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Dr. Gail Dines Returns to Discuss Porn, Power, and the Collapse of Masculinity
56 Plays7 months ago
Renowned feminist Dr. Gail Dines (re) joins the Queens for another deep-dive into the devastating effects of the porn industry on modern masculinity and women.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Female Dating Strategy, the meanest female-only podcast on the internet.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm your host, Diana.
00:00:06
Speaker
And I'm Rose.
00:00:07
Speaker
And today I have the pleasure and the honor of introducing Dr. Gail Dines.
00:00:12
Speaker
Gail, welcome.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm so happy to be back.
00:00:16
Speaker
Ah, we're so excited to have you here.
00:00:19
Speaker
We are huge devotees of Dr. Gail Dines here at FDS.
00:00:23
Speaker
And if you haven't listened to previous episodes where she appeared with Savannah and Ro, please go back into our back catalog and listen to those.
00:00:30
Speaker
But Diana and I also wanted the opportunity because as she was saying in the pre-talk, every day it's like another moon landing.
00:00:36
Speaker
It's just craziness after craziness.
00:00:38
Speaker
And so we wanted to host Gail and sort of discuss what's going on in the current zeitgeist.
00:00:43
Speaker
If I may introduce Gail briefly, she is the founder, president and CEO of Culture Reframed.
Impact of Hyper-Sexualized Media
00:00:49
Speaker
which is the first organization to recognize and address hyper-sexualized media, aka media in general, and pornography as the public health crisis of the digital age.
00:01:01
Speaker
She has also written a book called Pornland, How Porn Has Hijacked Our Society.
00:01:06
Speaker
She is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College in Boston.
00:01:11
Speaker
Gail, what an honor.
00:01:12
Speaker
Thank you so much for appearing here.
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, it's my pleasure, believe me.
00:01:18
Speaker
It's been your third time now.
00:01:19
Speaker
We're so honored.
00:01:20
Speaker
We love that you show up here because every single time we're just in awe of your wisdom.
00:01:24
Speaker
And I love the way that the whole thing works.
00:01:27
Speaker
And I love that the way you've come at this issue, which is so critical, you know, in our life.
00:01:32
Speaker
I mean, in young women's lives, older women's lives, you just really touch on the very issues that women and girls are dealing with.
00:01:40
Speaker
Thank you, Gail.
00:01:41
Speaker
That's really nice to hear.
00:01:43
Speaker
Thank you for saying that.
00:01:44
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:01:46
Speaker
It's so nice to see.
00:01:47
Speaker
I mean, it's sad to see as well how you've held the fort for so many years.
00:01:50
Speaker
But like your message has just been so reaffirming for so many women who are in this digital landscape, who are dating out there, who are wondering why the men that they're dating are disaffected.
00:02:02
Speaker
Why are they addicted to pornography?
00:02:04
Speaker
Like, I'm sure every woman who's been out dating at all can relate to what you put out because,
00:02:10
Speaker
It's been an issue for such a long time, but it seems like in many ways it's just gotten worse.
00:02:14
Speaker
And, you know, we want to talk a little bit about the show today, the show Adolescence, because I think that it's a show that actually did talk about how the portrayals of masculinity.
00:02:24
Speaker
We had a discussion a couple of weeks ago where you talked about the concept of whether healthy masculinity is even like a, it's misgiving because at the end of the day, it's not
00:02:33
Speaker
healthy masculinity.
00:02:35
Speaker
So I wanted to talk a little bit with you about, you know, what were your impressions about the show Adolescence and what do you feel
Pornography's Influence on Gender Perceptions
00:02:40
Speaker
like it got right?
00:02:40
Speaker
And what do you feel like it didn't, you know, do that well?
00:02:43
Speaker
First of all, it was heart-wrenching.
00:02:44
Speaker
I mean, it was very difficult to watch in the sense that you saw this kid get pulled into the manosphere, which we find all the time at Culture Reframe when we're doing lectures and workshops, is that there is no adult adult
00:02:58
Speaker
to guide him.
00:02:59
Speaker
I mean, what was very clear from the, and I think they got this right, was that, you know, the teachers had no idea what was going on on the internet.
00:03:07
Speaker
The mother and father, the police, none of them in that kid's life really understood what was happening.
00:03:14
Speaker
So I think it really got that right.
00:03:17
Speaker
His anger, his rage, the way in which he was pulled into this ideology of the manosphere that blames women because he felt bad about himself.
