Fight the New Drug (00:00)
Quote. So let’s take porn away from the already angry white men so that violence against women goes up even more. Nicely done. Rolling eye emoji.

So that’s a comment we received on social media. I’m here with Elisabeth. She works on our social media team as well as is one of our presenters. And we’re going to talk a little bit about quotes like this that we get to help paint the picture of the issue of sexual violence that’s happening both in person and online. So trigger warning, take care of yourselves during this conversation. But this is an important conversation to have. And so we’re going to dive right in.

Yeah, I think a good place to start is just generally what does sexual violence look like in the world, in the US. So in the world the UN reports one in three women worldwide experience sexual violence. So that is already a really big stat. We can narrow it down a little bit more to just the United States, where one in five women will be raped in their lifetime and one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18.

So, those stats are heavy, which is why this conversation is so important because this is, know, sexual violence is something that affects all of us. We can say that just happens over there. That doesn’t pertain to me personally, but it does. Every single one of us knows three women and four girls and six boys. And so these are things that affect the world that we live in, affect those around us. And so it’s important to look at how this is occurring, both in person and online today. Something that’s fueling sexual violence that we know is the normalization of violence and pornography. Yes. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

Great. We got this, this is an interesting comment that we got on social media. Somebody said recently, quote, “Here’s a tip. Don’t watch abuse porn or pedophile porn. Just normal porn will work,” unquote. Yeah, so what is normal porn? Like Natale, there’s violence everywhere, right?

And this is something to be very clear. We at Fight the New Drug, we are pro-healthy sexuality. We’re pro-healthy relationships, healthy intimacy. And we know from decades of research that porn is harmful. Porn is harmful for individuals, relationships, and society. And so a claim saying that there is, you know, normal porn that’s not abusive or not exploitative of minors is really a dicey area to exist because of course we wouldn’t make the claim that every single piece of content that exists online on mainstream sites or otherwise is inherently abusive. However, research just showed there are harms associated with any porn consumption, right? And so we want to talk about that a little bit. We want to talk about, as you mentioned with the advent of the internet and smartphones, porn is more accessible, affordable, available, and anonymous than it’s ever been before.

People are able to access this at rates that they never were able to before. Many parents, there’s a knowledge gap in what their understanding of pornography is versus what’s actually happening. A lot of the content we’re seeing in pornography is violent, it’s degrading, it’s abusive, it perpetuates harmful stereotypes. But there’s a recent call, we want to talk about some current events, that the UK is working to ban strangulation porn or choking porn. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

Great. So I think this is obviously something if you’ve heard about it or are up to date with current events, this has caused a lot of uproar in various communities. And so we want to just talk about why it’s important that this is happening in the first place. As Natale said, there is so much abuse content in pornography and strangulation is just one example of that. So the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention claimed to find 26 million porn videos depicting strangulation on just one popular website. So this isn’t like a niche category of pornography. This is something that’s happening pretty broadly in a lot of mainstream content that’s being normalized. It’s strangulation porn.

Yeah, it’s not even a genre anymore. It’s just included in all of the other things.

Yes, exactly. And this is really scary because strangulation, there’s no safe way to strangle somebody.

And, just really quickly to add, there’s a difference between choking and strangulation. choking, you can choke on food. It’s something that can happen on your own. Strangulation requires a partner, a second person to strangle someone. it’s something that it’s not something that can accidentally happen in the same way that choking on food can accidentally happen. And so it gets really scary because it’s a difficult thing to control.

Yeah. And it is important, like thank you for mentioning that, is important that we use the proper terminology and language around this because choking like, like it doesn’t sound that bad, you know, like I’ve choked on food before and that’s scary. Like I don’t want to say that’s not scary to people, but it sort of lowers the risk to it. Like it sounds not as scary as it actually is, but people are dying from strangulation and WebMD and lots of experts say that there is no safe way to strangle someone. WebMD says that sexual strangulation is one of the riskiest sexual activities a person can try. Can you speak a little bit more to that?

