Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality

by Gail Dines

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. And, as Gail 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. Proving that porn desensitizes and actually limits our sexual freedom, Dines argues its omnipresence is a public health concern we can no longer ignore.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Sexuality, Sociology, Psychology, Gender, Politics

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Gail Dines is an English–American feminist author, anti-pornography activist, professor, and lecturer.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gail Dines’ Pornland is the first book I’ve read about pornography and I think it was an excellent place to start. Using very clear language and thought-provoking analysis, Dines breaks down porn in ways that I found convincing and accurate. Admittedly, my personal layperson thoughts about porn and its effects on popular culture, business, sexuality, race and gender were often quite similar to Dines’, though obviously in a less-informed, critically organized and researched form. Pornland has confirmed and expanded my own thoughts and concerns about pornography, which I guess makes me a biased reader inclined to read her book with less critical rigor than I should. But I didn’t read this for a class or to become a pornography scholar; I read it as a thoughtful, concerned citizen who believes pornography might best represent everything wrong with modern society.

Dines’ historical account of when porn was first brought into the mainstream via Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler illuminates how the porn industry operated then and now first and foremost as a business intent on making the highest profits possible. As a business, it represents everything wrong with capitalistic business practice, for it focuses solely on profit margins at the expense of people – profits supersede the interests (health, safety, well-being, etc.) of both the consumer (mostly men) and the employees (female performers). They are selling an industrially manufactured product from the assembly line, where churning out as many units as possible is the order of the day. This mass-production method debases people and sexuality, reducing them to mere objects and mechanics. No deeper social, emotional, psychological, or spiritual connection is desired.

According to Dines, the industry works really hard to sell its product and garner customers. How porn is advertised to the public is crafty indeed. Playboy capitalizes on their sleek, debonair approach, which has served Hugh Hefner quite well. The sleazy humor used by Hustler claims porn consumers are greasy white trash when in fact their main consumer isn’t that at all; nor is founder (and millionaire) Larry Flynt. When it does portray itself as a prosperous celebrity occupation, as with porn star Jenna Jameson, it conveniently omits any indication that being a porn star is actually a terribly miserable occupation. Porn survives, like so much of consumer business today, by advertising their product in an intentionally deceptive package – basically, they lie to us. Since people are always influenced by the culture in which they live, it is no wonder we begin listening to and believing porn’s messages, which come in all forms: Cosmopolitan and Maxim magazines, child clothing lines designed to make prepubescent girls “hot” and “sexy,” Carl’s Jr. ads containing messages so sexually explicit you wonder if food even entered the advertisers’ minds, or music videos of scantily-clad divas writhing around in some form of orgasmic ecstasy. These are a few examples of how porn has seeped into our culture. Sex sells, and porn has taken full advantage of this fact, with their primary objective being money and rabid consumerism.

21st century consumerism has reached terminal levels of gluttony, with porn being one of the grossest transgressor and supporter of rabid consumption. The point of the product is to get you to consume more and more, and with pornography addiction numbers piling up it seems that the industry has been wildly successful. What Dines successfully shows is how the harsh treatment of women, the open and unapologetic racism, pseudo-child porn’s manipulation of women to look younger, to name but three, all show that pornography, in a very real and rather literal way, consumes people. People are the product and while these raw materials are abundantly available, due to their savage exploitation their shelf life is very short.

Dines’ descriptions are vivid and explicit, pulling few punches as to the aggressive, racist, sexist, sadistic aspects of the industry. She also doesn’t avoid naming large corporations benefiting from porn – amazon.com & google.com are getting quite a bump from searches and sales; hotel chains like Marriott and Holiday Inn generate quite a sum from providing porno movies. And Dines points out the flaws in arguments that porn isn’t so bad because it can’t be proven that watching porn causes men to rape women – like rape is the only crime against women worth caring about. She is (rightfully) an unapologetic feminist who argues that feminism is about gender equality, which is completely absent in porno movies, and that so-called female sexual liberation celebrated by Cosmopolitan and Sex and the City is actually about pleasing and being subservient to men – something that would make those second waves feminists who fought for sexual liberation roll over in their graves.

Dines’ arguments and analysis show contemporary society to have reduced sex to nothing but the physical appearance and performance, with the brunt of the pressure and pain put to women, though men are obviously damaged by this reductive view as well. I'll add that this is true at my own university, BYU, which claims and at least appears to not have a porn or promiscuous sex problem to the degree of other universities, which is not to say there isn’t a problem – there is, but hopefully to a lesser degree than elsewhere. BYU has (unacknowledged) problems with sexist attitudes and beliefs that exist within the porn industry in more radical form. But women still aren’t spared the suffocating pressure to be physically attractive – the hot and sexy factor is still a huge determinant in whether a woman gets dates and is accepted into male circles. Women constantly have to live up to the expectations of the men (and strangely the expectations of other women) around them, which naturally leads to the problems Dines addresses: eating disorders, unnecessary plastic surgery, excessive exercise, depression, poor grades and general feelings of inadequacy.

In conclusion (“finally!” you exclaim), Pornland is an excellent read. My only wishes were that the book’s conclusion discussed solutions to combating pornography in more detail. As it was, the conclusion was mostly an advert for the group Stop Porn Culture, which she helped found. And I had wished for some discussion about what she felt a healthy sexual relationship entailed – the book after all is about “how porn has hijacked our sexuality.” Aside from brief statements about sex being wonderfully important for strengthening a couple’s relationship, there is no in depth assertions of what couples can do to have a healthy, porn-free relationship. People need positive reasons to pursue the type of relationship I believe Dines wishes people to have. Identifying and proving that porn isn’t good for us is an important message, and she does it really well, but some encouragement on the other end would have made this already good book that much better. But as it is, this is a fine examination and condemnation of pornography.

[Dustin Wax · Rating 3 out of 5]

Profoundly flawed but important nonetheless. Relies heavily on rhetoric of drug addiction (people don't view porn, they "use" it; they don't have a habit, they have an "addiction"; porn featuring young women is not "teen porn", it's "Pseudo-Child Pornography" or -- absurdly -- "PCP" for short) and super-dodgy research methodologies (the link between rape and porn is supported by interviews with sex offenders; what about the men who watched porn and *didn't* rape anyone?). But this is an important debate, and Dines asks the right question: what does it mean for us that our sexuality is being commodified and commercialized. Porn is big business -- pornographers like Rupert Murdoch (whose DirectTV service is a major distributor of porn) and the Girls Gone Wild guy (yeah, like *he's* a significant enough person to remember his name?) transform our desires into saleable product, which is consumed regularly and in increasing ways -- how does that shape our relationships? The handful of insights make up for Dines' poor argumentation and reliance on her own "icky" feelings about various sex acts.

[Chris Tempel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Has the overall message I've come to independently that everything you put in your body: images, movies, books,food, social media, affects your mentality cumulatively. So many people deny this and say that we are supposed to see these things, or that it is somehow ok, under the guise that we are to "be critical", instead of understanding the deeper rooted accumulation of BULLSHIT that has made us sick.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've basically read as much of this book as I can stomach for now, for research purposes. This is not to say that I don't like the book, but rather that the porn culture that Dines describes is horrific. She doesn't hold back, and nor should she.

Dines is a feminist and her discussion deals with the ways that pornography affects women in the industry, but also in society at large. She traces the way that in the USA a ratings war between Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler basically made pornography more explicit, more accepted, and gradually more mainstream. Dines then describes various phenomena in contemporary culture that arise from that initial battle.

What I also very much appreciate about this book is that Dines discusses how Pornography 'hijacks' men's sexuality. She won me over in the first few pages when she talks about how when her son was 11 years old she spoke with him about the harms of pornography to the relationships of its users. She told him that at a certain moment he would have the choice either to look at pornography, in which case his sexuality would be marked in irretrievable ways forevermore; or not to look.

After reading what she describes, I'm inclined to move all my children to an island far, far away, without internet, and away from anyone who might ever possibly have come into contact with pornography. But, as Flannery O'Connor said, "You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you". So, I guess we'll all be staying in this so-called enlightened and empowered society, where parents will need to prepare their children for what is out there.

[Linda Smolenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is absolutly amazing.
The author brings actual examples from sites that portray the women as being nothing more than sex toys. She explains how seemingly "in control" "empowered" porn mega stars are actually anything but. She goes into the psychology of hardcore pornography and how it punishes and debases women. The effects it has on a whole new generation that is being brought up on accesible porn as sex education and the effects it has on men and women who do know better. The mental effects are intense and worrying.
There is a large section devoted to the horrible racism rampant in porn and even child pornography. It's a book that everyone must read. Be it a parent worried about a child coming into the world of free for all pornography, a person who thinks porn is harmless fun and not at all affecting them or a person who is just interested in our current over sexualized culture. This book is a must read for both genders!

[Ryan Mishap · Rating 4 out of 5]

What's the difference between erotic fantasy and industrialized distribution of graphic depictions of women sexually degraded? The difference between an individual's sexuality and the products of a multi-billion dollar industry.

This is a very sharp look at the modern business of pornography and how it is shaping our culture--the stories it is telling men and women. The descriptions of movies and what they depict are often hard to read, but I would hope that it would be difficult for any empathetic, caring person not to cringe and recoil.

Stories have meaning that aggregate and effect real people and society. The stories the vast majority of pornography tell aren't only anti-woman, they're anti-men as well, if one wants men to be complete, healthy human beings.

I was wishing this book, and others like it, covered DIY and feminist porn (in my punk and anarchist circles any critique of porn is met with a "sure, mainstream porn sucks, but..."), then I realized that any porn attempting to be feminist is such a small, insignificant part of the larger business that it isn't worth commenting on.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Frustrating and poorly argued. Lots of tangents that have a tenuous connection at best to how pornography is consumed in today's society. Her personal revulsion for certain sexual acts is obvious, and she seems to feel that the only reason a person would want any kind of kink or non-"vanilla" sex is because they've been brainwashed by "Pornland" (the experimental world we currently live in) to believe they need/want it. I found much of this kind of argument condescending and irritating.

The general discussion about how media shapes societal values was the best part of this book. And I believe that if Dines had broadened her discussion to ways sexuality is shaped by consumption of media and pop culture (including pornography), the book could have been intelligent and thought provoking. But focusing on pornography, and then further limiting the discussion to specifically "gonzo" pornography, (and them focusing on a specific producer/actor who creates gonzo pornography) created a very narrow scope and left little room for well thought out connections.

And she used porn as a verb, i.e "porning". Which I feel is pretty unforgivable.

[Melissa Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

First published in 2010, the nonfiction book "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality," by Gail Dines, was absolutely the best book I read in 2017. This stunning read has earned a top spot in my heart as one of my favorite books of all time.

I read this book in two days, but kept it up on my "currently reading" list for much longer -- just because I liked seeing the book on my Goodreads wall every day.

Gail Dines has an excellent TED talk featuring various highlights from this book. There is also a short documentary video featuring one of her numerous presentations, which I was able to access through my library system. I recommend watching her TED talk and the documentary film as well.

