Gail Dines

Professor Gail Dines is a scholar, activist and social critic. She is also at the forefront of an international conversation about the effects of porn culture on contemporary society. Her book, Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality, takes an unflinching look at today’s porn industry: the stories woven into the images, the impact on our culture, the effects on us as men and women, the business machine that creates and markets porn, and the growing legitimacy of porn in mainstream media. Above all, Pornland examines the way porn shapes and limits sexual imaginations and behaviors. Dines argues that rather than sexually liberating or empowering us, porn offers us a plasticized, formulaic, generic version of sex that is boring, lacking in creativity and disconnected from emotion and intimacy. She speaks with Monica Dux.

Gail Dines is in Australia as a guest of the Wheeler Centre and the Sydney Writers' Festival.

Presenters

Gail Dines

Dr Gail Dines is professor of sociology and women’s studies at Boston’s Wheelock College. Her work focuses on the hypersexualisation of culture and the way porn filters into pop culture. Her latest book is Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.

Monica Dux

Monica Dux is a Melbourne writer and social commentator. She has published widely on women’s issues and in 2008 she co-authored the book The Great Feminist Denial. She is currently writing a book on pregnancy and motherhood, which will be published by Melbourne University Press in 2013.