A sometimes gut-wrenching yet even-handed discussion of the pornification of our culture, and how mainstream pornography's rampant sexism and racism may be making our culture more hostile to women, people of color, and children.

- The book starts out with a chapter covering the history of porn in America, beginning with Playboy and it's subsequent battles with Penthouse and Hustler and how this lead to an expansion of what pornographic material was deemed appropriate. I felt like Dines' covering

A sometimes gut-wrenching yet even-handed discussion of the pornification of our culture, and how mainstream pornography's rampant sexism and racism may be making our culture more hostile to women, people of color, and children.

- The book starts out with a chapter covering the history of porn in America, beginning with Playboy and it's subsequent battles with Penthouse and Hustler and how this lead to an expansion of what pornographic material was deemed appropriate. I felt like Dines' covering of this material gave excellent historical context for current-day phenomena. I also loved her analysis of the strategies companies such as Playboy and Girls Gone Wild used to make porn more mainstream.

- Dines' financial reporting of numerous companies that profit readily from porn, ones we wouldn't expect such as Comcast and NewsCorp, really strengthened her argument that porn is becoming normalized because of more corporate backers disseminating more pro-porn material.

- Although I wish that there was more scientific research regarding porn's effects in the book, I trust Dines when she says that there is currently not much research in this area. Books with more relevant statistics include The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz, and Getting Off: Porn and the End of Masculinity by Robert Jensen. These books have statistics that show that exposure to violent and pornographic material increase mens' agreement with rape myths, and increase apathy towards violent behavior.

- What Dines lacks in scientific rigor, she makes up with astounding analysis of popular porn scenes and the messages they send. It's a basic fact in media studies that the media we consume helps order our perception of reality, so even if Dines does not have as many scientific studies as some readers would have liked, one could not argue at all that these images are harmless. Dines cites many popular websites, and shows throughout the book that there is obviously a formula that porn producers follow that often maximize debasement of women; one pornographer quotes even says that he delivers "violence against women because that's what men want". A large part of me does believe Dines when she says that there is not much research on long-term effects of pornography use because other books I have read also do not have much. It is probably a tenuous thing to research in this academic climate.

- I found Dine's analyses of Sex and the City and of Cosmopolitan enlightening. I found it a very strong argument when she used these mainstream media sources as proof of porn seeping into our culture.

- Dines also goes into how porn culture affects men and women, and these chapters are especially strong.

- I agree with some reviewers that Dines was more open in noting that certain sexual behaviors such as bondage or an*l are not inherently violent or degrading, but are merely framed that way in pornography.



This is an important book for anyone interested in gender and social justice to read. I was going to rate it 4 because I also wish there was more scientific research cited, but I rated it five stars to counter-act some of the reviewers who seem to have right-wing sentiments or who do not seem to have closely read the book/just seem personally offended.



I wanted to make some notes as to previous reviewer's comments:

- Dustin Wax calls it absurd that Dines calls mainstream pornography that uses prepubescent-appearing models with traditional signs of childhood (lollipops, ankle socks, school uniforms, dollys, teddy bears, braces, small breasts, pigtails etc,)and marketing and acting rhetoric that directly mimics child pornography (actresses dressed as children claiming to be 12 in script, "fathers, uncles, coaches, teachers" having sex with students/underlings, fetishization of virginity) is labelled "Psuedo-Child pornography" in Pornland. The definition of "pseudo" is "not actually, but having the appearance of; pretended", and "almost, approaching, or trying to be". If one dresses up an actress specifically chosen because she looks under the age of consent, gives her lollipops, ankle socks, pigtails, and scripts a scenario in which she is shown being statutorily raped or molested by a male adult that only works with minors and is told to answer "I'm 12" in front of the cameras, what else should we call it besides pseudo-child pornography? Dines also mentions computer-generated images of child porn. Both of these things look like child porn even if they do not involve the abuse of living children. Why would we label them anything besides psuedo-child porn when that is what they are specifically designed to emulate and when psuedo literally means "having the appearance of"? Calling a spade a spade is not a trick of rhetoric. It is simply the truth.



- Dustin Wax also asks "what about the men that watch porn and didn't rape anyone"? Nowhere in her book does Gail Dines say that porn directly leads to rape in a clear cause-and-effect way. In fact, on page 85 she directly discusses how porn-critique tends to boil down to one misleading question, "does it lead to rape?". She says, on page 85, that, "No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a nonrapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being... porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology." Gail Dines then details first-person accounts of men who have come up to her after her conferences as to how porn affects them. There are even two entire chapters pages 59-79 called "Grooming for Gonzo: Becoming a Man in Porn Culture" and "Leaky Images: How Porn Seeps into Men's Lives" that talk about porn's effects on ordinary men. It does not seem like Dustin Wax closely read the book, and I highly suggest that people disregard his review. The first lesson of media studies is that the media we consume helps to order our reality; obviously watching violently misogynistic and racist porn affects your life in some ways, and our culture at large, even if the majority of people are not hate-crime committing rapist. To look at it that way is reductive and completely disregards the established (and common-sense) fact that human attitude and behavior exists on a spectrum.



