The truth about the porn industry

[Ewe]

Interesting article in the Guardian today.

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/02/gail-dines-pornography

Ewe, thanks for posting that. It is a good article as I have previously said I was not against porn but to be honest, I have obviously been sheltered because the porn I had come across () was not violent or extreme so I didn't really know how bad some of it was.

I am not particularly anti-porn, or I haven't been but then I read something like that and really question my previous opinions on this.

Am at work at the moment, hence the brevity of my post, I will post more this evening when I am at home as I know lots of ladies in this section have interesting views on this.

wow. very powerful article and really given me some food for thought. i have never been particularly interested in or anti-porn either; it has never been on my wavelength.

i suppose society has not seen yet the results of a generation of males who are habitually accessing this kind of material from a young age. as a woman, and mother to a daughter, it really scares me.

Oh god I find that horrific and depressing, as a woman, of course, and as a mother. It makes me terrified for my sons -- that their capacity to relate to women, or in fact to sex as distinct from porn, is so pervasively under attack. So god alone knows how it makes all you mothers of daughters feel about their prospects in our society.

Just to try and temper the depair it makes me feel, I'm C&P-ing Dines positive advice:

"In Dines's view, the best way to address the rise of internet pornography is to raise public awareness about its actual content, and name it as a public health issue by bringing together educators, health professionals, community activists, parents and anti-violence experts to create materials that educate the public"

This has raised a 20 page thread on another forum I go on. I wonder if there's some naivete amongst a certain generation about how easy it is to access quite extreme, unpleasant, degrading and non consensual porn, and how many young teenagers have access to it.

Although I find it frightening I agree with most of Dines's points and am broadly in agreement. I think it's a really, hugely important article, and I would be really pleased if there was proper open discussion on how much of an impact the mainstreaming of hardcore pornography is having on our, but more especially our children's, sexuality.

There is another thread about thishere which has a link to an interview with the author and I linked to her blog and a website called stop porn culture.

Here's a great quote from the blog:

" I would say that anti-porn feminists are pro-sex in the real sense of the word, pro that wonderful, fun and deliciously creative force that bathes the body in delight and pleasure. And what we are actually against is porn sex. A sex that is debased, dehumanized, formulaic and generic, a sex based not on individual fantasy, play or imagination, but one that is the result of an industrial product created by (mostly) men who get excited, not by bodily contact, but by market penetration and profits. A sex that encodes deep cultural scripts of male entitlement and female subservience."

I think that the horrifying thing is how easy it is for under-18's to access this via the internet. Parental controls and confirming what controls your DC's friends parents have will be important I think.

I also think that a discuss about porn/obectifying women will need to be incorporated into sex education for my DS. (I do have time to think about this as he is 2.9 .)

I think that it was Germaine Greer who wrote that we should never underestimate how much men hate women. Whenever one is inclined to think "no, surely not...." one has only to think about porn