Pornland

Tim Chester:

The Guardian newspaper has a great piece on a new book called Pomland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines (available here from amazon.com andamazon.co.uk.). Pomland reveals the devastating affect porn is having on our culture. Here are some quotes:

“We are now bringing up a generation of boys on cruel, violent porn,” she says, “and given what we know about how images affect people, this is going to have a profound influence on their sexuality, behaviour and attitudes towards women.” 

According to Dines’s research the prevalence of porn means that men are becoming desensitised to it, and are therefore seeking out ever harsher, more violent and degrading images. 

“I have found that the earlier men use porn,” says Dines, “the more likely they are to have trouble developing close, intimate relationships with real women. Some of these men prefer porn to sex with an actual human being. They are bewildered, even angry, when real women don’t want or enjoy porn sex.” 

Porn culture doesn’t only affect men. It also changes “the way women and girls think about their bodies, their sexuality and their relationships,” says Dines. 

Images have now become so extreme that acts that were almost non-existent a decade ago have become commonplace … “To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”

Read the whole article here.