Sex, choking,

and a little thing called consent.

We don't kink shame.

But we do kink raise an eyebrow at times.

Not because what you may be doing is weird or shameful, but because of the way you're risking yourself or someone who has trusted you.

There are all sorts of kinks around pain and potential injury, not to mention other things we would generally consider Not Okay in intimate relationships. That doesn't make them wrong, though, for the same reasons the deed itself isn't wrong if we have consent.

Consent for these kinks is perhaps more complicated than we often think. It's not just for an activity, but all of the specifics around it: How, precisely, is the activity defined? What are the limits, the conditions beyond the scope of the consent? What safety measures will be in place? Who can participate? When? How is consent withdrawn?

If this sounds like boundary negotiation, you're not entirely wrong. Think of consent in this context as a supercharged boundary conversation that should happen well in advance of hopping into bed (or wherever....we don't judge).

The details are important, even if you think you are on the same page as your partner(s). If you want it vanilla or rough, what is included and not? If you want to try something new, what is it? Just because someone told you it's The Thing To Do, that doesn't mean permission should be assumed or that you have to participate a little or a lot.

But whether the discussion happens or not, you aren't required to continue once you've figured out whatever's happening isn't for you after all.

Specific to the choking described in this excerpt, there are particular safety issues to consider because of the risk of real, potentially permanent, injury. It's more than just hands around the neck, and the consequences of getting it wrong are extreme.

And getting choking or whatever else it is right, by not just jumping in because social media or a book said it's cool? That's not boring or vanilla at all.

The story:

"I like to think I enjoyed my single 20s," says Lucy, now 24. "I was an avid Hinge and Tinder user and I liked to think of myself as the ‘cool girl'. But I've been thinking about it so much — I'm not sure why. There was the friend of a friend who slapped me so hard in the middle of us having sex - no warning, just from nowhere. It actually made my teeth rattle. There was another guy I met at a bar. We got together that night and he started choking me so hard, I felt this sharp pressure, this pain I'd never experienced before. I was drunk but it sobered me up in one second. I still wonder what he did to me to cause that pain."

Never was "rough sex" discussed before, during or after. "Among my friends, there's this competitiveness about not being boring, not being ‘Vanilla'. I think it's very prevalent for women my age, and no one wants to kink-shame anyone," says Lucy (not her real name). "There's a lot of talk about online porn and what that has done to men's brains and expectations, but I also saw a lot of very violent porn when I was a teenager. I don't know why or how I found it. The women in porn never push back or say, ‘Don't do that' when they're choked. I think I became quite performative. I like to think I'm a strong woman but I don't know if it's about male validation."

It has become so standard among young people that one recent council-funded sex education presentation for Welsh secondary schoolchildren included "safe" choking advice such as: "It is never OK to start choking someone without asking them first ..." and: "Consent should also happen every time sexual choking is an option, not just the first time." When the presentation was made public, Fiona Mackenzie, the founder of campaigning group We Can't Consent to This (WCCTT), was "absolutely furious but not at all surprised".

Few doubt its origins. "It's about porn and the mainstreaming of illegal and violent tropes in porn practices," says Meyrick. It's not just

dedicated porn sites, she says. "It's a click away on TikTok, it's absolutely everywhere. I've had young people come to me in tears, young women saying, ‘I don't want to be strangled' and young men saying, ‘I don't want to do it' but both watch porn where it's handed to them in an uncritical way and there's an assumption that that's What has to happen."

Excepted from The Guardian.

Starting point resources: Consent Toolkit; Breathe: Risks, Realities, and Safer Alternatives to Choking and Breath Play.