Hi, token CP survivor here to give my 2 cents. I’m an artist, & for years I‘d draw pictures recreating my own trauma. I thought it helped, & sometimes it did. The images of my abuse get stuck in my head. The drawings allow me to take the images from my head & put it onto paper. https://twitter.com/noname11731349/status/1249147951143890946

But it wasn’t helping. It was hurting me very badly. I was retraumatizing myself. It was a form of self harm, just like cutting myself was.

And I would watch the videos to cope, as a matter of fact. Those traumatized me even more, but I‘d watch them to try & desensitize myself, to validate my trauma knowing it’s real, & to see the images in my head on screen.
This did irreperable damage to me psychologically.

It was ABSOLUTELY a form of self harm. Obviously, I no longer do it. Sometimes I still draw, but not the same way I did before. I don’t spend hours coloring & getting every detail right. I don’t look thru them every night. I put them away, burn them, or give them to my therapist.

What I DONT do is share it online. I don’t glorify images representing the worst things that ever happened to me. I don’t provide pedophiles with material that inevitably escalates to actual child abuse, and I don’t normalize and desensitize them to the rape of children.

So, sure, maybe it’s a coping method for this person. But only in the same way cutting myself was a coping method for me.
And, coping or not, it’s no excuse to contribute to a culture of abuse.

Every single forum or site that my videos were sold on had a section dedicated to “simulated CP” - drawings, cartoons, CGI. All the art CP sites linked to real CP. The guys who liked ‘stories’ & drawings almost always found their way to real kids.

Being a victim is no excuse. The lack of “real kids” being depicted is not an excuse. Because I’m real, & so are the kids those fantasies are built upon & inflicted upon.
And for the record, I shouldn’t have to waste my time explaining this. But there you go.
CP is bad, period.