Friday night, anti-porn campaigner Gail Dines rounded off her interminably long trip to Australia with a last hurrah at Melbourne’s Trades Hall. I was there, apparently alone, taking one for the team.
From the moment I stepped inside I felt jittery. Readers, there were radical feminists with severe fringes and chunky red necklaces everywhere. (Sorry. I know there is something wrong with that last sentence, but I’m keeping it.) No-one did or said anything to me, of course. But in my own mind, I felt like they could perceive, just by looking at me, that I had an immoderate interest in cock. The whole atmosphere made me too nervous to reapply my wearing-off lipstick in the open, so I scuttled off to the toilets to touch-up.
Lipstick fixed, I filed into the room and took a seat near the end of the fourth row, in between a young Asian woman with a pen and paper, and a middle aged white man. I took out a notepad, my ipod (for furtive voice recording), and my phone (for furtive tweeting). Adjacent middle aged man breathed heavily, which I interpreted as disapproval. Another middle-aged white man wearing glasses was in front of me, talking to a middle-aged white woman about what young women feel they have to … I couldn’t catch what he thought I felt but I was pretty sure he was wrong.
Monica Dux, who was stitting on stage with Dines, started things off with a quick overview of the arguments in Pornland. Then she addressed Dines: ‘Gail, are you tired?’. The audience chuckled politely, and Dines opened with the observation that because Australia is smaller than the US, it’s much easier to get into the media. Then she launched into her spiel.
It was replete with:
- sexist jokes/insults (e.g. the other guests on Q&A were like “adolescent boys”, with Leslie Cannold “the biggest little boy of all of them”)
- assumptions about who makes and uses porn (there have been images of sex “since the first time a man realised he could scratch a mark on the ground”)
- ridiculous and insulting generalisations (“all men know what gonzo porn is”; “there will never be condoms in porn because men don’t want to see them”; “men don’t want to see love-making”; “working class women in minimum wage jobs were looking at Jenna Jameson and thinking ‘I could do this’” etc.)
- Juvenile sex humour (“We have to get the industry where it hurts – with money. That’s worse than squeezing their balls, trust me!”)
The audience laughed along at all the jokes, gasped or shook their heads enthusiastically at the appropriate moments, and asked polite, complimentary questions at the end. I desperately wanted to ask Dines what she thought of my taste for rough/group/cock-gagging sex but I was, simply, too scared.
What is authentic sexuality?
Anyone who has paid any attention to Dines knows that a great deal of her argument about the harms of porn rests on the notion that there exists an ‘authentic’ sexuality.
Dines talks about authentic sexuality a lot but she seems reluctant to define it. At Trades Hall, she was careful to emphasise that it wasn’t up to her to dictate others’ authentic sexuality, and she wasn’t going to tell us what constituted authenticity for us. I can’t help but think that her coyness on this crucial point is not due to some heartfelt committment to freethought and self-determination. Rather, I suspect it comes from a reluctance to defend her definition of authenticity, which (perhaps she’s aware, on some level), is entirely arbitrary.
While she won’t set out criteria for authentic sexuality, she is clear in saying that authentic sexuality cannot come from, or be informed by, porn. Dines suggests that this is because the porn industry is capitalist and patriarchal, offering McDonald’s as a cute metaphor (porn is to authentic sexuality as McDonalds is to food) and relying on the supposed self-evident absurdity of expecting anything creative or real from a capitalist entity.
But Dines does leave clues as to her definition of authenticity scattered through her speeches and articles, whenever she identifies a given sexual act as good or bad (either with her tone, or with funny labels like ‘life-loving’ and ‘death-loving’). Good things include ‘making love‘, connection, and tenderness. Bad things include rough sex, hairless pussies, and having sex with real dolls. Gagging on cock is perhaps the baddest of all bad things, judging by the number of references it gets.
But really, what the hell kind of sense does this make? It really does not make any. Sure, most pornography is produced by profit-making enterprises. But so so too are the majority of books, magazines, films, songs and assorted cultural ephemera from which Dines et al have derived their ideas about the right kind of sex – the loving, monogamous, gag-free kind. Does Dines really believe, as she says, that nothing creative, useful, or meaningful can come out of a capitalist industry? Has she never seen a film, or read a book published and printed by a profit-making company, that added any enjoyment or meaning to her life? Or is it only when you add sex that nothing can be salvaged?
As a sociologist, you would think Dines would recognise the cultural and social context surrounding her, and realise that perhaps her view of sex is also shaped by the culture that she sits within. You think she might understand that no-one’s sexuality is a pure, untouched, individually-determined thing. Instead, she clings tightly to a narrow view of acceptable sexuality which, ironically, fits very comfortably within the patriarchal, capitalist framework she critiques.
Slut-shaming under the surface
Dines and her organisation say that they are not critical of the ‘constrained’, option-lacking women who perform in porn, but of the industry that exploits them. Still, there seemed to be an undercurrent of slut-shaming in the room.