00:03:25
Speaker
What I think they missed was
00:03:27
Speaker
is that any boy of that age, with or without the Manosphere, would have been watching pornography.
00:03:34
Speaker
We know that from studies.
00:03:35
Speaker
By 13, virtually all boys with access to the internet have seen porn.
00:03:40
Speaker
Now, if he was pulled into the Manosphere, he would have seen a lot of porn.
00:03:44
Speaker
And I think the missing piece there was the role of pornography.
00:03:48
Speaker
and the way in which it shapes what it means to be a man today, and especially for young boys, because, you know, we've done such a horrible job of sex education, especially in the United States.
00:03:59
Speaker
And also, you know, all over the world is not so great.
00:04:02
Speaker
Some of the Scandinavian countries are good, but on the whole, it's been a very poor job.
00:04:06
Speaker
And especially what we found was that
00:04:10
Speaker
it doesn't address the lives of young people.
00:04:12
Speaker
Even the good stuff that's science-based does not talk about the fact that pornography and hypersexualized media are the wallpaper of kids' lives, especially boys with pornography.
00:04:25
Speaker
So the question becomes, how does it shape them?
00:04:28
Speaker
What does it mean during the adolescent period when your brain is firing and wiring and making new neurons, et cetera, that you are watching this stuff, masturbating to it,
00:04:40
Speaker
you know, internalizing the messages, because pornography is a story.
00:04:44
Speaker
It's a story about women and men.
00:04:47
Speaker
It's a story about what constitutes femininity and masculinity.
00:04:50
Speaker
It's also a story about how men should treat women.
00:04:54
Speaker
And it goes way beyond the issue of sex or violence, which, of course, you have to talk about with mainstream pornography today.
00:05:02
Speaker
So I think what we don't do enough is deconstruct the ideology of pornography and how it impacts
00:05:09
Speaker
both boys and girls, because when you really sort of lay waste to a generation of boys, which is what our culture is doing, you absolutely lay waste to a generation of girls, because girls are always the sort of, always have to deal with the dysfunction of boys.
Cultural and Global Implications of Pornography
00:05:27
Speaker
They become kind of collateral damage of this society.
00:05:30
Speaker
So I think that what they missed really was the role of pornography.
00:05:35
Speaker
And somebody, you know, hopefully needs to get to them to get them to really understand the writers.
00:05:41
Speaker
What is it like to be brought up with pornography?
00:05:44
Speaker
Gail, I have two questions for you.
00:05:46
Speaker
Semi-related, one is directly related.
00:05:48
Speaker
Which one would you like to hear first?
00:05:51
Speaker
Whichever one you prefer to ask.
00:05:53
Speaker
Well, because of how wild the times are in the United States right now, and I think worldwide, you just had me think about the fact that pornography has been sort of deeply embedded and widely accessible more than ever in the last 30 years.
00:06:08
Speaker
And I just have to wonder if a lot of these men who are now in positions of power came of age during this pornified age.
00:06:14
Speaker
And it just makes me wonder if that's also what we're dealing with here on the international stage.
00:06:20
Speaker
Great question.
00:06:21
Speaker
What we're seeing is masculinity run amok.
00:06:24
Speaker
Okay, that's what we're seeing across, you know, many countries.
00:06:28
Speaker
And I think a lot of them did not necessarily come of age because they're older.
00:06:34
Speaker
But I think that the actual, the pornified culture, which spreads beyond pornography,
00:06:41
Speaker
They are basically socialized into that.
00:06:43
Speaker
I mean, what's really interesting is the kid gloves are off with men, especially in this country, declared war on women, children, everyone.
00:06:53
Speaker
These are, when I read the newspaper and see what's going on and the cutting in food stamps and the destruction of DEI and the anti-abortion and all of that and
00:07:03
Speaker
the poverty and the distress it's causing, you just see a group of absolute male bullies from the playground who don't care about anybody, just want to look, you know, bigger than the next man.
00:07:16
Speaker
And I cannot stand the way in which women and girls have become the casualty of this, and ultimately boys as well, let's remember that.
00:07:24
Speaker
But I see them as like, they're like adolescent playground bullies.
00:07:28
Speaker
The only problem is they have a lot of power.
00:07:31
Speaker
And they have the power to make lives completely miserable for everyone around them.
00:07:35
Speaker
They make them miserable on multiple levels.
00:07:38
Speaker
But, you know, always being someone who's interested in the way that class, gender and race intersect, of course, that the more you are poor and of color and female, the more likely you are to be the victim of this bully schoolyard culture.
