Written by Eniiyi
When Ifeoma opened her mouth to tell him to stop, nothing came out.
They had been having sex for a few minutes when his hands closed around her neck, and at first she did not think much of it because she had seen choking before in films and pornography. But when his grip tightened, she realised she was struggling to breathe and tried to tell him to stop, only to find that she could not get the words out.
“I was trying to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t really say anything,” she says. “My vision was also getting blurry.”
She grabbed his wrist and tried to pull his hand away, but he was much stronger than her.
As she struggled to breathe, she did not know how long he was going to keep his hand there, and the longer it continued, the more frightened she became.
When he finally stopped, she started coughing as she tried to catch her breath. He asked if she was okay and told her that he had not realised how much pressure he was using, and although she believed that he had not meant to hurt her, she was still shaken by what had happened.
The next day, she noticed bruises on her neck. “My voice was also hoarse for two days after, and I told my roommate I just had a cold,” she says.
She and him never had a proper conversation about what had happened, and they just gradually drifted apart after this incident.
For Tolu, the situation was different. She had already told her partner that she did not like being choked, yet a few weeks later, he tried it again.
She had been with her partner for about eight months when he first choked her without warning. Their sex life had never been particularly adventurous, and they had never discussed choking or anything similar before. So, when she was on top of him one night and felt his hand move from her body to her neck, she did not immediately understand what he was doing. Then his fingers tightened around her neck.
She looked at him, expecting him to realise that she was uncomfortable and stop on his own, but he did not, so she slapped his hand away.
“He asked me what was wrong, and I said, ‘I don’t like that,’” she recalls. “He said okay, and we continued and I thought that was the end of it.”
A few weeks later, it happened again. He started to choke her, but this time she knew what he was about to do and pushed his hand away almost immediately, reminding him that she had already told him she did not like being choked. What he said in response stunned her.
“He said he thought I had only meant that I did not like the way he had done it before,” she says. “I remember just staring at him because I didn’t understand how there could be another version of something I had already said I didn’t want.”
After that, Tolu became more alert whenever they had sex. She started paying attention to where his hands were and would sometimes move his hand away before it reached her neck.
Aisha, on the other hand, is comfortable with being choked during sex.
They work as a sex worker and, by their own account, enjoy sex that can be degrading or intense. They are comfortable with being choked when they have agreed to it and when it is part of what they and a client have discussed beforehand.
That is why the incident with one client who choked them without warning caught them off guard. Even so, they did not think of it as a serious incident at the time. They were used to rough sex and continued working, but afterwards they experienced bruising and soreness around their neck.
“There Is No Safe Way to Choke Somebody”
Omooba Adebimpe, a sex educator who runs Talk Sex with Sugar, hears versions stories like these often. In her opinion, a lot of what passes for rough sex now starts from not caring about the person at all. “The foundational idea of rough sex is that you don’t care about this person,” she says. “You’re just, bam, bam, bam. There’s this inherently violent background to it, and so I’m not really surprised that choking is a part of this.”
She also questions the different terms used to describe the act. Breath play, choking and strangulation are often used as though they are different things, but she says they all involve restricting someone’s breathing or blood flow to the brain, so calling it something else does not make it safer.
Her concern is also about whether people understand what they are agreeing to.
“People cannot give consent to what they don’t understand,” she says.
If someone agrees to being choked without understanding the physical risks, including what can happen when the body begins to lose consciousness, Adebimpe questions whether that agreement can really be considered informed.
“Even if somebody says, ‘I consent to choking,’” she says, “consent means that you’re able to say no at any time. But when you’re already like, you can’t breathe, you’re fainting, you’re losing consciousness, how are you able to say stop?”
For Adebimpe, the answer is straightforward.
“The safest way to choking,” she says, “is not choking at all.”
Why Choking Can Be Dangerous
Uche, a doctor training to become a general practitioner (GP) in the UK, says the risks involve the blood vessels, airway and other structures in the neck, which can be injured even by relatively small amounts of pressure.
The jugular veins, which carry blood away from the brain, can be compressed and may cause the dizziness and headaches that some women report they suffer from after being choked. More seriously, the carotid and vertebral arteries, which carry blood to the brain, can also be injured, potentially leading to clot formation. If a clot reaches the brain, it can cause a stroke, sometimes hours or days after the sexual encounter.
The airway can also be injured. Pressure on the windpipe can cause difficulty breathing, coughing and swelling and, in some cases, these symptoms may not appear until several hours or even days later. Uche says it can also be difficult to tell how much force is enough to cause damage, so there may be no visible signs afterwards. Someone may have no bruising or obvious injury and still have an unnoticeable injury.
This is why the UK now legally recognises non fatal strangulation as a distinct offence, carrying a sentence of up to five years.
But what about choking that has been discussed beforehand? Is it medically different from choking that happens without warning?
Uche says it is not.
“It’s not like we can measure the amount of force that will be dangerous while choking,” he says. “Even a force we think is small can be dangerous.”
Uche further explains that a conversation beforehand may help someone feel emotionally prepared for what is about to happen, but that it does nothing to reduce the pressure on the neck or the risks that come with it. He also adds that some people may also have preexisting conditions that make them more susceptible to the effects of being choked.
This is why it hardly matters whether the men in these stories meant any harm, since the body does not register intention. Ifeoma’s partner, for instance, claimed he did not realise how hard he was gripping her neck, but the physical risk was just as real, and so was the aftermath, which she was left to deal with alone. Even if he truly did not mean to hurt her, he could not have known how much force was too much, because as Uche points out, no one can know that in advance, which then means that no amount of care or good faith can make choking safe. The same uncertainty applies to those who are willing to take part in the act, and who may genuinely enjoy it, which is why they too should weigh the risks carefully before agreeing to it.
