Learning from Porn: Don't Worry, Everyone is (Still) Alright!
Pornography isn't making people choke their partners, people just like being choked during sex.
In recent years, it has been common to say that the rise in choking during sex is not only associated with adverse health effects, but also comes from pornography misleading people into choking their partner during sex (e.g. Gaitskill 2024; Moore 2025; The NYT 2024; Kotecha 2025; Breslin 2025; Kippert 2024; Bows 2024; Joannides 2023). In this article, I will argue that critics arguing that pornography is causing people to choke their partners are wrong, along with the fact that academics use verbal sleight of hand to make readers think that choking during sex is the same as trying to force someone to pass out.
Defining “Choking”
In data from Australians, Sharman, Fitzgerald, and Douglas (2024) found that 51% of participants ever being reported strangling their partner and 57% reported ever being sexually strangled. This is, of course, from the abstract — but the authors use verbal sleight of hand that laymen may not be aware on. Their abstract uses words like “strangulation”, which evokes negative connotations, and start off their paper with the following sentences: “In Australia, strangulation has been explicitly criminalized in all states and territories. However, it continues to be a “normalized” sexual practice despite its potentially fatal consequences and associated short and long-term sequelae” — effectively starting off with the idea that choking during sex is inherently harmful. Despite such scary warnings, the authors are conflating “strangulation” with what laymen would tend to think of when it comes to choking during sex (former being inherently harmful and later for sexual pleasure and safely). Indeed, buried in their paper, they note:
Further adjustments were made after discussion and advice from sexual health educators with extensive knowledge on sexual strangulation among adolescents and young adults, and who had completed independent interviews with young people on their strangulation experiences during sex. Given the common usage of the term “choking,” all questions used “choking” instead of “strangulation” and are referred to a such in the results.
One is less severe than the other — especially when put into the context of sex rather than when viewed in a vacuum. The questions the authors gave the participants come off as a clear separation between CHOKING and STRANGULATION when they are put into context rather than analyzing the behavior in a vacuum.
Even Wright, Herbenick, and Tokunaga (2022) make the same pitfall. “Sexual choking, which is a form of strangulation, can lead to various health consequences, including death.” Yes, sexual choking can lead to health consequences, but this does not mean laymen equate the two in such ways academics and anti-pornography commentators want it to be. Academics conflate the two to push their anti-pornography agendas, and commentators so they can argue against human sexuality — specifically a distaste for the type of people sex have.
Academics conflate the two to make it easier to attack and craft a panic around it. By noting that people are engaging in sexual choking during sex, authors can then sneakily lead into how choking can lead to negative health consequences (e.g., Herbenick et al. 2023). 1 Of course choking can lead to negative health consequences, but this does not mean the type of choking people engage in during sex is the same type of choking we would consider outside of sex, where one’s face turns purple. This is something even laymen seem to understand.
Despite the wishes of academics to conflate the two using verbal witchcraft, consumers of pornography are aware of the difference between sexually choking someone and then strangulating them. Herbenick et al. (2021) finds that in their interview among men, they differentiate between healthy sexual behaviors and potentially killing someone. When they asked participants how they viewed choking and strangulation,
“Mmm, like I think belt would fit that uh […]Uh, I’d leave [the belt around their neck] sort of open and then sort of tune it by hand. Uh, it was never like tied to the point where it’s like too tight and just left, I never did that. Um, but she wouldn’t mind it being pretty tight. Um, I don’t think I’ve done that with like a rope just because it felt it was too tense and then it would do damage possibly.” (Participant 21, white Middle Eastern, 32, heterosexual, cisgender man).
Participant 21 also differentiated between what he called “holding” (lighter pressure with hands or his elbow) and “choking”: ‘Like I have pinned you down on your neck to a bed or something and there’s definitely pressure on you, but it can be easy. There’s, I’m definitely not applying pressure to the extent where it’s interfering to breathing, but I could, and you wouldn’t have time to respond if I decided to…That’s kind of my limit to holding versus choking.’
Clearly, this violence is not actual violence, it’s just done for sexual reasons. Indeed, Burch and Salmon (2019) found that most people do not consider choking rough sex, which goes against where we think choking would be falling under based off the words and warnings of academics. Herbenick et al. (2021) offer contrasting results, showing most people to consider choking rough sex, and they note that differences in their findings might be due to methodology, but some questions arise with the way the authors conducted their study. First, from the get go they consider choking to be a form of rough sex, automatically making the participant connect choking with rough sex. In their first question, the authors worded it as: “People have different ideas about what rough sex means to them. What does it mean to you?” From there, they could pick different items, like choking, biting etc. Second, Burch and Salmon’s question was less restrictive and allowed participants to write in their own items and choose from existing items, not give them only pre-selected options. Such issues make me lean more heavily towards Burch and Salmon. Such issues with defining “rough sex” has also been noted in Gavey and Brewster (2025).
