#003 FiLiA meets: Gail Dines - Culture Reframed
Gail recently presented in London providing insight, information, solutions, and a passion for building a healthy generation of kids.
'Culture Reframed responds to the pornography crisis by providing education and support to promote healthy child and youth development, relationships, and sexuality.
Our research-driven programs teach parents and helping professionals how to recognize and respond to the role pornography can play in sexual violence, unhealthy relationships, internet addiction, negative self-image, sexual dysfunction, depression, sexually transmitted infections, injuries, and other health problems.
We aim to empower participants to create positive and lasting change in families and communities harmed by the sexually abusive and hyper-sexualized media that marks the digital age.'
Transcript:
S: So, hi this is Shabana and this is a FiLiA podcast, really excited to be sat here with Dr. Gail Dines who’s professor of sociology and women's Studies in Boston. Gail has just spent the whole day with us talking about porn and its impact on society us. You must be absolutely knackered but I'm so glad to having this conversation.
G: Knackered is absolutely right
S: I’ll make sure we don’t keep you for too long. I wonder if I can drive right in actually. You mentioned that you feel that porn is hijacking our sexuality, what does that mean?
G: Well, it basically means that, you know, sex or sexual desire is something that people own, it's natural, it's very natural, it's normal to have different desires to go through a developmental stage when you get interested sexually, whether you're gay, straight, whatever. And what's happened is that the porn industry has come along, taken that very critical developmental stage, which is often around early adolescence, and has hijacked it in the way they were offering, instead of, you know, a creative experimental sex that peers on peers can do, and find out what they like sexually, in comes the porn industry with misogynist, you know, hateful, violent imagery and teaches boys that this is what it means to be male. This is normative sexuality and patriarchy. This violence against women, they love it. She wants it. And the hijack is that then these boys do not get to develop their own authentic sexuality, and then they go and play this out on girls. So basically you've laid waste to the boys and you've laid waste to the girls because if you do that to the boys the girls are gonna pay, in the long run.
S: So sometimes people think that porn is something very separate, you have to really seek it out, it doesn’t affect the everyday person, if I'm not watching porn, I’m not affected by it. But you speak about the sexualisation of women, and how that’s an extension of porn. What do you mean by that, how does that work?
G: Well, we say we live in a porn culture. So first of all, porn is everywhere, you cannot go on the internet, without it either being passively delivered to you, we know that the average boy of around 11 or 12 often gets it passively delivered via YouTube, Instagram, whatever platform they're on. And also that the images and the narratives and the stories of porn seep into our everyday culture. So the idea that women are disposable fuck objects, the idea that to be masculine in this culture is to be predatory, all of these ideologies are really, porn didn’t invent them, they were out there, what porn did, is it really delivers to men a very clean, crisp succinct and unambiguous version of those ideologies and really, boys and girls, especially girls, have to figure out a way to survive in a culture where you have an industry that's built on violence against women.
S: One of the things that had the most impact on me when I heard you speak, was the dichotomy between the infuckable and the invisible being the two options for young women. What’s the pressure on young women to be fuckable, and what’s the challenges of choosing to be invisible, is there a choice, there and if there is, how do young girls feel about that?
G: In my experience of lecturing to, you know, thousands of young girls, they don't really get, until you actually put it in that way, and I hear a gasp in the audience where I say fuckable or invisible because they suddenly realize that is something they have been forced into without really getting the sort of trajectory of their lives. You'll often hear young women say, you know, I wear heels and thongs and lots of makeup because well I feel good in it. When you really bring it down to, well what choice do you have because if you don't conform, you're going through invisibility. And of course we know that adolescents really need to be visible it’s part of what adolescence is about. So most girls I'm finding increasingly do conform because there's nothing else on offer. When I was growing up, there was many images of what it meant to be a woman. And one of them that, you know, thank the goddess for feminism, was to be powerful and strong. And that's not really out there anymore today. So I think, when I meet girls who are .. choose invisibility, they do, I mean they say I chose invisibility I didn’t want fuckability, but I have to tell you, I'm lonely, I’m isolated, I have no friends. I can't choose the fuckable one, because that's not who I am and that's not who I’ve become, but this is not much fun either, being invisible, and certainly, you know, when you have young woman dressing up these low cut tops, pierced belly button, the mesh that’s now. It's very interesting whenever I go into high schools and talk about what does the fuckable look like, I’m often one season behind, they have to all correct me, you know, given that they're younger than I am. And then they really get talking, they feel exploited, they feel manipulated, but it's never been put to them quite so succinctly as these are the choices you’ve been given. And actually if you’ve only been given two choices, then neither one is actually a choice, I mean, is it? I mean you've been forced into it. And I think the mantra of third wave feminism, of choice, choice choice, makes no sense when you really see how this culture works.