It was probably most obvious when discussion turned briefly to Sasha Grey. Sasha Grey, Dines explained, is a pornstar who recently ‘gave up’ porn to ‘go mainstream’ in a horrifying first for the industry. (It’s not actually a first, of course, but was described as such).
This was, I suppose, an extension of Dines’ argument about the mainstreaming of pornography, but it was hard to miss the implication that women who’ve performed in porn are ‘other’, tainted beings coloured wholly by their sex work and properly confined to that space where they belong.
Of course, no-one mentioned that while she’s gone mainstream, Sasha Grey hasn’t disowned her past in porn, describes entering the industry deliberately and with purpose, and appears to be an impressively intelligent, articulate and self-possessed woman.
Moments when I LOLed and nobody else did
- Bless her, but Monica Dux seemed particularly clueless w/r/t the modern era with its internet and international postage and so forth, saying, for example, that she didn’t think you could get real dolls in Australia.
- Near the end, in response to a question, Dines suggested that the solution to the porn problem was to tell young women about radical feminism, specifically, having them read some Andrea Dworkin.
Oh Gail, you really don’t have anything of value to contribute, do you?
You weren’t the only one who was fuming in the audience at the Trades Hall lecture…
Oh, good to know! Had we known of each others’ presence one of us might have worked up the courage to say something…
I was there too; my friends and I were skulking up the back in case we got too furious and had to leave. That woman really has nothing of value to contribute, unless you count hysterical fearmongering as something of value.
Yeah, she has about half a point, buried in a mountain of hyperbole….
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Man good on you for going… I just couldn’t bring myself too, perhaps had I known there were other people with such similar mindsets to me in the audience, I might have. Sounds intense.
Pardon the lame comment, by the way, it’s 7AM and I haven’t slept (not for fun reasons either) but I just discovered your blog and am really loving it.
Aw thanks
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I too have just happened upon your blog, via Twitter, and I am enjoying the conversations.
On the ‘Dines’ issue, I just can’t help but sympathize with her pooooor husband. Poor man must have the lamest sex life ever conceived.
Can you imagine him suggesting they try doggy tonight.
Perhaps that could have been your question. Is it dirty to fuck doggy, or only when you slip it out and up the arse?
Now that would have been worth the admission to see.
Since Australia is also allowing a bunch of smut with me in it, I feel Australia needs to know the deep dark secrets of what the porn industry is all about. You have all been being fooled into believing a bunch of lies, and all that smut is very psychologically disturbing to the mental state of your society. The porn industry tries to glamourize itself on mainstream TV that it is good for relationships. Maybe it is, on the front-end, about 5%, the other 95% of the 100s of billions of dollars is made off of smut, slice-and-dice rereleases derived from original films, then recreated into the worse possible productions imaginable. Wake up America, what Playboy, Hustler, Excalibur, AEBN, Sin City, Pleasure, VOD.com, and other adult porn industries really makes its millions off of is smut and child porn! It is sickening how Hustler’s owner can brag that he can pay some jailbird $500,000 to do porn, yet he hasn’t paid one penny for hundreds of performers for thousands of bootleg films being sold on his website, not even for promotional bios, while selling child porn on his site. It is available for sale on most of the millions of adult websites online, and no one above comes down on these websites and adult companies for it. If I were the government I would have put a stop to it in the first place, the smut films with no scripts nor value, and confiscated all funds made from it. The bootleg smut that has been coming out is not good for relationships. It causes people to be distracted from reality, causes violent behavior, causes men to treat women poorly, to disrespect their fellow comrads, and ruins the lives of the performers, especially those who are NOT doing porn. Some performers only entered porn for a year and only did maybe 30 films, some only one and realized it was a mistake. That does not mean that person deserves to be splattered and exploited across millions of pages online, no one deserves that type of treatment. Every human being has a right to make mistakes, but also has a right to move on and do other things, go back to school, get a normal job. Smut is like slave labor, because if a performer was going through hard times, did a few films, didn’t get paid much, VHS on and off the shelves for a short time was around, not streaming online footage exploited online over a million pages for all the world to see, without performer pay or permission. Are not slave labor contracts illegal in America, and therefore void? Isn’t there laws to protect people’s choices to agree or not to agree, and if you’re not being paid for performances, isn’t it therefore slave labor, especially if you would have never agreed to the manner in which the films coming out are presented? Why America, why allow it to occur, or are you just not aware what’s been going on? Those films were slice-and-diced into 400 or so unpaid rereleases per performer over a period of 14 years that the internet has been around, with current production dates, misleading consumers as to when the footage was made by not listing those films as compilations with true production dates or use of rerelease dates and presenting the films as new films while putting performers on boxcovers without boxcover pay nor agent fees, worse it’s not how the footage was made, what’s presented is a knock-off bootleg version of the worse smut imaginable, no scripting, no value, just smut. Where are the laws America? Why doesn’t anyone stand up