Growing up in evangelicalism, I was taught that any porn consumption will eventually lead to needing porn that depicts SV, because they labor on the theory that porn is a drug, and you need "stronger porn" to get the same buzz.

In reality, I think the people who pushed this line of reasoning were actually the violent misogynistic freaks

Obviously they were chauvinistic creeps, but you're narrowing the most broad idea of criticism of depictions of SV down to what some cranks say about something that explicitly isn't a depiction of SV (because the point is that they falsely claim it still feeds into depictions of SV). I feel like this doesn't connect to my question at all.

And I think we should especially listen to sex workers on the issue.

I assume you specifically mean actresses and models, and if we're talking about things like working conditions, their rights to their faces, etc. then obviously that's true. But again, that doesn't really feel to me like it's addressing the issue I was asking about, because I'm not talking about the production of pornography, I am talking about the reception of pornography, about the sorts of images and messages some of it has (because again, I'm mostly talking about depictions of SV and the like here, not porn generally).

I repeat my question: Who is allowed to criticize the depiction of SV and not be regarded with baseline suspicion before even considering the merit of the criticism? Forgive my presumption, but I am assuming that you aren't suggesting "sex workers" is an exhaustive list, because surely if a sex worker offers criticism that is correct, it's not necessarily because of some incommunicable trait that is unique to their personal phenomenological experience, but because they have thoughts and information that can be relayed to other people meaningfully, and that other people could also produce. Which is to say nothing of the huge amount of porn that doesn't have any sex work involved in its production (because it's drawn or something).

Speaking for myself, this seems to me like a topic where sex workers would certainly have interesting and helpful things to say, but social impact of media isn't especially what their fields usually are, and this is a topic that people do study and which should have empirically observable principles. We should obviously regard stories like the one you tell where people just make up stories full of logical leaps about human psychology, but I don't think that invalidates criticism that is more carefully considered and empirically grounded (and almost assuredly coming from another group, because looking at the patriarchal elements of most porn, there is a lot that conservatives would refuse to acknowledge even if they understood it).

I don't expect for my perspective to be seen as particularly valuable, and that's fine, but can I suggest that you see the other person who I spoke to briefly in the replies to this comment? You might be interested in what they have to say.