As a person and as a writer, I appreciate books that illuminate how the world works -- and this book did that in such a powerful way. In my other reading, I know there's been a tremendous (and horrifying) rise in sex trafficking in the United States -- especially in children -- and now that I've read "Pornland," I know exactly *why.*

It's amazing when a book can explain so many disparate facts of reality all at once. Or when a book turns on your whole brain, and makes you race through the pages because you have that potent sense of, "here it is; here is the thing I've been looking for; here's the key to the WHY no one else can explain."

Why questions are the hardest of all, and "Pornland" is a nonstop illumination of *why* American culture operates as it does. This book travels into the psychological headwaters feeding the river of all of our media. Each chapter is brain food of the most powerful kind.

On a side note, to discuss something that wasn't featured in this book: Gail Dines doesn't talk about ableism in "Pornland," but I would like to add to her commentary, regarding ableism --

From what I can assess, regarding American culture: porn doesn't only transmit the most lethal messages of misogyny, racism, and homophobia -- mainstream porn is also the most powerful transmitter of ableism. The erasure of the disabled body in porn is the strongest form of ableism.

I do not fault "Pornland" for leaving this out. As mentioned, the book was first published in 2010, and disability studies is still kind of nonexistent in the culture at large. The stated purpose of "Pornland" is to examine different types of mainstream pornography, and the messaging transmitted in that pornography. To discuss the ableism of porn is to talk about the power of erasure -- and Gail Dines trained her focus on the images and videos that people are looking at. Since mainstream porn does not feature physically disabled actors at all, it seems counter-intuitive to discuss a type of pornography that does not exist.

Which is why that would be the one chapter I would add to this book, if I could: the chapter about the ableism of porn, and how incredibly powerful this complete erasure of physical disability in mainstream porn truly is.

Personally, I do not watch pornography, and neither does my husband -- he's always been averse to it because he says porn is "fake" and he's never liked the idea of "masturbating to pictures," especially "fake pictures" that someone has digitally enhanced on a computer. He finds porn weird and unnatural, and wonders why men want to jack off while looking at women who don't have "pimples, scar tissue, cellulite, fatty butts, floppy boobs," and other attributes of "real bodies." My husband has always been like this, and we've been together for fifteen years.

I share that as a personal commentary on a truth Gail Dines shares in her book: not all men watch porn. It is not a given that all men seek out porn, desire porn, or masturbate to pornography. I'm grateful I live with such a man. I feel incredibly lucky that mainstream pornography isn't part of my personal sex life.

My life is still impacted by pornography though, even if I don't seek it out. Seeing how very *much* my life --and American culture at large -- is impacted by pornography is the focus of this book, and it is absolutely brilliant.

All the stars, and all the love for the work of Gail Dines. I could not be more grateful to have this book in my life.

[John Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book written by a feminist professor who has been lecturing on porn for 20 years, a span in which the industry has become more demeaning toward women. Dines explains, in graphic language and detail, how porn really isn't about sex but rather about humiliating and degrading females. The vast majority of porn scenes today are not what real women would do in real life.
Yet porn has impacted, fashion, media and women in America: "Whether if be thongs peeping out of low-slung jeans, revealing their 'tramp stamp,' their waxed pubic area or their desire to give the best blow job ever to the latest hookup, young women and girls are trying to look and act the part of a porn star."
Dines tells how porn is becoming more violent in an attempt to keep viewers interested--calling women increasingly vulgar names, making them do sex acts that are physically unhealthy and pushing them to extremes to make them cry. In this environment, child porn is the only thing that turns some guys on anymore.
Ultimately it will get a lot worse. Teaching that women have no worth has a direct effect on how porn-watching men--and boys--treat females.

[Musharrat Zahin · Rating 4 out of 5]

গত বছর ইউএনডিপি বাংলাদেশ এবং সেন্টার ফর ম্যান অ্যান্ড ম্যাসকুলিনিটি স্টাডিজের (সিএমএসএস) যৌথ উদ্যোগে ‘ব্রেভম্যান ক্যাম্পেইন’-এর অংশ হিসেবে স্কুল পর্যায়ে শিশু-কিশোরদের পর্নোগ্রাফির প্রতি আসক্তি এবং এ থেকে উত্তরণের উপায় বের করতে একটি গবেষণা পরিচালিত হয়। এ গবেষণায় উঠে এসেছে, দেশের স্কুলগামী কিশোরদের ৬১ দশমিক ৬৫ শতাংশ পর্নোগ্রাফিতে আসক্ত। মানুষের জন্য ফাউন্ডেশন পরিচালিত সমীক্ষায় দেখা গেছে, পর্ন ভিডিওতে আসক্ত রাজধানীর ৭৭ শতাংশ কিশোর। (সূত্র: প্রথম আলো)

এত অল্প বয়সে শিশু-কিশোররা যে পর্নোগ্রাফির সংস্পর্শে আসছে, এরজন্য অনেকাংশে দায়ী ইন্টারনেটের সহজলভ্যতা। একইসাথে দায়ী পপ কালচারও। এই পপ কালচার বা ওয়েস্টার্ন কালচার আমাদের মাঝে পর্নোগ্রাফি অনেকটাই নর্মালাইজ করে দিয়েছে; আর এইটা কিন্তু নেটফ্লিক্সের ট্রেন্ডিং মুভি বা সিরিজের লিস্টটা দেখলেই বোঝা যায়।

কিন্তু পর্নোগ্রাফি কিভাবে এলো, আর কিভাবেই এইটা আমাদের ক্ষতি করছে, পুরো পর্নোগ্রাফি ব্যবসাটা কারা চালাচ্ছে– এসব নিয়েই "Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality" বইটি।

প্রতিটি পর্ন ভিডিওতেই নারীদের এক ধরনের "object" হিসেবে দেখানো হয়। এখানে দেখানো হয়, নারীরা সবসময় সাবমিসিভ, প্যাসিভ এবং পুরুষদের প্লিজ করতে চায়।

পর্নকে কখনোই যৌনতার আদর্শ মাপকাঠি মাপা যাবে না। কিন্তু ১০-১৬ বছরের যেই মানুষের এখনো যৌনতা নিয়ে কোনো জ্ঞানই নেই, তারা কিন্তু এসবকেই মাপকাঠি ধরবে। আজকাল মুভি, মিউজিক ভিডিও ব গানের লিরিক্সেও এসব জিনিস "সফট পর্ন" হিসেবে ঢুকিয়ে দেওয়া হচ্ছে।

তাছাড়া কৃষাঙ্গ, এশিয়ান এসব নিয়ে নানান স্টেরিওটাইপ পর্নোগ্রাফিতে তো আছেই। এসব দেখলেই বোঝা যায় আমাদের চারপাশের সবকিছুই সাদা চামড়ার মানুষেরা কন্ট্রোল করে।

তাছাড়া পর্নোগ্রাফি মানুষের মনে ডিলিউশনাল জিনিস তৈরি করে। এক সমীক্ষায় দেখা গেছে, ১৬-২১ বছর বয়সী নারীদের ৪৭ শতাংশই সেক্সের মধ্যে ভায়োলেন্ট এক্সপেক্ট করে৷ আমরা বেশিরভাগ সময় এমনসব জিনিস ফ্যান্টাসাইজ করি, যার পরিণতি বাস্তবে খুবই পীড়াদায়ক।

এই বইয়ের মতে পর্নোগ্রাফি ইন্ডাস্ট্রি নারীদের এবিউজড করাটা "সেক্সুয়াল লিবারেশন" এর লেবেল লাগিয়ে মেইনস্ট্রিম করে ফেলেছে। ফলে কেউ যৌনতার মধ্যে ভায়োলেন্স আনলে এটাকে "she wants it" বলে চুপ করিয়ে দেওয়া হচ্ছে।

আর আজকাল তো সেক্সুয়াল কিংকের অভাব নাই। দুইদিন পর পর নতুন নতুন কিংকের আবির্ভাব হচ্ছে। এর জন্যও কিন্তু পর্নোগ্রাফিই দায়ী। এসব উদ্ভট যৌনকর্ম নানান যৌন রোগ তৈরি করে৷

পর্নোগ্রাফি সবচেয়ে বড় যে ক্ষতি করে, তা হলো যৌনতার ব্যাপারে মানুষের দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি বিকৃত করে দেয়। যৌনতা সম্পর্কে সঠিক ধারণা না থাকায় পর্ন ভিডিওর বিকৃত যৌনতাকেই সবাই যৌনতার আদর্শ মাপকাঠি ভেবে নেয়। প্রতিটা পর্ন ভিডিওতে দেখানো হয় যে নারীর প্রতি ছেলেদের কোনো এম্প্যাথি বা সম্মানবোধ থাকে না, তাদেরকে যৌনবস্তু হিসেবে দেখানো হয়। তারা চেহারায় যতই আনকম্ফর্টেবল ভাব আনুক না কেন, নিজেরা সন্তুষ্ট হওয়া পর্যন্ত পেইন দিতেই থাকবে।

পর্নোগ্রাফি আসক্তি কিছু ক্ষেত্রে এমন এক পর্যায়ে চলে যায়, হিতাহিতজ্ঞানশূন্য হয়ে যৌন নিপীড়নের পথকে বেছে নেয়। তখন কেউ না চাইলেও একজন ধর্ষকে পরিণত হয়ে যায়।

যেহেতু স্যাটিস্ফ্যাকশনের কথা উঠছেই, পর্নোগ্রাফিতে দেখানো হয় যে ছেলেরা "ejaculate" হওয়া মানেই ভিডিও ওখানেই শেষ। এখানে যে দুই পক্ষেরই স্যাটিসফাইড হওয়ার ব্যাপার আছে, সেটা পোর্ট্রে করানো হয় না। অর্থাৎ প্রোপার ইন্টিমেসির ছিঁটেফোঁটাও এখানে থাকে না।

বইয়ের একটা পার্ট এমন, "Porn sex is not about making love, as the feelings and emotions we normally associate with such an act -- connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection -- are replaced by those more often connected with hate -- fear, disgust, anger, loathing, and contempt. In porn the man makes hate to the woman, as each sex act is designed to deliver the maximum amount of degradation."

