Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)

Gail Dines is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston. For 20 years she has lectured across the country against pornography and sexist portrayals of women. A Google video (1 hr 2 min) is now available of the lecture she gave to a rapt audience at the Pornography and Pop Culture conference at Wheelock on March 24. This video describes the increasingly harsh misuse of women in modern pornography–such as in the emerging “ass-to-mouth” genre–and how the people, money and values of porn reach deep into mainstream media and corporations.

This video includes explicit still images. Some may find it painful to watch, especially victims of sexual violence. Acknowledging this, activists have found that presenting today’s porn in an unfiltered fashion is “an effective and rapid consciousness-raiser about misogyny and male views of women”. We have seen our opposition claim that we should go easy on porn because it’s a form of “art”, that it represents the empowerment of women, or that today’s porn is no more harmful than paintings or century-old erotica pictures. We feel the best counter to these arguments is to show people what today’s porn actually is.

Here are selected highlights from Dr. Dines’ lecture. The complete presentation makes an excellent starting point for any discussion of feminism, media and pornography.

Pornography and Pop Culture

11min:50sec into the video presentation

The pornography industry’s revenue

Annual U.S. revenues

  • Estimated revenue for pornography: $12 billion
  • Box office for mainstream films: $9 billion

Annual worldwide revenues

  • Estimated revenue for pornography: $57 billion
  • Box office for mainstream films: $23 billion

13min:27sec – Technology has been facilitating the anonymous consumption of porn

“Men are willing to pay high prices for new technology if they can bring their pornography closer to the home, because the closer to home you bring it, the better the anonymity. And this is what helps increase the use of pornography. The more anonymous you can make it, the better it is.”

17min:13sec – Images are different from text

“When you look at print, and you see something, you can think to yourself, ‘I agree or disagree.’ You can put it down and come back. You engage with it. However, the problem with image is that we have no such immunization to the seduction of eloquence of the image. You look at that [magazine cover of buff man and woman] and you don’t engage with it. You immediately think, ‘Oh my God I’m such a fat pig. Look at me compared to her. What’s wrong with me?’ My students do this all the time… [T]hat’s the role of images…to construct your identity in relation to what is normalized.

“…[T]he bizarre thing about media is it makes normal the abnormal, and makes abnormal the normal.”

20min:20sec – Porn suggests that all women are ready and willing to offer up their bodies to men

“Males in our culture are socialized in a society where they are bombarded with the ‘fuck-me’ look, where it offers visual entitlement of ownership of women’s bodies. And what is rape and sexual assualt if not taking men up on that offer that she’s offering . The only trouble is that she’s not walking down the street, we are…

“So when Madonna in her ‘feminist’ way goes out and talks about women, puts out the message that women are indeed exactly as men thought they are (pornographic men), it’s all right for Madonna to say that because you know why, she travels with big, beefy…guys who protect her. It’s you and I walking in that fucking parking lot at night that [have] to deal with the guys that believe this.”

24min:50sec – Porn offers a narrow, man-centered fantasy about women

“We think it’s about women because it’s a picture of women, but no, pornography is really the story of masculinity. Pornography is the place where men speak to each other using the female body as the screen to project their words and their images.”

33min:30sec – Major corporations are involved with porn, its performers and its advocates

“I want us to remember who Howard Stern is… He was last year, the second largest paid entertainer in the world, behind Tom Cruise. He made $302 million last year… I’m just going to take you through, a little bit, who supports him… I want you to see how pornography and pop culture are intertwined economically. In August 2005 Howard Stern revealed on his show that he had signed a deal with In Demand Networks for an on-demand subscription to his show. This was In Demand’s first premium video offering…

“Now In Demand is the nation’s largest pay-per-view distributor, reaching over 50 million households. It is owned, in part, by TimeWarner and Comcast. TimeWarner also owns HBO, which, of course, regularly features pro-pornography documentaries, late at night, that normalizes pornography. TimeWarner also owns WB Network, which did a reality show with Ron Jeremy, the porn star, whose…hundreds of movies include…White Trash Whore, Black Babes in Heat, and Girls of the Third Reich… He’s on the college circuit, lecturing… He’s coming to Simmons, across the road to me…and they’re paying him $12,000…

“WB is the first network ever to employ a porn actor on a regular basis. TimeWarner also owns Sports Illustrated… It also owns Warner Books, which is just publishing a new book by this magazine, Boink.  Now Boink is the BU porn magazine which features ‘provocative pictures of real college students from around the country, by students, for students.’ You can, by the way, look for it in a bookstore near you in February 2008. The woman who is the editor of Boink got a six-figure advance from TimeWarner.”

