In the midst of a sexual recession, young adults are having rougher sex than ever before.

“Sex has not always been this rough,” said Debby Herbenick, professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health and the director of IU’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion. “To our knowledge, we’ve never had a time in history where there’s been this level of these kinds of practices.”

Since 2008, Herbenick and her colleagues have been conducting large-scale, nationally representative surveys on sexual behavior in the U.S. Around 2015, they began to see a noticeable change in these behaviors, she said.

“I was getting a lot more questions from my college students about various rough sex practices, but especially choking,” Herbenick said. 

Choking, a colloquial term for practices ranging from a hand placed around the neck to sexual strangulation, has entered the sexual mainstream alongside many other rougher sex practices.

A 2022 survey of over 4,200 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students conducted by Herbenick and her colleagues found that 40% of participants had been choked during sex, with significantly more women, transgender and nonbinary students reporting the experience.

Of these students, 92.1% reported that this choking was consensual, and 41.1% reported it being “very pleasurable,” though men were significantly less likely to report being choked as pleasurable. 

Though the term “rough sex” is prevalent, its exact definition is murky. Generally, acts like choking, slapping and spanking fall under this umbrella, but there is little consensus among young people, Herbenick said. 

Differing understandings of rough sex may cause problems during sexual encounters, and can sometimes leave people feeling harmed if sex is rougher than anticipated, she said.

In a survey of 350 UVM students conducted by the Cynic, over three-fourths indicated that they had partaken in sex they would describe as rough, including but not limited to choking, slapping and hitting.

“I find that with rougher sex I’m able to go to a more mindful spot and be present,” said an anonymous first-year. “Some people consider it a form of meditation.”

Much of why people enjoy rough sex or have specific fetishes is deeply psychological, said junior Clementine Golden, who chose to use a first name pseudonym to protect her privacy.

“When you’re hit your body is releasing adrenaline which can so easily be experienced as pleasure,” she said. “When you’re being hit over and over while having sex you’re not going to be feeling pain, you’re going to be feeling a type of pleasure.”

Having one’s partner relinquish control can also be a turn-on, said an anonymous first-year.

“I like to feel dominating,” he said. “But anything I’m doing in bed is only really pleasurable for me if it’s making the other person feel good. It’s hot.”

Rougher sex makes power exchanges that exist in any sexual encounter overt, such as patriarchy and gaps in physical strength or experience, said Elliot Ruggles, sexual violence prevention and education coordinator at UVM.

One anonymous junior studying gender, sexuality and women’s studies sees her experiences with rough sex as existing in a patriarchal context.

“I’ve always thought of sex as a performance, but that seemed to be more with my heterosexual experiences where I’m playing a role,” she said. “I don’t think that anything can exist not under the context of patriarchy.”

During one rougher sexual experience with a man, the anonymous junior felt that he was objectifying her without considering her comfort level and interests, she said.

“I wanted to engage in the play of it but I couldn’t get past the fact that he didn’t really see me as a person,” she said. 

While the encounter left her feeling uneasy about the patriarchal dynamics of rough sex, she still feels drawn to exploring it, she said.

“It’s kind of funny being a GSWS major because I see this patriarchal hierarchy around me and I still want to experiment with it,” she said.

While people can use sex to play with or push back against societal power dynamics, Herbenick hopes that people continue to question the ways that mainstream rough sex enforces gendered expectations of women, she said.

“The mainstream version of rough sex, people are just reproducing traditional gender roles, where men are dominant and women are submissive,” Herbenick said.

In the survey by the Cynic, 27.7% of respondents indicated that they had felt pressured to engage in or receive “rough” sex acts that they were uncomfortable with.

Golden first got involved with BDSM accidentally when she was around 13 years old as a result of her experience growing up as a transgender woman, she said.

“It started because I was trying to find ways to experience femininity without actually having to be a woman,” she said. “It was obviously, at the time, very non-consensual.”

Golden recognizes that her experiences fundamentally changed the way she thinks about sex in adulthood, she said.

“There’s a lot of people who will co-opt BDSM and rougher sex just to abuse people,” she said.

Many attribute this rise in rougher sex practices to online porn.

“Having grown up as a man, hearing how men talk about sex and the porn that they watch, I think that a lot of it has to do with how rough porn is,” Golden said.

For most college students, pornography is their first and primary sexual educator. In the age of online porn, this content is increasingly violent, as online algorithms prioritize rougher and more extreme sexual content to keep viewers engaged, said Ruggles. 

While many men who have sex with women report that they enjoy choking their female partners, some feel uncomfortable doing so. The anonymous first-year shared that some of his male friends feel an implicit pressure to be rougher with their partners during sex. 

“If you’re a guy who’s trying to have sex and this girl is letting you have sex with her, and she asks you to do something, I think guys would interpret it to be ‘you’re a bitch if you don’t do it,’” he said. “I would be embarrassed to be squeamish about it.” 

Online discussion of rougher sex sometimes stigmatizes men who are uninterested in choking women during sex, describing them as weak or “vanilla,” according to a Sept. 1 article from the Guardian.

The majority of people engaging in sexual choking are unaware of the risks, Herbenick said.

“It can affect people’s brains without them realizing it,” Herbenick said. “They are depriving the brain of oxygen and blood flow that has glucose and other nutrients, and doing that many times in their sexual lives.” 

These cumulative harms are more pronounced if someone experiences dizziness or vision changes while being choked. People with a history of seizures and heart or thyroid problems should avoid the behavior, she said.

If students still decide to engage in sexual choking, there are steps that can be taken to mitigate risk. Choking with lighter pressure, using a single hand instead of objects such as a belt and avoiding rough sex when intoxicated can all reduce the risk of serious harm, Herbenick said.

Being more open and talking about sex with trusted friends can also be very productive, said sophomore Scout Kennon.

“Sex is becoming a much less hidden thing,” Kennon said. “A lot more people are talking about it, having conversations about it. I think that kind of comfortability surrounding sex is allowing people to explore what they want to do and also what they derive pleasure from.”

Above all, Herbenick stressed the importance of thorough consent discussion with partners, while taking safety into account.

“There’s nothing wrong with diverse sexual practices, and there’s also nothing wrong with gentle sexual practices, and you get to decide with your partner what works for you,” Herbenick said.

Students emphasized the necessity of continuing to check in with partners before and during sex.

“You have to continually have these conversations and keep making sure that your partner is comfortable and there is consent in everything that you’re doing,” Kennon said.