পর্নোগ্রাফি যৌনতার সবচেয়ে আনন্যাচারাল জিনিসটাই দেখায়। আর এখানের কলাকুশলীদের বডি টাইপটাকেই সবাই স্ট্যান্ডার্ড হিসেবে ধরতে চায়। ফলে বাস্তবে যখন দেখে এসবের সাথে কোনো মিলই নেই, তখন তারা হীনমন্যতায় ভোগে।

বইয়ের প্রথম ৩ চ্যাপ্টার পর্ন ইন্ডাস্ট্রির উত্থান নিয়ে। কিভাবে ২য় বিশ্বযুদ্ধ থেকে আমেরিকায় ম্যাস পর্ন ডিস্ট্রিবিউশন শুরু হয়েছে, প্লেবয় ম্যাগাজিনের একচ্ছত্র ব্যবসা, পর্ন ইন্ডাস্ট্রির মনোপলি– সবকিছু ���ই চ্যাপ্টারগুলোয় তুলে ধরা আছে।

একটা সময় দেখা যেত কম্পিউটারে গান, গেম বা সিনেমা ডাউনলোড করার নাম করে পাড়ার স্যাঁতসেঁতে দোকানগুলো থেকে এডাল্ট ভিডিও সিডিতে ভরে নিয়ে আসতো। আর এসবকিছুই হতো লুকিয়ে। কিন্তু ইন্টারনেটের সহজলভ্যতার কারণে এখন কয়েক ক্লিকেই incognito mode অন করে পর্ন সাইট স্ট্রিম করা যায়।

আপনি জেনে অবাক হবেন, পর্নোগ্রাফি ইন্ডাস্ট্রি কিন্তু হাতেগোনা কয়েকটা কোম্পান���ই চালিয়ে থাকে৷ অর্থাৎ সবাই এখানে একচেটিয়া ব্যবসা করে৷ মাল্টি বিলিয়ন ডলারের বিজনেস একেক জনের৷ আর এসবের মার্কেটিংও কিন্তু অন্য লেভেলের!

প্রতিটা পর্নোগ্রাফির ন্যারেটিভই হচ্ছে "she wants it" আর এখানে দেখা হয় নারীদের কাজই হচ্ছে পুরুষদের যেভাবেই হোক স্যাটিসফাইড করা, নারীদের খুব বাজেভাবে অব্জেক্টিফাই করা হয়। যারা পর্ন ভিডিওতে কাজ করে, তারা কাজের জন্য করে, যৌন আকাঙ্ক্ষা মেটাতে নয়। আর পুরো জিনিসটাই ফেক বা ফিকশন, কোনো ডকুমেন্টারি নয়।

পর্নে নারীদেরকে cunts, whores, sluts এসব বলা হয়। একইসাথে হাঁটু গেড়ে বসানো, গলা চেপে ধরা, হিউমিলেট করা তো আছে। এগুলোকে খুব বেশি রোম্যান্টিসাইজ করা হয়৷ পর্ন ইন্ডাস্ট্রি ফিজিক্যাল আর ভার্বাল এবিউজ নর্মালাইজ করে ফেলেছে৷

ক্যাপিটালিজম যখন সব জায়গাতেই চলে এসেছে, তখন পর্ন ইন্ডাস্ট্রি কেন নয়? ওয়েস্টার্ন কালচার যেখানে পেরেছে পর্নোগ্রাফির মার্কেটিং করেছে একটা প্রোডাক্টের মতো। এখানে একইসাথে রেসিজমের ব্যাপারটাও চলে আসে যে আমেরিকান নারী আর এশিয়ান নারীদের শারীরিক অবকাঠামোকে কিভাবে হেয় করা হয় কিংবা কোন জাতের মানুষের পুরুষত্ব বেশি বা পুরুষাঙ্গের সাইজ কেমন৷ কিংবা আমেরিকান পুরুষরা কিভাবে এশিয়ান নারীদের নির্যাতন করে "pleasure" পায়।

এই বইয়ের একটা বড় অংশ জুড়ে রয়েছে যে কিভাবে আমরা পর্নোগ্রাফিকে নর্মালাইজ করে ফেলেছি৷ আমাদের কথাবার্তায় এই ব্যাপারটা এতটাই নর্মাল যে এরমধ্যে একধরনের অ্যাবসার্ড ব্যাপার আছে, সেটা আমরা ফিল করি না। আমরা যদি মেইনস্ট্রিম পর্নোগ্রাফির দিকে তাকাই, তাহলে দেখতে পারবো এইটা সম্পূর্ণ মিসোজিনিস্টিক, পেডোফিলিক এবং রেসিস্ট।
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বইটা বেশ ইনফরমেটিভ। যদিও লেখার ধরনটা বেশ কাঠখোট্টা, তবে বইয়ে নানান হিস্টোরিক্যাল তথ্য, ফেমিনিস্ট থিওরি, একাডেমিক রিসার্চ আর পর্ন সেটের কাহিনী আছে। বইয়ে অনেককিছুর একদম গ্রাফিক্যাল বর্ণনা আছে।

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, disturbing content. While many people think of pornography as harmless entertainment, the evidence is mounting that it is not. Porn is seriously misogynistic. It robs users of real, fulfilling intimate relationships and leaves addicts unable to function in society.

The book first covers the porn industry: how it started with magazines and moved to the internet, and all the marketing and greed that go into it. It is a male-dominated industry that exploits people for profit while offering nothing of value in return. The book also goes into how porn has leaked into the culture, from television to hookup culture. The whole thing is insidious.

Next the book covers porn’s effects on women and men each, specifically. It’s damaging to both. As porn races to the bottom in degredation, the women in porn are abused more and more. It teaches men to see and treat women as objects. It portrays consent as meaningless as all women and girls are inherently whores. Men become addicted, with altered brain chemistry and spending all their time and money on it.

There is a section on racism in porn. The racism is so over-the-top and beyond ridiculous I could hardly believe it. Basically, black men in porn are portrayed as sex-crazed animals violating white women. Asian men are feminized; Asian women are stereotyped in geisha-type roles, and black women feature much less often. The whole thing was repulsive.

As porn users get more and more desensitized, they have to turn to more shocking and taboo topics to get a thrill and eventually turn to pseudo-child porn (PCP) and ultimately child porn. PCP involves barely legal girls made up to look like young teens and children. Going with that are sites dedicated to girls losing their virginity, often violently. The link between porn and sexual assault crimes is still being debated and researched, but there is a clear link.

Ultimately, pornography, like the tobacco industry and drug cartels, get rich off of making victims. There is no positive benefit from porn and a host of damage to individuals and society at large. The effects will become more obvious with time.

The author is a progressive, left-wing feminist frequently accused of being anti-sex by critics who seem to refuse to examine any evidence of harm. After spending the whole book discussing men and women separately, the author says that gender is not real. How is that possible when you just recognized the differences in male and female anatomy? I’m still puzzled by that.

There are some things the book does not go into much that I would like to see (which is not a fault, as books can’t be infinite), but I think further research will come out with time: porn in the LGBT community (its forms and effects); porn made for women (more likely to take book form?); and more scientific research into the effects on the brain

(Strong language in quotes has been censored by me and appears in full in the book.)

Language: Lots of strong language, including some slurs
Sexual Content: Clinical but graphic sexual content that is often violent and misogynistic.
Violence: Sexual violence
Harm to Animals: None
Harm to Children: Some mentions of children used in pornography and sex trafficking
Other (Triggers): Racism, sexual abuse/assault, misogyny

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Porn sex is not about making love, as the feelings and emotions we normally associate with such an act—connection, empathy, tenderness, caring, affection—are replaced by those more often connected hate—fear, disgust, anger, loathing, and contempt. In porn the man makes hate to the woman, as each sex act is designed to deliver the maximum amount of degradation.

The pornographers did a kind of stealth attack on our culture, hijacking our sexuality and then selling it back to us, often in forms that look very little like sex but a lot like cruelty.

[Re Girls Gone Wild] While they might have thought sexually performing for the camera was fun at the time, their families, communities, and peer group turned against them once they found out what they had done, labeling them as sluts, a label they carry with them wherever they go.

[Sean Thomas, founder of Maxim magazine] “The purpose of the lad mad is to tell guys that it is OK to be guys—to drink beer, play darts, and look at girls. When we started Maxim we consciously felt that we were leading a fight-back against the excesses of sneering feminism. I believe we succeeded.” Part of the anti-feminist stance that Maxim so proudly adopts is the way it constructs masculinity as predatory and aggressive. Sex in Maxim is what men want from women, and articles abound on how to please her, not for her sake, but as a way for him to manipulate her into having more sex.

In this world, men dispense with romantic dinners, vanilla sex, and postcoital affection and get down to the business of f—ing. In porn, sex is the vehicle by which men are rendered all powerful and women all powerless; and for a short time a man gets to see what life would look like if only women unquestionably consented to men’s sexual demands.

The process of dehumanizing a group as a way to legitimize and justify cruelty against its individual members is not something that porn producers invented. It has been a tried and trusted method adopted by many oppressors; the Nazi propaganda machine effectively turned Jews into “k----s,” racists defined African Americans as “n-----s” rather than humans, and homophobes have an almost limitless list of terms for gays and lesbians that strip them of humanity. Once the humanness of these individuals is collectively rendered invisible by their membership in a socially denigrated group, then it is that much easier to commit acts of violence against them.

In porn, the women’s lack of human qualities often results in men’s inability to see just how violent the sex act is. No matter how cruel the sex, the one question I can always count on hearing from a man after my presentation is, “Women enjoy what they are doing, so why is porn a problem?” Of course, these men have no empirical evidence to support this, just their observations of the porn that they masturbate to. When I ask them if they would like to see their wives, girlfriends, or sisters in the position—in an attempt to humanize the porn performers—they are quick to respond that their loved ones are different from the women in porn; their women would never “choose” such a job. The image these men seem to have of women in porn is of a woman accidentally stumbling onto a porn set one day, and realizing that this is what she has been looking for all her life. That these women are acting, and may have come to porn not so much through choice but due to a lack of alternatives is rarely considered because this premise threatens to puncture the fantasy world created by both pornographer and user.

Men may think that the porn images are locked in that part of the brain marked fantasy, never to leak into the real world, but I hear over and over again from female students how their boyfriends are increasingly demanding porn sex from them. ... And from male students I increasingly hear how they thought that they could separate the two worlds, only to find out that industrially produced porn images do indeed seep into their intimate lives.

Missing from porn is anything that looks or feels remotely like intimacy and connection, the two ingredients that make sex interesting and exciting in the real world. Drained of these, porn becomes monotonous and predictable to the point that users need to eventually seek out more extreme acts as a way to keep them interested and stimulated.

The men in the small Catholic college dismissed this opportunity to explore their sexuality and it was apparent that, knowingly or now, they adhered to the porn world’s story: pornography is fun and harmless fantasy. My questioning the real-world implications of such fantasy elicited neither interest nor curiosity but a kind of consuming rage that closed down the possibility or reflection, analysis, and reason. The rage was directed at two places, both female—either the women in the industry or me—and it certainly conveyed to all women in the room what happens to those of us who don’t follow the porn party line. Conversely, the men who were concerned about their use seized the opportunity to explore how porn had affected them; the result was a serious and painful reflection of their porn use that left me, and many people in the audience, deeply moved.

These are not “fantasies” constructed in the head of each individual porn user, based on his own creative imagination, past histories, longings, and experiences, but highly formulaic, factory-line images created by a savvy group of capitalists. ... Ironically, what the “Porn is fantasy” camp misses is that porn actually works to limit our imagination and capacity to be sexually creative by delivering images that are mind-numbingly repetitive in content and dulling in their monotony.

