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Professor Gail Dines has written about and researched the porn industry for over two decades. She attends industry conferences, interviews producers and performers, and speaks to hundreds of men and women each year about their experience with porn. Students and educators describe her work as "life changing."
In Pornland—the culmination of her life's work—Dines takes an unflinching look at porn and its affect on our lives. Astonishingly, the average age of first viewing porn is now 11.5 years for boys, and with the advent of the Internet, it's no surprise that young people are consuming more porn than ever. But, as Dines shows, today's porn is strikingly different from yesterday's Playboy. As porn culture has become absorbed into pop culture, a new wave of entrepreneurs are creating porn that is even more hard-core, violent, sexist, and racist. To differentiate their products in a glutted market, producers have created profitable niche products—like teen sex, torture porn, and gonzo—in order to entice a generation of desensitized users.
Going from the backstreets to Wall Street, Dines traces the extensive money trail behind this multibillion-dollar industry—one that reaps more profits than the film and music industries combined. Like Big Tobacco—with its powerful lobbying groups and sophisticated business practices—porn companies don't simply sell products. Rather they influence legislators, partner with mainstream media, and develop new technologies like streaming video for cell phones. Proving that this assembly line of content is actually limiting our sexual freedom, Dines argues that porn's omnipresence has become a public health concern we can no longer ignore.
Going from the backstreets to Wall Street, Dines reveals how porn is affecting our lives and why its omnipresence is detrimental to our sexual freedom.
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Dines takes on the scourge of pornography and its permeation of all facets of culture in this history and call to action: “We are in the midst of a massive social experiment, and nobody really knows how living in Pornland will shape our culture. What we do know is that we are surrounded by images that degrade and debase women and that for this the entire culture pays a price.” Generously referenced, Dines' screed carefully builds her case that pornography's pernicious influence is a factor in the rise in brutishness and sexual violence, focusing specifically on how heterosexual pornography negatively impacts women. She has no time for arguments that so-called softer genres might be acceptable, and she goes into detail in explaining her reasoning. Perhaps she imputes too much significance to current flavors in the never-ending commodification of porn, but her purpose is to offer a compelling explanation of an issue that often makes Americans uneasy. A good, provocative title, but it should be remembered that to adequately discuss porn, one must adequately describe it. --Mike Tribby
Born and raised in England, Gail Dines received her Ph.D. from the University of Salford, UK. She began her activism volunteering at a rape crisis in Tel Aviv and started the Haifa-based feminist movement--Woman to Woman--in her living room at the age of 22. Since arriving in the United States in 1986, Gail has taught at Wheelock College where she is now professor of Sociology and Women's Studies and chair of the American Studies Department. For over twenty years Gail has been researching and writing about the porn industry and pop culture and has published many articles on such varied topics as the image of women in Hollywood, racism in porn, the hypersexualization of our culture, and the ways images shape our sexuality and our relationships.
Gail has spoken at hundreds of colleges across the country and at conferences around the world. Her lectures attract large numbers of students and the Q + A sessions often continue for hours with highly engaged and energized students. She is a gifted speaker who immediately connects with her audience. Her lectures change the way people think about pop culture and porn, and students regularly say that they will never look at the world the same way again.
Gail's edited book, Gender, Race and Class in Media, is a bestseller in colleges and is popular also in Canada, England and Australia. The book won the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights, and is now in its third edition. Her new book, Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality, examines how men and women's lives, sexuality and relationships are shaped by the porn culture.
In 2007 Gail helped form the activist group, Stop Porn Culture (SPC). One of the goals of this organization is to develop educational materials that raise awareness about the effects of living in a porn culture. SPC comprises academics, activists, anti-violence experts, students, parents and people concerned about porn's impact on the culture. SPC has developed two slideshows: one on the effects of porn on women, men and the culture, and the second on the impact of porn on children and youth. The slideshows are being given across the country, as well as in Russia, The Congo, England, Scotland, Ireland and Australia.
Gail has appeared on numerous television shows, including those on CNN, MSNBC, Showtime, and Fox. She is a regular guest on radio shows and her work is frequently quoted in newspapers and magazines across the country. As a public intellectual, Gail has been successful in opening up a national discussion on the effects of the porn culture. A committed scholar and activist, Gail makes sure that her work is accessible and engaging to people in and outside of the academy.
I am fortunate enough to have had the chance read Gail Dines' book, Pornland. Dines' describes how the porn industry operates *today*, in the 21st Century. She does this first by describing the men who created the industry as now know it: Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, and Larry Flynt. These men were excellent capitalists, not lovers of freedom. Dines provides evidence from women who've worked for them, and uses the pornographer's own words as well, to prove her points.
She then describes the hard-core pornography that has become mainstream today. The popular film series Girls Gone Wild depicts all women as being sexually available, Dines asserts, because women, specifically young, white women, are ready to undress and make-out with one another just for the thrill of knowing men are watching...or so one would think from watching Girls Gone Wild.
