Has Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality?

[LongTomH]

An interview with author Gail Dines at AlterNet discusses the effect that overconsumption of pornography and the extremes of current mainstream porn have on our culture and relationships.

Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women's studies at Boston's Wheelock college. Herbook: Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality argues that pornography is dehumanizing relationships and coarsening our culture. Porn culture has moved far beyond it's earliest days with Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler; it frequently includes images of abuse and cruelty. Dines book - and the article - quotes from the introduction to a typical porn site:

"Do you know what we say to things like romance and foreplay? We say fuck off! This is not another site with half-erect weenies trying to impress bold sluts. We take gorgeous young bitches and do what every man would REALLY like to do. We make them gag till their makeup starts running, and then they get all other holes sore -- vaginal, anal, double penetrations, anything brutal involving a cock and an orifice. And then we give them the sticky bath."

Creepy? Extreme? This is supposed to be a 'mainstream' porn site! Obviously, this does have an effect on men and their relationships to the women in their lives:

Gail Dines: Well, what's interesting is that I, like the viewers, get desensitized over time. I mean, obviously I couldn't have the visceral reaction I had in the beginning to it. But I put those descriptions in because often people say to me, you know, why are you getting so upset by images of naked women? And what I want people to understand is that pornography now looks nothing like it did 10, 15 years ago -- that it is now brutal and cruel and is absolutely based on the degradation of women. So this is why I walk people through the porn industry. Also, often anti-porn feminists are accused of picking the worst of the pornography. What I wanted to do was go into the mainstream pornography that the average 11-year-old would get once he put "porn" into Google.

Yeah - the "average 11-year-old!" That is, according to Dines, the age at which young boys are first exposed to porn on the net.

Dines relates the effect that working in the pornography industry has on the women who work in it; she relates that women have a hard time working more than three months in 'the industry:'

GD: That's what the article says in Adult Video News. Also, I've interviewed somebody who worked with AIM, the health care organization that takes care of the health of porn performers, and he was telling me just what happens to the bodies of these women. For example, he said one of the big things are anal prolapses, where literally their anuses drop out of their body and have to be sewn back in because of the brutal anal sex. He also talked about gonorrhea of the eye, and the latest thing -- because you have something called -- they put the penis into the anus, and then into her mouth without washing. They're finding now that women are getting fecal bacterial infections in their mouth and throat.

What's the effect that this has on both men and women in this culture? Women are dating the men who view porn and think they have a right to the type of sex they see in porn.

And a lot of the women, they don't want to do it, but they don't have the vocabulary to express why they don't want to do it because everywhere they go in this society they're told, "If you don't do it, you're a prude." And what teenager or adolescent do you know wants to be defined as a prude? So the boys are pushing, nagging, cajoling girls into performing porn sex.

I'll admit, I was part of "the Playboy Generation," and I watched some of the early video porn. But, descriptions of the stuff on the internet now creeps me out - just the descriptions! This has moved a long way from the 1960's discussion on sexual liberation; now, it's profit-driven and totally dehumanized.

The AlterNet article listed websites that provide resources for people interested in combating porn culture: Ms Dines own website: gaildines.com and stoppornculture.com, which she cofounded.

[Warpy]

1. It's a real problem with juvenile males whose knowledge of sex

is mostly from pornography and who expect real girls to act like that and enjoy that stuff. Hey guys! We don't!

It's just more unrealistic expectation piled onto girls already shamed into near anorexia by the fashion industry.

And they wonder why we're depressed.

Dads need to start stepping up to the plate, telling their sons there is a huge difference between the fantasy women in porn and real women in real life and telling their daughters they have a right to say no.

That's how and where this stuff needs to be fought.

[madrchsod]

2. nope....

porn in one form or another has been around for thousands of years. today we have more access to porn than in the past.

[LongTomH]

3. Porn - or Erotica - Has Been Around for Thousand of Years

Ms. Dines issue is with the increasing brutality and dehumanization in today's mainstream porn.

[TheWraith]

11. Except that her premise is based on rewriting the evidence.

She's taking a tiny subset of adult material on the internet, and claiming that it's "typical" or "mainstream," and that all internet porn is violent or abusive.

[Chan790]

22. which is tame and genteel compared to some of that of the Victorian era or late monarchal France.

If you've never read Justine by deSade let me assure you nothing in today's porn culture compares.

An excerpt from Justine: http://xahlee.org/p/justine.html (chosen because it doesn't contain some of the more grotesque of de Sade's imagery or fancies of amoral decadence.)

