A push to address conversations about strangulation and choking in sexual relationships have become increasingly prominent in recent years. Media reporting, practitioner concerns, policy debates and emerging research have all drawn attention to what many perceive as a growing issue among young people. Schools, safeguarding professionals and educators are increasingly being called upon to respond, with the most recent government guidance on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) requiring educators to address the topic.
Within the new RSE guidance, strangulation is positioned within the secondary school Being Safe curriculum as part of a sequence of safeguarding topics. Point 13 addresses female genital mutilation (FGM), virginity testing and hymenoplasty. Point 14 then states:
“That strangulation and suffocation are criminal offences, and that strangulation (applying pressure to the neck) is an offence, regardless of whether it causes injury. That any activity that involves applying force or pressure to someone’s neck or covering someone’s mouth and nose is dangerous and can lead to serious injury or death.” (p.18).
This is followed immediately by point 15, which states that pornography “presents some activities as normal which many people do not and will never engage in, some of which can be emotionally and/or physically harmful.”
This framing reflects legitimate concerns about serious harms, violence against women and girls, and young people’s safety. At the same time, however, it locates strangulation – discursively and pedagogically – primarily within a safeguarding, criminal justice and risk-prevention framework. This raises an important educational question: when a topic is introduced in these terms, what kinds of questions are we encouraged to ask – and which ones might receive less attention?
The immediate focus is often on the behaviour itself. Is it becoming more common? What risks does it carry? Where are young people encountering it? What role might pornography or social media play?
These are important questions. Yet during a recent discussion with our Reimagining RSE Trailblazers, another question emerged as equally significant: how do we respond to concerns such as these in ways that genuinely support young people?
This matters because history suggests that identifying a concern does not automatically lead to an effective response. Across RSE, we have repeatedly seen how well-intentioned interventions can produce unintended consequences. Efforts to deter young people from sharing sexual images, for example, have often relied on legal frameworks, shame, fear and risk-based messaging, with the fear being any message less than ban and block would amount to encouragement. While designed to prevent harm, such approaches have sometimes made it harder for young people to seek support, disclose experiences or engage in open discussion when things go wrong.
The challenge, then, is not simply identifying risks. It is developing responses that reduce harm without increasing silence, stigma or disengagement.
Against this backdrop, our discussion did not begin from the assumption that strangulation and choking represent a single, clearly defined problem with an obvious solution. Instead, participants explored how the issue is currently being framed, what assumptions underpin dominant responses and what kinds of educational approaches might help young people navigate complexity while maintaining a clear focus on safety, consent and respectful relationships.
What emerged was not a set of definitive answers, but a recognition that many of the debates surrounding strangulation and choking reflect wider tensions within contemporary RSE: between safeguarding and dialogue, prohibition and education, certainty and uncertainty, and adults’ understandable concerns and young people’s lived realities.
To learn more about the findings from the discussion, please check out the summary here:
One topic, many different concerns
One of the strongest themes emerging from the discussion was that ‘strangulation’ and ‘choking’ are often used as umbrella terms to describe a range of very different concerns, which may, in turn, obfuscate very real issues. Typically, we see it framed as non-consensual violence and abuse within relationships, and as part of coercive control and violence against women and girls. Yet, it can also constitute a consensual intimate sexual practice in some circumstances.
More broadly, we see choking and strangulation discussed in terms of the influence of pornography and digital sexual cultures and as reflective of gendered expectations about sex, desire and performance. Concerns are expressed about young people’s ability to communicate boundaries and consent, and their limited understanding of risk and bodily safety.
While these issues overlap, they are not the same thing. Treating them as equivalent can make it harder to understand what is actually happening and what kinds of responses might be effective. Similarly, as we have seen with nude image sharing, by conflating consensual and aggravated practices together as a single issue may make it harder for young people to ask for help and for victims of abuse to disclose due to fear and shame.
The power of dominant narratives
Current public discussions often frame choking primarily as an issue of violence, pornography or safeguarding. These framings have been important in drawing attention to potential harms and ensuring that concerns are taken seriously.
Yet participants also questioned whether these narratives sometimes become so dominant that they obscure other important aspects of the issue. For example, if all discussions begin and end with violence, what happens when young people describe experiences that they understand differently? If pornography is treated as the sole explanation, what other social, cultural and relational influences are overlooked? If safeguarding concerns dominate, what opportunities for dialogue might be lost?
