Death from self-strangulatory asphyxia or electrical self-stimulation

autoerotic death

Sexology

1. Death from self-strangulatory asphyxia or electrical self-stimulation as part of a paraphilic masturbatory ritual in which a ligature of some type is placed around the neck.

2. Death from asphyxiation or electrocution, as a miscalculation in a paraphilic sexuoerotic ritual involving self-strangulation or self-applied electric current. See Electrocutophilia.

au·to·er·ot·ic death

(aw'tō-ĕr-ot'ik deth)

Death as a result of strangulation with a rope or cord affixed to the neck during the course of masturbation, based on the premise that the strength of the orgasm is increased somewhat by hypoxia.

Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012

References in periodicals archive

The essay argues that contemporary discourses and representations of erotic asphyxiation and autoerotic death offer an explication of the establishment and inscriptions of cultural norms and sexuality.

INTRODUCTION: DEATH AND THE CONTEMPORARY

In many cases the issue is to distinguish autoerotic death from suicide or murder.

Autoerotic deaths; practical forensic and investigative perspectives.

Autoerotic deaths; practical forensic and investigative perspectives

MORTAL REMAINS by Kathy Reichs (William Heinemann, pounds 18.99) IN Kathy Reichs' 13th Temperance Brennan novel, the forensic anthropologist is called to the scene of what appears to be an autoerotic death. Nothing extraordinary in Tempe's world of dead bodies, except that the victim is a soldier who died in a helicopter crash 40 years before.

books

IN KATHY REICHS'S 13th Temperance Brennan novel, the forensic anthropologist is called to the scene of what appears to be an autoerotic death.

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For example, in a paper on 'erotized repetitive hangings', Resnik writes: 'although they are bizarre, these deaths are not medical rarities or forensic curiosities'; (2) while another medical doctor and criminologist, Cordner, describes the conditions of autoerotic death as being of a 'bizarre nature'.

It is with this history of the naming and categorising of sexuality and sexual subjects in mind, that I turn to the topic of erotic asphyxiation and autoerotic death. Rather than interrogating what sexual practices leading to autoerotic death may say about the practitioner, or identifying factors that might psychologically motivate people to experiment with these 'extreme' death-risking practices, in what follows I will explore instead how looking at discourses produced about erotic asphyxiation and autoerotic death, sexual modalities that lie on the margins of comprehension and acceptability, might elucidate precisely how cultural norms of sexuality and gender more generally are established and inscribed.

Our contemporary cultural understanding of gender is key to the ways in which narratives of erotic asphyxiation and autoerotic death are deployed and interpreted.

While similarly marking a potential loss of control in the spectre of the autoerotic death, in contradistinction to the leaky slipperiness of the loose-tongued figure at the party (whose lack of control equates to effeminacy), the presence of male solidarity and brotherhood--the homosocial relationship built around the secret--lends something grandiose and hyper-masculine to the notion of a desire so strong that it cannot be controlled.

All celebrity cases of autoerotic death recorded in recent years have been of male decedents.

Secondly, her narrative is concluded by autoerotic death, while the male characters, who had been taking equally reckless physical risks in the water, live to surf another day: 'Eva was found hanging naked from the back of a bathroom door in Portland, Oregan.

DYING FOR SEX: CULTURAL AND FORENSIC NARRATIVES OF AUTOEROTIC DEATH

Autoerotic deaths involving the use of machinery have been reported previously, most of them involving household or homemade electrical devices that caused electrocution.

My dear John Deere