Do Teenage Boys Really Need to Be Reminded Not to Strangle Girls?

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Much ire was directed at the Home Office when it issued leaflets to illegal immigrants reminding them not to rape women and children. This was troubling for two reasons:

  1. Why was the leaflet needed if such men were, as we have been promised, mere future engineers and brain surgeons?
  2. If they were in fact dormant rapists and paedophiles, a leaflet was a rather pathetic method of stopping such future crimes.

This muddled thinking extends also to actual future engineers and brain surgeons who are starting university every year and being forced to take flimsy consent courses in a feeble effort to stop them strangling fellow students.

I have been sent a screenshot of one such course by a friend whose mild-mannered son is beginning a degree in engineering at a Russell Group university. The consent course screenshot reads:

Why Consent Matters: Non-fatal strangulation and consent. Non-fatal strangulation (sometimes referred to as choking) involves pressure being applied to a person’s neck, affecting their breathing, blood flow to the brain or both. It can involve hands, an arm or another object being placed around the…” [screenshot ends.]

My friend had captioned the pic: “Son gutted by the news he shouldn’t strangle girls. He’ll have to find another hobby.” [Joke!]

Our eldest is soon starting at one of the increasing number of universities that make such courses compulsory. He has to look forward to a “two-hour active bystander course”, a “one-hour interactive (surely not role play?!) consent course” and an “online safeguarding course”. Oxford and Cambridge also have compulsory consent courses. How different from my first night at university in 1996, when a now Professor of Cardiology was sick all over my new dress at the freshers’ bop.

Has society so deteriorated that action does indeed need to be taken to stop young men strangling women when they go to university? There are no official figures about sexual strangulation, in spite of it becoming a standalone offence in 2022. The Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS), established in the same year and funded by the Home Office, includes one survey of self-reporting participants that found 21% experienced negative effects of being strangled during sex. It seems a circular moral panic. What on earth is going on?

For those readers who have vanilla sexual preferences, please look away now. If you return to the consent course text, it reads “non-fatal strangulation and consent”. There is a dubious idea that strangling during sex can prolong the orgasm (it was only 21% of strangled participants who reported a negative effect). So knotted are the sexual mores of today that strangulation has to be specifically referred to as non-fatal, because evidently strangulation for the purposes of prolonging the orgasm – so long as everyone consents – is fine.

Porn culture and OnlyFans are sometimes cited as driving this imagined thirst for strangling women, but certain studies suggest strangling and non-consensual aggression during sex were rarely searched-for terms. In fact, the most popular searches on Pornhub are: Hentai (Japanese pornographic anime), MILF (very pleasing to this 48 year-old mother of three) and demure. Yes, demure. Even porn addicts don’t go in for strangling women.

Is it possible, then, to conclude that:

  1. Young men don’t want to strangle women
  2. Young men are not strangling women
  3. Consent courses about not strangling women are therefore unnecessary
  4. Universities and other institutions only insist on them as bureaucratic cover

I have been asked recently what success looks like for Right-leaning people. One of the metrics, for me, would be the stripping out of such courses from a whole range of institutions. By the time teenagers go to university they are legal adults. If they commit crimes, whether sexual or otherwise, they should be arrested, punished and not released because the Conservatives forgot to increase prison capacity. We should return to the ancient common law principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty – and not treated as potentially guilty unless a consent or safeguarding course has been completed.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.

Stop Press: A “deeply concerning” lesson on consent is teaching asylum seekers how to avoid sleeping with underage girls in Britain, according to the Mail.

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17 Comments
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nickrobertslancaster
nickrobertslancaster
12 hours ago

Given the sociological phenomenon of America sneezing and Britain catching a cold, perhaps anti-strangulation training ought to be made mandatory for expectant and new mothers?

Whomakesthisstuffup
Whomakesthisstuffup
14 hours ago

Once we’ve added in the no shoplifting, burglary, drinking too much, drugs are dangerous, no cycling on the pavement, don’t microwave the kitten/ puppy, etc courses, there won’t be much time left for learning

transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
19 hours ago

The inclusion of what must be an extremely rare fetish in guidance for young men says a lot more about those who wrote the guidance than it does about the young men they have the arrogance to offer guidance to.

