My Friend’s Book on Pornography is Getting National Press
I've Moved! The Boomer Chronicles has closed after 6 years, but you can keep up with me on my new blog at http://www.rheabecker.com
Why should you care about pornography? Because it affects all of us, whether we use it, just see it around, or completely ignore it.
My friend Gail Dines, 52, a professor at Wheelock College in Boston, has written a new book called Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality. In a column for the New York Post, Gail says today’s pornography is not
your father’s Playboy. Type porn into Google and you won’t see anything that looks like the old pinups; instead, you will be catapulted into a world of sexual cruelty and brutality where women are subject to body-punishing sex and called vile names. It’s not surprising how little women really know about porn today, since most women avoid looking at these sites. Not true for the men I meet, especially the college-age and even high-school boys. They have grown up with porn and, for them, this has been their major form of sex education.
And here’s an article on Pornland from The Guardian in the U.K. I hope you will get the book and read it.
July 14th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I have not taken the advice to type porn into Google because I suspect it would make me sick and anyway, I don’t want to be arrested.
But I did read the Guardian article and found it very troubling, especially the connection between sex and violence. There is a lot to be said for repression. As long as thoughts are inside, there is the self repression that at least guesses it must be wrong. But if you see dozens of images of your fantasy on the internet, then maybe it is okay after all.
So hard to draw the line. We don’t want Lady Chatterley’s Lover banned, but we don’t want children growing up to think that multiple penetration is just regular fun either.
July 16th, 2010 at 9:47 pm
When a friend of mine’s son went away to college, she discovered a cache of disgusting porn on his computer that he had forgotten to erase. She does not feel the same about him now.
July 20th, 2010 at 12:25 am
I’ve been doing a little research on porn on college campuses for my blog and came across this article:
http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/97/39/01_4.html
At the bottom of it includes comments from a female student who says “whatever floats your boat”. I completely agree with everything Gail Dines says, but how are we supposed to do anything about pornography when young women don’t even take a firm stand against it?