A nøøse bit my sister, once.
Published in 1969. It would have been banned in the 1950s.
Asphyxiophilia is on p. 216 of the revised edition, but Google Books doesn’t have a preview of the 1969 original.
Døn’t tell me. Was she carving her initials on the nøøse with the sharpened end of an interspace tøøthbrush given her by Svenge - her brother-in-law - an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian møvies, including (but nøt limited to) “The Høt Hands of an Oslo Dentist”, “Fillings of Passion” and “The Huge Mølars of Horst Nordfink”? :eek:
Word spread enough for a teenager in Houston to die this way in 1972. He was found hanging under a football stadium.
That was my first introduction to the practice. The story was told to me by a guy that worked the Associated Press. He was completely exasperated with “Here’s how the kid died. How the heck do I turn this into a story a newspaper can print?”
Does word really have to spread to you to try this? For me, no amount of hearing about it would make it even remotely interesting.
I suspect that most people who are really into this figure it out for themselves without needing to be told.
You say ‘spread’ as if it’s some sort of mainstream form sexual gratification. Until this thread I hadn’t even contemplated the phrase ‘auto-erotic hanging’. But then I am 30 so I’ve only been using the internet for the last 18 or so years.
Point taken. But could something like this be “figured out?” Hanging yourself from a noose to the point of almost (or real) death is not something that would easily come to mind.
It just seems drastic enough that you’d have to hear about it to even be aware of it (which seems to be the OP’s thought). And then you’d have to be off your rocker enough to actually try it. But I’m open for knowledge.
How would they do that, though? I mean, it would never have crossed my mind that being asphyxiated might be even remotely sexually gratifying if I had not heard of it, and even now I have heard, it is sort of hard to imagine it that way.
I can only guess that the “erotic” aspect of asphyxiation was discovered when someone tried, but failed, to kill themselves for real, or maybe someone else tried and failed to kill (or genuinely harm) them, and then the word got about.
Hasn’t everyone experienced difficulty breathing in some way or another? Even if you’re swimming or holding your own breath, you get a taste of what that feels like. One poster mentioned grade-school kids who would squeeze each other until they passed out. So, if you’re wired a certain way, eventually you think “I like not breathing. I like pleasuring myself. Let’s combine them!” Maybe that idea comes from a magazine or other person, but I think most of us are more than clever enough to get ourselves in trouble without any help.
(There may also be other psychological/physiological reasons. Cutters cut themselves for the endorphin release; they figure it out themselves without having to learn about it from somewhere else.)
I’ve read multiple times that when a man is sentenced by hanging, he dies with a torrid penis. Maybe people deduced it from this. Reading this thread gave me the idea that could be the orgin for some.
Thanks for the responses. Some humor, some history, some facts, some ideas. Great thread.
Yes, I read that this was an urban legend, that guys who were hung sported an “penis of size” Maybe that’s where the expression " hung" (in reference to a desirable penis) came from. I don’t get WHY someone would do something like that.
There was a thread a while back where Doper Scylla told of how he actually experimented with waterboarding himself. Apparently the experience of simulated drowning was absolutely horrible (that is why it is used for torture I suppose), and nothing he said suggested that it was at all sexy.
I think to get the sexy effect (whatever it is, I don’t want to find out) you have to actually be squeezing the neck, not just unable to breathe for some other reason.
Did they get a badge for it?
Terrific question/user name combo, btw. 
Probably the same way it spread for girls.
(Yes, girls do it too, but they usually have a partner…usually.)
I first heard of it when I was a teenager circa 1976, in an article in High Times about Vaughan Bode. Dennis O’Neil wrote it.
“. . . and sometimes when a mommy and a daddy love each other very, very much, and the mommy has to go to Cleveland to help her sister with her new baby, the daddy takes a belt. . .”
As an aside, I’ve heard a lot on the news about the ‘choking game’ - basically, auto-erotic asphyxiation without the erotic part, done by schoolkids. I’ve always wondered if those kids were trying to jack off too, and just wouldn’t admit to that part of it when caught or parents wouldn’t admit to noticing it.
I think you mean turgid.