Dines also addresses how both women and men are negatively influenced by the mainstream porn industry in their everyday life. Many heterosexual women are confused by why men are so interested in having anal sex; the increased focus on anal sex in pornography might have something to do with this. Likewise, the vast majority of teenage and twenty-something women in the U.S. have taken up shaving their pubic hair. This comes directly from porn, where women are typically shown hairless (liking pubic hair on a women is considered a fetish and there is a special genre of porn for it). This change in the way women take care of themselves has resulted in nurses changing the way they do rape-crises kits; they can no longer collect samples of public hair, as they once did.
Anyone living in today's society should pick up this book, as I really did not begin to touch on the arguments Dines makes.... Everything she says comes from the view of a Marxist and leftist who is fed up with the left not taking the racist, misogynist, capitalist porn industry seriously, and indeed, coming up with every possible excuse of why not to do so.Read more ›
Gail Dines' Pornland lives up to its billing as the culmination of the life's work of one of the most reputable scholars of the effects of pornography on society. In it, Dines lays out an indictment of the pornography industry where only the pornography industry itself could vote "acquit." She masterfully traces the history of pornography from the feud between Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler through the modern day mainstream "body punishing sex" and brutal violence of online pornography. Based on her several decades of research on pornography and its purveyors, she lays bare an industry that has violated women in every way imaginable and is now running out of ideas on how many ways to penetrate their orifices. Her book reveals to everyday pornography users and to people who haven't ever seen pornography just how much porn is effecting our society, how violent it has become, and how much we all need to work to rid our society of its effects. Pornland is a call to action to reclaim a critical part of ourselves -- our sexuality. Whether the reader understands the cause of pornography to be sin, patriarchy, oppression, whether the reader sees porn as an expression of healthy sexuality, an addiction, or a harmless pastime, all should read Dines' critical look at this omnipresent influence on our society.
This is a succinctly but cogently argued book about how corporate pornography's effects are permeating our culture and our socially-constructed social norms. The most extreme and violent images are entering our culture and our culture's ideas of sexuality in ways that are having widespread impacts on this most intimate aspect of our humanity. This is NOT a simplistic anti-sex, anti-male, PORN=RAPE book, but a sophisticated critique of porn's evolution and impacts on society and individuals. She may be slightly exaggerating the market dominance of gonzo porn, but her basic thesis is still intact as the most degrading and defining elements of gonzo porn are now commonplace themes in other forms of widely used erotic materials. She very effectively sets forth how porn is a global corporate industry with a large, well-defined economic incentive for commodifying and market-segmenting the sexuality of the consumer, not just the performers who produce this material. Far from dismissing the idea of individual responsibility or agency, she puts forth a clear argument for how the cultural environment shapes the choices of individuals, has the potential to impact the quality of individual lives and relationships, and indeed delimits what choices are available to us, even in a realm in which so many have fought, and are still fighting, to be free of oppressive norms.
i cant recommend this book enough - the author (a woman and a feminist) put the arguments against using porn in such an eloquent manner with such powerfull and bulletproof logic and argument NO MAN ON EARTH COULD ! it probably takes a woman view to tell us men how ugly the porn got... we men just completely lost the ability to critically think about this men's favorite past-time beyond repeating formulaic shouts like:
1) porn is only fantasy and harmless fairytale for adults 2) porn is finally liberating our long pent-up sexuality 3) we are adults and we can always discern between porn and real sex with real women 4) porn can never change our attitudes towards women
The author Gail Dines is no feminist radical and you must admire her patience and clear logic with which she builds the case against the porn-industry and its false claims and downright lies about their noble and liberating mission in our bedrooms... the books reads like crime novel and with every page and with every popular claim observed (some are listed above 1-4), disected and completely debunked with cold logic and arguments.. the ugly and slimy face of porn starts to seep though the public mask this industry carefully constructed within last 15 years, built to make you believe watching porn is actually natural and healthy "entertainment" with no side-effects and absolutely no doubts necessary...
as reaction to some other reviewers... i actually loved that the book was on more philosophical and personal-opinion side rather than the ussual pop-psychology books with hundreds of research studies and all-nation surveys and polls put together and thrown into your face on every other page but no critical thinking from the authors...... Gail Dineson on the other hand sat down and really thought about the whole problem and presented a coherent and well argumented view of pornography... you dont have to agree with her but this book is like having a great discussion with a very good rhetoric and critical thinker who doesnt beat you with surveys and poll results but instead uses arguments and critical thinking to try to convert you... iam totally converted... and btw. iam a man, 31 age, in long-term relationship, atheistic and recently worried by my long term compulsive porn-use and its effects on health, relationship and my sexuality...
I believe we need both types of books - those author teams that gather scientific data and statistical numbers (the hard facts) and draw conclusions from facts only and the other type - the independent thinkers and "philosophers" who only use comon sense and their own experience and views... both books have their benefits and value in the discussion...
some reviewers seem to devaluate Daines because she dares to say "only" her opinion without supporting it with double blind studies and national poll results, graphs and consumer analysis... iam a man and porn-user and everything Daines says makes total sense - a common sense in fact... much of the stuff disclosed in the book about male behaviour of porn-users applies perfectly in my case - i just never could articulate it as good and clear as this women...Read more ›