and say it’s wrong, it’s inhumane! There are laws, but everyone turns a blind eye, and why… because if laptops and technology are to be sold, being porn is the main search of men, they allow it to happen and remain in their search engines while locating their main facilities abroad to avoid US taxes, so they can make more sales and be invisible behind ficticious names that are virtually immune to US regulations, just another form of GREED, and whose campaign funds are funded by it if anyone can donate online? Let’s hope whoever America picks for there next candidate, will be willing to see that it is wrong, what’s been going on. It doesn’t help that mainstream networks glamorize the unregulated internet, while not realizing the damages caused by it, that it’s not cool to be unregulated, instead it’s very damaging to many individuals. Caring starts at the bottom of the chain, and when something this horrible is allowed, the effects trickle up to every level in one form or another, and by then, it’s a mess. I’m so sick of hearing, “that’s Kimi Gee,” and other very annoying comments, when I haven’t even been doing porn the past 14 years, and it’s only because of the 400 smut streaming footage splattered online that I did not do, it’s disgusting that the government did not put a stop to the smut in the first place. If the 100s of 1000s of smut streaming footages are removed, what is the internet left with? A BETTER QUALITY OF LIFE! Men will still look up porn, but at least they’d be looking up what they’re supposed to, not disgusting bootleg remakes that causes violent behavior and the disrespectful treatment of women in an abusive manner. There’s a reason why many countries have simply decided to block porn completely, because most of it is SMUT, and it’s very damaging to the economical and psychological state of any nation!! I have one question for America, why allow it to continue that way? It simply isn’t right, AND the only way it will change is if it is PUBLIC POLICY, so either the PUBLIC as a whole stands up and says it’s WRONG, or this endless torture will NEVER STOP! If nothing else America, keep in mind all the smut online is pointing straight to America… which makes America look bad, think of that when you’re trying to generate funds in an already suffering economy, if you don’t care enough to fix the problem, why should funding sources care about you? It’s already happened where everyone in public positions would have to wonder if they were even getting another paycheck, if America was on the verge of bankruptcy, well, if the 100s of billions of smut was so great to the economy… WHY IS THE ECONOMY SUFFERING ANYHOW? DID YOU REALLY BENEFIT FROM LETTING IT OCCUR? If you didn’t stand up to it and make an effort to but a stop to it, you let it occur! And why should it even be your problem… the catch 22 of the laws state that it must be “PUBLIC POLICY” in order to enforce change upon the matter of SMUT! I’m sure all the smut producers, many being foreign and preying off of US-made footage, including the out-sourcing company that bragged how it makes millions while out-sourcing the worse editting of footage to some foreign worker for $5 pay a day to make smut while no one even considers that the reason no one edits it that way here is because it makes America look bad, of course the performers did not agree to it, it’s dated fraudulently, and it’s simply wrong… all these sitting back drenched in there billions of dollars laughing at America while the economy suffers, laughing in the darkest glooms of your economical destruction because you all never even bothered to do anything about it. You can still change what’s been going on! The first step is public awareness. I’ve taken the time to put this out so you know. I won’t tell you what films, because I’m not going to have a bunch of petafiles using the links to purchase those. Just know, all films dated year 1999 until present date were either derived from child pornography or films from year 1997, listed mostly by production companies other than that Kimi Gee had worked for, have been sliced-and-diced in a horribly unbecoming manner that is very damaging. Please people, how could it NOT be damaging? Really? Now, please take the time to write your congressmen, consumer affairs divisions, business licensing to ask why it’s allowed, the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI, the Labor Department, advocates, and anyone you can think of… to let them know that you don’t agree the smut should be there. I’ve already wrote to them! Nothing will be done, until enough individuals step up and says it’s wrong! Having a contract with a performer to pay a performer for a film, plus extra if going on boxcover, plus separate contract if using a biography to promote A PARTICULAR FILM only, means: The contract is for the original film and compilations from it, promotional material for that film, boxcover only if paid for it originally, and nothing more, especially since performer’s agent only got a fee for that scene of that film and no other films. You want to put out another new release with a new production date of NOW? Be prepared to pay for that film, plus the boxcover, plus damages for your lies about when the footage was produced and recreating the footage in an unexceptable manner without script in the worse possible manner in all of existance. Law enforcement could care less, the public could care less or maybe you do care and if so write your politicians and enforcers, the Feds could care less, the US government could care less until enough of the public reacts in the matter, hundreds of lawyers who have already been faxed could care less unless I stick a huge paycheck in front of them and it would still not get anywhere… but the porn industry and retailers will HAVE TO PAY FOR LABOR AND DAMAGES… for those 400 films and any others exploited all over the internet on millions of webpages. This unregulated activity of bootleg smut MUST BE PAID FOR!! The system has failed, but that doesn’t mean there is not a solution. There is always a solution! Stand up to it America and Australia, and take back your dignity!
LOLWAT?!