So we’ve seen a lot of reports in the past couple of years actually, but of quote-unquote rough sex gone wrong. Literally instances where individuals are engaging in the behavior that porn has taught them as normal. And we’ll get into that a little bit more in just a second. With regard to perceptions of individuals who are consuming strangulation pornography, people find themselves in an instance where the quote-unquote “rough sex” that’s just something that you know maybe they consider to be quote-unquote “normal porn” puts them in a situation where someone is hospitalized or even in some instances, actually dies. Femicide census reported that 22 % of femicides in the UK so cases where women are killed by men involve strangulation or asphyxiation and that doesn’t just come out of nowhere that’s something that pornography has certainly fueled and influenced, but it’s also something that, you looking at domestic violence statistics, once someone has engaged in strangulation as an act of violence, the risk of being killed by the perpetrator of strangulation increases exponentially. So this is a behavior that is exceedingly harmful and not something we want to be normalizing, yet it’s being normalized in pornography all of the time. And that’s concerning for a lot of reasons.

Do you to talk about some of the social comments that we’ve gotten to speak to that? So just for a little bit of context again, we often hear in our work in this space, know, where I care about the issue of, you know, drug or alcohol addiction, because that kills people. And I care about these other issues because it’s, you know, people’s lives are on the line. But this is something where people’s lives are on the line. And I’m not trying to be dramatic and say every instance of strangulation results in death, but there are instances when this is true. And we’ve heard
recently about some of them. Do you want to talk a little bit about our post?

Yeah, absolutely. So we try to stay up to date on current events as much as possible just to inform our audience on things that are happening. So we recently posted about the ban on strangulation porn in the UK and it was really unfortunate and sad to hear so many people sharing their own personal experiences of how they have been affected very personally and very physically by strangulation.

One person said quote, “This was how my mom was murdered.” Another individual said quote, “I was strangled and had a near death experience. My body still copes with the trauma.” And these again, were on a post specifically talking about strangulation, pornography and this ban in the UK.

Yeah. And I think it’s worth noting that on the same post, there were people like the comment we started this discussion with who are saying, well, just don’t watch that type of porn or just don’t engage in harmful porn. It’s fine, you guys are being dramatic. But this is literally something that’s causing harm and informing the way that entire generations learn about sex and intimacy. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. So I love that you mentioned that because the young people, what they learn in their youth, it does affect the rest of their lives, and it affects our whole culture and society. So it’s so important that we look at those statistics. So one in four young adults say that porn was the most helpful source for learning how to have sex. And a majority of boys and about a third of girls believe that porn is a realistic depiction of sex. And so that’s really scary when we’ve seen all these stats about how prevalent really harmful and dangerous behaviors like strangulation are in pornography.

And because they’re so normalized, again, this isn’t something where young people are in every instance seeking out this abusive or violent content. It is just there. It is just present in so much content that is mainstream that it’s normalized. So it’s something that if they believe this is a realistic depiction of sex, then they have no other reference point but to assume, okay violence is part of sex, got it.

Yeah, absolutely. And then again, we see that teens are trying to copy what they’re seeing in pornography. There are studies that support this. We’ve heard from younger kids and teenagers who experienced this of seeing things in pornography and either feeling pressured from a partner to participate in acts that are dangerous and uncomfortable, or even just expecting that from a partner as well.

Yeah. And we’ve seen this play out with regard to sexual violence in particular, because statistically in pornography men are perpetrators of the violence and women are statistically most likely the targets of that sexual violence and that’s verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. It teaches young girls that they should submit to a very high level of sexual violence and young boys that that is what is expected of them in sex. And so we have ⁓ a comment we got. Do you want to read this story?

Yeah, so this is again on that same post that we just shared about strangulation. This woman said, guys have tried strangling me while just kissing without consent. Like what? The first time it happened I had no idea it was inspired by porn. I was so lost and confused to what was happening. This needs to be talked about more. Guys’ minds are being warped by porn and they think this crap is normal and quote what women want. And a 2019 study found that 13% of sexually active girls ages 13 to 17 reported already being strangled.

So this is something that, you know, we heard a story several years ago of a young boy who was, I think he was 16, he was on his first date. The date went really well, they really liked each other. And at the end of the date, they were going to kiss and he ended up strangling her. And parents got involved, was, people had a normal reaction to this, but in asking the boy what happened, he said, thought that’s what she wanted. I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. And this is something that we’re seeing with young people. Again, the sexual templates are forming before they even really have any other framework, any other basis to go off of. And so this is something that is influencing the way that young people have sexual encounters with each other.

