cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/36086049
Research that has analysed thousands of randomly chosen videos from popular pornographic websites found that physical aggression like strangulation, slapping and hair-pulling was present in 35-45% of scenes, depending on the website.
It’s important to be wary of clutching our pearls about porn here – there is no evidence to suggest that watching ethical porn results in an upswing in violent behaviour, but research released last year by the Australian Institute of Criminology does indeed show that more frequent intentional viewing of violent pornography is associated with a “small but statistically significant” increase in violence against women by men after they watched violent porn.
Couple this with the knowledge that one in three Australian children have seen online porn and that the average age of initial consumption of porn is 13 – and we can all feel a desperate kind of sorrow for adolescents navigating this world. Girls thinking this is what boys want, boys thinking that this is what girls want. The confusion, the painful wanting to be wanted, that perennial need to be thought of as cool that comes with teenagehood, all of it is now shadowed by the normalisation of something that is clearly dangerous – as any medical expert will tell you, there is no safe way to lose oxygen to the brain.
…I know from personal experience how hard it is to have the conversation about porn with young children. You look at your sweet prepubescent boy child and think he is definitely the only child on the planet not being exposed too early to things he definitely shouldn’t see. He is. They are. Not talking about it is no longer an option.
I feel like the sub-linked article answers the question and also covers this sensitive issue in more detail.
Wait, so ‘choke me daddy’ could be a criminal offence. Like, goading someone into performing a criminal act or, on flip side, the other party thinking they’re in the clear because of consent that can’t lawfully be given?
Inb4 police stings trying to catch guys in the act.
Her: spread eagle, mid coitus, getting choked. Her: rips off mask revealing middle aged man Thought you were getting away with it, mate?! You’re under arrest!!
For an extreme ethics case study, there is a German man currently serving lifetime imprisonment for murdering and cannibalising a voluntary victim in 2001. (NSFW, of course) The two had discussed their plans through email for a month in advance, and the perpetrator had let two prior partners back out when they retracted their consent to be slaughtered. As listed in the article, this case had a large cultural legacy.
Your comment reminded me of this classic video (NSFW).
But yeah sort of. Not a lawyer but I’ve been adjacent to that field. The general idea is that “if something goes wrong, the perpetrator is at fault, even with consent.” The law now says you cannot actually legally consent to choking, no matter what you say; the same way you cannot consent to “assisted suicide”. The goader isn’t really liable here, it fully falls to the goadee. Unless you can prove intent that the goader deliberately tried to instigate a crime with full knowledge of the law, but good luck with that.
In reality, it’s impossible to truly police, unlike the suicide thing. You can still do it, but if the receiving party gets injured or worse, they have full backing to press charges and ruin your life. Not worth it In My Opinion.
Random mildly related story. I had an ex once that was really into non-con… They asked me to sign a pre-consent agreement to do non-con kink stuff on another day. I was extremely uncomfortable. Even with a written agreement, it would be risky, let alone the personal ick because I’m absolutely not into that. To me, enthusiastic consent is sexy. It felt like I was being asked to murder a kitten every night and I just couldn’t do it.
It’s always a tragedy when someone dies like that, but that article is full of some really dumb stuff and a lot of moralizing. The Lucy mentioned had frequent hookups where nothing was negotiated beforehand. It’s not her fault she was subject to violence and people should talk about sex, boundaries, kink, etc, before participation.
“No safe way to do it”: quite possibly. There is risk in many activities. This is why frameworks like RACK (risk aware consensual kink) exist alongside SSC (safe, sane, and consensual). To use a metaphor, driving a car is risky, but we do it anyway while adding safety features to roads and vehicles to reduce that risk. It’s impossible to make it completely safe.
Stealing can’t be done with consent because then it’s just taking.
Pregnancy also carries risk for everything on this list except trouble swallowing which is more of a cause. Voice changes from hormone level changes, incontinence from the pelvic changes required to get a baby through there, seizures from eclampsia, “pregnancy brain”, postpartum depression and anxiety both exist, and unfortunately miscarriages happen in over 10% of pregnancies. But taking risks for this is considered good while doing so for pleasure is deemed not so.
There is a significant difference in the preferences between men and women. This paper suggests ~75% of women prefer to be submissive as opposed to dominant. The sensual framing used is a straw man that requires willful ignorance of kink.
There is a heavy emphasis that porn causes more violent sexual behavior but then has this:
Some people just aren’t into it. It’s also mentioned he’s not into kinky porn. Also, maybe have conversations about sex and what everybody’s into before your one year anniversary.
This is the most interesting part of the article but they don’t go beyond the feeling to get any actual statements from anybody that would be at a sexual health conference. Going from risk to guaranteed harm (if that’s the case as opposed to user error) and how that shifts opinions or if there’s a divide in spite of that would be fascinating.
As somebody in the kink scene that doesn’t really consume BDSM pornographs and knows way too many women that have been subject to sexual violence and domestic violence, I think this is a pretty bad article that conflates kink with those violences.
Your arguments are based on adult-related contexts.
it seems to me you’ve missed the point of the opinion piece which is more about the effects of pornography (and violence within pornography) and its effect on children and adolescents.
My comments were in regards to the no safe way one in the comment I was responding to, which does talk about college students and adults including a Lucy whose age is given as 24, as opposed to the one about the 16 year old girl that died.
Thank you for that. I did no see it. Here it is for anyone interested: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/27/sydney-16yo-girl-death-suspected-sexual-choking-asphyxiation-ntwnfb