Yet Dines is very clear: there is nothing at all liberating about pornography. She notes that when giving public lectures on the effects of porn, she is faced every kind of insult: “they range from uptight, prude to uncool, old-time, man-hating sex policing feminist – the type of feminist who supposedly screams rape every time a woman and man have sex, the kind of feminist who has been derisively labelled ‘victim feminist’ because she supposedly sees all women as sexual victims”. It is her attempt to bring to public consciousness a problem that she argues is nothing less than a public health issue.Īnd Dines’ argument has not gone without criticism.

Yet her well-evidenced critique of the industry and porn consumption are a testament to the overabundance of negative effects on women’s and men’s sexuality, relationships and culture. She is open about the fact that we do not know for sure the consequences of saturating our culture with porn. In Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gale Dines disputes the widely held assumption that the mass distribution and use of pornography is a morally neutral cultural phenomenon. Hard-core pornography is what keeps producers’ bank balances booming and their patrons engaged. Understandably, the porn industry has had to adapt also – porn, as a “genre”, is now characterised by sadism and outright abuse of women. Nowadays, most of the soft-porn used by Playboy magazine in its embryonic years, can be easily accessed with a mere flick of the television remote no longer is it considered risqué to plaster half naked women on billboards, in magazines, or on prime time television.

It is hard to believe that a mere fifty years ago Hefner had to fight for this sort of publicity. With countless naïve consumers doing the same thing as my friend, Hugh Hefner is laughing all the way to his Playboy mansion. Without much thought, she had supported the porn industry via her purchasing power and by the fact that she was willing to be a walking advertisement for the porn world’s top brand. After a mild interrogation, my friend revealed that it was not the only piece of playboy apparel she owned a pencil case, t-shirt, and earrings were among her prized Playboy possessions.

I will always remember the day I jumped into my friend’s car, only to realise that I was about to sit on a seat plastered with that insidious little rabbit.

The Playboy bunny is the symbol, par excellence, of how the porn industry has co-opted mainstream culture.

Pornland by gail dines