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Today, pornography is inescapable. It shapes our self-image, our relationships, our sexualities — even our body hair removal practices. In academia, many media scholars have taken a non-critical approach to porn and third wave feminists have embraced it. If it feels like the pornographers have won, it’s because in many ways they have.

A new book edited by Dr. Heather Brunskell-Evans explores the impacts of the porn industry on critical media studies, popular discourse, and on our bodies and sexualities. Featuring chapters by feminist scholars like Julia Long, Sheila Jeffreys, Gail Dines, and Meagan Tyler, The Sexualized Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography offers a wide-ranging analysis of the various ways the propaganda of the porn industry has shaped our culture and lives.

Heather is a social theorist, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College in London. She is a National Spokesperson for the Women’s Equality Party Policy on Ending Sexual Violence and co-founder of Resist Porn Culture. As a trustee of FiLia, a feminist charity that aims to bring about change for girls and women, Heather is helping to organize this year’s Feminism in London conference, which is taking place on October 14th and 15th.

In this episode, I speak with her about the book as well as about the way discourse around pornography has changed over the years.

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Meghan Murphy Founder & Editor Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her dog.