Absolutely. We have another comment from somebody on that same post again. She said, quote, my boyfriend in freshman year strangled me without asking if I was into it into that at all. And it was one of the scariest moments of my life. I tried to claw him off, but he was too strong. And I think exactly like what you just said, it’s this sort of expectation and that affects both boys and girls where boys feel like that’s expected of them to show up in their sexual relationships that way. And girls feel like they have to endure that. And there is, you know, research that supports this. So almost half of 16 to 21-year-olds, they say that they believe that girls expect sex to involve aggression and 42 % believe that girls enjoy sexual aggression.

I mean this is something that if you just take a step back and think about the real young people who are experiencing this and adults who have grown up with porn’s influence in their lives. This is affecting individuals to the point where, women and girls we’ve spoken to, and certainly men and boys who can also be sexually abused, don’t even know that they’re experiencing sexual violence or abuse when they’re experiencing it. We had a guest on this podcast, bravely share her story. She was a survivor of sexual violence and she mentioned that not only did she not know she was experiencing sexual violence, but she thought there was something wrong with her because she didn’t, quote unquote, enjoy the sexual violence she was experiencing in the way that was portrayed, to her that she should, right, from pornography. I think this is something that, I mean, we’re looking at the very real way this is affecting entire generations of young people. And it’s really only escalating as content becomes more accessible and kind of increases in how extreme it is. But we’re seeing that go from the effects it has on teens to even on college campuses. This is affecting culture on college campuses and young people. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. So these are stats from RAINN. So one in four college women experienced sexual assault. And this is a really, really scary stat here that says that nearly two-thirds of college-age men shared that they would not report a friend who had committed rape.

So how do you feel hearing that stat? Like are any of us, it just feels like we’re not safe. Like nobody’s safe here.

It’s sad because it’s not like . . . these stats are devastating. Like one in four women experiencing sexual assault and two-thirds of men not reporting this. It’s devastating to hear those stats, especially as a woman. Also, I’m not at all surprised. We have spent our entire lives as women being told, This is the world we live in. It’s scary. And we exist as an organization and we’re here doing this work because we believe that change is possible and we believe that we can make a difference on these issues, but we have to look at what’s causing the problems, not just who’s experiencing the harms. And so I think it’s so important that we take a step back and say, what is actually happening on college campuses generally? What is the culture that’s leading to this? We know that rape culture is prevalent. We know that that includes rape jokes or normalization of sexual harassment, normalization of sexual violence, things like not reporting crimes. Rape is a crime. If you knew your friend committed rape and you wouldn’t report it, you are part of the problem. Also looking at why survivors of sexual violence on college campuses don’t report crimes is because people don’t believe them or they don’t get the resources that they need. We have to take a step back and look at the problem.

And this is something, when I was in college, we worked with a grad student who was surveying our college campus to look at sexual assault on our college campus. And there was some difficulty in reporting or in publishing the results of that. The administration didn’t really want her to. And so she brought the statistics to, I was in theater in my undergrad and she brought it to the theater department and said, can you help spread the word basically on what’s happening on our campus?

Not just out at the rates of sexual assault, which were alarmin,g and sexual violence and rape but but also what was being done to prevent it, and it’s pretty standard in a lot of colleges a lot of young people are getting quote-unquote tips to protect yourself from sexual assault. So you’ve probably heard some your whole life It’s that you know for women carry your keys in your hand between your fingers so you have a weapon Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail because it makes iteasier to grab you. Things that are really putting the ownership on women to stop this problem that men are primarily the perpetrators of. And so I feel really strongly that we should be looking at what’s causing this and pornography is something that is influencing this. And obviously, I also want to add women are not the only ones experiencing these harms in college campuses. You want to talk a little bit about how men experience it harms as well.

Yeah. And I think it’s important that we acknowledge that. Yes, like women are disproportionately targeted related to sexual violence, but it is really interesting when we see that even men are victims of this and especially on college campuses, male students are 78% more likely to be victims of sexual abuse or assault than non-students who are men.

So clearly there is something, like you said, something in college campuses and the culture that is created there that is perpetuating sexual violence and I love that you said like the prevention
efforts need to be different.

