Pornography and Women's Experience of Mixed-Gender Sexual Choking/Strangulation: Eroticization Mediates, Perceived Similarity Moderates.

Sexual choking, which is a form of strangulation, can lead to various health consequences, including death. Recent surveys suggest that sexual choking is prevalent among young U.S. adults, a demographic also likely to view pornography. Pornography professionals, social commentators, and scholars have noted that mixed-gender choking is normative in contemporary pornography. Further, the pornographic portrayal of sexual choking is gendered; men choke women more often than women choke men. Guided by the sexual script acquisition, activation, application model (AM) of mediated sexual socialization, the present campus-representative probability study explored associations between heterosexual-identified women's pornography exposure and sexual choking behavior. The more frequently women viewed pornography, the more often they were exposed to pornographic depictions of sexual choking. Exposure to sexual choking, in turn, was associated with being choked by men, but not choking men. The link between choking exposure and being choked was mediated by the eroticization of choking (rather than reduced agency to stop rough sex) and became stronger the more women perceived themselves as similar to actors in pornography. These results suggest that women's experience of sexual choking is influenced by their use of pornography, but in an active and willing, rather than a passive and unwilling, manner.