Author: Gail Dines

Gail Dines, Ph.D., is a professor emerita of sociology, and president of Culture Reframed. Her latest book, Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality, has been translated into five languages.

How Violent Porn Initiates Young Boys in Violence Against Women

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“Your body, my choice.” That misogynist credo is the crux of the blockbuster Netflix mini-series, Adolescence, the third most-watched English language show of all time on Netflix. The show continues to provoke debate about the impact of social media on the mental health of boys, in a world dominated by the manosphere, and its power to transform boys’ into violent misogynists. 

Surprisingly, porn was the one missing element in the otherwise brilliant four-part Netflix drama.

The show centers on a 13-year-old boy, Jamie—a typical lad, vulnerable, like so many other young men, to the venom of online misogyny spewed through unbridled social media, chatrooms, blogs and podcasts. This angry ideology, masquerading as manly virtue, blames women for male alienation and promotes violent sexuality and the dehumanization of women—the very narratives of porn.

Pro Sports Can Help to ‘De-Normalize’ Sexual Violence

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Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson recently signed a huge five-year contract for $230 million, even though he faces 22 civil lawsuits from women alleging sexual assault and abuse.

Children and adolescents often identify strongly with their sports heroes, clinging to their every word on social media, wanting to play like them, dress like them, and act like them. For this reason, it is especially important that the male sports culture—one of the most influential bastions of patriarchal privilege—takes a bold and unflinching approach to star athletes who have perpetrated sexual violence. The powerful message this sends to kids and adults is that men’s sexual violence against women is not “normal,” and will not be tolerated.

The Pornification of War in Ukraine

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The trending of #Ukraine on porn sites is only a recent development of an age-old misogyny, as old as warfare itself.

Research shows that habitual users of online porn seek ever more explicit and graphic images in order to sustain the same level of arousal. This partly explains the uptick in searches for pornographic videos of Ukrainian women after the invasion. It also accounts for the horrifying genres known as “refugee porn” and “war porn.” These videos link sex with desperation and violence. But not just any violence will do. The user is mainly interested in videos that feature the utter degradation of women and girls.

Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Empire Was Built on the Abuse of Women

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Hugh Hefner eventually became the darling of high society and the media. But it wasn’t luxury, sensuality or independence that Hefner was selling. He was only ever hawking old-fashioned misogyny. Now, we have irrefutable proof that Hefner’s empire was built on the horrific abuse of women.

A new documentary series on A&E, Secrets of Playboy, shows what feminists always knew: Hugh Hefner was a vile misogynist. 

Kids Learn About Sex From Porn. Comprehensive Sex Ed Could Help Change That.

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For decades, Howard Stern has used his celebrity status to normalize porn and misogyny. Last month, Billie Eilish, only 20, made a shocking revelation on Stern’s show: “I used to watch a lot of porn. I think it really destroyed my brain.”

Eilish is right—research shows conclusively that pornography is harmful for young people and, indeed, all brains. But kids take to porn because they find the sexual education offered by their schools and parents to be unhelpful and unreal.

How Jian Ghomeshi Pulled the Feminist Wool Over Everyone’s Eyes

Reprinted with permission from Feminist Current I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been interviewed by male journalists who have been clearly antagonistic to my feminist, anti-porn position. I can usually tell within the first five minutes of the interview that these guys are very upset by my argument that porn shapes male […]

Yes, The Playboy Club IS That Bad

There were so many surreal scenes in the pilot of NBC’s The Playboy Club that it is difficult to pick out the most eye-popping. Was it the “bunnies” spontaneously breaking into song, or the house mother earnestly lecturing the women to be the “very best bunny they can be,” or maybe the moment when the […]

Yes, Pornography Is Racist

In Shira Tarrant’s blog post on race and porn, she interviews some well-known African-American performers to challenge my claim that porn is racist. There are some women of color who have been successful in pornography, but this doesn’t change the fact that porn is systematically racist. Systems of oppression are flexible enough to absorb some […]