Progressives have, for good reason, singled out the media as a major form of (mis)education in the age of monopoly capitalism in which a few companies dominate the market and use their economic and political power to deliver messages that sell a particular worldview that legitimizes massive economic and social inequality. But many of these same progressives argue against the view that porn has an effect on men in the real world, preferring instead to call anti-porn feminists unsophisticated thinkers who don’t appreciate how images can be playful and open to numerous interpretations. So now we are in a somewhat strange place where people who argue that mainstream corporate media have the power to shape, mold, influence, manipulate, and seduce viewers simultaneously deny that porn has an effect on their consumers.

Imagine what would happen if suddenly we saw a slew of dramas and sitcoms on television where, say, blacks or Jews were repeatedly referred to in a racist or anti-Semitic way, where they got their hair pulled, faces slapped, and choked by white men pushing foreign objects into their mouths. My guess is that there would be an outcry and the images would not be defended on the grounds that they were just fantasy but rather would be seen for what they are: depictions of cruel acts that one group is perpetrating against another group. By wrapping the violence in a sexual cloak, porn renders it invisible, and those of us who protest the violence are consequently defined as anti-sex, not anti-violence.

One pattern I have seen emerge is the way many of these men don’t mind the porn images intruding into their sex lives as long as the sex partner is a hookup. They start to mind when they have met someone they want to forge a relationship with and they are unable to get rid of the images. Try as they may, scenes from their favorite movies come hurtling back as they become aroused. They find themselves comparing their girlfriend to their favorite porn performers, with the girlfriend coming off the loser. Andy put it succinctly: “When we have sex, I try not to think of some scenes from porn that I like, and then I feel guilty because I can’t help myself when I do think about that. I feel like a s–t because she doesn’t even know I watch porn.” Tony, voicing a similar sentiment, said, “I hope she never knows what’s going through my mind when we have sex. She’d hate me.”

The intimacy, igniting of senses, and connections developed when skin meets skin are all either absent or overridden by the industrial product that these men have come to depend on for sexual pleasure. Trained by the porn culture to see sex as disconnected from intimacy, users develop an orientation to sex that is instrumental rather than emotional. No wonder one man described pornography as teaching him “how to masturbate into a woman.”

The men I speak to at colleges who are addicted do indeed end up in serious trouble; they neglect their schoolwork, spend huge amounts of money they don’t have, become isolated from others, and often suffer depression. They know that something is wrong, feel out of control, and don’t know how to stop. ... This seems to be such a problem on some campuses that the counseling center is now offering support groups for such men. Whenever I hear these stories, I feel both sad for the men and outraged at the porn industry for hijacking the men’s sexuality to the point that they feel so out of control.

For this group of men [sex offenders], the regular gonzo pornography became boring, and they moved into more violent, fetishistic pornography, often that which looked like overt torture. When this also started to become boring, most of the men moved into child pornography. Some accidentally came across child porn while surfing porn sites, and others sought it out to masturbate to something other than the usual porn. The average length of time between downloading the first child porn and sexually assaulting a child was one year. Most men told me that before becoming addicted to Internet porn, they had not been sexually interested in children.

The connection between porn and rape is without a doubt the most debated and most controversial question of porn’s effects. Some argue that porn causes men to rape, while others counter that sexually aggressive men seek out more violent pornography and would rape with or without the visual stimuli. Studies, however, suggest that there is a link between porn consumption and violence against women. Neil Malamuth, one of the most well-known psychologists studying the effects of porn, and colleagues reviewed a broad range of studies and concluded that “experimental research shows that exposure to non-violent or violent pornography results in increases in both attitudes supporting sexual aggression and in actual aggression.”

And then there are the women who have been raped as adults by boyfriends, husbands, teachers, priests, doctors, colleagues, and strangers, who either made them act like the women in porn or told them about their porn use as they raped them. I have heard from wives who were forced to put a centerfold over their face as their husbands raped them; girlfriends who, during the assault, had to moan just like the woman in the movie; women who thought they could trust a male friend only to be drugged and raped while the camera was recording; and students who went to fraternity parties and were gang-raped by the brothers as a porn movie was playing in the background. Traveling the country, I have heard just about every possible way that porn is used against women, children, and some men. I have listened to stories of lives devastated by men who use porn, and for these survivors, porn is not a fantasy but a nightmarish reality.

What anti-porn feminists are saying is that such myths promote a culture that will affect men in myriad ways: some will rape but many more will beg, nag, and cajole their partners into sex or certain sex acts, and more still will lose interest in sex with other human beings. Some will use women and disregard them when done, some will be critical of their partner’s looks and performance, and many will see women as one-dimensional sex objects who are less deserving of respect and dignity than men, both in and out of the bedroom. Whatever the effect, men cannot walk away from these images unchanged.

Susan Bordo looks at the ways the culture helps shape women’s ideas about what constitutes the perfect body. The bodies of the women we see in magazines and on television are actually very unusual in their measurements and proportions, with long necks, broad shoulders, and high waists. Yet because these are more or less the only images we see, we take them to be the norm rather than the exception and assume that the problem lies with us and not the fashion and media industries that insist on using a very specific body type.

It would be a mistake to glorify sex for women in the pre-hookup days, as feminists such as Shere Hite have documented just how unfulfilling sex was with men who were clueless about women’s bodies and sexual desires. But if previous generations of men didn’t understand women’s bodies, then what must this generation of men be like who have grown up on porn? As my colleague Robert Jensen always says, “If men are going to porn to learn about women’s sexuality, then they will certainly be disappointed.” In porn a man just has to have an erection for a woman to be suddenly overtaken by orgasmic responses. Porn sex assumes that women are turned on by what turns men on, so if he enjoys pounding anal sex, then she does too. Little surprise that studies show that men in hookups experience orgasm more often than women, or that they report more sexual satisfaction from the encounters.

With hookup sex comes, for women and girls, an increased possibility of being labeled a slut—a term that is used to control and stigmatize female sexual desire and behavior. There is, after all, no male equivalent of a slut since men who are thought to be highly sexually active are called a study or a player—labels most men would happily take on. ... But for all of women’s so-called sexual empowerment today, the effects of being labeled a slut are as devastating now as they were in the past. A study by academics Wendy Walter-Bailey and Jesse Goodman shows that these girls and young women “often resort to self-destructive behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, self-mutilation, academic withdrawal, or risky sexual conduct.”

Black men have been socialized over the years by the increasingly pornographic images in mainstream hip-hop. Highly sexualized images of black women are a staple of these videos, and while, as some black critics argue, these images reinstate black women as sexually desirable in a society where the beauty standard is racist, they do so in ways that objectify their bodies and teach boys and young men that they are not equal partners but rather f— objects who deserve to be treated just like the women in porn videos. Hip-hop helped develop the black porn genre, and Mireille Miller-Young argues that “white pornographers were acutely interested in how black men consumed images of black women—how they fetishized them in popular culture—so that they could expand their market beyond the standard white male consumers who generally purchased adult tapes featuring black sexuality.” Hip-hop was the main source of information for porn producers eager to open up the black porn movies released, that it successfully provided a blueprint for porn imagery.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the British series Coupling. It's like Friends but actually funny and good. There is a talk at the dinner table in one episode about what the difference between porn and erotica is. This book further illustrates that theory.

I did not know that the types of porn that Dines mentions actually existed. I mean, really, how is that a turn on? I have to use that, I think if I actually write what that is my computer will burn down in shock and embaressment and I'll be kicked off this website.

I mean - ICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But apparently, it's not about being turned on, it's about being dominant and putting women and minorities in thier place. This is on the part of the producers (this Max Hardcore sounds like a complete *&*&*$#^^&%%^&*&*&^^%^&) as well as some of the viewers (like the ones who end up in jail). Dines seems more concerned about the effect on younger people (college age and down) and she looks at affects and effects on both men and women in terms of how they dress and how relationships are constructed.

She also helps explain why you might have had a problem with Sex in the City. (After reading some of the descriptions, you might want to take a shower however).

I honestly feel that on the weekend when the young ladies head up to my local bar in their F**K Me shoes, I should read this aloud to them.

(Actually, this is really mean to say, but it is really funny watching these women work in those shoes when it is raining or snowing. I know, I know. It's very bad to say, but it really is funny).

In all seriousness, this book is more about education about what porn is then why something should be banned. This aspect makes the book far more interesting than porn is bad so burn it argument.

[Jaclynn (JackieReadsAlot) · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars - I have always been on the fence when it comes to pornography. I don't consume it as I don't find monotonous, pounding vaginal sex pleasing in real life or fantasy, nor do I maintain arousal with paid performers and generally female debasing sex acts. BUT, I am also against limited ones free speech/1st amendment rights or telling people what to do. I dislike authority and am somewhat of an anarchist.
This book didn't reveal to me anything I did not already guess at, but it does provide statistics and objective evidence to support the notion that in our society that is already saturated with hypersexualized images of extreme constructs of masculinity and femininity, porn causes damage on all fronts. To boys and men and especially to girls and women.

*Some written depictions of real, hardcore porn scenes will make your stomach turn. As will the final chapter on child porn.

[Lotty · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an eye-opener to someone who doesn't watch TV, and hasn't participated much in popular culture. After reading Dines' book, I can see where an acceptance of porn has worked its way into movies, print, and even the design of children's clothing. While I see sex as something that should be / can be celebrated in life (and the lives of consenting adults), I cannot accept the moral rightness of porn as a product to be sold in an industrial fashion. It's just so oppressive on so many levels. But I'd be open to thinking about whether or not individuals choosing to make a living in the sex trades can do that in healthy, non-oppressive ways.

[Winston Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read Dines' books and listen to her speeches and you'll come to the conclusion that she believes that all sex is rape. She blames capitalism and cites sources from the left side of politics. But what's ironic and almost hilarious (it would be if she wasn't in favour of fascistic legislation), is the abundance of pornography usage in conservative regions such as Utah. To make matters worse, she ignores the varied and detailed studies conducted that have shown an inverse correlation between acceptance of porn, availability of porn, and the rape rate (i.e. the more porn is accepted and widely available, the less rape there is). More ignorance and blatantly false assertions abound. According to her, porn was created by white capitalist men to oppress women. Wow. I guess making sex illegal unless supervised by Dines and her cadre of Puritans should be implemented. We all know how well that worked with Prohibition in the US, right? Well, imagine that imposed on something that nearly everyone wants to partake in.

She'd love to see porn made illegal. Thoughtcrime, anyone? What she fails to do is propose any workable system that would protect women (and men, who are suspiciously played-down in this book). Not only that, but the multi-billion dollar LEGAL worldwide pornography industry provides jobs. Self-regulation will ultimately win out, as the sheer surfeit of corporations Why does consent mean so little to her? Why does she want everything but vanilla sex illegal in the privacy of one's own bedroom? No wonder she was welcomed and treated as a quasi-deity in Australia, a country with fascistic restrictions on pornographic content (no fetishes are allowed, not even spanking). I bet she was positively delighted when she learned that more books, films and video games were outlawed in that backwater island than any other first-world nation.

Dines complains at length about how pornography encourages its viewers to emulate the behaviour they see. Why this is a bad thing she never explains. What people should know before getting into porn (and hopefully soon after) is that the performers are highly-trained, fit, educated and capable actors. They are the Michael Jordans and Jose Cansecos of the sex industry. It would take months, if not years, of training and practice to perform at their level.