37min:05sec – Large cable and satellite operators enjoy lush profits from porn

Comcast is the nation’s largest cable company… In 2002, Comcast pulled in $50 million from porn programming alone. Comcast also owns E! Entertainment, which regularly features shows hosted by Jenna Jameson… [H]er bestselling book was published by HarperCollins [How to Make Love Like a Porn Star]…which is owned by Rupert Murdoch…[who] has a major share in DirecTV, [whose] subscribers spend over $200 million a year in pornography.”

38min:03sec – Porn is becoming increasingly hard core

“…the old distinction between soft core and hard core is over…all the soft core pornography has basically migrated into pop culture… When you go on the Internet, the vast majority of the pornography that is accessible is hard core… The distinction in the pornography industry is no longer between hard core/soft core, it’s between features and gonzo.”

39min:53sec – Gonzo porn is particularly abusive to women

“To talk about gonzo we have to talk about one of the fathers of gonzo…Max Hardcore… On his website he writes, ‘I force girls to drink my piss, fist-fuck them, ream their asses and drill their throats until they puke.’ And puke they do… He also uses dental equipment inside of women’s vaginas and anuses. So when you go on there you are looking at torture…

“There are pages and pages of fan sites to this man.”

41min:26sec – Porn shows extreme disrepect for women; racist

In pornography, women are

  • cum dumpsters
  • fucktubes
  • slut sandwiches
  • m.i.l.f.’s
  • wet cunts
  • fresh teen ass
  • horny old broads
  • hot slits
  • slanteyed sluts
  • naughty schoolgirls
  • tight pink pussies
  • stupid hoes
  • naughty nymphos
  • big booty ghetto girls
  • drunk bar sluts
  • cameltoes
  • pathetic bitches
  • little hoochies
  • squirting skanks
  • kung pao pussies

“Now, I’ve been on television shows with many pornographers, and they have the absolute chutzpah to turn around and say to me, ‘But we love women. This is a celebration of women.’ Well I have to tell you, if you think calling a woman a ‘cumbucket’ is your sign of love, sorry… These men hate women…

“I do not believe that men go to look at pornography because they hate women. I think for most males in our culture, and remember the average age of downloading your first porn is now 11 to 12… I don’t think that these 11 to 12 year-olds hate women. Their hormones are going crazy, they live in a hypersexualized culture…what passes for sex education is pathetic, so where are you going to go? You’re going to go to pornography…

“I say this to men over and over again. You might not go to pornography hating women, but you’re sure as hell going to come away with that feeling. You get much more than you bargained for with pornography, and that’s the problem with it. The other problem with pornography is it sexualizes the violence and degradation against women. And when you sexualize violence you render that violence invisible, because when men see that they can’t step back and critique it… You are basically trying to have a rational conversation with an erection and it doesn’t work.”

43min:20sec – Much of today’s porn shows no interest in a woman’s pleasure, even feasts on her pain

Example Website:

Gag on My Cock

We fuck them in the face ’till they cry!

Can these fuck toys be any dumber?

THEY THINK THE T-SHIRTS ARE A FUCKING JOKE…
STUPID HOES, THE JOKE IS ON THEM!

“One of the things they always argued about with radical feminists, is that we went to the very worst. I want to tell you that every image we used today, and every image that you will see in our slide sho
w tomorrow, we downloaded within 5-7 seconds, got major hits on Google, and were free. We did not search anywhere for this. These are the ones that pop up…

“Gagging is very popular… Now let me tell you where the kid gloves are off here. There is no pretense that she likes it… Look at her mascara running down her eyes. She’s crying. And they don’t wipe it away. Why not? Because part of the thrill of this is that it hurts her and she hates it. And this is for me a…new theme in pornography that I have only seen coming in the last year or two–where they are very clear, ‘You know we don’t give a shit whether the bitch likes it and in fact if she doesn’t, then it’s even better.’