RTSC
RTSC
19 hours ago

I presume they’ll be giving the female students a compulsory course in not kicking men in the balls, since that also isn’t to be encouraged.

No? Gosh, now that’s a surprise.

Tonka Fairy
Tonka Fairy
21 hours ago

More appropriate would be a “MILFs in the wild and how to handle them” course.

These young men need to be prepared.

I can be the instructor if required.

stewart
stewart
1 day ago

This is part of the broader epidemic of people hallucinating problems and wanting to impose their solutions to their imaginary problems on everyone else.

The man made climate catastrophe is obviously the big one.

The problem of people being born “the wrong gender” is another.

The problem of Christians preaching “hatred” another.

There’s lots of them.

Funnily enough, the real ones don’t seem to matter so much to them. Collapsing public finances, unsustainable immigration, suffocating regulations. The real problems don’t seem to interest them.

Matt Dalby
Matt Dalby
1 day ago

If someone consents to being strangled during sex and it goes wrong at least there’s one less depraved person in the world and they won’t do it again.

Some people need to learn the hard way not to engage in depraved sexual activity and sometimes they do.

http://www.spiked-online.com/2026/02/10/why-was-a-dog-humping-paedo-treated-like-a-saint/

If people needed to look away from the details about strangulation during sex they shouldn’t read the article.

DiscoveredJoys
DiscoveredJoys
1 day ago

Any new law will bear more heavily on the innocent than the guilty.

Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
1 day ago

From the Stop Press: “how to avoid sleeping with underage girls”. Call it what it is ffs. If it’s having sex with and they are under age it’s r@p€.

disgruntled246
disgruntled246
17 hours ago
Reply to  Boomer Bloke

Particularly annoying is the ‘some people have fallen for it’ as though the 12 year olds were wicked little temptresses luring the poor vulnerable (randy) migrants into ‘sleeping’ with them.

JAMSTER
JAMSTER
1 day ago

The whole concept of partially strangling someone in order to enhance one’s sexual gratification is utterly revolting. I wonder if there are some people who might find pleasure in witnessing the partial strangulation of certain smug, self-satisfied, hypocritical, power-crazed, narcissistic, intellectually challenged individuals in public life ?? That would, of course, be equally revolting, disgraceful and reprehensible ………….. but perhaps rather more understandable for many.

Neil Datson
Neil Datson
1 day ago

Well thank the lord that we’ve got an Institute for Addressing Strangulation at long last! What does it come in at?

i) More than £10,000 but less than £100,000 per annum?

ii) More than £100,000 but less than £1,000,000 per annum?

iii) More than £1,000,000 per annum?

Whichever, no doubt it’s a bargain.

EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
1 day ago

Telling students generally not to do sometjing most of them would never have considered is displacement activity. Also diversionary because it takes attention away from the real and present danger posed by those millions the political class have chosen to bring here from places where respect is unknown for women, girls and boys and it is granted to men only if they are of the right religion.

transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 day ago

I was asked at work to complete a “compulsory” course on “sexual harassment”. I refused on the basis that it is insulting to an adult to assume that they do not know how to behave like a decent human being. It is part of the general move to treat everyone like a malleable infant that requires help, that has no agency, all part of removing the importance of personal responsibility and family, so that the state can exercise more power and control over us.

JXB
JXB
1 day ago

These course cannot be targeted at the offender group, because racial profiling = racism.

To avoid this all must participate.

Just Stop it Now
Just Stop it Now
19 hours ago

Well done you. Refusal is a valid option, even with ‘compulsory’ nonsense

transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
19 hours ago

It was from our fairly non woke HR person, nodded through by a busy boss, in reaction to the requirement to demonstrate you’ve taken steps to prevent harassment should a case arise. I don’t think they will do it again in a hurry- lots of people complained and the boss himself admitted the course was terrible. But it just shows how these things take root, through acquiescence.

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