Her claims that porn leads to rape and/or adds a profit motive to such heinous behaviour is not born out by the evidence. The reverse is in fact the case. And it's not hard to see why. Repressive sexual education and punishing children for looking at porn on their own (no sane person I know advocates showing children porn because of the psychological harm and damage authority figures can do when they insert their peer pressure and influence into a child's development in unhealthy ways), teaching them lies in abstinence-only nonsense and inculcating them to be ashamed of their own bodies does nothing but harm.

Most of her "quotes" are unsourced, which speaks volumes about her intellectual honesty. If she had any valid points to make, why engage in such deception?

Sources:

Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex Related Crime: A Review.
The Porn Report (available on Amazon)
Why Conservatives Spend More on Pornography. Conservative states spend more on pornography--hypocrisy or repression? (March 7, 2009 by Nigel Barber, Ph.D. in The Human Beast)

[Ann Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this thought-provoking book, sociologist Gale Dines explores how what she describes as "porn culture" has permeated mainstream pop culture -- and what that means to adult men and women as well as teenagers and young adults growing up in a world in which ideas about what it means to be masculine or feminine are being skewed by a multi-billion dollar porn industry. Her arguments are compelling and disturbing. To those who would argue that the hypersexualization of women's bodies has been empowering for women, Dines writes: "This is pseudo-empowerment since it is a poor substitute for what real power looks like: economic, social, sexual, and political equality that give women power to control those institutions that affect our lives."

[Muriel (The Purple Bookwyrm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

More accurate rating: 9/10.

(And late as usual... Mental health shenanigans amirite?)

Pornland is definitely the best of the three books I have now read on the subject of pornography and its ills. Or more precisely Big Mainstream Porn and its ills - which, mind you, represents about 80-90% of it but still, technically speaking pornography doesn't have to be intrinsically harmful. As such I'm not anti-porn in theory, but I kind of am in practice? Averaged out it makes me porn-critical at the very least.

Dr Gail Dines is a feminist, and her thorough analysis of mainstream porn definitely goes into - and benefits from, in my opinion - arguments derived from feminist analysis, so it really shouldn't come as any surprise that this elevated Pornland above both The Porn Myth and Your Brain On Porn for me. That being said, there's definitely more to this treatise than feminist analysis.

But first, I'll change things up a bit and get my two nitpicks of criticism straight out of the way:

- Video games are sort of mentioned in conjunction with the argument that violent media can desensitise consumers - especially young impressionable consumers - to said violence. And of course GTA is mentioned, like it's a freaking meme at this point how you can rape and kill prostitutes in some version or other of that game (a pretty sick meme, to be sure, but a meme nonetheless). And it's not like I completely disagree with the argument itself but... Come on, there are so many different kinds of video games in so many different genres. To the "GTA argument" I'll counter with Spyro the freaking Dragon and Stardew freaking Valley, which is one of the most wholesome (and unexpectedly moving I might add) things I've ever encountered, in any medium.

- Beauty standards and the beauty industry are mentioned in conjunction with pornography and the toxic messages it spreads, which is something I really appreciated - like I said, this treatise is bloody thorough. But then a couple of lines were dropped about eating disorders that were a bit... Reductive shall we say? Like I'm sorry but no, not all cases of anorexia result from an obsession with dieting and being thin. In fact, and this is pretty ironic given it should be even more relevant to a feminist analysis of pornography, a lot of eating disorders develop as a response to trauma from... Yep, sexual abuse.

Setting aside those two nitpicks, Pornland was basically a near-flawless, feminism-informed analysis and indictment of mainstream pornography, and attendant porn-culture, rape-culture's younger sibling if you will. Dines first details how porn-culture as we currently know it came into being with the print-media likes of Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler - and let me tell you, the more I learn about creepo Heffner, the more I dislike him (though I suppose it's a relatively moot point now given he's dead). Though compared to the reams upon reams of gonzo porn one can access on the Internet today, those magazines appear relatively "tasteful" I suppose.

The author then goes into the consumer-capitalist interests at the heart of the porn industry - which is why I find it just as relevant to talk about Big Porn as we do about Big Food or Big Pharma. Ungodly amounts of money, of capital, are generated from the cold and inhumanly mechanistic at best, violent and misogynistically degrading at worst, filming of sex acts. And it's pretty fucking sad and pathetic - or distressingly depressing if you're a woman who wants to relate intimately with men quite frankly. It is estimated about 1 in 5 male consumers of porn have some form of addiction to it, and the pornographers greedily count on that fact to maximise their profits - just as tobacco and alcohol sellers would.

The following chapters go over the ways porn has infiltrated popular culture (ex: pubic shaving becoming an expected aspect of so-called femininity, and anal sex becoming a lot more mainstream), the ways actresses are "groomed" into the porn and wider sex industry (and don't kid yourselves, even "out and proud" female performers will, 9 times out of 10, have a history of sexual and/or emotional abuse), and the impact porn, as a visual medium, has on men, women, and more importantly boys and girls, in an already androcratic - at the very least androcentric - society.

Then you get two charming (/s, obviously) chapters on the violent racism present in a lot of porn - a kind of racism which would, furthermore, be hotly contested in civil society. And on the oh-so-creepy infantilisation of women in "teen" porn - which has uncomfortable, to say the least, connections to actual child pornography and, more broadly, the sexualisation of actual children (which is incidentally shit I've been pointing to for years now).

Dr Dines gets major points for finally bringing up that feedback loop I mentioned in my two previous reviews between society and the content of pornography. Pornography as it exists today would not be the way it is without androcracy, but it does, in its turn, compound the problem in a way. On a similar note, just as a non-violent man will not suddenly rape a woman out of the blue because he jerks off to a porno once in a while, it will definitely worsen the situation for men who already have a shaky relationship to women and their agency as human beings. And when it comes to children and teenagers, well there it's even worse, because they are growing up and developing their gender-influenced sexual identities with this shit.

I loved the fact she called porn hate-making, in contrast to love-making. And I adored the fact she called massive BS on the argument that porn is "just fantasy". Because it actually isn't. Porn is, for one thing, 1000% formulaic and precisely designed to elicit a specific response, and make the consumer crave more of that response - that's media and advertising psychology 101 people. For another, porn is made up, by pornographers, of specifically chosen scenes that involve real people having real sex. It is, per its etymology, filmed prostitution! In what universe does that fit the definition of fantasy?! You don't have to dislike it, fine, but at least have the intellectual honesty to dispense with that bogus line of thinking. Please and thank you.

Finally, going on a mini-rant here because this book freaking upset me: I'm still not quite sure how a decent boy, young man, or man can just be "led" to escalate through increasingly more violent (and/or deviant) kinds of pornography. I mean okay androcracy and rape-culture give a kind of explanation there, sure. And like #not all men (or women I guess, though once again let's be real, we all know where the numbers lie with this one) who indulge in porn are "bad people", right (especially if it's relatively vanilla, and not a daily necessity to jerk off). Fine. But let me be clear: if you fap and come to a woman who is crying in pain, there is something fucking wrong with you. End of story. You might not be evil as such, but you are doing something which in my book counts as morally evil, fucking sue me, and you seriously need to take a good long look in the mirror and re-evaluate your values as a human being.

Dr Dines is way more empathetic and patient with this than I am, and she has to be. I very sincerely admire her for this, but I just can't anymore with this repulsive shit. And yes, daily, even simply frequent and/or gonzo porn usage is an absolute deal-breaker for me in a heterosexual relationship. Like I said, this book was legitimately upsetting in places, but effective, and I had to keep reminding myself *not all men are like this, not all men are like this, not all men are like this* (and, to be fair, my ex didn't watch porn so there's that) so I wouldn't cry my eyes out. And even then I did, because like I dumb-arse I went on the Internet afterwards and read a slew of pathetic arguments from porn-sick men (it's what I like to call "browsing self-harm", you're welcome to the expression). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, final ranking of the three books I read on the subject:
1) Pornland || Dr Gail Dines
2) The Porn Myth || Matt Fradd
3) Your Brain On Porn || Gary Wilson

Some quotes just because I can:

In porn the man makes hate to the woman, as each sex act is designed to deliver the maximum amount of degradation. Whether the man is choking her with a penis or pounding away at her anus until it is red raw, the goal of porn sex is to illustrate how much power he has over her. It is what he wants when, where, and how he wants it. {...} In porn, sex is the vehicle by which men are rendered all powerful and women all powerless; and for a short time a man gets to see what life would look like if only women unquestionably consented to men's sexual demands.

No doubt there are some who enjoy watching women suffer, but I honestly do not believe that the average man is a woman-hating sadist. This is indeed the image of men the pornographers generate, but it is one that, ironically, given our man-hating reputation, feminists reject since we have never believed that men are born misogynists. {...} We have to ask, what is it about male socialisation and masculinity that helps prepare them - or, I would say, groom them - into seeking out and masturbating to such images?

That these women are acting, and may have come to porn not so much through choice but due to a lack of alternatives is rarely considered because this premise threatens to puncture the fantasy world created by both pornographer and user. {...} For those men who are not sexually sadistic or cruel, this could well be psychologically intolerable, so they have to work very hard at maintaining the fantasy that porn women are indeed unlike most women they meet in the real world. {...} Ultimately, however, the ability to keep porn women separate from the women they date and hook up with is eroded as the more men watch porn, the more the stories become part of their social construction of reality.

Missing from porn is anything that looks or feels remotely like intimacy and connection, the two ingredients that make sex interesting and exciting in the real world. Drained of these, porn becomes monotonous and predictable. {...} Ironically, what the "Porn is fantasy" camp misses is that porn actually works to limit our imagination and capacity to be sexually creative by delivering images that are mind-numbingly repetitive in content and dulling in their monotony.

No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a nonrapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being. {...} but to see it as simplistically and unquestioningly leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology. {...} What porn does is to take these cultural messages about women and present them in a succinct way that leaves little room for multiple interpretations. {...} By the time they first encounter porn, most men have internalised the sexist ideology of our culture, and porn, rather than being an aberration, actually cements and consolidates their ideas about sexuality.

By wrapping the violence in a sexual cloak, porn renders it invisible, and those of us who protest the violence are consequently defined as anti-sex, not anti-violence. {...} How porn is implicated in rape is complex and multilayered. Clearly, not all men who use porn rape, but what porn does is create what some feminists call a "rape culture" by normalising, legitimising, and condoning violence against women. {...} But what anti-porn feminists are saying is that such myths promote a culture that will affect men in myriad ways: some will rape but many more will beg, nag, and cajole their partners into sex or certain sex acts, and more still will lose interest in sex with other human beings.

While we all have some power to act as the author of our own lives, we are not free-floating individuals who come into the world with a ready-made set of identities. {...} The Stepford Wife image, which drove previous generations of women crazy with its insistence on sparkling floors and perfectly orchestrated meals, has all but disappeared, and in its place we now have the Stepford Slut: a hypersexualised, young, thin, toned, hairless, and, in many cases, surgically enhanced woman with a come-hither look on her face.

