Rough sex is climbing among young people, and we need to talk about it
In some ways, things have been brewing for a while. The hashtag #chokemedaddy is not only found on concerning posts but has been the subject of hilarity in meme culture for years.
In our internet-fuelled culture, things change quickly.
Trends — the currency for platforms like Tiktok — come and go at a dizzying speed.
On the lighter side, this can make it seem like Monday’s meme is Friday’s flashback.
But there are grim trends, too, and they can tell us some worrisome things that are happening in the culture.
ROUGH SEX AMONG TEENS
Earlier this month, the author Peggy Orenstein used the op-ed clout of the New York Times to sound an alarm about the frightening and fast rise in rough sex among teenagers.
Orenstein is no mere passing observer to this subject — she has written such books as Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity, and Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.
Orenstein wrote the April 12 essay, "The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex," to get people’s attention, in part because she has been troubled by emerging evidence of just the last few years.
“I haven’t often felt so strongly about getting research out there. But this is lifesaving,” she quotes researcher Debby Herbenick, director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University, as saying.
CHOKING COMMON PRACTICE
Herbenick’s research has been showing a steep spike in choking as a common practice identified by university students, reflecting on their current and adolescent sexual histories.
Herbenick’s most recent research was anonymous and gathered in the U.S. Midwest, but as Orenstein writes, it clocks with what she has been seeing elsewhere.
Sexual asphyxiation is of course not new, but the practice has changed, and evidently rapidly.
Just under two-thirds of the women in a survey of 5,000 students reported having been choked during sex.
“The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened,” Orenstein writes, “had shot up to 40 per cent from one in four.”
CHANGED CULTURE
Orenstein first noted something concerning in 2020, just four years ago, when a 16-year-old girl asked her after a presentation, “How come boys all want to choke you?”
The culture has changed. Choking is evidently a hot topic in porn, which is so beyond ubiquitous that wringing our hands is pointless.
We need to be talking much more candidly about risks, consent, respect and so many other issues.
In some ways, things have been brewing for a while. The hashtag #chokemedaddy is not only found on concerning posts but has been the subject of hilarity in meme culture for years.
Rolling Stone magazine noted in 2022 that #chokemedaddy parody memes were now the subject of academic study, with the article noting that these memes started taking off in the mid-2010s.
FROM FRINGE TO MAINSTREAM
From porn to parody memes, something has been stirring kids up. What was dangerous and, on the fringe, has suddenly become mainstream.
But choking is highly risky, and it is a display of power and violence.
I read with interest a report this week by Sarah Smellie, the St. John’s-based correspondent for The Canadian Press, who looked at how choking is a rising concern for those trying to halt intimate partner violence.
Five years ago, the Criminal Code of Canada was updated to include strangulation in the definition of assault with a weapon or assault causing bodily harm.
However, not enough police (and those in the criminal justice system) are trained well enough about choking, which unlike other types of assault does not leave telltale marks.
"It's one of the best predictors of homicide or femicide,” B.C. criminology researcher Amanda Mccormick told Smellie.
"The thing about strangulation is it's quite hidden: a lot of abusers will use this as a form of power and control, but it often doesn't leave any visible injuries.”
WE CAN'T SHRUG THIS OFF
I worry while reading about these types of articles. I know I’m not alone.
But I also know we cannot shrug it off, like some sort of Fifty Shades of Grey fad that’s bound to run its course like a tired Tiktok trend.
Choking has moved into the mainstream, and in cultural terms, it’s happened quickly.
We need to deal with it appropriately, at multiple levels and multiple spaces — at home, on campus, in the courts and yes, online.