The simplification in the article is because it is mostly men doing this to mostly women.
In the worst outcome, there have been manslaughter charges raised against men who choked their partners to death, where "strangulation kink" has been used in the defence of these men. So it is clearly a problem.
I didn't say there weren't rapists who were strangling their partners for their own pleasure. The "problem" you're describing is already illegal. I don't think there's a first-world country where you're allowed to nonconsensually choke someone. And "it was just my kink" isn't a good defense at all - just because it's used doesn't mean anything, the defense's whole point is to come up with the most tame interpretation possible for the crime, no matter how ridiculous.
The moral panic part is when the UK government decides that blanket banning everyone from doing it consensually is going to change anything about unrelated rapists who were already fine with breaking the law. And especially the fact that they think that the effects of this blanket ban are going to be large enough for it to be worth to criminalize consenting adults over.
And then then there's the choking porn part, where they seemingly have deduced that it was brainwashing men in such dangerous capacities that it's now worthwhile to brand someone a criminal for life if they dared to have that cognitohazard inscribed on their hard drive. It's okay, you may not have hurt anyone, you may have had a happy, consensual relationship, but we must simply punish you, don't you see. It's for the greater good, for we are fighting something which was already illegal.
Statistics don't matter here. When they come for the next "immoral" kink, they'll conjure up more statistics and conjecture to make it seem less insane. But statistics aren't what caused this. There is no choking porn crisis. They just wanted to go after it, and this was the best tool available.
You created an account about half an hour ago and have submitted nearly 1/6 of the comments on this post. You're more or less uncritically parroting the talking points of the special interest groups behind this while dismissing real concerns about liberty, censorship, and sexism.
Why are you so invested in this issue? Why did you create a throwaway account just to post on this topic? What relationship do you have to politicians, civil servants, and NGOs who have been involved in this campaign?
In the worst outcome, there have been manslaughter charges raised against men who choked their partners to death, where "strangulation kink" has been used in the defence of these men. So it is clearly a problem.