00:07:54
Speaker
And I also see them, you know, it was interesting.
00:07:56
Speaker
One of them, we're talking about cutting food stamps.
00:07:58
Speaker
And I thought,
00:08:00
Speaker
Do any of you have any responsibility or think about children's lives?
00:08:06
Speaker
Is it just about you?
00:08:07
Speaker
And the answer seems to be yes.
00:08:09
Speaker
It's just about these men trying to increase the power and show who's the biggest bully on the block.
00:08:15
Speaker
If this is how men are acting who were not brought up in this environment, what is it going to deteriorate to?
00:08:23
Speaker
Or what can we even think to imagine about what the next generation will be doing as they come into power?
Challenging Misogynistic Norms through Feminism
00:08:30
Speaker
Actually, we can see now what the next generation, first of all, because of
00:08:33
Speaker
One of the things we are seeing, which is actually one of the scariest things, is we are seeing that increasingly child rape of both boys and girls, but especially girls, is being committed by other children, mainly men, boys.
00:08:48
Speaker
So what we're seeing is a whole shift in, you know, it used to be that if a
00:08:53
Speaker
boy was raping his sister or cousin or whoever.
00:08:58
Speaker
And by the way, Ian, some studies show that the age of the boy rapist has gone down from 15 to 11, and that the age of the girl victim has gone down from about eight or nine to four years old.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah, terrible.
00:09:11
Speaker
And when we work with frontline health experts who actually deal with these children, what they find is that actually the boys are doing porn acts on these girls.
00:09:21
Speaker
They're strangling them, anal penetration, and they're filming it.
00:09:27
Speaker
as they go along.
00:09:27
Speaker
So where do they get this idea from to film it?
00:09:30
Speaker
So, you know, pre-internet porn, you could assume that if a boy was acting out sexually against another child, that he himself had probably been sexually abused.
00:09:41
Speaker
Now, they cannot assume that.
00:09:43
Speaker
And we do work with a lot of child exploitation
00:09:47
Speaker
anti-child exploitation organizations, especially the children's advocacy centers, of which there's 900 across the United States.
00:09:54
Speaker
And, you know, he's saying no longer can we assume that he has in fact seen pornography, that you have to develop questions
00:10:03
Speaker
and very carefully asked these questions about their exposure to pornography, both for the victimiser and the victim.
00:10:09
Speaker
And, you know, I hate calling a 12, 13-year-old boy a victimiser.
00:10:13
Speaker
I hate doing that because, in a way, he's also become a victim of this culture, not as much, obviously, as girls.
00:10:19
Speaker
But there's a very upsetting scene in adolescence where, you know, he's claiming that's not me, that's not me, that's not me.
00:10:27
Speaker
And even though he's looking at the tape and in a way what he's saying is that's not who I am.
00:10:32
Speaker
That's who I've become.
00:10:34
Speaker
That's not me.
00:10:35
Speaker
It's not so much denying the act as saying it's not who I am in my essence.
00:10:42
Speaker
And you can see that, you know, I do not believe for one minute that boys are born violent.
00:10:46
Speaker
You know, you might have a very, very small percent, but the reality of the world is
00:10:51
Speaker
is that they are turned into being violent by the culture.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I mean, this is why I always say feminists are men's best friends, right?
00:10:59
Speaker
We're the last group who believe in the humanity of men, because if we didn't, we wouldn't be doing this work.
00:11:04
Speaker
We would just all go and live in a cave somewhere or go to a desert island, because we believe that men can be as human, as kind, as empathic and as compassionate as
00:11:16
Speaker
as girls and women.
00:11:17
Speaker
We really believe that and that they're born.
00:11:19
Speaker
And I have to say, as the mother of a son, I completely, I know my sweet little boy and how we had to fight the culture to keep him, you know, a really grounded human being with empathy and compassion.
00:11:34
Speaker
But the culture wanted something else out of him.
00:11:36
Speaker
So it was basically my husband and I having a tug of war against the culture.
00:11:40
Speaker
I'm happy to say we won.
00:11:41
Speaker
Yay!
00:11:42
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
I mean, I've got wonderful stories to tell about what boys can be because we brought up our son where his first language was feminism.
00:11:50
Speaker
I mean, words like sexism and misogyny were dropping out of his mouth by the age of four.