As for the more-shameful of the Victorian era, I looked online for it to no result but I was once "enjoyed" to a series of drawings from the era of women lining up to be fucked while beheaded. Another of a woman being held down and fucked by a horse. Earlier still, the street shows of the Elizabethan era frequently depicted beastiality, forcible sodomy and frquently rape as a comedic device. Even the staging of Shakespeare's plays were bawdy to extreme degree...Titus Andronicus is a long work of torture porn by some critiques.

The more fucked-up and repressed the culture, the more vicious the pornography. While I am certainly not keen on the level of decadence in modern pornography, it is hardly a new low. Degradation is as historically intrinsic to pornography and sexual fantasy as fucking.

[izquierdista]

4. But the really nasty stuff is one click away

What the Marquis de Sade could have done with Facebook and XTube.

[cliffordu]

5. The crap that he's talking about is a shrinking version of porn.

The internet is killing mainstream porn and this is a good thing.

Amateur porn, couples doing the films themselves with no "professional" involvement is replacing almost the entire porn industry from what I've been reading.

Some of the amateur stuff is sensitive, non-exploitative and quite good, like the best porn throughout history has been, and like it should be now.


But I thnk sex art needs a different name other than porn. Sex art maybe.

[arcane1]

6. I feel sorry for the 14-16 year-old girls...

who have to date boys their age who know nothing of sex beyond what they see online. :(

[MedicalAdmin]

23. And this is different from dating boys who know nothing at all.

Or who only know what they learned at the hands of their pastor/priest?

ALthough I must admit that online porn is, for the most part, pretty gruesome and nothing like the playboy, etc. of my youth.

[realisticphish]

7. This is an important area for study

but I have to disagree with some of the premises of this particular article.

I'm no porn addict, but hey, I've been around the internet. And I don't think that she is at all correct in calling that creepy-ass degradation shit "typical." That is not at all the case. Yeah, the internet has allowed for a lot of fetishes and bizarre stuff to become more mainstream, but most guys I've ever talked to think the Max Hardcore type of stuff is psychotic. Maybe I just hang out with guys who aren't creepy sadists, but I think that is overstatement.


That said, I encourage research in this area in general. The serious issues involved in pornography, like STI testing, other physical damage as listed above, psychological trauma for the participants, and social consequences in sexual psychology, these are all very worthy of study. I do think that pornography has damaged many aspects of sexual interaction. Certainly there are effects in terms of the perception of body types (though, honestly, porn is far more realistic than Hollywood or advertising). But the larger affects, I think, come from the false perceptions given about what women (and to a much, much smaller extent, men) want sexually. When a teen's first contact with sex is through experimentation, it's a real learning process, with feedback. With porn, it's not even CLOSE to how things actually work. And the vast majority of adults know this, but teens more than likely do not.

Things didn't develop the way they were supposed to vis a vis the sexual revolution. We got rid of a lot of the self-loathing aspects of sex, but not the social constructs that drove it. Now sex is still a dirty shameful thing, and people hide these things in private, rather than confronting the issues out in the open. We got rid of the self-repression, but kept the same old attitudes towards women.

[LongTomH]

18. I think we agree on most issues raised in your post.

There are real issues raised in the AlterNet article. I especially agree with this paragraph:

Things didn't develop the way they were supposed to vis a vis the sexual revolution. We got rid of a lot of the self-loathing aspects of sex, but not the social constructs that drove it. Now sex is still a dirty shameful thing, and people hide these things in private, rather than confronting the issues out in the open. We got rid of the self-repression, but kept the same old attitudes towards women.

[depakid]

8. The Dworkin wing of feminism returns!

:rofl:

For some reason, Alternet seems to have a thing for that faction.

[comtec]

9. I've always looked at porn as a guide to sex

that is, this direction may work for you...

also as pure entertainment, my ex and I still enjoy watching porn together and make snarky comments.

Here's the thing, porn is porn. The (main stream) actresses are generally well protected by law (knowing enough to USE that law is another thing) and they are volunteering.

There are more than enough volunteers to be actresses and actors (Generally very short careers compared to women) in porn that it's a waste of effort to try to bully someone.
if an actress says no, they move on to the next.

All actresses have an F-list, and makers can easily find someone to fill a "roll" without forcing anyone.

I know i'm going to be attacked by feminists, but these are the facts!

porn has existed since time immemorial... that means during the entirety of the matriarchies as well!

You want to change porn? then make your own, showing the "correct" way.

There are plenty of FEMALE directors who make a great deal of money and fame for their softer porn.

That's one thing about it, unlike all other industries, it's pretty equal opportunity.

