10 Interesting Things Gail Dines Said on Wednesday Night

Cross-posted on genfem.com

Internationally acclaimed activist, scholar and social critic Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality spoke about the way in which today’s porn industry has become a cultural force transforming our sexual identities, attitudes and relationships. Here are 10 interesting takeaways:

1. The worst thing that could happen for the cosmetics industry is for a woman to look at herself and like herself. How different would our opinions of ourselves be if the only bodies we ever saw were real women’s bodies?
2. Magazine ads show pieces of women (legs, stomach, head). The integrity of our bodies gets lost. We get so used to seeing women cut up in pieces that when we look into the mirror that’s what we see.
3. The new thing women are made to feel bad about is not losing their baby weight as fast as celebrities do. It’s especially unfair because real women can’t afford the level of help (drivers, trainers, nannies) celebrities can.
4. The only game in town for young women is the hypersexualized culture. Young women can choose to be fuckable or invisible.
5. The Internet made porn affordable, accessible and anonymous.
6. Jenna Jameson was a recruitment tool for the porn industry. She made it seem glamorous and aspirational, even though most women end up in the sex industry after they’ve been sexually abused or because of their limited employment options.
7. Mainstream pornography is becoming increasingly hardcore. Producers and directors instruct men to “wreck” the women as much as they can. The theme is the debasement and degradation of women.
8. In the racist porn industry, black men having sex with white women is seen as a way of debasing them. Additionally, black women are paid less and treated more brutally than white women.
9. Worker safety all but disappears when it comes to pornography because, as Dines said, “When it comes to women, who gives a shit anyway?”
10. Dines gets slack for being anti-sex because she’s anti-porn, but if she wrote a book about the hazards of the fast food industry, no one would say she was anti-food.