I was once ashamed to admit I’d been strangled nonconsensually during sex. Now I’m speaking up to save women’s lives

‘For a long time, I was embarrassed to admit that while I intellectually knew something wasn’t right, I still failed to call it out in a moment of uncertainty,’ writes Hannah Ferguson of her experience of sexual choking. Photograph: Liz Ham/The Guardian

Last week, a 16-year-old girl was found unresponsive in a home on Sydney’s northern beaches. She was airlifted to hospital and died two days later. New South Wales police are investigating her death as the result of a sexual strangulation act. Sources told the ABC the deceased may have experienced a seizure following asphyxiation, and that officers were told the sex was consensual.

While that investigation has yet to run its course, speaking generally, strangulation during sex is not a new phenomenon or conversation. Just a few years ago it was relatively taboo to criticise this normalisation of violence in sex – it was often framed as “anti-kink” to raise concern about this dangerous act that is increasingly depicted in mainstream pornography.