S: I remember I went out one night and I saw a man with a T shirt which had a woman who was clearly being objectified. And I got annoyed and I said what’s that shit on your T shirt? And I was really taken by his response he said no, no, she has power. And I think that’s picking up on your previous point, there’s this idea that women, quote, unquote, own their sexuality, or are owning being a sexual object, there’s power associated to that. And my response was, how many beautiful women there are in the world, so obviously, when you talk about power in it’s truest sense that's not what it looks like. But what do you say to the very many women especially quite recent and it’s quite topical, who are part of that industry, whether it's porn or whether it's just the sexualization of women who say we want to do this and actually by stopping us from doing it, as was the case with the women who were being paraded around sports cars, etc. You're taking away our right to work.
G: Well the first thing I would say is that I probably would not speak to many women who were in the industry at that moment, because you have to survive in that industry. And I don't think I’d survive two minutes in the sex industry, so certainly, I would not go in and lecture any woman in the sex industry, you know, she does what she does to survive. She has two suits in the porn industry, deal with an assault on the body. Every day, if she's being prostituted, you know, she has to deal with that, every minute of every day. So first of all, I tend to work mainly with women who are out of the industry and then who can reflect on it. I would say it's a valid point for women to say you're taking away how I earn a living, but really you shouldn't be blaming me, we should be blaming the capitalist system that says that the only way that women can earn a living, is if you objectify yourself or if you see yourself as fuckable. That is ridiculous. It's like saying to poor people it's your fault that capitalism exploits you, no, you know, we need to have different economic system where everybody, not just women, but everybody has a right to earn a decent liveable wage, to a job that brings a sense of integrity, a sense of connection to the world that you live in, a meaningful life. But what is capitalism? Capitalism, basically is based on the exploitation of labour in most people doing shit work, for the 1% who get rich on it. That's not capitalism in a nutshell.
S: So, going back to porn, I'm sure you are often accused of being anti sex, when you speak about being anti porn, what's the difference?
G: I would say, I am pro sex and that's why I'm anti porn, they've got it the wrong way around. I don't think you can be pro sex and pro porn. You have to make a decision, because the most anti sex imagery I've ever seen is in pornography. The pornographers actually are not turned on by sex or turned on by money they've got the wrong thing going here. So I think if you're pro sex, you have to be anti porn I don't see how you can possibly be pro sex and pro porn at the same time. Porn, really, is to sex or McDonald's is to food, you know, it's kind of a stripping down of a natural desire into something that you can monetise and commodify. Now, if I was out speaking about the effects of the fast food industry and obesity and the environmental destruction nobody would accuse me of being anti eating, right? They would accuse me being anti the industry. So it's a pretty ludicrous argument that somehow if you're against the commodification and monetisation of women's bodies you are against sex it is just two separate completely different things. It's just testimony to the brilliance of the porn industry’s PR, well oiled machine, that they have collapsed porn into sex, yeah.
S: When I first came across Pornland and I read your chapter about representation of women of colour in the porn industry, that was the first time I actually read a white woman talk about something and I was like yes, absolutely, so thank you for that! And I sort of picked up on this during the conference earlier, but I want to return to it because I think it's a really important point, women of colour are often not spoken about enough in these spaces but our bodies are often sort of battlegrounds for each other from each other in these conversations.
G: Exactly
S: And I wanted to sort of speak to you about, what was your, what did your research tell you about women of colour and the role that they play within porn or what is done to them, but also interestingly, what's happening now around the link between politics and porn so for example now you have women in hijabs in porn. And there's something really interesting happening there I can’t quite put my finger on it.
G: I think that's for the porn industry, finding a niche market. I wouldn't think there's anything cultural. You see the porn industry, they’re businessmen, if they can find a niche market to exploit, they will. So this is clearly a niche market that they found, so I wouldn't think this is an organic desire by women to be making pornography like that now. I think what's interesting about pornography and race, is that your pornography is based on the debasement of women. And we live in a sexist, racist society. So, if she's a woman of colour, you get a two for one basically, you get to debase her because she's a woman, and you get to debase her because she's a woman of colour, what could be hotter in porno-speak than the double debasement, and what you notice about women of colour in pornography is that they seamlessly meld her debased status as a woman with her so called debased status as a woman of colour. So, there you get really hot sex, because also what you see in porn is when it's a white woman, they don't refer to her as having a white pussy or this, but as soon as a woman of colour, she's got a black pussy she's got this. They always put the race beforehand, they've racialised her body entirely. And I think you put it really well, but I think all women women's bodies are the battle grounds, on which men fight over patriarchy. I think women of colour, especially fertile battlegrounds because of the racism and the sexism, and the history of colonisation, all gets played out on the body of women of colour. And that again is why they are perfect for porn because you can debase them every which way.
S: What I liked about your talk earlier is that you outlined what the problem is, but you move more towards what we do about it. And I really want to focus on that right now what do you think is the solution going forward?
