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.
No form of porn is exempt from being potentially toxic and harmful to the consumer. Computer-generated image (CGI) porn, for example, is often thought to be harmless entertainment. This Fighter's story shows just how untrue that is.
Hi FTND,
Your organization is the reason I still have hope. Hope not only in combating the effects of porn in our world and culture, but also hope that I can be free from it.
I’m not there yet, but I will be. And soon.
I’m 32, from Australia, married with five beautiful kids. My wife knows of my struggle and still chooses to love me despite it. Her courage inspires me.
I felt the need to send this to you. I wrote it mostly to admit things to myself; I suppose when the battle is in the mind it helps to get out on the exterior a look inwards for a moment. But I also hope it can help start or further spur on the conversation of this kind of porn, what lies at the core, and why it needs to be addressed.
Related: 3 Reasons Why Animated Porn is Gaining Global Popularity
If you can use it, then please do. If not, that’s ok. It’s done me some good to write this, and if you read it… well, thanks.
The real destruction of fantasy-driven CGI porn
I write to discuss an aspect of porn that I struggle with most. I don’t know what you’d call it, probably just computer-generated porn, but it’s kind of more than that, I think.
I find most pornography quite distasteful and unacceptable, most especially the hardcore stuff, but it is the capacity for animated porn that drew me in under a false pretense of innocence yet lead me to ironically realize some of the problems that are at the core. Problems at my core, and problems with the type of porn itself.
CGI (Computer Graphics Imagery, or Computer-Generated Imagery) takes sexualization and unrealistic acts of sex to another level. Practically impossible sexual positions and movements, that would tear skin, break bones, and bust even the strongest pelvis, are portrayed as endurable and make pleasure the only real side-effect.
With CGI, there are no limits to the physical size and shape of characters, body parts or contorting of sexual organs (many of which aren’t physically achievable in real life). With the rapid advancement of CGI photo-realism and the implementation of virtual and augmented reality technology, I can only begin to imagine the damage that this could cause in the coming years.
Related: Why Watching Porn Is An Escalating Behavior
But what is this type of porn tied to? Why do people like me get drawn into this, even in favor of much of the content a typical porn consumer would digest (if that could ever be defined)? Why does the virtual seem to have more lures for people like me?
In my struggle, it’s been easy to justify the viewing of it as not being “actual” porn, because of the produced images or video not being the result of sex trafficking and abuse, or a sex tape that got unintentionally or nonconsensually uploaded. These characters, these acts, they weren’t “real.” In my mind, it wasn’t “that” wrong. It was fiction, a made-up story.
Nothing could be further from reality.
It doesn’t have to be sex trafficking to be toxic
Whilst this porn may not be a video of some poor young woman or man, ripped away from a family and a chance at life, that has been drugged and forced to have sex at gunpoint, it is a progression and a by-product of the porn culture. It promotes the same attitude as any other porn and further perpetuates it. If anything, it proves that the problem is even deeper than first thought.
Second to this, my mind is a creative one and CGI porn toys with the limits of reality. Ultimately, this kind of porn seeks to capitalize on the natural tendency to dream and create with the mind. The virtual fantasies are like ecstasy to the imagination; an easy high but it also lacks substance, sense, and true intimacy. This kind of porn burns holes not only in relationships, but also holes in one’s ability to simply use their imagination for healthy reasons.
Related: 20 Must-Know Stats About The Porn Industry And Its Underage Consumers
I love to write and illustrate, and feel like porn has been competing effectively for imagination real-estate. And I hate it.
More recently, I’ve realized it’s about control. The idea of being in control is something innate in most porn, if not all porn, to one degree or another. But I feel it hits a different level with CGI, especially over its “special effect” film predecessors before the age of advanced computer graphics.
Common CGI search terms for me revolved around women being controlled or manipulated past the point of being able to rescue themselves from being dominated… In other words, the feelings of a lack of control are no longer something attributed to pain or the memory of personal hurt in real-life, but instead to pleasure in the virtual one.
Related: What Is Hentai Porn, And Why Is It So Popular?
Even the simple idea of asserting power and control with the by-product of it being pleasure is a horrible drug, but it’s just one that is easier to fall for because it doesn’t look as dumbfoundedly obvious as a video of someone getting gang-raped and Pornhub calling it a friendly group hug.
It doesn’t have to be live-action to be addictive
I’m writing all this for two reasons. One, because I’ve needed to admit it to myself for a long time and two, because I was never really told about this when searching for help with porn addiction, and hadn’t seen many articles about the impact of CGI porn specifically.
I see many FTND articles talking about porn in the sense of real-life actors and participants, but we are coming into an age where people aren’t always needed to produce porn anymore, and the line from the real to the virtual is further blurred. Yet it will all reap the same depreciative, destructive culture that porn always has, but without looking so much like it is.
Related: How Hentai Porn & Chat Rooms Distorted My Sexuality
I’m finally getting it after all these years since starting to watch it when I was 16, and I hope this can help someone, anyone, caught in the snare of this kind of porn. Walk toward freedom, discover yourself. Deal with the hurt that porn feeds on so it can’t any longer. Celebrate the good in you that porn would otherwise twist and ruin.
FTND shows you the facts about porn and why to say no. That’s great, but please also realize that just as there are men, women, and children that all deserve to be free from the sex trade, so do you and I deserve to be free from porn.
–J.
Living in a digital world
The reality is, animated or non-animated, violent or sci-fi fantasy, porn can negatively impact consumers and relationships whether it is live-action or digitally designed.
Related: 20 Must-Know Stats About The Porn Industry And Its Underage Consumers
Animated porn may not be as directly tied to sex trafficking as live-action porn is, but the toxic messaging of romanticized abuse and unrealistic expectations for relationships is still the same and can have a similar effect on consumers’ brains and even harm their relationships.
Don’t forget that you deserve better than what porn has to offer.
Animated porn may not be as directly tied to sex trafficking as live-action porn is, but the toxic messaging of romanticized abuse and unrealistic expectations for relationships is still the same and can easily have the same effect on your brain and even harm your relationships.
Cartoons and porn are designed to help the consumer escape reality, and while Pixar films and Disney animation won’t, it’s best to stay away from digitized explicit content, twisted hentai, and other animated adult videos that normalize detrimental ideas and relationship practices.