[Eric Condon]

10. It is pretty equal opportunity

And furthermore, the big elephant in the room that no one really wants to acknowledge is that the porn industry is about a thousand times more progressive than the mainstream film or modeling industries in terms of the diversity of models/actresses they employ. No woman will be ever be told she's too fat/old/ethnic for porn, because there is always, ALWAYS a market. It's much more convenient for the anti-sex police to blame porn for the self-esteem issues facing women and girls, but they'd do better to go after Vogue than Hustler.

[comtec]

13. Well part of it is that we're just a bunch of misogynistic men who don't know anything...

OH and we hate women's rights...
ESPECIALLY if we try to inject a bit of logic LOL

Yeah it's ironic really, the one industry that will NEVER tell a girl she's too fat is porn!

I'd say most men who watch porn prefer the real lines a woman has, not the ones you see on models. (granted there is that fetish)

that certainly explains why amateur porn is really on the rise (no pun intended)

I'd also point out that the VAST majority of porn studios are pushing hard for internal regulation on age, treatment, safety and healthcare!
Not to mention gay rights.

They are also always on the bleeding edge of technology.

[LongTomH]

15. Is it too much to ask for people to actually READ the article before commenting?

nft

[comtec]

16. anti-porn screeds almost always say the same (incorrect) thing, so reading them is usually pointless

and it's the reality that it's been with us for time immemorial
there's nothing new in that article.

In fact, how we view sex NOW is WAY more conservative than it was seen 300 years ago.

we're more liberal than the Victorians (not hard) but we, as a civilization, have lost SO much ground on accepting our bodies, etc, because of the Victorians.

Has porn made us a LESS effective in dealing with each other?

are you fucking kidding me?

that we're even having this discussion proves not.

Do you know what people did even 80 years ago to teach a boy to become a man? and how old those boys usually were?!

This "18 year-old before sex" stuff is modern clap trap, unknown to our species before the 1900's.

Here's something that is never considered... men now actually CARE if the girl enjoys sex... that was super rare before the 1960's.

so consider THAT, before attacking modern society and porn.

[bemildred]

12. Oh good, another witch hunt. nt

[CLANG]

14. You may be on to something...

[qb]

17. The people who seek out abusive porn are already freaks.

Porn or no porn, there have always been abusive bastards, and they should be prosecuted for their crimes.

What's needed are more legal protections for the performers who are being harmed.

[onethatcares]

19. I'll tell you what hijacked my sexuality

8 fucking years of georgewbush in the whitehouse and his band of merry fuckwits. Then it was the working two jobs by my wife and I in order to at least keep a roof over our heads,food on the table and a semi new car to go to those jobs in. we got too damn tired to do much more than eat and sleep. Try to get that loving feeling back after years of that.

Sorry, porn had nothing to do with that.

[Locrian]

20. good quote here

GD: Well, it's very interesting we say that because, you know, as somebody who studies media, and as somebody who's progressive, when we study right-wing media we don't say it's fantasy. We don't say, "You know what, don't worry about Glenn Beck, don't worry about Rush Limbaugh -- people can distinguish." No, we understand that media shapes the way we think. It shapes our reality, it shapes our perceptions of the world. Pornography is one more form of media. It's a specific genre which, by the way, is very powerful because it delivers messages to men's brains via the penis, which is an extremely powerful delivery system. So I think the idea that it's fantasy just isn't borne out given the studies that we know about how porn, and how images in general, affect people's view of the world.

[Scout]

21. isn't it funny how so many on DU refer to the right wing brainwashing

people thru' the media, and people drinking the kool-aid, how easy it is to influence the weak minded ...

but when it comes to PORN!!!! oh no no no, no one is influenced by it, not at all...

"it makes my pee pee hard, how can it be wrong"

:grr:

[MedicalAdmin]

24. Well a daily diet of 6 hours a day of torture porn hasn't changed me.

Excuse me while I go masturbate. ... Now where did I put that chainsaw?

[Tutankhamun]

25. If a teenage girl's teenage BF asks her for something really kinky/nasty/painful, etc.

she may feel pressured, but she can still refuse. I just find it difficult to feel sorry for a kid who is asked for, say, anal sex, and doesn't want to do it. These kids can move on -- find someone who treats them the way they want or they can refuse to do the act that makes them uncomfortable and see if their current partner will accept that. There are a lot of fish in the sea. As long as nobody is forced into anything there just isn't a cause for alarm. Kids can be taught to resist peer pressure.

I read a story about a kid who had his penis burned off accidentally at birth. Some girls are born with no vagina to speak of. Others have suffered female "circumcision" and will never experience normal sex lives (or normal lives otherwise). Others are raped or molested repeatedly for years. These are the kinds of people who have my sympathy.