During an interview in a Connecticut prison, John told me how he carefully and strategically groomed his ten-year-old stepdaughter into "consenting" to have sex with him, and then casually mentioned that his job was made easy because "the culture did a lot of the grooming for me". {...} This cultural shift toward sexualising girls from an early age is bound to have real social consequences. Not only does it affect the way girls see themselves, it also chips away at the norms that define children as off-limits to male sexual use. The more we undermine such cultural norms, the more we drag girls into the category of "woman", and in a porn-saturated world, to be woman is often to be a sexual object deserving of male contempt, use, and abuse.

[Rebecca Huston · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book that is going to bother most readers, and infuriate nearly everyone, no matter where you stand on the pornography debate. Very raw, very disturbing and not for most. While I was glad to have this book written, and seeing the damage that gonzo porn can do -- gonzo porn is very violent, very misogynist -- it's also strident and repetitive. Read at your own risk.

For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.bubblews.com/news/9739323-...

[kehindeslibrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is terrifying, to say the least. It’s taken me two months to digest Gail Dines’s brutal, yet revealing words about the everlasting impact porn has had on mainstream media, video games, pop culture and our youth.

Gail Dines is a radical feminist who specialises in the study of pornography.

This book, which is divided into eight chapters, explains in detail the effect that porn has on the brain, our sexuality, racial stereotypes, how we view and interact with women in daily life and how hardcore porn can be linked to sexual assault and rape.

We live in a time where hypersexuality is rampant, from the tv adverts that we see on our screens to the music videos that are put out on a monthly basis.

Today, we have Only Fans (OF) sex workers on social media, romanticising the sex industry, and posting content on their social media platforms that almost makes the industry a better place than it is. And although Gail Dines doesn’t speak about OF in this book (it was published in 2010, a while before Only Fans become popular) Only Fans was the main platform I thought of.

Porn has become so accessible that we can find it through a simple link on our phones. Children can now stumble across these videos and images very quickly, not knowing the damaging effects that porn will have on their brains, their sexuality and how they view and see women forever.

Although society today is more accepting, and sex is now seen as less taboo, many people take criticism of porn as being anti-sex. However, in the early pages of the book, Dines gives a brilliant response to this rhetoric:

“𝗣𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘀𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗲𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗻𝘆𝗺𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗲𝘅 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗮 𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘀𝗹𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗲𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶-𝘀𝗲𝘅.”

The book is heavily researched, with the book ending with over forty pages of references. I don’t have the words to describe how important and revolutionary this book is today, but it’s one that everyone must read.

“𝗣𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝘅 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲, 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝗰𝘁—𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗲𝗺𝗽𝗮𝘁𝗵𝘆, 𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻—𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲—𝗳𝗲𝗮𝗿, 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗴𝘂𝘀𝘁, 𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿, 𝗹𝗼𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗽𝘁. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝘀𝗸 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗼𝗿𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝗲𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗼 𝗮𝘁 𝗼𝗱𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱𝘀.”

[Nikki Metzgar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book on an airplane and during the four hour flight, there was a little TV on the seat in front of me that played ads the entire time. You couldn't turn it off, so I was just forced to glance at car commercials the entire time. The situation was frighteningly relevant since this book is about the slow creep of hypersexuality into our media and it actually did scare me a little bit to think about how we can barely control the images we're exposed to on a minute-by-minute basis just living an average life in America.

That's sort of the point of the book--constant exposure to pornified women and porn itself shapes the way we think about gender and sex in our daily lives, whether we like to admit it or not. I could have done without the in-depth descriptions of gonzo child porn, (but then again, how would I have known such a terrible thing exists in this world?) but the parts that fascinated me most were when Dines talks about how porn works in concert with other sexist imagery in magazines, television and movies to promote a cohesive sexist narrative that we all have to live inside of. Pornland is a good beginner's book for delving into porn/porn culture because Dines spends so much time just basically describing porn and its vile aspects, including the hidden business side.

I could not disagree more strongly with people who accuse Gail Dines of being anti-sex. I think that it's part of the broad liberal identity to be pro-porn these days. What Millenial woman has not been taught to think, "Oh, that's cool that every man I've ever befriended or dated masturbates to porn daily. That's completely normal?" But the point that Dines makes is that to be be pro-amazing, individualized and creative sex is to be anti-porn, and I think she does a great job at that. I'm left curious about the idea/reality of sexual freedom and its relation to women's empowerment in a broader context now, which I would have loved to hear Dines address further.

[Jenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried hard to have an open mind about this book after all the bad press it received from my uber-liberal-feminist blogroll. Some really valid points at times and the sections about the history and business models of popular magazines/video producters was interesting but the arguments got a little outlandish at points and I lost interest when she started to critique "hook-up culture". Old hat.

[Alexandria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sometimes gut-wrenching yet even-handed discussion of the pornification of our culture, and how mainstream pornography's rampant sexism and racism may be making our culture more hostile to women, people of color, and children.
- The book starts out with a chapter covering the history of porn in America, beginning with Playboy and it's subsequent battles with Penthouse and Hustler and how this lead to an expansion of what pornographic material was deemed appropriate. I felt like Dines' covering of this material gave excellent historical context for current-day phenomena. I also loved her analysis of the strategies companies such as Playboy and Girls Gone Wild used to make porn more mainstream.
- Dines' financial reporting of numerous companies that profit readily from porn, ones we wouldn't expect such as Comcast and NewsCorp, really strengthened her argument that porn is becoming normalized because of more corporate backers disseminating more pro-porn material.
- Although I wish that there was more scientific research regarding porn's effects in the book, I trust Dines when she says that there is currently not much research in this area. Books with more relevant statistics include The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz, and Getting Off: Porn and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen. These books have statistics that show that exposure to violent and pornographic material increase mens' agreement with rape myths, and increase apathy towards violent behavior.
- What Dines lacks in scientific rigor, she makes up with astounding analysis of popular porn scenes and the messages they send. It's a basic fact in media studies that the media we consume helps order our perception of reality, so even if Dines does not have as many scientific studies as some readers would have liked, one could not argue at all that these images are harmless. Dines cites many popular websites, and shows throughout the book that there is obviously a formula that porn producers follow that often maximize debasement of women; one pornographer quotes even says that he delivers "violence against women because that's what men want". A large part of me does believe Dines when she says that there is not much research on long-term effects of pornography use because other books I have read also do not have much. It is probably a tenuous thing to research in this academic climate.
- I found Dine's analyses of Sex and the City and of Cosmopolitan enlightening. I found it a very strong argument when she used these mainstream media sources as proof of porn seeping into our culture.
- Dines also goes into how porn culture affects men and women, and these chapters are especially strong.
- I agree with some reviewers that Dines was more open in noting that certain sexual behaviors such as bondage or an*l are not inherently violent or degrading, but are merely framed that way in pornography.

This is an important book for anyone interested in gender and social justice to read. I was going to rate it 4 because I also wish there was more scientific research cited, but I rated it five stars to counter-act some of the reviewers who seem to have right-wing sentiments or who do not seem to have closely read the book/just seem personally offended.

I wanted to make some notes as to previous reviewer's comments:
- Dustin Wax calls it absurd that Dines calls mainstream pornography that uses prepubescent-appearing models with traditional signs of childhood (lollipops, ankle socks, school uniforms, dollys, teddy bears, braces, small breasts, pigtails etc,)and marketing and acting rhetoric that directly mimics child pornography (actresses dressed as children claiming to be 12 in script, "fathers, uncles, coaches, teachers" having sex with students/underlings, fetishization of virginity) is labelled "Psuedo-Child pornography" in Pornland. The definition of "pseudo" is "not actually, but having the appearance of; pretended", and "almost, approaching, or trying to be". If one dresses up an actress specifically chosen because she looks under the age of consent, gives her lollipops, ankle socks, pigtails, and scripts a scenario in which she is shown being statutorily raped or molested by a male adult that only works with minors and is told to answer "I'm 12" in front of the cameras, what else should we call it besides pseudo-child pornography? Dines also mentions computer-generated images of child porn. Both of these things look like child porn even if they do not involve the abuse of living children. Why would we label them anything besides psuedo-child porn when that is what they are specifically designed to emulate and when psuedo literally means "having the appearance of"? Calling a spade a spade is not a trick of rhetoric. It is simply the truth.

- Dustin Wax also asks "what about the men that watch porn and didn't rape anyone"? Nowhere in her book does Gail Dines say that porn directly leads to rape in a clear cause-and-effect way. In fact, on page 85 she directly discusses how porn-critique tends to boil down to one misleading question, "does it lead to rape?". She says, on page 85, that, "No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a nonrapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being... porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology." Gail Dines then details first-person accounts of men who have come up to her after her conferences as to how porn affects them. There are even two entire chapters pages 59-79 called "Grooming for Gonzo: Becoming a Man in Porn Culture" and "Leaky Images: How Porn Seeps into Men's Lives" that talk about porn's effects on ordinary men. It does not seem like Dustin Wax closely read the book, and I highly suggest that people disregard his review. The first lesson of media studies is that the media we consume helps to order our reality; obviously watching violently misogynistic and racist porn affects your life in some ways, and our culture at large, even if the majority of people are not hate-crime committing rapist. To look at it that way is reductive and completely disregards the established (and common-sense) fact that human attitude and behavior exists on a spectrum.

- I feel like Mary only gave such a low-star review because she was personally offended. After close reading, I do not agree that Dines has "personal revulsion" regarding certain sex acts. She is merely analyzing what many mainstream porn websites say and the images they project. I do not think it is a large leap to say that ejaculating on a woman's face mirrors marking her as "territory" or degrading her humanity especially when paired with common pornographic sexist epithets like "wh*re, sl*t, etc". When a website talks about "splitting a woman's *ss open with huge c*ck", or on page 69 when a pornographer openly says he believes rough an*l scenes are for when a "husband is angry at his nagging wife and wants to get back at her and whatever woman was mean to him that day", obviously pornographers use an*l sex in a certain way to render women powerless (though it may not be used the same way in ordinary life and can be pleasurable besides). Anal sex can be extremely painful if not done correctly and leaves the woman more vulnerable. This makes it an extraordinary experience for two partners who are interested in it and openly loving and communicative, but also makes it a tool that pornographers use to further sexualize the dis-empowerment and harm of women in porn. Although I wish that Dines openly admitted that oral and anal sex are pleasurable and that it is simply mainstream pornography's framing of these acts that is harmful, she has extraordinarily good reasons and analysis in arguing that mainstream porn's use of certain sex acts is disempowering. I'm someone who considers myself kinky, and agreed completely with Dine's analysis of certain marketing materials and scenes. I also think that it's odd that people who consider themselves kinky are not open to analyzing the cultural factors that may lead to them sexualizing power imbalance between sexes... And I'm saying that as someone who's always been open to BDSM. Our sexual fantasies do not exist in a vacuum, as humans are fundamentally socio-cultural creatures whose identities are shaped by those forces.

