My first visit to this group was last night serving on a jury for a post on a Tosh thread.

[proverbialwisdom]

11. Doing some independent reading is a good idea, eg. PORNLAND by academic Gail Dines.

Last edited Sun Aug 5, 2012, 08:11 PM - Edit history (2)

Only the author would be expected to agree with every word, naturally, but SELECTED FACTUAL PARTS are excruciatingly informative. By the way, she's not even close to being a RW fundie according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Dines .


Incidentally, extreme porn is illegal in the UK. Dines describes and questions the parameters of legal in the US.

http://calebposner.com/tag/max-hardcore/

Sections 62 through 67 of the 2008 Criminal Justice Act (UK) makes it a punishable offense, for which one may receive three years in prison, to possess pornography that meets the outlined definition of extreme. Legally, pornography is regard as extreme if any action depicted therein “(can) threaten a person’s life, results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to..."

It turns out however that as many as 9.5 million UK residents could be guilty of violating this law, or so claims Backlash (the chief opponent of this law)... But in the age of the internet, there exists an ample online supply of such material courtesy of Brazil, Japan, the United States, and a great multitude of European nations...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-dines/adventures-in-pornland_b_636381.html

...Using interviews with hundreds of college-age students, Pornland takes a close look at what it means for young women and men to grow up in such a culture and how it shapes their identities, sexualities, and ideas about intimacy, relationships, and connection.

"One problem I knew I had to deal with as I was writing the book was the inevitable accusation that, because I am anti-porn, I must be an anti-sex prude who is out to police people's sex lives. To criticize porn today is to be seen as criticizing sex, because--thanks to the porn PR machine--porn has now become synonymous with sex.

The way I address this in the book is to ask the reader what would happen if this book were a critique of McDonald's for its exploitive labor practices, its destruction of the environment, and its impact on our diet and health. Would I be accused of being anti-eating or anti-food? I suspect that most readers would understand that the critique was focused on the large-scale impact of the fast-food industry and not the human need, experience, and joy of eating. So I say in the preface that this book should be read as a critique of the industrialization and commodification of sex by corporate predators, and not as an attack on sex itself.

It is this industrial setting that often gets ignored in the heated debates over porn..."

More reviews: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=pornland+gail+dines&pbx=1&oq=pornland+gail+dines&aq=f&aqi=&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1421l4577l0l5087l19l16l0l0l0l0l543l3918l0.1.8.1.2.1l14l0&fp=1&biw=1311&bih=526&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&cad=b

Repost from: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2118184#2124639

Recent news: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/ira-isaacs-guilty-obscenity.html

The WSJ and NYT have recently hyped a pair of books People Who Eat Darkness (nonfiction) and What Comes Next (fiction). I'd add The Whistleblower (nonfiction) by Kathryn Bolkovac. What do the plots have in common? Making movies/streaming video, illegally, since the sexual violence is real and motivated by psychopathy or money. Very sobering, very thought provoking.

http://magazine.columbia.edu/features/fall-2011/long-night

COVER STORY: The Long Night

Tackling the scourge of sex trafficking, from the big screen to the big street

by Paul Hond
Published Fall 2011

With her debut feature, The Whistleblower, director Larysa Kondracki '01GS has sparked a worldwide discussion on human trafficking.

DVD (fictionalized account): http://video.barnesandnoble.com/DVD/The-Whistleblower/Rachel-Weisz/e/24543780502
BOOK (nonfiction, hardcover currently $3.59): http://www.amazon.com/Whistleblower-Trafficking-Military-Contractors-Justice/dp/0230108024/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1326057550&sr=8-5