Review: Pornland by Gail Dines

I finished reading Pornland, by Gail Dines, this weekend and wanted to write up a quick review.  It made for pretty riveting if disturbing reading material.  The main thesis is that the vast majority of mainstream pornography is disturbingly violent, misogynistic, body-punishing, and (when it involves people of color at all) crazy racist, and that these disturbing images are becoming increasingly mainstream not only in porn, but in the rest of our culture.

Dines takes an abolitionist stance on porn, but there is little theoretical discussion in the  book.  Dines doesn't bother arguing whether or not feminist porn is possible; instead focusing on the fact that, if such a thing exists at all, it is a rare and magical unicorn, not what the vast majority of men are actually masturbating to.  While I love a good theoretical discussion, this was a refreshing stance.  The potential for feminist porn is often used as a derailment (intentionally or not) in critical discussions.  Most of the feminists I know who defend porn (which is to say every one I know in real life except my mom) rely on the belief of the potential for feminist porn, choose to not look at the porn that is actually prevalent on the internet, and defend all porn as a healthy expression of sexuality because they believe depictions of sex between adults need not be misogynist.  Perhaps the most true thing in this book is Dines' assertion that most women she has spoken too have a vision of porn that is "20 years out of date".  Pornland really cuts through that noise with an unflinching look at common narratives in mainstream pornography. These narratives almost universally center around the ideas that regardless of what they may say women always want sex, that women even (especially?) enjoy degrading and body-punishing sex, and that the primary purpose and really only value of a woman is as a sex object, to be used and discarded.  These beliefs also happen to be central tenets of rape culture.

This type of discussion is very necessary for contemporary feminist discourse. Feminists of my generation have largely decided to uncritically accept and even embrace pornography, on pain of being called anti-sex no-funsters.  What is especially baffling about this is that third wave feminism has brought fairly sophisticated media criticism to many other areas.  We can watch "Target: Women" and see how ads for laundry detergent or yogurt promote sexist stereotypes and have real effect on how women are viewed by ourselves and others, but somehow Barely Legal is beyond serious critique and is believed to have at worst minor effect* on how men think about women.  Don't get me wrong, I get how this happened (pornography has been a deeply divisive issue for previous generations of feminists, we want to distance ourselves from the religious right, and of course as porn becomes ever more ubiquitous in society and in our relationships there is ever more pressure to go along with it), but enough is enough.  The porn industry is way too misogynistic and destructive for us to continue to ignore.  We all need to take as critical a look at what is going on in mainstream porn as we can stomach, and I thought this book makes a nice starting point for discussion.

*Link to a fairly apologist but non-graphic article on why men like teen porn by "male feminist" Hugo Schwyzer. Do you like the header image? Stay classy, Jezebel.