The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure (10 page)

The “domino theory” of the passions is invoked here along with a search for increasing levels of stimulation that leads inevitably toward more misogynous and damaging material.
⁴⁶
Pornography programs men’s sexual instincts and can have only one possible trajectory—to ever more encounters with sexually explicit imagery and toward more and more “extreme” material. Men’s sexuality is figured as totally plastic, intrinsically so—a barely constrained appetite that has to be civilized and ought to be kept away from the inflammatory influence of sexual media for its own good. Dines notes that the “addicted young men I speak to do indeed end up in serious trouble. They neglect their school work, spend huge amounts of money they don’t have, become isolated from others, and often suffer depression. They know something is wrong, feel out of control, and don’t know how to stop. Some of the most troubling stories I hear are from men who have become so desensitised that they have started using harder porn and end up masturbating to images that had previously disgusted them. Many of these men are deeply ashamed and frightened, as they don’t know where all this will end.”
⁴⁷

Fortunately, the antiporn “analysis” is able to save them:

For the men [being upset by the slide show], it’s not (usually) that they haven’t seen these kinds of images before, but that they are being cued to see them differently. Often, what disturbs them most is that similar images haven’t disturbed them in the past. They realise that they’ve been manipulated in the service of the industry’s profits and their involvement with pornography has kept them from developing an authentic sexuality in accordance with their own values.
⁴⁸

This enlightenment—realizing “they’ve been manipulated in the service of profits”—is reinforced by the rising popularity of stories of porn addiction elsewhere. Michael Leahy describes porn as America’s number one addiction, while Christian singer Clay Crosse confesses to being tempted and “battling with lust fuelled by pornography,” a problem he apparently shares with more than 50 percent of US churchgoers.
⁴⁹
Across the Internet—the space that is supposed to have been colonized by porn—tales of terrible struggles against porn’s influence are rolled out. They are indeed compelling stories, and are now being backed up with all the authority of the latest “scientific” research that claims the pleasure centers of the brain are rewired from watching “too much” porn.

And as these narratives of pain, destruction of relationships, failures
of penile function, and compulsive self-abuse unfold, they also offer a powerful possibility of redemption, renewal, and rebirth. Many porn addiction confessions are attached to recommended interventions: the quiz to determine if your use is obsessive, the Net Nanny, the six-month detox, and if all else fails, “keylogger software that will track every move you make on the Internet” and “accountability software that will . . . also send a weekly report to your ‘accountability partner’ to keep them up to speed on the sites you’re visiting.” Men can be reassured they’re not alone, “. . . with a combination of therapy, Internet filters, affirmations, accountability, and research it [porn addiction] can be overcome.”
⁵⁰

The view that underpins this approach can be usefully compared to the “crystal clear set of guidelines” about sex, set out in evangelical Christian and other conservative antiporn campaigns: “sexual pleasure is for men and women to enjoy inside marriage,” but those who fall from grace and are willing to repent can be forgiven.
⁵¹
Under the guise of a politics based on gender equality, antiporn feminist writings are increasingly modeled on this religious approach to porn, though using a medical model of “healthy sex” and discourses that encourage men to see themselves as addicts, or the victims of “grooming” by pornographers or popular culture, as “abused,” “consumed,” and desensitized. These allow us to imagine male porn consumers as the “target for ruthless commercial exploitation,” as harmed and suffering, but able to pursue “healing, connection and moral regeneration.”
⁵²

Antiporn feminism has proved incredibly resistant to the academic practices of theory and evidence, preferring to counter opposition with appeals to emotional truths. More than ever it relies on “testimony,” though whose testimony counts is still a problem—those who testify to porn’s pleasures or sense of liberation don’t count in the same way as those who present themselves as addicts, victims, or rescuers. It is perhaps unsurprising that this position has become so loudly voiced and in such a manner in the current political climate. It is, as Lynne Segal noted in 1998, a “winning ticket” in conservative times, not least because it offers both women and men the prospect of “easy identifications, the pleasures of the familiar repackaged as radical, the comforts of conservatism, and the dismissal of past feminist victories and any serious possibilities for change.”
⁵³
The use of testimony, alongside the thrilling attractions of the antiporn slide show, comprises a key mode of expression in the telling of sexual stories for contemporary antiporn feminism. These are spun out in narratives that, although heavily dependent upon a narrow and scripted evidence base, have become reified as the authentic voice of truth and feeling. Rhetoric rather than reason is
the preferred mode of debate, similar in style to the testimonies used in Christian religious revivals, though couched in the language of health. It is a type of speech that fits with a particular form of knowing, one rooted in the bones and a kind of common sense that does not need theory or evidence to support it.

Notes

1
. Chris Boulton, “Porn and Me(n): Sexual Morality, Objectification, and Religion at the Wheelock Anti-Pornography Conference,”
The Communication Review
11, no. 3 (2008): 249–50.

