STOP PORN CULTURE is a group fighting against the harms of pornography. It was started by Gail Dines, PhD., Robert Jensen, PhD., and Rebecca Whisnant, PhD. Stop Porn Culture has been (and is being) greatly assisted by a number of other people, such as ICASA, (The Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault), and the very hard-working and dedicated Lierre Keith.
We encourage all anti-porn activists to attend one of Stop Porn Culture’s slideshow training sessions. The next one will take place at the University of Texas in Austin, January 25-27, 2008. It will start at 5PM on Friday and finish up at noon on Sunday. A $50 donation is requested to cover administrative costs, but this can waived for those who need it. Limited scholarships for travel and expenses are available.
Come and get the experience, knowledge, and confidence to talk publicly against pornography in your community. The training will include in-depth presentations on such topics as:
We encourage all anti-porn activists to attend one of Stop Porn Culture’s slideshow training sessions. The next one will take place at the University of Texas in Austin, January 25-27, 2008. It will start at 5PM on Friday and finish up at noon on Sunday. A $50 donation is requested to cover administrative costs, but this can waived for those who need it. Limited scholarships for travel and expenses are available.
Come and get the experience, knowledge, and confidence to talk publicly against pornography in your community. The training will include in-depth presentations on such topics as:
- Background on the economic industry that is pornography
- First Amendment and other free speech issues
- Women in the industry
- The question of “alternate” images
There will be a long session of practicing Q&As in small groups. The training will end with a session on self-care for presenters and activists since, as many of you know, this work can be grueling.
For lodging options, the cheapest and closest hotel is Rodeway Inn at 512-477-6395. It’s $60 a night, and a 20-minute walk to the training location. Free lodging in the community may also be available–please indicate if you need this.
The slideshow is our first line of offense in the battle we must wage to reclaim this culture from the misogyny, racism and brute power of the pornographers. Come join us in our struggle for a violence-free world.
For more information, or to obtain a copy of the slideshow, please email stoppornculture@gmail.com. For a registration form, please click here. Feel free to post this announcement anywhere.
See also:
Stop Porn Culture MySpace Page
Recommends anti-porn books, websites and presentations.
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
In pornography, women are
“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…
“I say this to men over and over again. You might not go to pornography hating women, but you’re sure as hell going to come away with that feeling. You get much more than you bargained for with pornography, and that’s the problem with it. The other problem with pornography is it sexualizes the violence and degradation against women. And when you sexualize violence you render that violence invisible, because when men see that they can’t step back and critique it… You are basically trying to have a rational conversation with an erection and it doesn’t work.”
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…
…[W]hen you put some activity into the marketplace—that is, you decide to sell it instead of just doing it—does that make you more or less free in doing it? For instance, suppose you like to make music. Up until now it’s been a hobby, something you do in your spare time, but now you’ve decided that you want to get signed with a major label. All of a sudden you’re not free to make any old kind of music you want, are you? Now it’s “What do they think they can sell? What’s in vogue this week, and are you it, and if not, can they make you into it?”
…We need to find ways to challenge the naïve and regressive conceptions of freedom as the freedom to enter the marketplace and/or to choose among the options that the marketplace offers us. We need to suggest to people that—in many everyday contexts, but perhaps especially for the most intimate and potentially-creative activities of our lives, like sex and sexuality—real freedom in that activity means neither selling it nor letting somebody with a profit motive tell us what it is supposed to look and feel like.
What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn (explicit language)
[Robert Jensen:] Sex…has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn’t, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn’t work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.
That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty.
Robert Jensen: When Examining Complex Social Phenomena, Scientific Method Has Limits; Listen to the Stories of the Victims (explicit language)
These are excerpts from the narratives of women who have been hurt by pornography. To acknowledge and believe them does not mean we have to pretend there aren’t women who see pornography as a positive force in their lives (McElroy, 1995). To point out that some women have pornography forced on them is not to argue that no woman ever choose to look at pornography. There is no need to pretend the women speak with one voice. We desperately need, however, to listen to these women, to acknowledge that their experiences are real, to acknowledge that they are real, and that they matter. (p.119)
For lodging options, the cheapest and closest hotel is Rodeway Inn at 512-477-6395. It’s $60 a night, and a 20-minute walk to the training location. Free lodging in the community may also be available–please indicate if you need this.
The slideshow is our first line of offense in the battle we must wage to reclaim this culture from the misogyny, racism and brute power of the pornographers. Come join us in our struggle for a violence-free world.
For more information, or to obtain a copy of the slideshow, please email stoppornculture@gmail.com. For a registration form, please click here. Feel free to post this announcement anywhere.
See also:
Stop Porn Culture MySpace Page
Recommends anti-porn books, websites and presentations.
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
In pornography, women are
- cum dumpsters
- fucktubes
- slut sandwiches
- m.i.l.f.’s
- wet cunts
- fresh teen ass
- horny old broads
- hot slits
- slanteyed sluts
- naughty schoolgirls
- tight pink pussies
- stupid hoes
- naughty nymphos
- big booty ghetto girls
- drunk bar sluts
- cameltoes
- pathetic bitches
- little hoochies
- squirting skanks
- kung pao pussies
“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…
“I say this to men over and over again. You might not go to pornography hating women, but you’re sure as hell going to come away with that feeling. You get much more than you bargained for with pornography, and that’s the problem with it. The other problem with pornography is it sexualizes the violence and degradation against women. And when you sexualize violence you render that violence invisible, because when men see that they can’t step back and critique it… You are basically trying to have a rational conversation with an erection and it doesn’t work.”
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…
…[W]hen you put some activity into the marketplace—that is, you decide to sell it instead of just doing it—does that make you more or less free in doing it? For instance, suppose you like to make music. Up until now it’s been a hobby, something you do in your spare time, but now you’ve decided that you want to get signed with a major label. All of a sudden you’re not free to make any old kind of music you want, are you? Now it’s “What do they think they can sell? What’s in vogue this week, and are you it, and if not, can they make you into it?”
…We need to find ways to challenge the naïve and regressive conceptions of freedom as the freedom to enter the marketplace and/or to choose among the options that the marketplace offers us. We need to suggest to people that—in many everyday contexts, but perhaps especially for the most intimate and potentially-creative activities of our lives, like sex and sexuality—real freedom in that activity means neither selling it nor letting somebody with a profit motive tell us what it is supposed to look and feel like.
What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn (explicit language)
[Robert Jensen:] Sex…has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn’t, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn’t work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.
That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty.
Robert Jensen: When Examining Complex Social Phenomena, Scientific Method Has Limits; Listen to the Stories of the Victims (explicit language)
These are excerpts from the narratives of women who have been hurt by pornography. To acknowledge and believe them does not mean we have to pretend there aren’t women who see pornography as a positive force in their lives (McElroy, 1995). To point out that some women have pornography forced on them is not to argue that no woman ever choose to look at pornography. There is no need to pretend the women speak with one voice. We desperately need, however, to listen to these women, to acknowledge that their experiences are real, to acknowledge that they are real, and that they matter. (p.119)