Strangulation is an assault on dignity. When someone chooses to strangle another person, they dehumanise and degrade the person they are strangling.
It’s time we talked about sexual strangulation.
This dangerous practice, often promoted in mainstream pornography, has now found its way into many young people’s sexual expectations and experiences. It’s time we talked about this issue and helped young people to understand that there is no safe way to strangle.
— Maree Crabbe, Project Director of It’s Time We Talked
There is no safe way to strangle. Strangulation is always dangerous. For the victim it can result in serious injury, brain damage or death. The perpetrator can be charged with serious crime — grievous bodily harm, manslaughter, or murder. In the UK the perpetrator can be charged with strangulation or suffocation, specific offences which the UK added to their Serious Crime Act in 2021.
Analysis of strangulation prosecutions in the UK shows that strangulation often co-occurs with coercive control, sexual offences, and image-based abuse.
- Most victims of strangulation will not have visible external injuries.
- Non-fatal strangulation can have serious immediate and long-term health consequences including brain damage.
- The victim may die hours, days or months after the strangulation event.
- Non-fatal strangulations point to future homicides.
- A woman who survives one strangulation event is 700% more likely to be strangled again and 800% more likely to be killed later.
- Fatal strangulation can occur without any external evidence of violence on the human body.
- Read more here: Have you been strangled? Or smothered so you couldn’t breathe?
Sexual strangulation, often referred to as choking, has emerged as a key theme in our interviews with young people. They tell us it’s common, it’s gendered, it often occurs with no communication or consent, and it can feel really scary and unsafe. Sexual strangulation is usually enacted by men, regardless of the gender of their partner.
— Breathless Campaign (developed by It’s Time We Talked)
Pornography is now the most prominent sexuality educator for many young people. Most young people discover porn well before they encounter sex – perhaps even before they have kissed or held a partner.
— Maree Crabbe, It’s Time We Talked
Because young people are learning about sex through porn, they are being duped about what kinds of sexual practices are healthy and safe.
All genders are being duped by the porn industry.
In this article I’m calling the person who chooses to strangle another person ‘the perpetrator’, and I’m calling the person being strangled ‘the victim’.
What is motivating the perpetrator of strangulation?
The person doing the strangulation is (at the very least) trying to humiliate and degrade the person being strangled.
The perpetrator may also be trying to intimidate the victim by making the victim feel so scared that they comply with the perpetrator’s wishes.
The perpetrator may also be trying to overpower the victim.1
The perpetrator’s motivation may or may not include intent to kill.
In addition to the motive to humiliate and degrade, the perpetrator may be wanting to deter the victim from resisting the perpetrator’s demands, or punishing the victim for resisting the perpetrator’s demands.
In some instances the perpetrator may be punishing the victim’s protective parent (usually the mother), who is also a victim of the perpetrator.
A perpetrator might strangle anyone who is attempting to restrain the perpetrator from harming the perpetrator’s victim(s).
Strangulation when the perpetrator is a psychephile
Don Hennessy defines a psychephile as a man who targets a woman for a long-term intimate relationship so that he can dictate the level of intimacy and the type of sexual activity in the relationship.
The psychephile is a man who gains control of the mind of the target woman so that he can dictate the level of intimacy and sexual activity in the relationship.
— Don Hennessy, How He Gets Into Her Head (affiliate link).
Hennessy says this is the core motive of all psychephiles. He believes the psychephile is primarily a sexual offender.
The target woman may be the psychephile’s wife or ex-wife, or the female intimate partner the psychephile has cohabited with.
All psychephiles do violence to the target woman’s dignity at a very fundamental level.
Don Hennessy believes that the psychephile is primarily motivated by his sexual lust.
If Hennessy is right, the psychephile’s sexual lust governs and colours all his actions that have any bearing on the target woman.
Hennessy recognises that not all psychephiles prefer to get their sexual satisfaction (their orgasms) in the same way.
Some psychephiles prefer to satisfy their sexual lusts by doing things to the body of the target woman. When a psychephile does sexualised things to the body of the target woman, he is always (to some degree) dishonouring her dignity and disrespecting her preferences. He has decided that her dignity is of less value that his dignity.
Other psychephiles prefer to satisfy their sexual lusts by doing things to their own bodies, or to people other than the target woman. Some psychephiles prefer to satisfy their sexual lusts by doing things to the bodies and minds of children and minors. Some prefer to engage in sexual activity with other men or trans-people. (I won’t go into other paraphilias here, but there are even more perverted acts that some humans engage in to obtain their sexual satisfaction.)
All psychephiles who are addicted to porn, or are doing sexualised things to people who are not the target woman, will be doing those things without the target woman’s consent. All such psychephiles will be neglecting and dishonouring the sexual preferences of the target woman. Often this neglect and dishonouring of the target woman’s sexual preferences is not just minor deprivation, it is egregious deprivation and deceit. Note: coerced consent is not really consent, because the target woman is only ‘consenting’ under threat, manipulation or deception, not having been fully informed of what the psychephile is doing or intending to do.
Hennessy says:
The skilled offender has many layers of need. At a very deep level his need is to avoid death, as though he wants to become God-like. While we are familiar with physical, emotional and financial control, the real God-like feeling is in his ability to sexually control the woman. The act of sexual intimacy is used by these men to confirm ownership.
The act of sexual intimacy without consequence is one of the most God-like experiences these men have. He targets a woman who will become a long-term acolyte in his project. His ability to hide this intention is the cornerstone of this project. If a woman is targeted by one of these men she is never aware of what he is doing to her.