2
.
Pornnation.org
,
Object.org.uk
.

3
. Shelley Lubben,
Truth Behind the Fantasy of Porn: The Greatest Illusion on Earth
(CreateSpace, 2010);
shelleylubben.com
.

4
. “It’s Easy Out Here for a Pimp: How a Porn Culture Grooms Kids for Sexual Exploitation,” slide show, Stop Porn Culture, accessed February 24, 2012,
http://stop-pornculture.org/toolkit-for-easy-out-here/
.

5
. Gail Dines, Linda Thompson, Rebecca Whisnant, with Karen Boyle, “Arresting Images: Anti-Pornography Slide Shows, Activism and the Academy,” in
Everyday Pornography,
ed. Karen Boyle (London: Routledge, 2010), 21.

6
. Dines et al., “Arresting Images,” 21–24.

7
. Andrea Dworkin,
Pornography: Men Possessing Women
(New York: Penguin, 1989).

8
. Melinda Tankard Reist, ed.,
Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls
(Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2009), 11.

9
. A Google search for this exact phrase turns up more than twelve thousand hits. Dines used it as a title for an article (2010) but it has also been widely adopted by journalists, politicians, and other cultural commentators, indicating its resonance as a call-to-arms for a generation of adults who are supposedly ignorant of the trajectory porn has taken.

10
. Gail Dines, interview,
American Morning,
CNN, July 28, 2010.

11
. Decca Aitkenhead, “Are Teenagers Hooked on Porn?”
Psychologies,
2010,
http://www.psychologies.co.uk/family/are-teenagers-hooked-on-porn/
.

12
. Stanley Cohen,
Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers,
2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 9.

13
. Simon Watney,
Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS and the Media
(London: Continuum, 1997), 43.

14
. Watney,
Policing Desire,
41.

15
. Ibid., 42.

16
. Ibid., 42.

17
. Carole S. Vance, ed.,
Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality
(Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984).

18
. Janice Irvine, “Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotions,” in
Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights,
ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 234.

19
. Watney,
Policing Desire,
43.

20
. Irvine 2009, “Transient Feelings,” 253.

21
. Ibid., “Transient Feelings,” 235.

22
. Ibid., “Transient Feelings,” 243.

23
. Ibid., “Transient Feelings,” 244.

24
. Janice Irvine, “Emotional Scripts of Sex Panic,”
Sexuality Research and Social Policy
3, no. 3 (2006): 86.

25
. Emine Saner, “Can Sex Films Empower Women?”
The Guardian,
March 4, 2011,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/05/conversation-gail-dines-anna-arrowsmith
.

26
. Eithne Johnson, “Appearing Live on Your Campus!: Porn-education Roadshows,”
Jump Cut
41 (1997): 27–35,
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC41folder/PornEdRoadshows.html
.

27
. Lynne Segal, “Only the Literal: The Contradictions of Anti-Pornography Feminism,”
Sexualities
1, no. 1 (1998): 44, 56.

28
. Dines et al., “Arresting Images,” 29.

29
. Ibid., 17, 18, 23, 24, 17, 29.

30
. Karen Boyle, ed.,
Everyday Pornography
(London: Routledge, 2010), 30.

31
. Boyle,
Everyday Pornography,
30, 27.

32
. Reist,
Getting Real,
20.

33
. Clive Hamilton, “Good is the New Bad: Rethinking Sexual Freedom,” in
Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls,
ed. Melinda Tankard Reist (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2009), 95.

34
. Abigail Bray, “Governing the Gaze: Child Sexual Abuse Moral Panics and the Post-Feminist Blindspot,”
Feminist Media Studies
9, no. 2 (2009): 184.

35
. Bray, “Governing the Gaze,” 185.

36
. Ibid., 181.

37
. Dines et al., “Arresting Images,” 31.

38
. Gail Dines,
Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), x, xxiv, xi.

39
Wendy Malz and Larry Malz,
The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide To Overcoming Problems Caused By Porn
(New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

40
. Jensen in Boulton, “Porn and Me(n),” 257.

41
. Anthony Giddens,
The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies
(Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1993).

42
. Dines et al., “Arresting Images,” 17–33.

43
. “The Full Interview with Robert Jensen,” by F*Bomb,
UWeekly Austin,
April 6, 2011,
http://uweeklyaustin.com/blogs/f-bomb/posts/the-full-interview-with-robert-jensen-116/
.

44
. Dines et al., “Arresting Images,” 24.

45
. Ibid., 31.

46
. Mariana Valverde,
Sex, Power and Pleasure
(Toronto: Women’s Press, 1985), 150.

47
. Gail Dines, “How The Hardcore Porn Industry Is Ruining Young Men’s Lives,”
The Sydney Morning Herald,
May 18, 2011,
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/how-the-hardcore-porn-industry-is-ruining-young-mens-lives-20110517-1erac.html#ixzz1b4dlVQCm
.