When did sexual choking become almost as mainstream as the missionary position?
Nobody knows for sure, says Debby Herbenick, a leading sexuality researcher at Indiana University and author of Yes, Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know About Today’s Teens and Sex. But judging by the way it’s turning up in music, TV, and social media, being strangled for sexual gratification is now far from taboo. (Although losing your breath due to external airway blockage is technically strangulation, experts commonly use the term “choking” to describe the practice in sexual contexts.)
That tracks with a growing body of research — much of it led by Herbenick — suggesting that a truly astonishing number of young people are choking each other during sex. In surveys she and her team have conducted over the past four years, about half of American college students acknowledge being choked during sex, despite the fact that the practice poses