www.StopPornCulture.org" *********************** StopPornCulture! is dedicated to challenging the pornography industry and an increasingly pornographic pop culture. We affirm sexuality that is rooted in equality.
Female
101 years old
BOSTON, Massachusetts
United States
Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, has struggled uphill to educate people about pornography for the past 20 years. Pornography consumption has changed dramatically the past two decades, but pornographic product remains focused on the same titillation at women's humiliation that has always been its central theme. Missing no opportunity to bust a pornography myth, Dines had barely begun her presentation before exploding the common retort that pornography is as ancient as cave paintings by reminding people that before the 1950s, pornography was not distributed through the mainstream channels of American capitalism. Her critique framed the watershed moment of Playboy's publication in 1953 such that its obvious capitalist intent was forefront instead of the usual diversions about sexual liberation that have effectively silenced feminist criticism of this profit-driven industry.
One of Dines' strengths as a speaker is how deftly she uses the images and social conventions familiar to the audience to make her points about their insidious socializing effects. In the landscape she paints, blonde jokes are not mere quips on hair color but cruel stabs at women infantilized and idiotized spanning back from Jessica Simpson to Generation X icon Meg Ryan to 1970s sweetheart Goldie Hawn and so on. The "come on big boy" invitation staring from thousands of impossibly gorgeous models in magazines and music videos becomes less annoying and more sinister when Dines points out how they encourage men's belief in their entitlement to women's bodies. Men who rape are taking women up on the "fuck me" look promised by models and would-be feminists like Madonna, but models don't inhabit the daily lives of men like ordinary women do and Madonna has a retinue of bodyguards protecting her that ordinary women don't.
The power of images cannot be understated. One doesn't engage with an image intellectually, one feels its loaded messages instantly and intrinsically, or as Dines puts it, "You cannot have a rational discussion with an erection." Just as the animalization of black women presented in pornography and popular culture imagery says nothing about black women, but a whole lot about white men, pornography as a whole says much more about who men are than women. Says Dines, "We think it's about women because it's a picture of women, but, no, pornography is really the story of masculinity. Pornography is the place where men speak to each other using the female body as the screen to project their words and thenimages."
What these images say about women is that men derive great sexual pleasure from hurting women and seeing women be hurt, and their sadism is on rise. Just when you think pornography has crossed every boundary and has filmed every possible combination of mouths, anuses and genitals being penetrated by every object known to humankind, pornographers find a way to up the degradation ante. A new trend in pornography is "pink eyeing," men intentionally ejaculating into a woman's eye, and it is a glimpse at what is happening now that facial shots have become too passé for the porn addicted to get sufficiently tingled.
Overall it was a bleak presentation; there's no getting around the grim reality of the damage pornography is doing to us all. But from great depths of sadness well great reservoirs of resolve to change the prevailing pornified culture. Dines more than adequately prepared conference attendees for the grand unveiling of the slide show, "Who Wants To Be A Porn Star?" a ready-made presentation with helpful tips for public presenting intended for use by the next generation of antipornography activists. ____________________ Copyright Off Our Backs, Inc. 2007
Reel Action members Marissa Williams and Matt Kimball presented the show "Who Wants to be a Porn Star?" to a full house on March 26.
Many who attended the presentation were not really sure what they were going to see.
Were they really holding auditions?
Were they going to show porn on campus? There were many ideas of what was going to be shown that night.
Students and community members soon learned that Reel Action was putting on a slide show about the porn industry and how the industry is sexist and racist. Reel Action members wanted to educate the Castleton community on how the porn industry really works.
"The slide show was about how pornography degrades women to an object, most notably specific body parts that make men begin to expect a certain standard for all women," Kimball said, when asked about the purposes of the event. "It teaches us that women are just pleasure centers and not real individuals.
"This significantly affects our personal relationships and we begin to expect certain things, just because porn does it."
Organizers said the show was a success. The obscene, but honest pictures of porn had a real impact on the audience. They were shocked at how far the porn industry has gone and how easily porn is obtained these days.
"The show wasn't what I was expecting at all. The images are truly disturbing and they had to get out of my head," said student Ray Boule. "I had no idea that the porn industry was that bad."
The statistics that were presented seemed to have the biggest shock factor, numbers that no one wanted to believe.
The presentation gave all who attended a lot to think about.
The world that we live in has become what one writer called "pornified."
Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families, by Pamela Paul. (Buy it here at Amazon.com.)
(Note: The author has stated that she regrets the errors on pg. 259 in the sentence beginning with “Meanwhile, women on the Left…”. The sentence and the points made in it are inaccurate but corrections were not able to be made for the paperback edition.)
Heroes
All strong, independent men and women standing up to porn culture and sexism.
Gail Dines Robert Jensen Rebecca Whisnant Lierre Keith
**** June 2009 Update ****
Hey Supporters,
We have a few updates for you on our work here at Stop Porn Culture.
We had a great slideshow training this past weekend in Boston. People
came from as far away as Scotland, Nova Scotia, and Bellingham, WA.
Rebecca Whisnant presented our latest slideshow, "It's Easy Out Here
For A Pimp: How a Porn Culture Grooms Kids for Sexual Exploitation."
The show will be available for download soon from our website.
