Radical Feminist Perspectives on Pornography: An In-Depth Conversation with Dr. Gail Dines

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/18

Part 2 of 2

Dr. Gail Dines is the Founder and CEO of Culture Reframed and Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College, Boston. With over 30 years of research on the pornography industry, she is recognized globally as a leading expert on how pornography shapes society, culture, and sexuality. Dr. Dines has served as a consultant to governmental agencies in the U.S. and internationally, including the UK, Norway, Iceland, and Canada. In 2016 she founded Culture Reframed, where she continues to champion education around the harms of pornography. Dr. Dines is also the co-editor of the best-selling textbook Gender, Race and Class in Media and the author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, which has been translated into five languages and adapted into a documentary film. Her work has been featured in major media outlets, including ABC, CNN, BBC, MSNBC, The New York Times, Time, The Guardian, and Vogue. Dr. Dines is a regular guest on television and radio and is prominently featured in documentaries such as The Price of Pleasure and The Strength to Resist.

Dines explores the profound societal harms of pornography. She discusses the rare internal disagreements within radical feminism, the contrast with moralist objections, and how pornography erodes healthy sexuality, consent, and gender equality. Dines argues pornography acts as a distorted form of sex education and a driver of sexual violence, dehumanization, and disconnection. Drawing on extensive research and her book Pornland, she advocates for porn-resilient education and a public reckoning with how adult inaction leaves youth vulnerable to exploitation, addiction, and long-term psychological harm.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A question comes to mind. We’ve discussed liberal feminism versus radical feminism in framing the issue. But within radical feminist discourse, are there any internal objections or disagreements on this critical view of pornography?

Dr. Gail Dines: Radical feminism tends to agree widely on this topic. Are you asking about internal conflicts?

Jacobsen: Yes, specifically within radical feminism.

Dines: Any disagreements are quite minor, mostly around how to define the issue or how to address it. But there’s a strong, unified belief within radical feminism that pornography is violence against women, both in its production and consumption. We have major arguments with liberal feminists, Marxist feminists, and socialist feminists. We don’t tend to have many internal debates about pornography within radical feminism. However, we do have disagreements on other topics.

Jacobsen: There may be surface-level critiques from traditionalist, conservative, or religious groups that object to pornography on moral grounds, often based on a transcendentalist or ethical view of sin. Yet, they seem to reach a similar conclusion as you do…

Dines: Yes, but the conclusions, although they may appear similar, are quite different. Right-wing moralists are often concerned with what pornography does to the family, particularly how it affects men. They argue that it may cause men to stray or damage family cohesion. Radical feminists, on the other hand, have a critique of the family as the place where women are most at risk, as we know from the evidence. We are concerned with the harm to women, children, and society in general, but our stance is not based on moralism.

We refer to this as a harm-based issue, not a morality-based issue. That’s not to say some right-wing organizations don’t adopt some of our arguments—they do—but the core driving force behind our opposition to pornography is different. They oppose it from a moral perspective; we oppose it because of the real harm it inflicts on individuals and society.

Jacobsen: What would a healthy societal view of sexuality and sex education look like?

Dines: Much of what we’ve built on Culture Reframed is what that should look like, to be honest. By the way, all our programs are free. You do have to sign up, but it’s entirely free. A healthy view of sexuality begins with the individual owning their sexuality. It evolves naturally as a person grows. Of course, it’s rooted in equality, consent, non-violence, and genuine connection and intimacy.

This doesn’t mean that sex is only for marriage or long-term relationships but that there is some level of connection and intimacy involved. That’s what makes sex meaningful in the end. If you don’t know the person you’re having sex with, as is often the pornography case, it quickly becomes boring. That’s why pornographers constantly escalate the content—more violence, more extreme acts—because standard sex gets boring for viewers users become desensitized.

If you were to film regular people having sex, most of the time, it would be so dull that you’d fall asleep watching it. The fun and excitement come from actually having sex, not watching it. So, for pornography to hold viewers’ interest, they have to keep ramping up the adrenaline through more intense and bizarre acts.

Jacobsen: Is part of the core issue the dehumanization and depersonalization that comes with pornography? It seems like there’s a disconnection—people go to their computers, consume pornography, and then return to their regular lives as if nothing happened. It’s like their day becomes fragmented and disjointed.

