07/10/2026
While we continue to expose the harms of normalising strangulation as 's*xy', some defend the practice. We’ve responded to some of the more common claims in our blog.
Myth: "It's fine as long as it is done safely"
There is no safe way to strangle someone. A literature review by Dr Vicki Lowik, Associate Professor Heather Lovatt and Dr Nicola Cheyne noted:
“A person who is being strangled can lose consciousness after four to 10 seconds of arterial pressure and have anoxic seizures after six to eight seconds; lose bladder control after 15 seconds and bowel control after 30 seconds; and sustain brain stem damage after 20 seconds and brain death after one to six minutes of pressure.”
Not only can strangulation be fatal, victims are at risk of brain damage or death even weeks or months later. Individuals who have been strangled can suffer strokes, depression, memory loss, seizures, motor and speech disorders and paralysis. These serious long-term outcomes can occur even when strangulation is brief and without great force.
People (many of them women) have died as a result of being strangled during s*x. We therefore reject the claim that strangulation can ever be safe.
Research on young adult men who strangle their female partners indicated they had little awareness of the risks, that almost none of those surveyed had sought any education on mitigating them, and that their knowledge of strangulation and how to do it was typically informed by po*******hy (see Herbenick et al., 2022).