“Now again, what does it mean for young boys and men to connect orgasm to these images, over and over and over again?”

44min:40sec – Porn actresses focus on avoiding ruptures in anal sex

Example Website:

Anal Suffering

“SWEET TEEN ASSES FUCKED N SUFFERING FROM EXCRUCIATING ANAL PAIN!”

Example Website:

John Strong presents

Altered Ass Holes

“WHOOAAH!! that fucking hurts!”

“Another very popular theme in gonzo is anal sex. Now, in this particular type of sex in gonzo, the joy about it is that it hurts. There is no attempt to make out that this is pleasurable for her, and in fact when you watch these images, what is amazing about this is that the woman is very, very focused on not being ruptured. And sometimes off-camera you hear them say, ‘Hey, honey, moan,’ because she forgets…”

46min:05sec – Porn defenders shrug off the suffering and desperation of performers

“Now the new thing they call it, is ‘pink-eyeing’, where they’re ejaculating into her eyes. This is becoming also popular…

“I was giving a talk of this at a prestigious New England College, and one of the professors was there who’s written a lot of pro-pornography stuff. And she stood up and she said, ‘You know, I don’t know what’s the problem here. Lots of women do exploited labor. What’s the difference between this and waiting tables? And you know what my answer to that is, ‘If you don’t know, I don’t think I have any words to explain it.’ If you can’t feel that in your body, of what the degradation…sometimes when you watch these movies, afterwards, the woman does not know what to do with herself… She can barely pull herself off. Sometimes you see in these women’s faces such a look of desperation it makes you want to die on the spot.

“These are not actresses. These are women who have very few choices, many of whom have been sexually abused as children.”

48min:00sec – Porn documents sexual trauma, makes it hard for performers to leave it behind

“So let’s think about trauma. When you have a traumatic event, you hope in the best-case scenario that you go through the trauma and there is some place of a door to walk out of it… When your trauma is forever documented, there is no closing the door.”

48min:35sec – Porn now has women eat their own shit

Example Website:

ASS 2 MOUTH

“Now, one of the latest things that’s been going on for a few years is ATM, Ass-To-Mouth. Now this is about a man ramming his penis into a woman’s anus and then going straight into her mouth. And the joke is she has to eat shit. Now as Bob [Jensen] once put it really well, there is no sexual arousal heightened by going from anus to mouth outside of the humiliation and debasement of that woman. What else is this about?”

51min:00sec – Porn puts countless scenarios into men’s heads

Example Website:

Fuck The Nanny

Fuck the Nanny Shayla
“nanny asking for an advance? then she better start sucking dick!”

Fuck The Nanny Tegan
“a great way to get back at your boyfriend – fuck the man you nanny for”

“Now what does pornography do? What pornography does, most importantly, is it puts lots of little scenarios in men’s heads, so that wherever you are you can activate that particular sexual scenario…

“Every interaction between a woman and a man in pornography, and between women and women, mind you, is sexual, as in, when you’ve got a nanny, ’cause you can fuck the nanny, you can fuck the secretary [website: secretaryporn], you can fuck the maid [website: Maid Bangers], you can fuck the nurse [website: Nurse Hardcore], you can fuck the teacher [website: Teacher Galleries], or the student [website: NAUGHTY Book Worms, ‘Making The Grade. OUR WAY’].

“Would any of you students like to go into a professor’s office for a seminar after he’s just jerked off to this?”

52min:25sec – Student magazine suggests hitting a woman at the right time can enhance a man’s sexual pleasure

Example Magazine:

Boink from Boston University

Article: “The Donkey Punch”

“When [Boink] started, women were clamoring to get into this… What is going on in this culture that so many female students from BU want to go into this?… Now this is a story on the ‘donkey punch’… This was some sex tips in the first edition of Boink, and the donkey punch is a sexual technique developed specifically by men because women have the potential to become ‘loose as a goose’ and it’s hard to do what you want to do, i.e. ejaculate. So let me tell you what this suggests. This suggests you enter her from behind, and if she’s loose as a goose then what you do is pound away, and then, at the pivotal moment, you smack her hard on the head. She’ll get a shock, pull her muscles up, and then you get to ejaculate…

Another one was called I think ‘Riding the Bull’. And it said again you enter her from behind, hold her breasts very firmly, and then at [the] pivotal moment, you get your friends to come in to take a picture. She’ll jump up and you hold on to her breasts… So this is not fun. This is about a magazine of how to sexually assault and rape women.”

