Porn terminology made my ex excuse strangulation as "choking"

Hi all, I hope it's okay to post here.
I wanted to highlight a problem I've experienced and see if anyone has gone through something similar.

TW: Domestic violence and strangulation

This happened a long time ago and I am no longer with my ex.

When the abuse was at it's worst, we were seeing a counsellor together. I told her that he had strangled me. His response was that he didn't know it was bad because people do it consensually. The counsellor then asked me to describe what happened and after I did she told me because I could say "stop", it was technically choking, not strangulation.

This is the problem.

The term choking is used constantly in porn to water down what is actually strangulation. But they are not the same thing. Choking is the internal obstruction of the airway, e.g choking on food. Strangulation is an external pressure applied to the neck. These terms are used interchangeably to minimise and dismiss violence towards women.

She brushed it off and accepted his explanation that he didn't know it was harmful even though it was the third time he has done it. Every time I had sent him articles on non-fatal strangulation. It wasn't ignorance, he knew exactly what he was doing and even an expert fell for this excuse.

When I've opened up to friends and professionals I have to preface everything with "I have never consensually done choking" as if that had to be clarified before anyone would begin to take me seriously. I had to tell them that we had never done that in our relationship and that I had NEVER shown interest in it. Even if someone had done it consensually in the past it does NOT make it okay to do it.

I can't help but think of cases like Grace Millane in New Zealand, where men have been able to claim that it was consensual strangulation gone wrong. Courts have heard defences for BDSM and have been taken more seriously than the victim who passed away. Their past is combed through for any chance to be able to blame the victim. The normalisation of violent porn and the casual use of the words like choking makes it so much easier for abusers to hide behind it and even use it as a defence for murder.

It makes me really angry that my counsellor accepted his excuse and I wonder how much the porn industry minimises DV.