Like, I remember in college going to keep it safe sisters is what it was called, was called And yeah, it was like, yeah, if you’re on a date with somebody and they try to do something, what do you do? And like that’s so great that there are resources being provided for people. But where was the seminar for boys about, hey, here’s what not to do. And like, this is how you treat people in your campus. And there was none of that. So we’re often telling women and girls how not to get raped, but we’re not telling the primary perpetrators, men and boys, “don’t rape.”

Yeah, think there is something in the culture of how we normalize things that pornography certainly fuels. And it’s something we can all take part in creating change. Like every single one of us can use our voice to call out harmful sexual behavior. We know that pornography consumers are more likely to engage in actual acts of sexual violence or be more accepting of acts of sexual violence. And so looking at what pornography is influencing and taking a look at individual behaviors to see how we can create change is a good starting point as well.

Yeah, and necessary This is going to take every single one of us.

Fight the New Drug (18:15)
So it’s really important that we have this conversation about sexual violence because it’s not only happening in real life in the world around us, but now it’s transitioning so that it’s also happening online, which is really scary.

Right.I mean, we’ve known sexual exploitation is happening online for ages, but this is something that changes in technology are affecting, so this is happening in new ways.

And so we want to talk a little bit about what’s happening with advancements in technology, what that looks like, why it matters. So, let’s dive in a little bit.

So starting with deepfakes, that’s something that I think a lot of people have heard about deepfakes, but surprisingly, I think a lot of people don’t know what deepfakes are. Can you start by briefing everyone on what a deep fake is?

I would love to. So a deep fake is essentially, it’s used through artificial intelligence, so AI technology. And essentially what it does is it allows you to take, like I could take Natale’s face and I could superimpose it over her, somebody dancing. A fun video of Natale doing something funny and quirky.

In its most innocent form, it can be great.

Yes, like we’ve all seen videos of politicians playing Fortnite and stuff and they’re fun. But unfortunately, that’s not the reality of what deepfakes primarily are. So 96% of all deepfakes are pornographic and 99% of those pornographic deepfakes target women specifically.

Which is alarming and also, since from 2019 to 2023, there was a 550% increase in deepfakes online. So this is not something that has gone away. And as we’ve had advancements in AI and in this technology, it’s only increasing and pretty rapidly increasing. And there are some real-world examples of this as well.

Yeah. I think before we go into that, think just to clarify a little bit more about what sexual or explicit deepfakes look like. Because we did mention like the more casual version of them but there are apps and tools and websites that you can use to turn somebody’s image into something that looks explicit you can Whether that’s like I don’t know how they do it just generating an image You can make it like put someone’s face over a porn performer Images that already exist. So regardless of how it happens you can make somebody look like they’re doing something explicit or put them in a really vulnerable image.

Right. And as I think important to know, we’re all existing in this world where at some point everyone has probably seen something that’s created using AI that you can’t tell the difference if it’s AI or real, right? So it’s getting like better and better. Yeah. AI is, is the technology is getting incredible and that’s a great tool in so many ways and causes a lot of harm in so many ways. This, this being some of the ways, right? It’s these compromising images or sexually explicit images are being created of individuals without their consent and then are being used to exploit individuals. So let’s talk a little bit about some real-world examples what that looks like.

Yeah, so unfortunately, there are too many, way too many, and we could spend the rest of however long we have together talking about them. But just a couple of recent ones, so there’s a case in Hong Kong recently where a law student made deep fake nudes of at least 30 women.

that were also students of this university. 4,000 celebrities have recently found to be victims of deep fake pornography. Again, most of these are women, public figures or celebrities of some type. The president of South Korea actually recently declared a digital sex epidemic due to the deep fake crisis that was happening in their country. So many women, girls and women, minors and adult women are being targeted with deep fake pornography, is image-based sexual abuse.

And much like every other advancement in technology, laws that are designed to protect people cannot keep up with the advancements in technology, right? So these things are happening. They’re not always illegal, actually, but the real harm, the emotional harm, it’s very real for people who are experiencing extortion or sexual exploitation, sexual violence being depicted in sexual violence. You know, going back to the comment we opened with about alluding to the idea that if pornography exists for people who would otherwise be sexually violent in real life, if someone can make a deep fake of someone that maybe they would commit sexual violence against in real life, but they can have a deep fake where the sexual violence occurs that that’s preventing harm from people.