The website is undergoing an overhaul and will soon be launched. We
have a request for anyone who is interested. We'd love to have some
photographs to include on the site, pictures of regular people who are
against pornography. They can be anything, from your ten-year-old
wearing a feminist t-shirt to your celebration of your fiftieth
birthday. Just nice pictures, with or without political content, that
you'd give us permission to use. If you look at this website for the
Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault, you'll get the idea.
http://www.mecasa.org/
We have a few events coming up, though no firm dates yet. Next summer,
probably in July, will be our next conference, on feminist
anti-pornography activism and organizing. The conference will be at
Wheelock College in Boston, MA. We may have another slideshow training
this winter in Bellingham, WA--email us via the contact page at StopPornCulture.org if you might be interested.
And we're also considering a longer 3-4 day summer institute on
feminist theory and activism.
If you'd like to be get future SPC updates emailed to you, please sign up for them at StopPornCulture.org.
Best, Lierre for SPC
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The slideshow is our first line of offense in the battle we must wage
to reclaim this culture from the misogyny, racism and brute power of
the pornographers. Come join us in our struggle for a violence-free
world.
NOTE: Please email stoppornculture@gmail.com for information about buying a copy of the slide show if you are interested in presenting it in your community.
Check the web site and events page for other events, activities, the anti-porn slideshow, helpful resources and more.
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***** HOT NEWS! Sept. 2008. ***** A GROUND-BREAKING documentary about pornography has just been released! *******
Below are the CONFERENCE VIDEOS of the 2007 Stop Porn Culture Conference: Pornography & Pop Culture: Rethinking Theory, Reframing Activism. Wheelock College, Boston March 23-25, 2007: (Note: At the time SPC was going under the name of "National Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement.")
Opening remarks of Dr. Gail Dines:
(Click on arrow/triangle at left to play.)
"Pornography & Pop Culture: Putting the Text in Context", by Gail Dines:
Rebecca Whisnant: "Not Your Father's Playboy, Not Your Mother's Feminist Movement: Contemporary Feminism in a Porn Culture":
(See text article of the talk here at SaidIt.org.)
"Real Men, Real Choices", by Robert Jensen:
..
"Mapping the Pornographic Text: Content Analysis Research of Popular Pornography". Robert Wosnitzer, Ana Bridges & Michelle Chang:
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"A Drug Called Pornography. Understanding the Harmful Effects" (Parts 1-4. Includes interviews with Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Andrea Dworkin, and Jackson Katz.) Note: Includes some disturbing and potentially triggering content. Please be aware of this. Thanks.
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
Part Four:
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Who I'd like to meet: Others interested in stopping porn culture.
Key Extracts from Speech by Mariet Verhoef Cohen, during Soroptimist International of Europe Friendship Days in Aarhus, Denmark, Mariet Verhoef-Cohen, part 3 (Empowerment)
Hi! Check out " PART 2 No Tolerance of Intolerance " - Key extracts from Mariet Verhoef-Cohen's opening address at the Friendship Days 2008 in Aarhus, Denmark. Thanks for your support, it really means a lot! Speech Mariet Verhoef-Cohen Pt. 2 from Soroptimist Europe on Vimeo.
Hi! Thank you for the friendship! Pleases check out the new Soroptimist Webclip online! "No Tolerance of Intolerance Part1" - Key extracts from Mariet Verhoef-Cohen's opening address at the Friendship Days 2008 in Aarhus, Denmark.
DANKON PRO LA ALDONO! (thanks for the add! (in esperanto)) great site. let us create a network of social change for social justice across the corporate-owned myspace universe and connect in real time and real life in the struggle on the streets.
Robert Jensen is a brilliant individual whose books I make an effort to read, and Ms. Whisnat taught a college course to a friend of mine decades ago. I'll see you guys at Wheelock.
Enthusiastic greetings to all of you anti-pornography activist friends working to Stop Porn Culture, and spreading the word in your MySpace website. I wish I could be more involved in your important new campaign, but I don't have time for this at the current time. I know how extraordinarily busy some of you also are, and I'm grateful that you are managing to make time to work for Stop Porn Culture. I get many emails from women in particular who want advice on what they can do about pornography, and it is great to be able to tell them about Stop Porn Culture. Now I can refer them to your MySpace page here, as well as your main website as soon as you get it up and running. Knowing all the incredible anti-pornography resources that you have available, I'm hoping that I will be able to refer interested individuals to it very soon. I have been encouraging anti-pornography activists to attend one of your excellent slideshow trainings. I'm looking forward to hearing about some of the new projects you will be undertaking to combat porn culture!
Hello to my good friends at Stop Porn Culture. :-) It was great to attend your conference in March and to spend time with you all again in person. Your new slide show is fantastic, and I can't wait until it comes out in DVD form with audio narration on it. (And also on the Internet.) :-) Thank you for all of your work on behalf of girls and women (like myself) who have suffered so greatly in our increasingly woman-hating culture. (As evidenced by the escalating misogyny of the 57 billion dollar a year global porn industry that your slide show documents so well.) Thank you also for your friendship, and your continued self-initiated support of my own activism. (I.e. In your Sept. email update to conference attendees, and on your UT website, Bob.) I really appreciate it, and it has been a pleasure to work with you personally (Gail/Bob/Rebecca) on various projects over the past few years. I wish Stop Porn Culture great success, and will do whatever I can to support you. In sisterhood and continued solidarity, Anti-Porn Blogger :-) ***************** - 101 Things You Can Do to Combat the Harms of Pornography - Jenna Jameson's 25 Good Reasons Why No One Would Ever Want to Become a Porn Star - Anti-Porn YouTube Channel w. 200+ Anti-Porn Videos - Anti-Pornography Activist Blog :-)
