Some of my first experiences with sexual content came from finding porn parodies of characters I associated with myself as a child. When you’re a kid and you connect with works of art, you want to engage with it as much as possible. In an age where Googling — #NotJustADrawing

a character can show you nsfw content on the first page of image results, often times even with safe search on, children are at a high risk of encountering a dangerous world of adults who fetishize them and their media in an abusive way. I grew up into adolescence with the —

belief that seeing porn of underage characters was fine, because it was for *me.* I was exposed so often and so quickly to l*licon and other such media that I not only normalized it, I justified to to myself as a means to cope. It was my first association with sex, and that is—

a big fucking deal. I *know* I am far from alone in being someone who grew up associating sex with media that glorified our innocence, our naivety, our vulnerability, our youth. I defended simulated cp as a “healthy alternative” for pedophiles when I was the age of the rape —

victims being depicted. Adults pretended to be my age, making porn of people my age and I excused it. Adults told me American culture was just prudish and that other cultures thought I was mature enough to handle sex. Adults told me that characters that were as real to me as —

my neighbors, characters I empathized with and processed the world through, were not real and therefore depicting the rape of my surrogate selves was harmless. I believed them, and now as an adult my conception of sex and safety are still warped.

It’s never just a drawing when it is designed to draw in children, designed to replicate them and to identify with them. It is not just a drawing when a love of art can pull a child into the belief that they are old enough to be adults’ sex objects. When it makes pedophiles —

feel normal and acceptable, when it connects them with impressionable children.