G: I don't think there's a solution. I think there's multiple solutions. Because what we're fighting here is a huge global industry. And you never fight a global industry with one solution. So, I think, regulation. Absolutely. I think legislation, you know, regulation via legislation, education, the public health approach. I think making porn not cool, like we made smoking not cool. I think we need to get adults who are charged with taking care of children which really is all adults but especially paediatricians, social workers, teachers, we need to get them on board, understanding the harms that porn is doing to the next generation. And I think most people have been asleep at the wheel over this, it is astounding to me that the porn industry has come in, had the power it's had over young people's lives, taken over the internet through they have, and still most people don't know what's going on, and it's still a shock when I speak, and I get, like when people are shocked by when I speak I think you should not be shocked. This should not be news to you, you should be, you should know all about this. And it is amazing how the porn industry always flies under the radar. What they get away with no other industry, I know, that operates above ground gets away with.
S: Bringing it back to the UK context, there's a couple of things that are happening here that I really think it’s important that I latch onto. I wanted to sort of get your thoughts on some of the things that are happening around the Age Verification Act and the Digital Economic Act. What can we do to, sort of, push that?
G: Well, I think we need to make sure that it gets passed, and it gets, not only passed, but that is enforced, because laws are meaningless unless they are enforced. So, in this case, I think there should be.. make sure that there's very heavy fines against companies that do not adhere to the age verification. I think that they should be, as it said in the Act, be dropped at the Internet provider level, and I think that we're going to need people organising, to make sure that the people who are charged with actually putting this Act into action, do what they're going to do, because what I worry about is you can have the best Act in law in the world, and unless it's being used by the correct authorities, is a useless piece of legislation. I think it's going to be very interesting, because not only is it going to have a huge impact, if it works, on the porn industry and porn .. accessibility to porn in the UK for under 18s, all of Europe is looking to see how this plays out. So I think people in the UK, especially feminists should be pushing for this and on this, because we don't want men to be in charge of this, we want feminists to be at the forefront of this, to make a statement, and then of course eventually what we want to talk about is why should men have access to the images of violence against women? I mean, at the moment we're focusing on children, and that's a start, and a foot in the door, but ultimately we have to ask the question, do we want to live in a society where any guy within five seconds can get to an image of a woman being brutalised sexually, and he gets the right to masturbate, jerk off to it. What does that say about how women are treated? How women are thought about? And what does it say about our status in the world? I think porn is an excellent measure of where women are at, as is the needs of the sex industry, which is why it needs to go away and we need to make it go away.
S: Brilliant. I'm going to end on this question, so I work around ending violence against women and girls, and we have this term called vicarious trauma, which is where you work in such a heavy subject, it's easy to sort of internalise some of that and to feel really down. But I also came across this term called vicarious resilience, which is when you're meeting with women who are incredibly strong and have overcome so many barriers that you kind of, you bounce off that strength that they have and you internalise it. You probably see some horrendous things, in terms of violence against women. What self care strategies do you have? Because I think that it’s really important that we learn to take care of ourselves as a starting point, because it’s like in the airplane videos, you’ve got to learn to …
G: Of course, put an oxygen mask on yourself
S: What's your oxygen mask?
G: Well my oxygen mask is being an activist. I think without that, I’d go crazy. It keeps you sane, is to fight, because there's nothing worse than playing being a victim, feeling victimised and doing nothing about it. Also, I say, yes, certainly, you do get trauma, but I think about all the women in this movement, who actually have been prostituted who have been in porn, and have the capacity to be activists. And I don't know how they do it. I mean, those are my heroes, that I look to, that's where I get my vicarious resilience is thinking, you know, these women have been to hell and back. They must be triggered so often by doing this work, and yet they do it. So that's where I get a lot of my strength from, is looking at these women. And ultimately, I do things I enjoy, I love yoga, I do meditation, you know, I do those things, and I have friends and family, and also there's a group of us do this anti porn work, and we have a kind of shorthand with each other when we are feeling bad, we email each other and we write “in porn hell”. So everybody knows to call you, to help you get out of “porn hell”, so to speak. So, we've built a support system like that. But, I mean, there are times when obviously it gets to you and you just can't stand it anymore and you think, oh, I remember once going into my college and some students who were working in early childhood, were drawing pictures of animals and stuff and I thought you know, and I'd just been looking at teen porn, you know, and I thought, how did I end up here? They’re doing stuff around pictures of animals to take into the schools. But you know somehow, I heard or read this somewhere that, you know, an activist is like an artist, they will wander the world until they will find their instrument, and they will know when they found it. Like if you were meant to play the piano, you will find a piano. I was meant to do this, I found it. And it just feel like my instrument, I wont say art, obviously, but it feels like, what I was meant to do, I found what I was meant to do.
S: That’s a beautiful note to end on, Dr Gail Dines, thank you so much for your time and thank you for helping us really continue our conversations, this is not going to be the end of the work, we’ve got to push it through, thank you so much.
G: Well thank you so much for what you as well, thank you, it was a pleasure.