Which is a ludicrous claim by the way because we know how pornography is fueling sexual violence and we know how the normalization of things like this are fueling ideas of entitlement over other people and entitlement to people’s bodies and to control things in a way that laws and safety cannot keep up with.

And what’s really interesting is that, like you said, there’s sort of a disconnect. People believe or have this impression that because it is AI-generated and because it’s not real, right? It’s fake, that it’s not hurting anybody or that it is completely harmless. In fact, 74% of deepfake users don’t feel guilty about consuming deepfake pornography. And in fact, we just recently posted about celebrities who were speaking out against AI deepfake porn because they had been victims of it. They were all women. And it was really interesting because we got a lot of comments from men and from women, honestly, who well, I’ll just read some of them. This person says, “we don’t care about victims who put themselves in the position and don’t care about the consequences.” Somebody else said, “Yeah, I don’t feel sorry for the celebs who were just sad AI took over their side hustle, but it’s a shame when it’s children and women who would never consider such actions to begin with. Ooh, like, I just, I don’t know. It’s like being a celebrity or a public figure or, and also who doesn’t have their face on the internet nowadays in the age of social media, just because your image is available for people to exploit and abuse does not mean that you were not still exploited and abused in the production, non-consensual deepfakes.

There’s a lot of victim blaming in these comments and lot of attitudes and perceptions that are very interesting to say just because someone’s a public figure, they deserve to be exploited basically.

Or it’s like less harmful than a child or another woman.

Right. And I think something really important to note is even if somebody did choose, you know, we’ve spoken to so many people who were former performers in the porn industry who speak about entering a scenario they thought was one thing and then it becoming something else and then being exploited through an experience in that way. Even if it was someone who consented to any piece of the equation, it does not mean that they deserve to be violated or degraded or harmed. And so I think the idea that any consumer has an entitlement to sexualize another human being without their consent, even if it’s quote-unquote fake, that’s a real person. The impact is very real. We’ve spoken with many survivors who experienced deepfake situations where their image was superimposed onto a body that was not theirs or they were the victim of a nudifying app. And these are problems that we’re seeing with young people in schools as well. And the harm they experienced was as if that was an image of them, nude, that was shared, right? Like these are not harmless issues. And so I think that’s important to remember, but also they have to learn from somewhere. These tools have to learn from somewhere. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely. So again, people, it’s this misconception that because it’s AI, it’s completely fake or completely generated, however AI does it. But what a lot of people don’t recognize about artificial intelligence is that it’s a learning mechanism. So it has to to like it observes real world behaviors, how we communicate, etc. to be able to train train itself. Yeah, to react in the way that we want it to. And so when it’s creating images, it has to look at other images, observe other images to be able to replicate that. Let’s use child sexual abuse material, for example.

So, okay, that’s illegal. We hear all the time people say, well, AI is going to be great because then people have access to content of children without having to use actual children. But what they don’t realize is that in order for a computer to generate a sexually explicit image of child, the computer must consume a sexually explicit image of a child. And so these kids who were victimized in the past and are still being victimized because people are still consuming that content are being re-victimized because their image is still being used by computers and then by people essentially.

And then I mean even just looking zooming out a little at what we know about the harms of pornography from decades of research that what is consumed fuels attitudes and perceptions. So even if whatever is being created in deepfakes is quote-unquote “not real” it could be fueling an appetite for something violent something harmful something illegal that Consumers can be more likely to act out in real ways. So these are very complex issues, but they are certainly not harmless and unfortunately, only escalating with advancements in technology

Yeah, that’s something that’s really scary about this whole thing. Again, it’s just the accessibility of it is so unlike anything else. And we’re seeing that this is affecting kids so much. A 2025 Thorn study found that one in 10 minors reported that their friends or classmates had used AI tools to generate nudes of other kids. So again, these are tools that kids have access to because they have access to devices. And so they can download these tools, create these images. And a 12-year-old doesn’t know that that’s harming their classmates, they don’t know the implications of that or that it’s illegal because it’s child pornography. And one in eight young people between the ages of 13 and 20 know somebody who was targeted by deepfakes as a minor. this is just, it’s just becoming a new and more accessible way of exploiting and abusing people, which is really scary and really unfortunate.

