Interview of Gail Dines’ on “Pornland’
In today’s world, sex has become commodified and industrialized. We see it all the time in print publications, television commercials, cable television shows, major motion pictures, and adult entertainment. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry that misuses and abuses sex and represents it in disturbing ways. Pornographers sell and produce films based on teen sex, torture porn, humiliation, and/or racist caricatures. What’s more disturbing is that hard-core porn is becoming more mainstream in society.
Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College and an expert on pornography. Her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, has just been released by Beacon Press and is considered a groundbreaking study of how today’s pornography shapes men and women’s ideas, attitudes, and perceptions of sex. Here is what Dines has to say about her new book and the effects of pornography.
Louis Proyect:
Stan, don’t have an email address for you but I just attended a press screening for “The Tillman Story”. As Pat might have said, you were FUCKING GREAT. Will post a review first chance I get. The movie is not only timely but a masterpiece. The best movie I have seen about the post-9/11 wars as well as so timely in terms of the “big muddy” in Afghanistan. Congratulations.
30 June 2010, 7:36 pmTess:
@Stan,
Having read your book “Sex & War”, do you believe people addicted to porn can develop or reclaim a proper perspective on sexuality and relationship? If so, how?
1 July 2010, 12:39 amMother Hen:
I have a story to relate. It reminds me of Andrea Dworkin responding to criticisms regarding anecdotal evidence. Of course, when the resources are not made available for research, sometimes that is as much as you have.
I was working with a group of teens – mostly girls. Of all of them, one stands out as particularly nurtured, at least in the context I knew her. Both of her parents were involved in her life in ways that most of the others did not even have one. Her mother had been a victim advocate and taught comprehensive sexual education to young people. I witnessed her *dad* wearing a t-shirt that promoted consensuality. This young womin has also expressed an interest in pursuing a career in the clergy. Nonetheless, she strikes me as almost certainly the most highly sexualized of her peers.
The only other piece of evidence – and the one which completes what would otherwise be a puzzle to me – is that when I expressed my opposition to pornography, she indicated that she didn’t have a problem with it, and led me to believe it was probably used in their house.
1 July 2010, 7:46 amMother Hen:
* as a clarification, it was the *mother* and not her daughter who indicated her acceptance of pornography (as one might say: a “marital aid”).
2 July 2010, 8:45 pmPORNISEXTREMELYSEXISTWOMANHASTINGSICK&DAMAGING!:
I made a mistake I didn’t mean for my line about atitudes such as your make it hopeless to be included here! I had written this and posted it where some sicko pro-porn people had posted and I didn’t remember to edit it out on here,I didn’t want to write this whole post over I have it on my mail file cabinet.
2 July 2010, 11:43 pm