- Mary, the book is about porn and sexuality. There are other books about porn culture/pop culture at large, most notably Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy. A strong study of masculinity is The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz. To cover more pop culture than was already covered in the book in the "growing up female in porn culture" chapter would be to lose focus on the book.

- I agree with Jonathon that the book may have been stronger if Dines accounted for other factors that may lead to hookup culture. For example, a culture of immediate gratification, perhaps the effects of technology such as the internet or social media that may be leading to a decrease in our generation's ability for intimacy (I've heard it alleged). But I feel like Dines is correct in saying that the hookup culture is also an outgrowth of a culture that teaches women to sexually self-objectify and that their worth is derived from their sexual servicing of men. It also seems almost obvious the connections between porn sex and hookup sex- complete lack of intimacy, interchangable partners or "stars", etc. I feel like her point was especially strengthened when she used Cosmopolitan headlines and Sex and the City storylines to show how the ideology of porn sex is shaping the dating advice that popular culture is giving women, which is also supporting hookup culture.

- I feel like Jonathon is mistaken when he says that Dines studying how porn affects dominant conceptions of masculinity/femininity is "losing focus". The book is a study of how porn affects gender identity; one cannot separate the two. However, Jonathon does do a good job in his bullet-points of some of Dine's main ideas.

- I agree with Jonathon in that I wish the book provided more ideas as to positive social action against porn culture besides simply eschewing porn and pledging to not date porn users.

- I have no idea where Ayame Sohma is getting his research from, but viewing pornography has been linked to increased acceptance of rape myths such as "drinking women deserve it, women bring it upon themselves, women dressed a certain way deserved it, etc", increased acceptance of violence against women, and increased incidence of violent behavior. Sohma cites one study, but The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz cites many more and clearly shows that the consumption of misogynistic media leads to misogynistic values and behavior. It seems almost common sense that exposure to violent images breeds more violence by normalizing the behavior. Sohma also claims that Dines want "everything but vanilla sex to be illegal". She says nothing of the sort, and simply analyzes popular pornography websites' images, and does not actually speak of making anything illegal. Sohma also seems to equate porn with sex, when they are not equivalent. Sex is an intimate act that occurs between two human beings, whereas porn is the dissemination of images representing a certain industrialized view of sex. Sohma equating porn with sex is like equating McDonald's or Oreos with whole foods. They are not the same; porn is a product, and sex is natural, in the same way that pink slime is an industrial product, and something like lettuce is natural. Sohma also compares porn stars to great athletes because of their great "performance". If a conformist, hypermasculine, overly defensive, and irrational right-winger doesn't like this book, his erroneous degradation of it is certainly a recommendation that even-keeled and open-minded people read it.

- To reviewers who say it is erroneous to call compulsive porn use "addiction", it is well established in the scientific community that certain things can have addictive qualities in the brain even if they are not chemical (like drugs or alcohol) in nature, such as gambling, exercise, self-harm, or sex.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew, quite the read. I really can't organize my thoughts, so here's a random collection of topics instead. I have a lot to say.

1) hi, the way these men talk is crazy

The vast majority of this felt geared towards reframing porn. It's not a rebellious indie project, but a multi-billion dollar industry focused on maximizing profits and getting you to pay, pay, pay...consume, consume, consume...escalate, escalate, escalate.

Nor is it a chic, sexy, empowering little corner of the internet, but a mainstream realm of casual degradation where the worst stereotypes re. gender, race, and sexuality go for their last hurrah. (We kick off with an interesting chapter about the battle between Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, and other mags to redefine porn as classy...not to destroy Puritanism for the sake of it, but to get subscriptions and advertisers.)

And I couldn't stop thinking of well-meaning feminist/progressive women who seem to think lucrative porn is mostly cutesy, polished films with a playful spank or two. Having Black or Asian or fat or too-young women on offer is about diversity, not a way to offer up various -isms like items on a menu (do you think lesbian porn is for lesbians?). Something that definitely tears that impression apart are the included quotes from producers, viewers, ad copy, websites, so on, that prove what should be mindnumbingly obvious.
- From a producer: "I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they get even with the women they can't have."
- And from another: "Essentially [anal porn] comes from [every man] who's unhappily married, and he looked at his wife who just nagged at him about this or that or whatnot, and he says, 'I'd like to fuck you in the ass.' He's angry at her, right?"

On the sales side, the side women or execs or advertisers might hear, porn is fun, modern, boundary-pushing but in the cool way. On the products, they assure watchers that the women are stupid, insatiable sluts who need to be wrecked and ruined.
- "By wrapping the violence in a sexual cloak, porn renders it invisible, and those of us who protest the violence are consequently defined as anti-sex, not anti-violence."
^^^ I'm mostly thinking about the worst of porn, because I do genuinely think amateur or, ugh, "vanilla" porn needs to be discussed from a different angle. But the conversation is constantly twisted--why is it not possible to talk about the very mainstream, very popular forms of abusive porn without being assumed to be against all porn? All sex? One would think progressives would be railing against "bad" porn in droves to protect the sanctity of "good" porn, but no--we're all silent. Feminist publications shot down this book and it's entirely about "bad" porn.


2) if it's proper media, then give it a proper media analysis

You can genuinely find a not-insubstantial cohort of folks (including the scholars/journalists discussed in this book) who will shame you for reading that problematic book or watching that movie with a scummy lead actor, or demand representation of different races/genders/sexualities/abilities because what you see on screen has a profound impact on your psyche...but will conveniently argue that porn doesn't count.

I'm gonna be crazy here and say that maybe, when you watch The Help and empathize with the white protagonist, you're experiencing a form of media conditioning that's a liiiiittle less strong than when you orgasm to someone calling an Asian woman a slur. IDK. Maybe? Does media lose all power as soon as someone's dick is out?

- "What is clear, though, is that this daydream [of his brother dying] is something Bader made up in his own head, from his own experiences, feelings, and desires. He presumably was not thinking of how best to conjure up this fantasy so that he could then pay people to enact it so he could sell it [...] to lots of people who would buy it and use it for their own purposes [...] Bader is comparing his own personal fantasy to those images produced by an enormous industry whose goal [...] is to maximize profits by selling to men a product that facilitates masturbation. In other words, these are not 'fantasies' constructed in the head of each individual porn user, based on his own creative imagination, past histories, longings, and experiences, but highly formulaic, factory-line images created by a savvy group of capitalists."
- "Progressives have [...] singled out the media as a major form of (mis)education in the age of monopoly capitalism in which a few companies dominate the market and use their economic and political power to deliver messages that sell a particular worldview that legitimizes massive economic and social inequality. But many of these same progressives argue against the view that porn has an effect on men in the real world, preferring instead to call anti-porn feminists unsophisticated thinkers who don't appreciate how images can be playful and open to numerous interpretations. So now we are in a somewhat strange place where people who argue that mainstream corporate media have the power to shape, mold, influence, manipulate, and seduce viewers simultaneously deny that porn has an effect on their consumers."

Take away the veneer of "counterculture" and "salaciousness," and the porn industry works in the exact same way as Disney, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, whatever. If they won't dismantle porn, then why not hold it to the same standard? If, like--KPOP of all things is under fire for cashing in on an imitation of Black culture (via...a hairstyle? What was that scandal?), then porn should be under fire for essentially always framing Black men as rapist animals. Nothing is as sacred as a man's orgasm.

3) ehhhh I'm not so sure

a) Rewrite this for the modern day and the Cosmopolitan and Sex and the City discussions are getting axed IMMEDIATELY. I wasn't moved by how a sex tip magazine was giving, well, sex tips to heterosexual women that focused on their male partners (we could say it's odd that there're no magazines telling men how to get women off, and instead they get The Game, but Dines did not). The fact that they advertise themselves as a women's lifestyle magazine and yet are mostly about heterosexual sex feels less like "your lifestyle as a woman IS sex" and more like if they called themselves a sex magazine they wouldn't be in the grocery check-out. $$$

b) Sex and the City's man-crazy, anti-PC plotlines about four adult women felt quaint next to what we're staring down now: Euphoria and Euphoria-esque projects, female celebrities flashing their crotches on the red carpet (not because they're addled like Britney but because it's fashion for women to wear scraps), revenge porn--and AI revenge porn (it's soooo empowering and yet the quickest way to ruin a woman's career and relationships), sex bots in your DMs and your comment section, barely legal OnlyFans, AI pornified girlfriends...so on.

c) Not convinced by how the "pseudo child porn" discussion spun off into how child porn influences pedophiles to harm kids. To hell with "teen" porn, but genuine CSAM is in a whole other ballpark. The refutation to this--children cannot consent, a teen who turned 18 a week ago can--is obvious and untouched. I don't think the book is really equipped to deal with criminality at all. The interviews she had with incarcerated rapists (of both children and adult women) felt irrelevant. I feel like it's besides the point to say that this slim number of men watched porn and then raped, considering how I feel like it's in the book's favour to point out how widespread and common porn watching is (ie. it's as mainstream as watching Netflix, so we should hold it to SOME standards and treat it seriously). The fact that rapists watched porn felt like I was being told the rapists wore socks.

d) In fact, it's the legality of porn that's of more interest to me. I feel like there's more to say about the psychic damage "teen" porn does to the culture than a handful of child rapists who watched bona fide child porn. She touched on it--under-16 celebrities being dressed up and photographed like they're 27 and on the cover of Playboy--but I wanted her to dig more into that. That is what fucks women up. IDK what it does to men. But it fucks with our brains, to be told that this 12 year old is the coolest and most talented and most relatable girl...and here she is with a face full of makeup. Here she is sprawled on a table with knee-high boots and a mini skirt. Fucked up, man.

Yeah, maybe that's a good note to end this on. Fucked up.

[Rayna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I feel 5x sicker after finishing Pornland. This was so painful to read, for the obvious reason that the subject matter is so horrendous. But this is the world we live in, it's really important for people to know, and Gail Dines does not hold back. The violence and degradation inflicted on female porn performers is told in candid detail, and it's not pleasant. This is not an enjoyable read, but it is certainly an enlightening one.

Like most anti-porn activists, Dines gets accused of picking out only the worst-case porn scenarios (#notallporn), so there are two things to note here: 1) her examples come mainly from the most popular, most-visited websites and the most-watched and/or top-renting videos and video series; and 2) the not-so-subtle implication of the pro-porn argument is that as long as some people are benefiting from the porn industry, the rapes and abuses of some women are an acceptable loss. Needless to say, that is a stance that is profoundly anti-woman.

The critiques in Pornland are, of course, largely focused on porn's effects on women and men and the way sexuality is socially constructed. While I am not new to the feminist anti-pornography position, I was interested in some of the porn-related issues I've only vaguely heard about, like the research on the increased incidence of hooking up among college students. In these studies women were significantly more likely to report feelings of regret, low self-esteem, and depression. Dines also discusses some of the conversations she's had with both male and female students about how porn has affected their relationships, information which, while not collected like the data using standard research methods, provides additional valuable input to the mix.

