Romania’s Eurovision song criticised for ‘glamorising sexual strangulation’

Romania’s Eurovision entry Choke Me has been labelled “dangerous” and “reckless” for appearing to glamorise sexual strangulation, an unsafe practice that can lead to brain injury and death.Campaigners against sexual violence said the entry, in which the words “choke me” are repeated 30 times during the three-minute song, was “playing fast and loose with young women’s lives”.The song, by a former winner of the Romanian version of The Voice, Alexandra Căpitănescu, also contains the lyrics “It’s hard to breathe in”, “I want you to choke me” and “make my lungs explode”.Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University and the author of Exposed: The Rise of Extreme Porn and How We Fight Back, said the repeated sexualised “choke me” message “shows an alarming disregard for young women’s health and wellbeing”.“The song – and its choice by Romania/Eurovision, and promotion by those organisations – represents a reckless normalisation of a dangerous practice,” she said. “It’s playing fast and loose with young women’s lives. The emerging medical evidence is that frequent sexual strangulation is giving young women brain damage.”A backlash against the track has spread online, with many Eurovision fans calling for the entry to be disqualified or for the lyrics to be modified.Last year, a complaint by the BBC to the European Broadcasting Union, which runs the song contest, led it to rule against the title and lyrics of the Maltese entry which contained a play on words where “kant” (meaning “sing” in Maltese) sounded like “cunt”.In previous years, the EBU has ordered entries to remove words such as “shit” and “pussy” from their songs.The Guardian understands the BBC has not lodged a complaint about this year’s Romanian entry, and the video of the song is viewable on the EBU website. Both the BBC and EBU were contacted for comment.Defending the song, Căpitănescu said the metaphor behind the vivid imagery was about the feeling of being overwhelmed by strong emotions and being suffocated by self-doubt.The Norwegian Eurovision YouTuber Norway" class="entity-link entity-person" data-entity-id="43811" data-entity-type="person">ESC Norway, a trained psychologist, said the Romanian entry was using the practice, which is banned in pornography in the UK, to “create controversy”. She said: “They know what they’re doing and they’re using a topic that is now popular and normalised through porn culture, which is really dangerous.“They know this is a trend and it’s super scary what is happening.”Research last year showed more than half of people under the age of 35 had experienced strangulation, with nearly a third wrongly believing there were safe ways to strangle someone.Numerous studies have shown brain changes in women who have been repeatedly “choked” during sex, including markers for brain damage and disruptions in brain hemispheres linked to depression and anxiety.Nearly half said they had experienced anxiety during or after being strangled, with even a fleeting moment of strangulation potentially leading to lifelong health problems.McGlynn added: “What this shows is the desperate need for better education and awareness-raising as to the harms of women.“But what also bothers me so much is that many young women do not want to engage in strangulation/choking, but its normalisation makes them feel like they have to despite their own inner sense that it’s not right and, for some, their knowledge of the harms. But it’s promotion in this way makes it just harder for young women to resist. And not resisting is putting their own health and lives at risk.“Why do we seem to care so little about the health and wellbeing of young women?” she added.Meanwhile, Eurovision is facing a partial boycott of this year’s event over the inclusion of Israel, which is accused of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It was accused of using the competition for propaganda in 2025, with the Israeli government running paid social media adverts encouraging people to vote for its own entry, which finished second.Broadcasters across Europe, including Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Iceland and Finland, requested an audit of the voting system after the surprise result, amid allegations that Israelis used European credit cards to vote dozens or even hundreds of times.Some fans speculated this was responsible for the gap between the maximum 12-point score awarded to the Israeli entry from the UK public vote and the zero points awarded by the panel of judges.