Stop Porn Culture and Wheelock College Announce a Summer Institute, July 8-11, Boston, MA

We are pleased to publicize the following announcement from Stop Porn Culture:

Media Madness: The Impact of Sex, Violence and Commercial Culture on Adults, Children and Society
A Summer Institute for Educators, Students, Human Service Professionals, Activists and Parents
July 8-11, 2008, Wheelock College, Boston

For the 14th consecutive year, Wheelock College is offering a very popular summer institute on the role that the media (television, magazines, advertising, pornography, video games and music videos) plays in shaping our gender identity, our intimate relationships, our children’s lives, and ultimately our culture. The institute is taught by Dr. Gail Dines, author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, and Dr. Diane Levin, author of the forthcoming So Sexy So Soon. Participants in both tracks will learn:


  • How media violence affects behavior and contributes to violence in society

  • How media images perpetuate and legitimize sexism, racism, consumerism and economic inequality

  • How political and economic forces shape the media

  • How media affects children’s ideas about sexual behavior and relationships with others

  • How to critically deconstruct media images and develop media literacy skills

  • How to become active in advocacy, community building and grass roots organizing
As a way to accommodate the needs of the participants, this year two days of the institute will be split into the following tracks:

  1. Fighting the porn culture: how to think about and organize against the increasing pornification of our society. Led by Dr. Gail Dines with guest lectures by Dr. Rebecca Whisnant, Lierre Keith and Matt Ezell, founding members of Stop Porn Culture.

  2. Combating the hazards of media culture with children, families and the community. Led by Dr. Diane Levin, author of the forthcoming book, So Sexy so Soon.
Credit Hours
The institute is available as a 3-credit graduate course or a non-credit course. Scholarships are available. Housing is available on the Wheelock campus. For more information, please contact Gail Dines at gdines@wheelock.edu (write July Institute in the subject line).


See also:

Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
“Now, I’ve been on television shows with many pornographers, and they have the absolute chutzpah to turn around and say to me, ‘But we love women. This is a celebration of women.’ Well I have to tell you, if you think calling a woman a ‘cumbucket’ is your sign of love, sorry… These men hate women…

“I do not believe that men go to look at pornography because they hate women. I think for most males in our culture, and remember the average age of downloading your first porn is now 11 to 12… I don’t think that these 11 to 12 year-olds hate women. Their hormones are going crazy, they live in a hypersexualized culture…what passes for sex education is pathetic, so where are you going to go? You’re going to go to pornography…

Rebecca Whisnant: “Not Your Father’s Playboy, Not Your Mother’s Feminist Movement” (explicit language)
…Structurally speaking, as a person facing oppression of whatever kind, one has two choices. One can resist the oppression—in general, or in any particular instance—in which case one is likely to get viciously slapped down. Alternatively, one can obey, that is, act in ways that please the oppressors, perhaps in hopes of gaining some limited reward (or at least of avoiding the oppressive system’s very worst consequences). As you may have noticed, neither option is altogether attractive…

…[T]he essential feminist question is not whether some individual women like or choose or benefit in certain ways from X, but whether the overall effect of X is to keep women as a group subordinate to men.

Feminism is about ending the subordination of women. Expanding women’s freedom of choice on a variety of fronts is an important part of that, but it is not the whole story. In fact, any meaningful liberation movement involves not only claiming the right to make choices, but also holding oneself accountable for the effects of those choices on oneself and on others…

Our reviews of essays in Not For Sale, including A Review of Rebecca Whisnant, “Confronting pornography: Some conceptual basics”
We’d like to think that porn is different from, and not as bad as, prostitution, but both are paid sex acts, often performed under the same conditions of inequality. “[M]any men who would regard patronizing a prostitute as beneath them see nothing wrong, pathetic or shameful in their use of pornography.” (p.19) While prostitution is illegal, porn is legal and even protected by the Constitution. Whisnant says this is a false distinction. “Pornography is the documentation of prostitution. It is a technologized form of prostitution–prostitution at one remove…”

“Men: don’t use pornography. Throw it away and start dreaming your own dreams.” (p.25) Women: demand that your intimate relationships be porn-free. How long would the industry last if women said they wouldn’t date, have sex with, or marry men who used porn? Imagine a sexual life that springs from your own individuality and personality, not one that’s controlled by loveless mass-produced fantasies. (p.26)

Herbert, Brooks and Osayande on Misogyny, Money and Power; Amazing.net’s War on Women and Blacks (explicit)
[Now on sale at Amazing.net/Goflix.com:]
New Blood
Hold on tight and smile Bitch! The only difference between a filthy cunt whore on the street and a porn star is the camera.

Porn Director: The Idea that Porn Actresses Are Not Prostitutes Is Silly (explicit language)
See, some Porn Whores don’t do privates cause they “are not” a whore. To these Silly Rabbits, they’re “actresses” who have sex on tape as part of their job. They reject the idea that they’re a whore, which means they’ll never do a private, to which I say, More Power To Ya, Whore!