These questions do not diminish the seriousness of harm. Rather, they encourage us to think more carefully about how complex social issues become understood and responded to.
The challenge of talking about risk
Many institutions understandably favour clear and unequivocal messages. Such approaches can feel safer, particularly when schools are navigating safeguarding responsibilities, parental concerns and an increasingly scrutinised RSE landscape.
In the discussion, few participants disputed that choking carries serious risks. The question was how educators should engage with those risks. Participants reflected on the limitations of prohibition-based approaches, as we have seen within drug education in the past. Young people are often aware that some peers and adults engage in practices that official messages describe as entirely unacceptable. When educational messages appear disconnected from lived realities, there is a risk that they lose credibility.
This creates a difficult dilemma. How can educators communicate concern without shutting down conversation? How can they acknowledge risk while remaining open to questions, uncertainty and discussion?
Gender, power and agency
The discussion also highlighted important tensions around gender.
Many public conversations frame choking as something that boys do to girls, reflecting legitimate concerns about violence against women and girls. Yet participants noted that experiences and motivations are often more diverse than these narratives suggest. For instance, some young women report enjoying and requesting choking, while some young men describe feeling pressure to perform behaviours associated with sexual competence or masculinity. Experiences may also differ across LGBTQ+ relationships and communities.
Recognising this complexity does not mean ignoring gendered inequalities that may shape patterns of risk and harm but does highlight the importance of clearly defining what we are discussing, separating consensual activities from abusive behaviours and dynamics. This, in turn, requires us to avoid simplistic assumptions about who has agency, who experiences pressure and how power operates within relationships.
Beyond ‘don’t do it’
Perhaps the most significant insight from the discussion was that education may be most effective when it focuses less on individual acts and more on the broader skills needed to navigate relationships, intimacy and consent.
Rather than treating choking as a standalone topic, participants suggested that it may be more helpful to think more broadly about ethical and caring relationships and to situate choking within wider conversations about consent, communicating desires, negotiating boundaries and responding to pressure and expectations. These conversations can focus on recognising discomfort and respecting others’ limits, while also examining the role of gender, power and social norms.
From this perspective, the aim is not simply to tell young people what to think. It is to help them develop the capacity to think critically about complex situations they may encounter.
Working with uncertainty
One challenge repeatedly surfaced throughout the discussion: uncertainty. The evidence base is continuing to develop, and our understanding of young people’s diverse experiences remains partial. Yet, public debates are often highly polarised and educational settings face competing expectations and responsibilities. Thus far, RSE guidance instructs schools to address the choking and strangulation but doesn’t explain how. In such circumstances, there can be pressure to offer certainty where certainty may not yet exist, which may be ineffective in reducing harm.
A Safe Uncertainty approach begins from a different premise. It recognises that it is impossible to remove all risk on behalf of young people. Instead, education should equip them to navigate uncertainty by asking questions, engaging in dialogue and seeking support when they need it. It acknowledges legitimate concerns without assuming that every question has a simple answer. It recognises that safeguarding and dialogue are not opposites. Rather than closing down difficult conversations prematurely, it seeks to create spaces in which complexity can be explored thoughtfully. This shifts the educational task from simply warning young people about risk to supporting them to make sense of complex situations they may encounter in their relationships. From this perspective, ignorance, innocence and safety are not equivalent.
This does not mean abandoning clear boundaries around harm and abuse. It means recognising that understanding complex social issues requires curiosity as well as concern.
Where next?
The discussion left participants with many questions rather than definitive conclusions.
How should educators balance safeguarding responsibilities with open dialogue? How can young people be supported to navigate competing messages about sex and relationships? What kinds of educational approaches help build relational competence rather than simply transmit warnings? How do we respond to emerging concerns without reproducing shame, silence or fear?
These questions will continue to inform our work through Reimagining RSE. They will also shape our developing collaboration with the Institute for Addressing Strangulation as we explore how educators can engage with this topic in ways that are evidence-informed, reflective and responsive to the complexities of young people’s lives.
The challenge is not whether we should take these concerns seriously. It is how we do so in ways that support understanding, dialogue and meaningful prevention.
Further reading: Previously, we have addressed similar issues in educational responses to image sharing and digital intimacies, critiquing the legacy of fear-based messaging. We have also examined pedagogical approaches to pornography and a safe uncertainty approach to educating about sexually explicit media.