The skilled offender has managed to create an illusion that what he wants is power and control. We are right in believing that this partly explains his behaviour but sadly his intention goes further. The tactics of targeting, setting up and grooming are used by all sexual predators who wish to develop and maintain a long-term sexual relationship with their target. Skilled offenders are people who believe that their sexual needs must be met repeatedly by the same woman. These psychephiles have a common goal. The goal of all his tactics is to have his sexual needs met without negotiation. The bed is the battle ground where the male abuser needs to be in charge. He can be demanding or rejecting of affection and intimacy, but either way he must be in charge.
We do an extraordinary injustice to these skilled offenders if we believe that they use all these tactics just to gain power. Most of them could do that without such effort. Most of them have huge amount of power before they ever enter the relationship. They could threaten their target with financial ruin, parental dominance or physical violence if all they wanted was to be in charge of their own lives. What they really want is for the woman to cede the right to her bodily integrity.
While most men have power to manage the routine functions of the relationship from the beginning, they know that the woman may resist their entitlement to sexual activity. They use their skills to undermine this resistance. They know that they arrive into the relationship with very little power over this resistance. Initially it may be the only area where the target woman has equal power. The man who comes to the relationship already convinced of his entitlement and driven by lust cannot allow this initial equality to stand in his way.
—The male domestic abuser is a psychephile — a sexual offender (emphasis mine)
I can see the logic in Hennessy’s theory that male intimate abusers (psychephiles) are primarily motivated by their belief that they are entitled to get their sexual preferences/ sexual lusts satisfied without having to negotiate.
A psychephile may strangle in the act of sex because that is his sexual preference. This kind of psychephile gets intense sexual satisfaction in choking his victim.
However, a psychephile might also strangle while not being sexually aroused and having an orgasm.
If a psychephile strangles while not in the process of getting an orgasm, he is strangling to intimidate or punish the target woman.
A psychephile might strangle the target woman so that she’s more likely to comply with his future sexual demands and preferences. Or to punish her for leaving him.
Or a psychephile may strangle the target woman’s children (and/or her loved ones) to punish the target woman for resisting his demands.
When a psychephile uses strangulation in these ‘non-sexual’ contexts, we could posit that he is still primarily motivated by sex. The target woman is resisting his assaults on her dignity and her safety, and her resistance is making it difficult for him to get his sexual satisfaction in whatever way he prefers getting it. He believes he’s entitled to get his sexual preferences met without having to negotiate, so he may choke and strangle the target woman so that she will knuckle under. He may also believe he is entitled to strangle her children, or her protectors, so she will knuckle under.
A friend linked to this 5 min video: The dangers of strangulation (Insight Exchange, October 2022).
I agree with my friend’s description of the video, she says: “This video and the research and lived experience behind it takes into account domestic violence (perpetrated by an intimate partner), family violence (perpetrated by any member of a family), and sexualized violence (which can be perpetrated by both an intimate partner and a family member or an unrelated acquaintance or stranger).”
I agree with my friend that
Perpetrators of strangulation may minimize their actions, describing themselves as being momentarily ‘out of control’ when in fact strangulation is a deliberate act of taking and intensifying control. Strangulation is a terrorizing and overpowering assault, yet victims always resist and respond to the violence used against them, even when their options are narrowing and limited, but stopping the violence is the responsibility of the person using the violence.
Endnotes
1. Could a person enact strangulation in self-defence? Possibly, but I think those situations are very rare. For example, if someone is attempting to shoot me and they’ve somehow dropped the gun but they’re reaching out to grab the gun, I might strangle that person to prevent them killing me.
Resources on Strangulation. Resources on Porn.
Brian Bennett provides consulting services in the areas of intimate partner/domestic violence, vulnerable adult abuse/neglect/exploitation, non-fatal strangulation assaults, law enforcement training, training/curriculum development, and human resource management of work place violence. 90% of Brian Bennett’s posts on LinkedIn are strangulation related and he has a lot of graphics in his posts.
It’s Time We Talked — Resources about porn for young people, parents, schools, and community organisations.
Porn is NOT the Norm — Supporting autistic young people and their communities to safely navigate pornography’s influence.
Fight The New Drug — Revealing the harmful effects of porn. Empowering real change.
Strangulation Training Institute
Strangulation Assessment Card (PDF) – can be used by professionals or victims of strangulation.
Strangulation Investigation Questions (PDF) – for any person that a victim might seek help from.
Signs and Symptoms of Strangulation (Version 1 in English)
Signs and Symptoms of Strangulation (Version 2 in English)
Signs and Symptoms of Strangulation (Version 1 in Spanish)
Signs and Symptoms of Strangulation (Version 2 in Spanish)
Facts Victims of Strangulation (Choking) Need to Know (Brochure in English)
Facts Victims of Strangulation (Choking) Need to Know (Brochure in Spanish)
Intimate Partner Violence & Strangulation in the Deaf Community – Video with subtitles for the hearing impaired.
No Place for a Smile – an article for dentists.
Dentists routinely assess a patient’s head, neck and mouth. They have an excellent opportunity to recognize whether or not a patient is being abused. This article seeks to enlist the collaboration of the dental community in the effort to prevent domestic/intimate partner violence and provide more information about the signs and symptoms of domestic violence injuries, including strangulation, which is often overlooked by medical and dental professionals.
Domestic violence victims suffer ‘shocking’ rate of brain injury, report finds — An Australian study found that in domestic violence admissions to hospital, 40% of victims had sustained a brain injury.
Module Strangulation (New 2025) — 46 animated minute video by Insight Exchange. It gives statistics about the prevalence of strangulation and the gender of perpetrators (mostly males) and victims of strangulation (mostly females) It also includes accounts from women who were strangled. It challenges assumptions people may make about strangulation.
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