And then again, it’s reinforcing the behaviors of okay, if young people are passing around an image of a classmate that’s quote-unquote a deep fake and not real it normalizes the idea of passing around sexually explicit material which then normalizes sexting in schools, which we see is a problem and parents are surprised to learn all of the time that It’s self-generated child sexual abuse material or legally child pornography If a minor takes an image of themselves and then passes it to someone else and that is literally possession and distribution of child pornography, which is illegal. And so having other things that are normalizing that, it’s only fueling the entitlement again around this and this crisis. And we’re seeing increasingly individuals who have experienced these harms as teenagers, as young people, and the way that it’s affected years of their lives or is still affecting their lives. So it’s something, you know, we won’t get into this much today, but even sextortion is something that’s utilizing AIs and deepfakes to exploit young people and teenagers are losing their lives to this. Like this is a serious issue and so many people have no idea that this is happening in these ways and to this degree.

Yeah, I think exactly like said the normalization of it. People don’t recognize that what is happening to them is exploitation and abuse. And so if you are somebody that has experienced some type of image-based sexual abuse or otherwise it’s important that you know that you are not alone. There are people and resources available to help you and to support you. And this is absolutely not your fault. And you, it’s not fair for you to feel like it’s your responsibility that somebody else has done this crime to you.

And something else to tell any young people who are listening. This is something that’s being normalized around you, passing around quote unquote, they’re fake. They’re fake images. It’s being normalized around you and you don’t have to be okay with it. You can speak to a trusted adult, speak to a parent, let someone know what’s happening because it’s not okay and it shouldn’t continue. So you can help fight the normalization of this in your schools and take a stand against things like this. And then for adults as well, same thing, it’s not okay. And there are resources that can help mitigate this and help if you’ve been a victim of this. And let’s all just choose collectively not to produce explicit pornographic

Don’t exploit people. It really is that simple.

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of this conversation because social media is a piece of this puzzle as well. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

Yes. So I think especially for the parents and caregivers who are listening to this right now, is, it is so easy to think that my child doesn’t have access to this or this is happening. It’s a problem, but not in my community, my schools, or my churches. Maybe you have all of the right internet filters and all of the quote unquote, right safeguards, and are doing everything you could possibly do as a parent to prevent this. That still doesn’t mean it’s not possible to access.

Yeah, and that’s not your fault. course not. Not your fault. You’re doing amazing.

You can be doing all of the right things and that doesn’t mean that your child won’t still access pornography. And I think that a big puzzle piece that people just don’t recognize needs to be a part of this big picture is just how accessible pornography is for anybody, especially for kids. And so this is really scary. The Children’s Commissioner in 2023 found that kids are, get ready for this, more likely to see porn on social media than they are to see it on a porn site or even on a search engine. Like it cannot get more accessible than that. And the specifics here, we have Twitter or X is what it’s referred to now, is the top place on the internet that kids are likely to see pornography, which does make sense.

Again, if you’re a parent or a caregiver, this is important that X does allow explicit content. They do have parental controls, but that is good information for you to know. Porn sites comes in second, where kids are most likely to see pornography. Next, this might be surprising to some people, Instagram is actually number three on the list, followed by Snapchat. And then finally, search engines. Like that is insane to me that search engines is number five on the list and all of those social media and websites are like, it’s more accessible than ever.

And this is something too that even if every person on every social media platform was the age that they’re quote unquote supposed to be to have an account, which we know that they’re not. There are people younger than age 13 is the minimum age on a lot of platforms. Even if everyone was at least 13, they’re still minors, right? They’re still minors being exposed to often violent, very explicit content that is on these platforms. I think in my experience in talking to parents as we’ve done work in this movement, a lot of parents don’t know this because they think that every social media algorithm matches theirs. And I think that is something so important to remind parents of is that what you’re seeing on your timeline because of your demographic and your interest is likely not the same as what your kids are experiencing. And kids are also being targeted, like young people are being targeted; these are industries that are to make money, to profit off of people. They don’t really care who they harm along the way a lot of the time. And so this is something where the younger they can get a quote-unquote customer in the door, they’ll have a customer for life. And so young people are being targeted by predators, by those promoting sexualized material. And this is something parents need to know.

