I am vehemently "anti" abuse and violence across the board, but I don't understand why people are so "anti" porn [or prostitution, for that matter] or see it as "abnormal" ~ so long as sex is mutually consensual, I don't care what others choose to watch or participate in ~ Sooz

Sex studies journal editors accused of ‘normalizing porn’
By Carole Cadwalladr, The Observer
Saturday, June 15, 2013 20:27 EDT

New publication ‘will foster the normalization of porn’, say critics.

The editors of a new peer-reviewed journal into pornography studies, both senior academics at British universities, are “promoting pornography”, “ignoring” its potential harms, and are tantamount to “climate change deniers”, campaigners claimed last week.

As David Cameron called for companies to take action against sites that “pollute the internet” ahead of an emergency summit on internet pornography on Tuesday, academics and campaigners launched a furious attack on the editors of the new journal for what they see as “pro-porn bias”, which they fear “will further foster the normalization of porn”.

The journal, which announced its call for papers a month ago, and will be published by Routledge next year, marks a turning point in the academic study and treatment of pornography. It is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the subject and its editors – Feona Attwood, professor of cultural studies at Middlesex University, and Clarissa Smith, a reader in sexual cultures at Sunderland University – say it will offer a fresh cross-disciplinary approach and provide a focus for researchers working on porn.

However, a petition accusing journal of bias, and demanding that Routledge either change its editorial board or rename it “Pro-Porn Studies” has attracted 888 signatures, including from senior academics in North America and Europe, people working with the victims of sexual and domestic violence and health professionals.

Gail Dines, a British professor of sociology at Wheelock College, Boston, and the author of Pornland, said that, while it was vital that pornography was studied and research published, she had grave concerns about the editorial direction of the journal.

“These editors come from a pro-porn background where they deny the tons and tons of research that has been done into the negative effects of porn,” she said. “They are akin to climate-change deniers. They’re taking a bit of junk science and leaping to all sorts of unfounded conclusions.”

Attwood said it was untrue that they were ignoring the potential harms of porn

The board of Porn Studies has come in for particular criticism. It includes Tristan Taormino, whom Dines calls “a pornographer who has worked with some of the most hard-core directors in the industry” and whom Attwood and Smith call “the editor of a recent and acclaimed book on feminist pornography as well as a director of feminist porn films”. There is also Violet Blue, a sex blogger, whom Smith claims is “one of the leading figures in tech writing in the world”.

Some 30% of all internet bandwidth is estimated to carry porn, and porn sites receive more traffic each month than Amazon, Twitter and Netflix combined, but until recently the increasing prevalence of violence content (a 2010 study of the 50 most popular sites found physical or verbal abuse against women in 90% of all content) and the growing ease of access has been largely ignored by academics, politicians and the mainstream press.

Stuart Hazell and Mark Bridger, recently convicted of the murders of Tia Sharp and April Jones respectively, were both found to have watched violent material, much of which was legal, and the subsequent furore prompted David Cameron to call for internet search companies to take urgent action to better police the results they deliver. On Tuesday Maria Miller, the culture secretary, will host an emergency summit with representatives from Google (and YouTube, which it owns), Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, BT, Virgin, Talk Talk, Vodafone, Sky, O2, EE and Three to discuss ways of better policing the internet, but campaigners said yesterday that legislation was required. They are demanding that the 2008 extreme pornography act needs amending to include rape porn.

Routledge has issued a statement saying that the proposal for the journal was “reviewed by six experts in the field, and we have every confidence that the editors and board are equally committed to our values”, but refused to comment on an accusation by Dines that it had “been derelict in its duty to uphold academic impartiality”.

Attwood said that “we absolutely haven’t said that the experience of front-line practitioners is irrelevant” but the problem was there was “very little good research on the experiences of actual women”.

“One of the key things we want Porn Studies to help develop research on is the experiences of actual women and men – whether they are people who consume porn, produce porn as amateurs or make a living in porn.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/15/sex-studies-journal-editors-accused-of-normalizing-porn/

Okay, I've read this three times now and I still can't figure out what the "problem" is. lol

which they fear “will further foster the normalization of porn”.

Aha! Gail Dines feels justified in publishing an anti-porn point of view, so it must be scary to think that there might be some "pro-porn" competition.

i don't see how any of the "potential harm" in porn is attenuated by driving it underground.

mac, it's like the issue with gays. They don't really mind that people are gay, they just want them to hide it. If it's in the open, then the gays are trying to "normalize" homosexuality and "recruit" their kids to the "perverted lifestyle".

IOW, what they don't know can't/won't hurt them or theirs since they can pretend it doesn't exist.

I'd rather porn was a little harder to get.

I think this ties to the objectification of women and the fact that many boys watch a lot of porn from a very young age. It plays into the culture of rape and it portrays the violent sex acts as something everyone does.

I generally don't care what consenting adults watch, but I am fairly sure the easy access to huge volumes of porn is detrimental societally.

Oh look, there's Gail Dines again being critical without even finding out what's different about the porn women produce.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/ ... porn-women

Porn made for women, by women
Independent female directors are making pornographic films aimed at women. Catalina May finds out what makes them so different.

Anna Arrowsmith (aka Anna Span) has been a porn director for 12 years. This made her recent campaign as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Gravesham rather controversial. "Not my cup of tea", said Nick Clegg about her occupation. But what she has been doing is not mainstream pornography, but independent porn made for women.

"I have fought long and hard for women's right to sexual expression and consumption, as well as for freedom of speech," she wrote in the Observer. But Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, challenged her in the Guardian: "What are you doing that is different from what every other pornographer is doing?"

The best way to answer that question is probably by watching Arrowsmith's films. And not just hers. Because a number of women, tired of mainstream porn and tired of criticising it without offering an alternative, are making the porn films they want to watch.

These films don't include horny schoolgirls, naughty nurses, nymphomaniac nannies or desperate housewives. Nor do they include Mafiosi, multimillionaires drinking cognac, pimps, drug dealers or super-sized sex machines. Because these women, as filmmakers and consumers, place themselves far away from mainstream porn.

You have some good points. I worry more about the suggestion of sexuality that very young children are exposed to. The pop stars practically having intercourse on stage or mimicking the act, the manner of dress (especially for girls) and so on. This exposure sets them up for a foray into porn at younger ages, imo. For instance, if the little boys can see almost everything exposed on an older young woman, they tend to yearn to see more, if that makes sense. Our culture has started sexualizing the children younger and younger.

As for the easy access to porn: As much as most responsible parents ban exposure to this stuff, they are pretty ignorant about the access......via smartphones, at friends houses with absent parents etc. etc. But, they think nothing of taking little 8yr old Susie to see Katy Perry in concert. After, they don't understand why Susie wants teeny-tiny shorts, garters with stockings and a whipped cream spewing bra. After all, it's presented in an almost carnival-like atmosphere.

there is a really great couple of scenes in "This Film Is Not Currently Rated", which is about the MPA, where women filmmakers "crossed the line" and got an X rating (now called NR, i think) because they DARED to challenge preconceived notions and mores about sex on the screen. i think it says a lot of interesting things about our country when you can watch 27 people get their heads blown off on Screen, but not ONE scene which shows frontal nudity below the navel, or an act of oral sex.

maybe if we would just grow up a little about all of this, it would cut the rape porn off at the knees.