Young women are getting strokes and seizures — it's time to ban 'choking' porn 

Young women are presenting at A&E with strokes, seizures and brain injuries, because of sexual techniques men are learning from pornography. We have to act, writes Ruth Breslin 

In a recent review of the titles of the top 100 ‘hot porn videos in Ireland’ on Pornhub last month we found that more than a fifth of video titles directly reference physical aggression.

Social media is awash with ‘advice’ videos telling young people how to choke their sexual partners ‘safely.’ Such misinformation helps no-one, as two crucial facts are usually omitted — the practice that they are describing is in fact strangulation (not ‘choking’), and medical professionals are clearer than ever that there is no truly safe way to strangle someone.

Yet demand for this so-called advice is growing as strangulation as a sexual practice moves out of the realm of ‘kink’ and becomes entirely mainstream, primarily among those under 40. The international evidence shows a five-fold increase in strangulation in a single decade — with public health experts noting the incredible speed with which this practice has grown in popularity.

In the vast majority of cases, it is young women who are being subjected to strangulation by their male sexual partners. This typically involves the placing of hands, arms, legs or a ligature on or around the neck and applying pressure (whereas choking more accurately refers to something inside the throat that is blocking airflow). US studies find that up to two-thirds of young women have been strangled during sex, one third during their most recent sexual encounter alone, and some report that they were between the ages of 12 and 17 when they were first strangled. More than half of young women in a recent British study said they had been strangled during sex without ever giving their consent.

There is little question among scholars that we have arrived at this place because of the extent to which pornography has seeped into our culture and our intimate lives, teaching young people in particular that harmful and potentially life-threatening practices such as strangulation are what ‘normal sex’ should involve

The wider ‘pornification’ of popular culture is highly influential and evident across society — from #chokeher hashtags and #chokemedaddy memes on mainstream social media platforms, to chart-topping popular songs featuring lyrics that celebrate or joke about ‘choking’ — such as those by American singer Jack Harlow, who raps: “I'm vanilla, baby, I'll choke you, but I ain't no killer, baby...”.

We are clearly not immune to these influences in Ireland. In a recent review of the titles of the top 100 ‘hot porn videos in Ireland’ on Pornhub last month we found that more than a fifth of video titles directly reference physical aggression, such as women’s bodies being ‘pounded’ or ‘destroyed’ by men. Some of the thumbnails of the most popular videos feature women’s faces contorted in pain and/or being strangled. This type of content is available online right now, for free, on the most mainstream of pornography platforms and can be accessed by anyone of any age in Ireland, within a couple of seconds. Young people tell us that they go to pornography because they are naturally curious and want to ‘learn about sex’. Instead, what they are confronted with is the brutalisation and degradation of real women and girls on camera. 

This in turn is shaping their own sexual templates — the evidence is clear that what young people view in pornography, including strangulation, is heavily influencing their own sexual expectations and behaviours in the real world

Terms such as ‘choking’ or ‘breath play’ are used by the pornography trade to obscure and minimise the true harms of strangulation. Strangulation is, of course, a potentially life-threatening practice and has been identified by An Garda Síochána as a ‘significant risk factor’ for homicide among women. 

However, medical experts have also highlighted how ‘non-fatal strangulation’ can result in very serious impacts to physical and psychological health. The neurological consequences include loss of consciousness, acquired brain injury, stroke, seizures, motor and speech disorders, and paralysis. Psychological outcomes include post-traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, depression and suicide ideation. Consciousness can be lost within four to ten seconds of placing pressure on the arteries in the neck, followed by seizure within six to eight seconds. Strangulation is one of the most common causes of stroke in women under 40.

These stark realities are rarely shared by the social media influencers seeking to instruct young people how to ‘choke safely’. But such is the level of concern about this practice in the real world that former justice minister Helen McEntee, as part of her efforts to tackle gender-based violence, introduced two new offences of non-fatal strangulation, citing its serious long-term physical and mental health effects. Since late 2023 and May 2025 there have been 67 prosecutions in Ireland. Societally, it seems that we have now reached a point where new legislation must be created in an effort to combat potentially lethal gender-based violence that has clearly been inspired by pornography.

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Women’s Aid, in commissioning our research on the links between pornography and the perpetration of violence against women and girls, noted the extent to which pornography is being used as a ‘blueprint’ for the sexual violence the women they support are experiencing at the hands of their abusive partners.

This study — Facing Reality — also determined that many boys are effectively being groomed by the pornography trade to perpetrate sexual violence, while many girls are being groomed to submit to it. Sex is not supposed to be terrifying. Yet those working with young people at the frontline in Ireland are meeting girls and young women who are scared to begin or continue having heterosexual sex. These girls are frightened because they find the acts they have witnessed in pornography — the same acts often imitated by their male peers — painful, degrading and dangerous.

In all of this, we cannot lose sight of the fact that pornography is a €90bn global business, whose carefully crafted algorithms deliberately feed us more and more extreme content to keep us engaged, to keep our eyeballs on the screen for long enough to maximise profits from its key revenue source — advertising. We must cut off access to this content for children and young people to protect them from its insidious influences, but also to prevent them from becoming the porn ‘customers’ of the future. Age verification is on its way, but we need it sooner, and we need the Government and Coimisiún na Meán to ensure that it is fully and effectively implemented for all pornographic content across all platforms.

However, we cannot stop there. Our Government should move to criminalise all pornography that depicts strangulation, exactly as the UK Government has just done. What is illegal to perpetrate in the offline world should also be illegal to perpetrate online. The UK’s Ministry of Justice acknowledges the serious risks to health and life of sexual strangulation and says it is taking this step to address the ‘growing epidemic’ of violence against women and girls. If we want to tackle the literal stranglehold that pornography has on our own lives and our intimate relationships, then we should be brave enough to do the same.

Ruth Breslin is Director of The SERP Institute