Others use such relationships to argue that porn supports and promotes violence against women. In Roper (2022), they note
In a piece on Grazia, Louise Pybus, whose husband killed a woman named Sophie Moss when he strangled her during sex, identified the role of porn in promoting acts of sexual violence against women:
Porn has a lot to answer for here; it has normalised violence against women. Those who don’t want to be strangled, slapped, spat on, or punched during sex are derogatorily referred to as ‘vanilla’. Rough sex is not just fashionable; it has now become the norm. There are Tik Tok videos of 17-year-old boys bragging about choking girls in bed and spitting on them. In the comments sections, rather than cries of horror, 15-16-year-old girls are wishing for it to happen to them.
Notice the attempt to conflate sexual choking with strangulation, and thus having it as a crux to argue how pornography is violence against women. Sexual choking is violence — pornography is bad because it is teaching violence. This would be an ideal argument if consumers of pornography were idiots, but they do not seem to be.
Of course, nothing in these paper indicates that women enjoy such behaviors, though. However, Sharman et al. noted that most people — whether straight or gay — had a neutral view of choking and most reported being in the middle of wanting to be choked, same for positive experience choking and being choked. Such findings span both men and women. Most did not report any negative consequences, whether they were being choked or doing the choking.
Herbenick et al. (2021) found that most women enjoyed being choked during sex.
“Aha, but they enjoy it because porn tells them to enjoy it!” In line with social learning, akin to Wright, Herbenick, and Tokunaga’s paper, one could argue that people are saying they’re okay with it because those in porn seem to enjoy it. This, too, is not empirically supported.
As Sharman et al. found, there is a weak and no correlation between seeing choking in porn and predicting positive perceptions of being choked. A whopping coefficient of … 0.004! Nothing to see here, really.
Though beliefs regarding violence are more direct, one subtle theme that tends to go unchecked in such debates regarding pornography is the attempt to police human sexuality. Previous judgement research has demonstrated attempts to connect pornography with sexual behaviors being viewed under a harsh microscope, with anything learned from pornography for sex being seen as bad because of the fact that it came from porn; and since porn is bad, what they learned is thus inherently bad (see Black 2023). For example, in a written article by the academics who conducted the 2023 Australian study above, they attempt to police the sex people decide to have by arguing that you can’t have safe sexual choking during sex, and those who think you can are naive.
“In a new study, we’ve found part of the reason why strangulation during sex is so common may be because many people mistakenly believe that, while risky, it can be made safe through moderating pressure and appropriate communication.”
What do you mean “mistakenly believe”? How can safety-guards, like partner communication and appropriate neck pressure not be valid risk-taking strategies? How is one supposed to “mistakenly believe” that taking about boundaries with your sexual other is not going to lower the risk of potentially being hurt during sexual choking? Are there other alternatives one must take? The authors never answer such damning questions. This is akin to Conte, Sharman, Douglas (2025). Such research attached with bizarre comments from their respective others is asinine, especially since research like this tends to lead to pornography bans based on questionable foundations, for example, as is being done in the United Kingdom (Barret 2025).
Another example comes from Bows (2024), saying
Separate research suggests strangulation has become so normalised that many do not consider it to be a form of rough or violent sex at all. A 2019 survey found only around a third of participants considered choking to be rough sexual behaviour. Most considered hair pulling, being pinned down, biting, being tied up and slapping as rough sexual behaviour.
Notice the fact that Bows does not like that most people do not consider choking to be rough sex, like how she views it. “A 2019 survey found only around a third of participants considered choking to be rough sexual behaviour.” Such findings must have lead to hard times for Bows, no doubt. Though this is a perfect illustration of the disconnect regarding what academics claim about human sexuality and what people themselves think.
“Learning” From Porn?
A common theme in these critical analyses regarding choking and porn is the assumption individuals learn from pornography. Not only have multiple research papers been written on the topic (Wright 2011; Fritz et al. 2020; Bridges et al. 2023; Wright et al. 2022; Bridges et al. 2016), but there is little support that such associations between pornography exposure and behavior are causal. Readers are encouraged to read my other article discussing the lack of learning effects regarding pornography consumption and youth behavior (Black 2022), the lack of causal relationships between phonography exposure and multiple of social and psychological outcomes, and the fact that most people do not like violent porn (Black 2023). A more damning study comes from Thomas and Buijzen (2025), who found that learning pornography is fake does not seem to change attitudes regarding sexuality.
These pieces of evidence, when viewed together rather than in isolation, cast doubt on social learning theory being a strong mechanism in pornography research in this context (choking). Most people do not like violent porn, stuff where people are genuinely being choked is not liked, so where are academics getting the idea that people are learning this from porn? If anything, people probably just do it because they like it.
Overall, the issue regarding choking and sex seems to be made scarier by the trickery being done by academics and commentators. Pornography consumers are not stupid, and such is born out in the research. Largely a moral panic being flamed by anti-pornography activists and social commentators. The fact that a handful of researchers are investigating this topic (Wright and Herbenick), and these researchers happen to be anti-pornography, better research from neutral parties are required.
Herbenick et al. (2021) attempt to correlate choking with lower mental health, but they lack any proper controls. Good example of research voodoo: Find an association, call it a day.