And another way that social media specifically is just perpetuating these harms. It’s so easy to share these images we’ve talked about, sharing explicit deepfakes of people that were non-consensually created. There are plenty, unfortunately, so many people who have stories of recorded rapes or recorded acts of sexual violence that end up on social media because it is so easy to share. And that’s something again, that parents and just everybody needs to be aware of is, again, how accessible this content is and how if you are a victim or somebody that has been targeted in some way that it’s just another example of how these this harm just keeps going. Like once it ends up online, it’s impossible to get it off because it is so easily shared and downloaded and reshared, uploaded to this website and whatever and and so I think that’s just another reason why we need to change the culture around what it is like how we can see media and our perceptions on pornography and sexual violence because these are problems that will not go away unless we are willing to be those people that are not just acknowledging that that problem exists but are actually working to fight it

Yeah, and I love that you said that because this really ties in where we started the conversation, which is looking at the way that sexual violence is happening in person, that real people are experiencing in these ways, but also the way that this exploitation, this sexual violence, this sexual abuse continues to follow people through their lives and is continually normalized online, right? We know the world we live in, the internet’s not going anywhere, but I think we can make change on the issues of sexual violence.

You know, been doing this work as an organization now for 16 years. We’ve seen a lot of progress, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. And I maybe want to just leave our listeners with a word of encouragement. One, thank you for joining us through this full conversation. We know this content can be heavy. We do this work all day, every day. We’re really in this and it’s even heavy for us a lot of the time. It’s part of why we’re so passionate about this because we are real people and we experience, we experience rape culture too. We are two women who are combating the harms of pornography and sexual exploitation, who are in video content just like this, that’s published on the internet. And we get a lot of comments all of the time that are some of the worst things a person could say to another person. and that is just a drop in the bucket to what some people are experiencing, with regard to sexual violence. So it’s something that it does affect us personally to live in a world where these things are normalized. And we believe that change is possible. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to show up every day and do this work. It’s not easy to have conversations with your friends, but I think it is possible. And you know, we are here every day because we believe that too. So what hope could you offer anyone who’s made it through to the end of this conversation?

Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. It is so important that amidst all the heaviness and the sadness and the hurt that there is a silver lining in there, there is hope, and that’s something that is really special about our job. It is so difficult sometimes, but it’s also really special that because of our work, we do get to see so clearly the impact that our movement with your help creates and the potential impact we can see where this movement can take us. And I do just want to say as well that our movement, Fight the New Drug’s Movement, is only as successful as the support that we get from our fighters. And so thank you for being somebody that is willing to step into that really hard place and be able to create change in yourself, in your communities, in your relationships, because difficult to sit there and not hurt and experience it. But that is quite literally the only way we’re going to make change is by people like you being willing to do the work to do that.
And just to add to that, we talk about these issues that are systemic issues, right? And we read these statistics that are devastating and heavy and there are hundreds more to back up the points that we’ve made just in this discussion about this small piece of this puzzle. But it is possible for every single one of us to make a difference and you don’t have to change the entire system to make an effective difference.

Change could look like questioning your own pornography consumption. It could look like having a conversation with your friend or coworker or parent or child. It could look like opening the door with your community leaders or whatever is within your sphere of influence. Every single one of us can make a difference. It can be buying a t-shirt that says, people are not products like Elisabeth’s. Because believe it or not, that’s an incredible conversation starter, right? So it’s just really small acts every day. We interviewed someone on this podcast once named Val Ritchie who has done a lot of work across the globe actually looking at sexual exploitation and sex trafficking and he’s seen some of the worst things humanity has to offer. And I asked him what gives him hope. And he said, this is a human problem with a human solution. And I think about that so often because I think in our work, as you said, this movement is only as strong as every member of this movement. And this really is something that this is a problem created by us, but as humans, but we can also create the solution.

Yeah, absolutely. So thank you so much for being part of the solution and for fighting with us, because it’s tough already, and we couldn’t do it without your help.

Yeah, thank you.