Gail Dines is a Professor of Sociology at Wheelock College in Boston. She received her Ph.D. from Salford University in England and is co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality. Dines began her lecture at VCU last Thursday with a brief history on the relationship between pornography and capitalism in the United States. In 1953 the first edition of playboy magazine was published and became an instant success. What Hugh Hefner realized was that for the magazine to make money he would have to make advertising look sexy, thereby sexualizing commodity. Not only did he make it work, but fifty years later the mainstream media is still saturated with "sex sells" images. Dines then spoke about what it was like to grow up in a text based culture, vs. an image based culture. When porno magazines like Playboy first came out it would have been very difficult for young boys to acquire them, and most likely they would have to raid their parents stash in order to see them. Today, recent studies show that boys as young as 10 and 11 years old are likely to experience pornography for the first time on the Internet, and this type of porn is extremely graphic, body punishing and humiliating to women. The most common type of porn that is being marketed on the Internet today is not about sex, it's about violent and humiliating acts that strip women of their sexual autonomy. Not only are these images dangerous to (obviously) women everywhere, they are detrimental to young, impressionable boys who can access these sites. What kind of message do these images send to young men about women? That all women deep down are whores who like to be abused? Or maybe there's just a certain "type" of girl who it's okay to treat this way. The ideology of porn is so dangerous. It reinforces the "Madonna/Whore" stereotype so strongly that even women start to believe it, and then we are divided, we are judging each other and that's exactly what they want. If we're too busy arguing then we can't try to stop them from making money (not that we could really stop a 57 billion dollar industry if we tried). The massive inferiority complex that the pop culture/media industry has ingrained in us helps them to turn around and then sell us more makeup, more fashion magazines and more porn. Think about how much the mainstream media loves to hate Brittney, Paris and Lindsey when they sold them to us in the first place. What I will never understand is how intelligent women get caught up in trash culture talk. I've heard women pass judgement so harshly on each other and it breaks my heart. It is my belief that as a feminist it is counterproductive to call other girls whores, sluts or bitches. It is also important to remain compassionate towards sex workers because while they are working against what I believe in, they are still people with unfortunate circumstances, and if I condemn them then I'm no better than the men who are exploiting them. Yes, they make it harder for me to be seen as an equal and this infuriates me, but I also realize that they didn't create the market, and if there wasn't a market for it they wouldn't be selling it. Most women who end up in the porn industry are there because of drug addictions. Contracts from the companies almost always offer rehab as an incentive to have sex for money. Many girls also come from a childhood where they experienced sexual abuse and probably never felt any autonomy over their own body in the first place. The porn industry for most women is not really work; the relationship between these girls and their companies is closer to a master/ slave relationship than any other line of work in this country. Another point Dines made that I have always felt is true; radical feminists care about men a lot more than the companies who are making money off them. Feminists are opposed to the harmful ramifications of gender constructs for both women and men. For men to feel like they will be more desirable to women because of the car they drive or the amount of money they can throw around is a real pressure placed on them by a capitalistic society that wants to make them feel inferior, in order to then sell them what they are "lacking". It's interesting that feminists often are labeled man haters when in reality they are usually deeply compassionate people who have husbands and sons. If we are to believe that feminists truly hate men then what can be said of the men who are running the porn industry? Are they men lovers?
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