54min:49sec – Porn trades on racist stereotypes, makes light of child molestation

Example Website:

Pimp My Black Teen

Example Website:

Barely Legal

“What happens in pornography is ultimately what is the most sexually arousing are the younger women [down] to children. So this is Pimp My Black Teen which of course trades in all the vile stereotypes that black women are not attractive and need to be turned out and improved by a pimp.

“Now these kinds of images lead to the next, which is Barely Legal. Now Barely Legal is run by Hustler. It is one of Hustler’s flagship websites… The tagline on this is, ‘From the homeroom to the bedroom.’ Now it goes from this to Chester the Molester who is very well known in Hustler magazine, because what did Chester do? Chester went after a little girl. This was month in, month out in Hustler.”

56min:14sec – Porn shows pedophiles what to do

Example Website:

Cherry Poppers

“…made by Max Hardcore, which were instructional tapes to pedophiles on how to rape a child… What they do is help the pedophile get ready. They help season the pedophile to eventually season the victim. They normalize pedophilia. They provide ideas. This was so specific, that at the end of one of these segments, you’ve got Max Hardcore…he takes a camera and he takes a picture of her, and he says, ‘Listen, honey, if you tell anyone, I’m taking this picture to school and I’m going to show all your friends exactly what you did.’ Now, this is what pedophiles do to terrorize children all the time, and this is what Max Hardcore was doing. He was showing the pedophile a way to police and control the child.

“And then we get into more present-day websites such as Use My Daughter…Daddy’s Whore…

“How long [can] a culture continue when this is our visual landscape?… How bad does it have to get?…

“These men [the porn merchants] are not out for your sexual freedom or my sexual freedom… Whoever decided that these white pimps should control what sex is i
n this culture?… They destroy the creative and life-loving experience that these things can bring…

“To fight back against your oppression makes you feel alive, and we live in a culture that loves death…we can build a movement that makes us proud to be called feminists.”

See Professor Dines’ complete presentation and selected other presentations from the Wheelock conference now on Google Video.

See also:

Free Book Download: Diana Russell’s Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (explicit)
Against Pornography is unusual in that it goes beyond abstract
discussions of pornography to present the raw material, so readers can
judge for themselves. Dr. Russell reprints and analyzes over 100
cartoons and pictures from publications like Playboy, Penthouse,
Hustler and Cheri.

Hustling the Left
As Craft demonstrates in the numerous Hustler cartoons she reproduces
on her site, the magazine mocks child abuse (often by depicting the
child as sexually precocious and seducing the adult), and promotes
racism and violence against women. Hustler invites readers to identify
with Nazis, wife-beaters, incestuous fathers and kidnappers of children
(the famous “Chester the Molester” cartoons). The Left would show no
mercy to any other corporation that made money by trafficking in
racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic images. Why does the porn industry
get a free pass?

Jenna Jameson’s Tragic Backstory; Seeking Virgins with Paris Hilton
COOPER: …[I]f you had a daughter, if she came to you and said that she wanted to get into that industry?
JAMESON: I’d tie her in the closet. Only because this is such a hard industry for a woman to get ahead and get the respect that she deserves. I fought tooth and nail to get to where I am, and it’s not something that I would want my daughter to go through. It’s not something that any parent would choose for their child.

Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
The incest started at the age of eight. I did not understand any of it
and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me
that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that
would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters
having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say
that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right
because magazines could not publish lies… He would say, “See it’s
okay to do because it’s published in magazines…”

It is also important to note two other ways in which the prohibition
against adult–child sex is undermined by child pornography. First, the
inclusion of many child pornography cartoons in mainstream men’s
magazines
like Playboy and Penthouse communicates its social acceptability.
Second, the boards on various sites allow visitors to form their own
subcultural communities in which such behaviors or desires are not
considered
deviant and where pedophiles and others interested in child pornography
can feel more normal…

Some Porn Hard to Distinguish from Training for Pedophiles (explicit language)
He told her how fun it was but reminded her not to tell her sister. He
treated her as if she was his special friend, yet also spit in her
mouth at one point. These are the standard strategies of a pedophile:
alternating affection and abuse to leave the child confused, and
telling the child that the sex is special but must be kept a secret
from others.


