THOUGHTS ON DR. GAIL DINES SPEECH PRESENTATION “HOW PORN HAS HIJACKED OUR SEXUALITY”

Media Culture on Womanhood

Sadly most parents or mentors will not follow this but some of the simplest solutions to helping girls and young women are explaining to them that the media images of femininity are not real, woman in these images are airbrushed to the point of losing the real person the pictures were taken of and that these models and actresses also have been forced into unhealthy dieting, exercise programs, and plastic surgeries to try to save the computer airbrush people some time. Give your daughters or those you are mentoring a healthy viewpoint of womanhood; do not force these unhealthy ideologies on them by trying to make them fit the media culture and if their peers are pressuring them to follow these unhealthy ideas, explain to them that their friends are following a wrong and sometimes dangerous ideology of womanhood. Teach girls also that they are all individuals that they have the right not to follow this path of image cloning and they should be themselves. Girls and young woman cannot be isolated and protected from these outside images because they are everywhere, but a strong development of self-worth from loving families or mentors can go a long way towards a girl that will grow up into a woman that has her own self-worth and that will not be a victim of the commercialization of womanhood. This change of socializing girls and young women into strong confident individuals that know their own self-worth will slowly change the media culture and overtime the corporate world also because they will not be making money on the old image of womanhood as an object and clone image.

Rape Culture

Dr. Gail Dines confrontational reaction to the flasher shows that self-confidence and the sense of empowerment can do a lot to make the world a more equal and just safer place for women. Though, it will never stop the more violent predators, it can deter many actions by predators that are victimizing their victims in more of the ways bullies go after their victims for shock value, by using women’s socialize timidness that can be used against them. Give girls and young women in your life the sense that they are equal to men and have (or at least should have, in a lot places we do not sadly) the right not to be available to boys and men as sexual objects and here only to please them. Teach girls that they have the right to say no and that their body is their own not someone else’s to abuse and control. Teach your sons that girls and women are not just objects to be used and abuse and thrown away. Teach them to respect women just like they are taught to respect their fellow boys and men. Teach them that the old saying “No means Yes” is a misogynistic concept and that “No Really means No” not some of the time but all the time, not the other way around. Yes, this would not be a quick solution and sadly a lot of parents and mentors will never do this because they are blinded by rape culture themselves but at least it would be a start to the solution of rape culture.

Sexuality and Porn

First the sexualization of children has to be stopped this is a sexual assault on little girls plain and simple and creating a new type of pedophile and child molester that is fetishizing over girls dressed as adult women. You have these child beauty pageants for very young little girls and dressing them not only as adult women but dressing them in makeup and clothing that are sexualized. If other countries can try and ban child beauty pageants, the United States could too. You also have advertisers using younger and younger girls in sexualized ads that are also promoting pedophilic behavior. The solution here is to find ways to legislate policies and laws protecting child actors and models that are employed by these companies. Also, boycott the hell out of those companies that persist on sexualizing children.

Porn has changed drastically over just a decade or so. There used to be what was called soft-core porn that had some human connection, betraying sexual acts in a more realistic way, with eye contact and emotional acting not the brutality that now is the main staple of the porn industry that has been taken over by what is called “gonzo porn” which tries to put the viewer into the scene and the violence. The problem here is this gonzo porn is extremely violent, celebrating rape culture and the brutalization of women. Gonzo porn has taken the place of the so-called “boring porn” that is more like being a voyeur watching two people having sex, to participating in raping and brutalizing another human being. Today, we have the online world that exposes children to many things including this type of porn and it does affect their sexuality and views on what sexuality, sex, and sexual relationships are in the real world. Boys get expose to these violent sexual acts that have nothing to do with real loving sexual relationships that people have in the real world not the porn world. This gives them a very wrong, unrealistic, and dangerous idea of what “real sex” is compared to the rape depiction and brutalization of the porn actresses in these films. It also gives them the ideology that women are just things to abuse, use and treat like trash. Sadly, many parents will only punish their sons for catching them watching these completely disturbing sexual acts betraying rape, instead of using it as a teachable moment and explaining to them that this is not how real life sexuality, sex, and sexual relationships work that you do not sexually brutalize another human being and if you do you belong in prison. It is also a teachable moment on how women are not objects for men to use and abuse. Then if they find out that a child has become addicted to watching this type of porn, they ignore it without getting them help before it is too late, which they need to do. The addiction to this porn does not excuse violent predators that take the fantasy that this porn gives them to the real world. If you commit violence against another human being, you are not excused just because the last porn film you watched gave you the idea on brutalizing someone.

The gonzo porn industry is sadly not going to go away soon, they hide behind free speech. But maybe boys, its future viewers, can be taught that this is not “real sex” it is “real sexual brutalization” in the form of sexual acts to entertain a sick mind. That they should not be treating women like this. Taking away the porn industry’s future customers is one way of putting them out of business. Another way is to find these women that are forced into working for the porn industry because of financial need and help them find better options to get them better and safer employment and if they have drug addictions get them help for that to, do not demonize them for being victims of the porn industry. But the best fix is to not become a customer of this type of porn in the first place and if you are a fan and addict to it, get some help, please.