Many people contact Fight the New Drug to share their personal stories about how porn has affected their life or the life of a loved one. We consider these personal accounts very valuable because, while the science and research is powerful within its own right, personal accounts from real people seem to really hit home about the damage that pornography does to real lives.
We recently received this true story from someone who was inspired to ditch porn for good once he saw how the industry treated a porn performer's suicide like an advertising opportunity. Stories like this show why different people give up porn for different reasons.
I’ve been reading a lot on the blog and I realize my story might help some people.
Me quitting porn took the death of a porn performer. I’ve been obsessed with porn since I was 11, and I’m now 30, but I was finally able to quit.
Here’s what happened. I was on Pornhub when I saw that there was a tribute to a specific porn performer… I looked more into it and found out that she had committed suicide.
Related: Multiple Porn Performers Die In 6 Months
I was disgusted. I was disgusted with the community and disgusted with myself. The community, because they thought a compilation of this woman’s porn was a worthy tribute to her. Didn’t they think she was more than that? Did they really think she would be happy that after she was gone they were using her death as a way to capitalize on views? I was also disgusted with myself, as I found she committed suicide a month previous, and I had watched her porn after she died.
With this shock to my system I wanted to know what happened. Eventually, I went to her Twitter and Instagram and scrolled through a couple of months prior to her suicide. (Of course, I don’t recommend anyone do this, porn performers retweet ads of their porn. Not a safe spot for anyone struggling.)
Through that, I saw how much more she was than just a porn performer… Even when all these posts were specifically made under her porn alias. She had a sense of humor. She had a personality. She had movie preferences and music preferences. In short, she was human, something you would never see in full on a porn site.
Related: Ex-Porn Star Confesses Hardships Of Life After Leaving The Industry (VIDEO)
I see why FTND is so important, now. The vast majority of the comments from her followers were along the lines of, “you’re so hot,” so objectifying and degrading. Always about her body, never about her other traits. You could practically see the drool dripping off the comments.
I want others to be aware that people are not products. I want everyone to promote real love. I know I will be from now on.
–P.
Why This Matters
We applaud this Fighter for deciding to break away from his porn habit and for seeing performers as people, instead of just sexual objects. We encourage everyone to view everyone who appears in porn as fully human, now—don’t wait until another performer passes away.
Porn promotes the idea that people are just body parts, nothing more. In fact, it often ruins the illusion of “fantasy” when you learn more about someone and their likes and dislikes—it humanizes them, when many consumers only want the objectified and sexualized version.
When a consumer sees pornographic images, research shows that they detach the performers on screen from their humanity, and see them as nothing more than objects. How is that healthy?
To give you an idea of how damaging these images are, a study by Princeton psychologists showed a group of men pictures of male and females, some barely clothed and some not. During the study, the psychologists monitored their medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is involved in recognizing human faces and distinguishing one person from another. For the most part, the mPFC was activated with each picture. However, when the men viewed the pictures of sexually dressed women, it was not activated. Basically, the automatic reaction in the men’s brains suggests that they didn’t perceive the women as fully human. Just as a body.
Related: Study Finds Men’s Magazines And Convicted Rapists Use The Same Language To Describe Women
What if we lived in a world where the status quo was respect and love, instead of objectification and sexualization? What if we lived in a world where viewers saw the performers in porn as real people with hopes, dreams, and a story?
According to the International Labor Office, roughly 4.8 million people across the globe are trapped or forced into commercial sexual exploitation. The problem affects females the most, as 2/3 of victims are women. Out of all those human trafficking cases, sex trafficking accounts for 58% of those. The crime generates $32 billion annually, which is on the same level as the profits made by the illegal trade of arms and drugs across the world. Clearly, this is a huge issue, and us refusing to click means we’re refusing to contribute to sexual exploitation.
The world may consider porn as harmless entertainment, but research and science sincerely disagree. Sexual exploitation and objectification aren’t healthy for viewers, performers, and society—relationships built on love and respect are what really matter, and that’s what we’re fighting for.
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