Dines: Absolutely. That’s a great point. There have been studies done on this. One interesting study showed two groups of men: one group watched a regular National Geographic movie, while the other watched pornography. Afterward, they were asked to interview a female candidate for a job, and the chairs were on rollers. The men who had watched pornography kept rolling their chairs closer and closer to the woman. They also found that these men couldn’t remember the woman’s words.

This kind of behaviour shows how pornography impacts boys and men’s perception of others, particularly women, and how it disrupts their ability to interact meaningfully in real-life situations.

They were too busy checking her out. So you’re right. When you think about it, much pornography is consumed at work. Then you leave that cruel world where men are depicted as having every right to women’s bodies and go back to working in a world with women where you don’t have those rights. It’s interesting because we have the Me Too movement on the one hand, which is crucial for explaining what’s going on. On the other hand, pornography is working against everything the Me Too movement is trying to say about consent and women’s bodily integrity. Even men’s bodily integrity is compromised in pornography—nobody has bodily integrity.

In pornography, the body is there to be used in any way possible to heighten sexual arousal, usually involving high levels of violence. I haven’t seen many films where this wasn’t the case.

Jacobsen: We’ve already covered building porn resilience in children, or at least how important it is. How far do gender inequality and sexual violence reflect each other in women’s rights movements, particularly within the frame of pornography?

Dines: Let me make sure I understand. You’re asking about the relationship between gender inequality and sexual violence and how this plays out in the context of movements like Me Too, correct?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Dines: I addressed some of this earlier when I talked about equality in other areas of life and how pornography undermines it. Gender inequality and sexual violence are deeply intertwined. If there were no gender inequality, sexual violence would be unthinkable. Sexual violence is typically used to destroy and control women and to show power and dominance. That’s why we must call it “sexual violence”—because it weaponizes sex against women.

Without gender inequality, this kind of violence wouldn’t even be conceivable. It’s built into the very structure of gender inequality, and in turn, it perpetuates and exacerbates that inequality. It’s a vicious cycle. Gender inequality fuels sexual violence, and sexual violence deepens gender inequality.

Jacobsen: Just to be mindful of that, then. We talked about the psychological impact earlier. What are the similar psychological impacts on boys and girls, rather than the differences?

Dines: Similarities around what, specifically?

Jacobsen: In terms of pornography consumption and its impacts.

Dines: We know very little about girls. There aren’t many studies at all on girls’ exposure to pornography, and, as in many areas, girls and women are often under-researched. One of the few studies by Chyng Sun, Jennifer Johnson, Anna Bridges, and Matt Ezzell does show a few things. Some girls and women go to porn not to masturbate but to see what boys and men are doing, so they can reproduce that behaviour.

They also found that girls and women who become addicted to pornography, similar to men, lose interest in real-world sex, preferring pornography. They become isolated and depressed. So, if they do go down the route of addiction, the impact is quite similar to that on men, except they don’t become violent.

Jacobsen: What are the key points of feminist and anti-pornography activism, particularly in your book Pornland, intersecting with issues of gender, sexuality, and human rights?

Dines: That’s what the whole book is about. Pornland was written to explain the modern-day pornography industry in the age of the internet. People were talking about pornography as if the internet hadn’t happened. I take a radical feminist perspective, using research to back up the claims and focus on how pornography undermines women’s human rights.

There are chapters addressing racism, showing how women of colour are especially targeted, both for their race and gender. I also discuss how mainstream sites are increasingly making use of images of young looking women—sometimes they could be children, it’s hard to tell. So, they might be underage or made to look underage.

The main argument is that we live in a world that is completely inundated and infested with pornography. As a sociologist, I’m interested in the sociological impact. I borrow from psychological literature but focus on the macro level. How is pornography not just shifting gender norms but cementing the worst aspects of them? It hasn’t invented misogyny, but it has given it a new twist and continues to reinforce it across various institutions.

Jacobsen: Gail, any final thoughts or feelings based on our conversation today?

Dines: We’ve buried our heads in the sand for too long. For people who weren’t born into the internet age, it’s hard to understand just how much pornography is shaping young people. There’s been a massive dereliction of duty on the part of adults in helping kids navigate this world they’ve been thrown into, often left to sink or swim on their own—and many are sinking. The kids I talk to feel overwhelmed by pornography, and studies back this up. Many wish there were far less of it because they recognize the negative effect it has on their sexuality, their connections, and their relationships.

So, it’s time we step up and take responsibility as adults.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Gail.

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