One of the most disturbing parts of the book is the chapter on pseudo-child pornography and its similarities to real child pornography. In this chapter Dines reveals how pornographers have increased markets by using their political influence to push against child porn taboos.

The main body charged with lobbying lawmakers on behalf of the porn industry is the Free Speech Coalition, an organization that, although founded in 1991, had to wait till 2002 for its first big legal victory, the case of Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition. Here the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the coalition when it declared the 1996 Child Porn Prevention Act unconstitutional because its definition of child pornography (any visual depiction that appears to be of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct) was ruled to be overly broad. The law was narrowed to cover only those images in which an actual person under the age of eighteen (rather than one that simply appears to be) is involved in the making of the porn, thus opening the way for the porn industry to use either computer-generated images of children or real porn performers who, although eighteen or over, are childified to look much younger.

The brutal sexual abuse of adult women doesn't convince porn advocates that the porn industry is fucking vile, so pseudo-child porn (or real child porn, for that matter) won't convince them either--but this is horrifying to anyone with a moral compass.

In the chapter about becoming a man in a porn culture, Dines writes:

If porn performers truly don’t like what is happening to them, then the fantasy that users have erected about women and porn begins to crumble, and they are left with the stark reality that maybe these women are not “fuck dolls,” but are instead human beings with real emotions and feelings. If this is the case, then users would have to admit to becoming aroused to images of women being sexually mistreated. For those men who are not sexually sadistic or cruel, this could well be psychologically intolerable, so they have to work very hard at maintaining the fantasy that porn women are indeed unlike most women they meet in the real world.

Ultimately, however, the ability to keep porn women separate from the women they date and hook up with is eroded as the more men watch porn, the more the stories become part of their social construction of reality. Men may think that the porn images are locked in that part of the brain marked fantasy, never to leak into the real world, but I hear over and over again from female students how their boyfriends are increasingly demanding porn sex from them. Whether it be ejaculating on their partner’s face or pounding anal sex, these men want to play out porn in the real world. And from male students I increasingly hear how they thought that they could separate the two worlds, only to find out that industrially produced porn images do indeed seep into their intimate lives.

The one thing that grated me about this book is Dines's tendency to treat the topic of men growing up in porn culture as though men are equally victimised by it. Actually, men are not victims of porn culture at all. She goes on to share various comments from porn-watching men, from those who are openly sadistic and misogynistic to those who describe being addicted to porn and want to stop watching it. Then she says:

Whenever I hear these stories, I feel both sad for the men and outraged at the porn industry for hijacking the men's sexuality to the point that they feel so out of control.

I have no doubt that porn's effects on men are negative in the long run, but her sadness and pity for men are wasted. Men actively benefit from porn more than they lose out, as illustrated by the solidification of male entitlement to porn sex from their girlfriends and wives. Men, as a group, will never willingly give up porn no matter how many studies about its destructive effects are published because they hate women and the pleasure they get from the rape, abuse, and exploitation of women outweighs anything else. Many of the very men she quotes in her book make this quite clear.

Porn addicts or not, men are perfectly in control of their actions. Porn-using men chose to click on that very first porn video, they chose to go back for more and more porn, they chose to masturbate to the images they found, they chose to make sexual demands of the women they dated and slept with. The only real victims here are girls and women, who have no choice at all. We can't choose to opt out of living and/or interacting with men who watch porn and project their disgusting sexual appetites onto us.

Don't get me wrong, I think Dines's heart is in the right place and I doubt she intended to give the impression that men are mostly innocent in all this. Her work is incredibly important; I just wish she were more unapologetic when accused of "man-hating" since most of the men she would potentially pity hate her guts.

[Amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In porn, sex is the vehicle by which men are rendered all powerful and women all powerless; and for a short time a man gets to see what life would look like if only women unquestionably consented to men's sexual demands."

This is, in my opinion, a riveting sequel to Andrea Dworkin's Pornography. Where Dworkin discusses literature and magazines, Dines discusses magazines and gonzo video porn. We follow her research through magazines such as Playboy and Hustler, how such magazines offered a high-class (or higher-class) look at these women while operating under the guise of being a culture magazine. Moving forward, into an internet-dominated scene, Dines effectively untangles how popular video pornography is and why.

The introduction to this book gave me pause. It was difficult, and I feared that the rest of the book would be just as harrowing. And in a way, it was.

In a world where the internet can offer anything, all the time, pornographers need to continuously push the boundaries--they want ad revenue, they want clicks, they want your time. However, this creates a dopamine-pushed addiction where viewers enter a rabbit hole of increasingly disturbing porn that is harmful to both the women on-screen but women off the screen, too.

Dines is an academic at heart, and presents a variety of problems (misogyny, rape culture, the shaping of teenage sexuality) with a calm stance. She has visited pornography expos, she has interviewed porn stars, she has read articles and journals and the like. She does not present this problem through an anti-men lens, but rather through a pro-health-sexuality lens. She fears for her son, whose education of sex and sexuality may be altered through porn use. Porn use, she argues, is not healthy for men, nor is it safe for women. This two-pronged approach is effective and enduring.

[Barry · Rating 1 out of 5]

At least one review on Goodreads needs to start with the final phrase of Dines' text "in a just society, there is no place for porn". Unless you agree with this there is no point in reading because the author uses no proper research methodology to arrive at this conclusion, only unfounded, self-contradictory assertion.

In fact Dines' takes the hackneyed feminist line that porn leads to rape and extends it to blame white heterosexual men for making racist, paedophile rapists of all other men. Whence female pornographers and porn consumers? Whence lesbians? Ignored. As are gay men, save for their exploitation of 'Asian twinks'.

I bought this book with an honest care for the increasing influence of porn on mainstream culture and general sexuality. Dines insults her reader in offering only closed-minded prejudice that lends nothing to this debate. A waste of the paper it's printed on.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of the Porn Industry.
Dines entreats us to look at Porn's attitude towards women.
She shows how porn is promoted in our everyday lives -
even as we, on one level, deny it.

Interesting that porn consumption is most popular
in areas where gender/racial inequality
are greatest. In the U.S., Utah and the Southern states
take the lead. As Gail Dine states, "in a just world, there
is no room for porn."

The book is throughly documented with
examples of perversions that have grown
more violent through the Internet.
She gives valid reasons for this.

Dines shows the political power of the Porn Industry;
How it influences the hyper-sexualized culture
we live in today for their profit.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

made me feel sick reading, an essential read for everyone especially feminists. Gail dines is one of my favourite writers and speakers, i think her work and speeches are amazing. this book is the first book i read criticising the porn industry although i do wish she wrote about how lesbians are particularly fetishised in porn and how this affects lesbians in life as i feel like thats a massive issue from it aswell.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely a must-read--especially for all you avid porn-watchers out there. It's well researched, smart, and incredibly readable. I was slightly turned off by moments of hardcore judgment (pun intended) which is why I gave it a 4/5. However, this book is extremely important and so relevant.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dines’s cultural analysis on the pornography industry and how it has (in many/most ways, subconsciously) shaped innumerable aspects of our lives and our relationships, especially between men and women, is worth the read and discussions that we really should be having but simply choose to ignore.

I don’t find Dines’s book to be too opinionated on one matter or the other: she gives the reader the sheer facts of the growing multibillion dollar industry, providing compelling evidence for large corporations, Wall Street, hotels, and politicians alike to not only stay on its “side” but explains how they all profit from this exploitative industry.

She doesn’t lay the blame so much on the consumer (mostly men, as we know) of porn as she does the “porn titans”: the ones that have made millions off of turning women into human sex dolls that exist simply to serve the sexual desires of men: no matter how painful, degrading, abusive, or defiling a porno scene is, the porn woman is subsequently dehumanized and thus gives the viewer a way to legitimatize this “consensual” agreement.

In reality, most women enter porn very naively, and do so because of poverty stricken, abusive pasts. And the men who are profiting the most off of these nearly broken women are the directors and producers who literally use them until their bodies and/or emotions are so literally broken (yes, the sex in today’s mainstream porn actually causes permanent damage to many of the women’s bodies).

She effectively destroys the aggravating “porn as empowerment!” argument by showing how contracts are really fulfilled: please, enlighten me as to how a shy young woman going to a room with TWELVE MEN and zero women (unless another “performer” happens to be in there) to try to negotiate a contract and specify what she ISN’T willing to do - then gets sickeningly manipulated into “going along/just trying something” (central for her to feel a deep sense of shame) as something generally happens that she explicitly stated she would never do, right from the get go. I’d really like to know how a woman that is pushed to the point of vomiting from suffocation by a male penis (while naturally, having one in both of her other orifices as well) is being “empowered.”

As the author says, she is not anti-sex. She is anti-violence, and there is so much sadistic emotional and physical violence, along with hatred toward/of women in mainstream porn today that it’s affecting the sexualities of men and women, both negatively, because it secretly controls what they actually want and forces them to accept the “porn sex norm.”

I saw some other reviews where it was said she made an argument for increased porn watching directly correlating with rape? Umm...where was this, what page? What I recalled her saying was the exact opposite. While she didn’t believe men who viewed porn would suddenly decide to go rape a woman, it didn’t mean there weren’t harmful and negative, real effects on society’s treatment of women, especially concerning how men treat women. If men used to watching “mainstream“ porn and constantly hearing the woman referred to as a “dumb whore who begs for the c*%k” (and that’s actually one of the gentler forms of verbal degradation used!), do people really think this isn’t going to leave ANY type of impact on how both men and women perceive the other, and how they think they should act?

Never in porn do they show anything that remotely pleasures the woman. Instead, she lives to serve him. The ultimate male model for masculinity, who is unconcerned with her pain and suffering, who laughs at her humiliation. For some reason (actually, the author gives us all of the explanations!) this is what men are taught to believe that ALL women “secretly” want.

It was a compelling read and I actually ended up watching the documentary on YouTube that was mentioned in the book (Hardcore; it’s not pornographic in imagery, but it documents a single mother’s travels from England to the US to “make a name for herself in the adult film industry”... and I will just say: it is not for everyone. I do think that if you can easily watch the type of mainstream gonzo porn out there now on a regular basis, you should have no problem watching this documentary and witnessing the manipulation and terror that these women actually endure; and actually learn to humanize these poor women instead of degrade and humiliate them).

I must say that while it was a compelling and extremely informative read, it was also extremely disturbing. She doesn’t shy away from some of the more hardcore topics, nor does she sugarcoat how the men speak about the women as sexual commodities to be exploited then tossed out once they’ve outlived their usefulness (literally because at times, their bodies were too damaged to continue). It was a book that could have been finished in a matter of hours or so, but at times it made me sick. I would set it down for awhile for some relief, then pick it up and kind of rush through the chapters to get to the end.

Even though it was written almost a decade ago, I can’t imagine this is a book that anyone who thoroughly read through and digested back then, nor now, will be forgetting anytime soon. 4 stars for really laying out the facts, remaining mostly free of bias (from what I recall) and exposing all of the sick secrets the industry uses to continue expanding its consumer base.

This may not be my best review; as I am quite tired and have written it rather haphazardly. I need sleep.