- I feel like Mary only gave such a low-star review because she was personally offended. After close reading, I do not agree that Dines has "personal revulsion" regarding certain sex acts. She is merely analyzing what many mainstream porn websites say and the images they project. I do not think it is a large leap to say that ejaculating on a woman's face mirrors marking her as "territory" or degrading her humanity especially when paired with common pornographic sexist epithets like "wh*re, sl*t, etc". When a website talks about "splitting a woman's *ss open with huge c*ck", or on page 69 when a pornographer openly says he believes rough an*l scenes are for when a "husband is angry at his nagging wife and wants to get back at her and whatever woman was mean to him that day", obviously pornographers use an*l sex in a certain way to render women powerless (though it may not be used the same way in ordinary life and can be pleasurable besides). Anal sex can be extremely painful if not done correctly and leaves the woman more vulnerable. This makes it an extraordinary experience for two partners who are interested in it and openly loving and communicative, but also makes it a tool that pornographers use to further sexualize the dis-empowerment and harm of women in porn. Although I wish that Dines openly admitted that oral and anal sex are pleasurable and that it is simply mainstream pornography's framing of these acts that is harmful, she has extraordinarily good reasons and analysis in arguing that mainstream porn's use of certain sex acts is disempowering. I'm someone who considers myself kinky, and agreed completely with Dine's analysis of certain marketing materials and scenes. I also think that it's odd that people who consider themselves kinky are not open to analyzing the cultural factors that may lead to them sexualizing power imbalance between sexes... And I'm saying that as someone who's always been open to BDSM. Our sexual fantasies do not exist in a vacuum, as humans are fundamentally socio-cultural creatures whose identities are shaped by those forces.



- Mary, the book is about porn and sexuality. There are other books about porn culture/pop culture at large, most notably Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy. A strong study of masculinity is The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz. To cover more pop culture than was already covered in the book in the "growing up female in porn culture" chapter would be to lose focus on the book.



- I agree with Jonathon that the book may have been stronger if Dines accounted for other factors that may lead to hookup culture. For example, a culture of immediate gratification, perhaps the effects of technology such as the internet or social media that may be leading to a decrease in our generation's ability for intimacy (I've heard it alleged). But I feel like Dines is correct in saying that the hookup culture is also an outgrowth of a culture that teaches women to sexually self-objectify and that their worth is derived from their sexual servicing of men. It also seems almost obvious the connections between porn sex and hookup sex- complete lack of intimacy, interchangable partners or "stars", etc. I feel like her point was especially strengthened when she used Cosmopolitan headlines and Sex and the City storylines to show how the ideology of porn sex is shaping the dating advice that popular culture is giving women, which is also supporting hookup culture.



- I feel like Jonathon is mistaken when he says that Dines studying how porn affects dominant conceptions of masculinity/femininity is "losing focus". The book is a study of how porn affects gender identity; one cannot separate the two. However, Jonathon does do a good job in his bullet-points of some of Dine's main ideas.



- I agree with Jonathon in that I wish the book provided more ideas as to positive social action against porn culture besides simply eschewing porn and pledging to not date porn users.



- I have no idea where Ayame Sohma is getting his research from, but viewing pornography has been linked to increased acceptance of rape myths such as "drinking women deserve it, women bring it upon themselves, women dressed a certain way deserved it, etc", increased acceptance of violence against women, and increased incidence of violent behavior. Sohma cites one study, but The Macho Paradox by Jackson Katz cites many more and clearly shows that the consumption of misogynistic media leads to misogynistic values and behavior. It seems almost common sense that exposure to violent images breeds more violence by normalizing the behavior. Sohma also claims that Dines want "everything but vanilla sex to be illegal". She says nothing of the sort, and simply analyzes popular pornography websites' images, and does not actually speak of making anything illegal. Sohma also seems to equate porn with sex, when they are not equivalent. Sex is an intimate act that occurs between two human beings, whereas porn is the dissemination of images representing a certain industrialized view of sex. Sohma equating porn with sex is like equating McDonald's or Oreos with whole foods. They are not the same; porn is a product, and sex is natural, in the same way that pink slime is an industrial product, and something like lettuce is natural. Sohma also compares porn stars to great athletes because of their great "performance". If a conformist, hypermasculine, overly defensive, and irrational right-winger doesn't like this book, his erroneous degradation of it is certainly a recommendation that even-keeled and open-minded people read it.



- To reviewers who say it is erroneous to call compulsive porn use "addiction", it is well established in the scientific community that certain things can have addictive qualities in the brain even if they are not chemical (like drugs or alcohol) in nature, such as gambling, exercise, self-harm, or sex.