What Capital Video Sells

Now on Sale at Capital Video: Watch Women Eat Their Own Poop (explicit)

Gag Factor #20 (explicit)

Violent, misogynistic movies

Movies that promote infidelity, despair, call women “sluts” and “whores”

Movies that feature “Bubble Gum Virgins”

Capital Video’s Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More

Capital Video: Purveyors of Shame Feature a New “Celebrity Sex Tape Scandal” (explicit language)

Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)

5 thoughts on “Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)

  1. I will like to download the videos and have the text of the conference to add subtitles in spanish to the videos or at least have the text of the conference to understand better. Thank you

    Sorry about my english

  2. I know you probably wont publish this but I don’t care. I am 23 years old. I have a BA In Criminal Justice. I have done many studies on criminal minds, about rape, and murders and none have been related to porn. I infact have had many girldfriend who had enjoyed film our sexual relations, and In no way was I EVER abusive, or in full control. Porn is about exploring sexuality, not only alone but as couples or even groups. In our age you should be totally embarased to say you’re against porn. Because I’ve done way crazier shit then in porns, so in most ways porn shows us what sex can be and allows us to explore ourselves. I love porn, and I love the freedom to watch it and experience it with with girlfriend. I hope you eventually realise that perhaps you could be mistaken about your cause. And instead of being paralysed by what seems different. Maybe you should embrase it. And after 4 years of studying criminal behaviour…I can safely say you wont rape or kill anyone…unless you’ve already thought abgout doing so. Hope to be hearing from you all soon. e-mail me fuckers!!! P.S. If you ever get pulled over by a cop in Buffalo, ask if it me.

  3. Your personal experience is your personal experience, but that doesn’t mean it holds true for everybody. As for porn not turning up in your criminal studies, that might be in part because these studies are ignoring it, just as you appear to be ignoring studies like these:

    Porn Myths: “Porn is an outlet or safety valve for men who might otherwise do Bad Things”
    Some people have suggested that porn shops are a safe place to help
    people relieve their impulses. Research suggests that, on the contrary,
    porn can “decrease sensitivity to the crime of rape” and “increase the
    acceptance of violence against women”. Here is information adapted from
    oneangrygirl.net.

    “The relationship between particularly sexually violent
    images in the media and subsequent aggression…is much stronger
    statistically than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.”

    –Researcher Edward Donnerstein…

    Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution,
    Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs

    The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the
    Research

    Influence of Porn on Sex Practices: Dispatches from the Field
    (explicit language)

    Evidence Assessment: The Role of Pornography in the Physical Abuse of
    Women

    Testimony from Northampton Shelter for
    Battered Women: Half of Abusers Use Pornography as a Part of the Abuse (explicit)

    Time to Explore the Links Between Porn, Testosterone, Sexual
    Behavior and Violence

    Testimony in Minneapolis: With Growth of Porn, Rapists Show Less Remorse

    Testimony in Minneapolis: “Prevalency of pornography amongst our offenders”

    Porn and Sex Crimes in Other Countries: The Historical Experience

    Exposure to pornography as a cause of child sexual victimization

    Porn a factor in many sex offenses

  4. 23 years old… a BA, you still have a long way to go in learning what responsibility really means. And with your thought process and attitude, that’s why our system is still oppressing by corrupted cops.

    Also if you need porn to help show you how to explore yourself sexually, I’m guessing you have no imagination or sense of what you really want, but for others to show you what they think you want. I’d like to see what you’d say and feel if gagging a man, you is a way to help discover sexuality and you become a victim to that violence… let’s see what you say then. And to use porn consumption as an education tool to explore sex, you won’t discover the truth here. Good luck. Let’s just hope none of your close female family/friends will be vicitms of showing you or other men ways to sexually discover themselves. I’m sure you don’t want your daughter to be in that situation. And just because you’re or we are in that “age”, many of us learn and discover sex by talking to our partners to see what they like and don’t like, not mimic others. You have a brain, use your intinct to guide you.

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