Pornography and Women’s Experience of Mixed-Gender Sexual Choking/Strangulation: Eroticization Mediates, Perceived Similarity Moderates

Abstract

Sexual choking, which is a form of strangulation, can lead to various health consequences, including death. Recent surveys suggest that sexual choking is prevalent among young U.S. adults, a demographic also likely to view pornography. Pornography professionals, social commentators, and scholars have noted that mixed-gender choking is normative in contemporary pornography. Further, the pornographic portrayal of sexual choking is gendered; men choke women more often than women choke men. Guided by the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model (₃AM) of mediated sexual socialization, the present campus-representative probability study explored associations between heterosexual-identified women’s pornography exposure and sexual choking behavior. The more frequently women viewed pornography, the more often they were exposed to pornographic depictions of sexual choking. Exposure to sexual choking, in turn, was associated with being choked by men, but not choking men. The link between choking exposure and being choked was mediated by the eroticization of choking (rather than reduced agency to stop rough sex) and became stronger the more women perceived themselves as similar to actors in pornography. These results suggest that women’s experience of sexual choking is influenced by their use of pornography, but in an active and willing, rather than a passive and unwilling, manner.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The present effort focuses on choking, rather than penile gagging. Penile gagging has been defined as “one actor inserting their penis very far into another actor’s mouth” (Carrotte, Davis, & Lim, 2020, p. 3) and “inserting the penis very far into the partner’s mouth, causing the partner to gag)” (Miller & McBain, 2021, p. 9). Subsequent studies may wish to examine both choking and penile gagging, given evidence that the latter is also prevalent in popular, mixed-gender pornography (Miller & McBain, 2021).

² Four women who indicated that their last sexual encounter was an assault or rape were not asked the present study’s choking questions to reduce retraumatization, reducing the sample size from 698 to 694.

³ Consistent with their self-identification as heterosexual, all women indicated that their last sexual partner was a man.

⁴ It should be documented that the lead creator of the pornography consumption frequency measure presciently envisioned the diminishing value of the “picture” items as technological advances increasingly enabled the streaming of pornographic video (J. Peter, personal communication with lead author, March 6, 2014).

⁵ Given the potential health implications of choking/strangulation, it is important that public health professionals and sexuality educators consider seriously how pornographic socialization impacts young women’s sexual choking behavior. But it is also important to note that the present study’s univariate descriptives suggest that many young women rarely view pornography and are corresponding unlikely to be exposed to depictions of sexual choking.

⁶ This logic does not exclude the possibility that some women find sexual choking pleasurable because they believe their partner does. In other words, certain women may eroticize choking due to the perception that it is pleasurable for their partner. It is recommended that subsequent studies explore women’s beliefs about their male partners’ eroticization of choking as an additional linking mechanism.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.