00:11:57
Speaker
I've got a lovely story to tell that I go into the room and he used to like National Geographic and he must have been about four or five and he's pointing at the TV and he's shaking his head and I said, what's the matter, honey?
00:12:07
Speaker
Why are you upset with this?
00:12:09
Speaker
And he said, you know what, mum?
00:12:10
Speaker
They keep saying man and his environment.
00:12:12
Speaker
Well, what about women and their environment?
00:12:16
Speaker
I mean, that was at like four or five.
00:12:18
Speaker
And he would see things before I would.
00:12:21
Speaker
It was so astounding to watch what it looks like when feminism is their first language.
00:12:25
Speaker
Another time we're walking, again, he's very young.
00:12:28
Speaker
We're walking past a group of shops and there's a small boutique.
00:12:32
Speaker
And he goes, uh-oh.
00:12:34
Speaker
I said, what's the matter?
00:12:34
Speaker
He said, look, they're hanging her.
00:12:36
Speaker
And true enough, it was Christmas time.
00:12:38
Speaker
And they were hanging the mannequin by her neck with Christmas lights.
00:12:42
Speaker
And I said to him,
00:12:43
Speaker
Well, what should we do?
00:12:45
Speaker
He said, well, we have to go in and protest, of course.
00:12:47
Speaker
So in we go.
00:12:49
Speaker
What I wanted to do was go home and make dinner and get everything ready.
00:12:51
Speaker
But no, he said, we've got to protest.
00:12:53
Speaker
So, of course, we protested and I went in and I said, you know,
00:12:57
Speaker
This is a form of violence against women.
00:12:59
Speaker
Even though it's not a woman, you're showing hanging.
00:13:01
Speaker
And they started arguing with me.
00:13:03
Speaker
I said, look, I'm not here to argue with you.
00:13:04
Speaker
I'm just telling you that if you don't take that down within 48 hours, you will go on a boycott list.
00:13:11
Speaker
And let me tell you that the last time that somebody went on a boycott list, they actually went bankrupt.
00:13:16
Speaker
So it's up to you.
00:13:17
Speaker
And I walked out.
00:13:19
Speaker
It was down within 24 hours.
00:13:21
Speaker
And let me tell you, there is no boycott list.
00:13:24
Speaker
LAUGHTER
00:13:27
Speaker
You know, she wanted to fight, the woman who owned the, and I wasn't going to fight.
00:13:30
Speaker
But you threaten that there's going to be bankruptcy or economic reprisals.
00:13:35
Speaker
And that's what they listen to.
00:13:36
Speaker
But it was so interesting.
00:13:37
Speaker
He saw it before me.
00:13:39
Speaker
He definitely did.
00:13:40
Speaker
So I want people to understand that our boys are so precious.
00:13:43
Speaker
Of course, our girls are completely precious as well.
00:13:45
Speaker
And as feminists, those are the group we protect the most.
00:13:49
Speaker
But, you know, this notion that boys will be boys is the most man-hating thing I can think of.
00:13:54
Speaker
Feminists are not man-hating.
00:13:56
Speaker
We have faith.
00:13:56
Speaker
And as long as we have faith in boys and men's capacities to be good and kind and as equal to women, you know, because when you say, you know, men and women want to be equal to men, the response to that is don't aim so low.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's fair.
00:14:13
Speaker
The crazy thing is just recently we've heard the press secretary of the United States say
00:14:18
Speaker
boys will be boys when talking about like the men in the office sitting and arguing with each other.
00:14:22
Speaker
So it seems like we're being taken back to this horrible place where we're just justifying like men's inability to articulate their emotions properly.
00:14:32
Speaker
And like, that's one of the things I was thinking about when I was watching
Media's Role and Avoidance of Pornography Discussion
00:14:34
Speaker
adolescence as well is why wasn't there any depiction of him watching pornography?
00:14:39
Speaker
It's almost like they sidestepped it, even though you seem to be saying that it's actually a huge part of their radicalization.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:45
Speaker
I think a huge number of young men, they turn to figures like Andrew Tate and all these people because they're looking for role models and they don't find it.
00:14:53
Speaker
So I'm kind of curious to know, what do you feel is, you know, men's responsibility in all of this?
00:14:58
Speaker
And do you feel like the situation has gotten better in terms of people actually acknowledging how much of a problem pornography is with young boys, especially?
00:15:07
Speaker
The question I have is most of the people in media, especially those who are getting things published and filmed and disseminated and produced, they tend to be these power brokers are men.
00:15:18
Speaker
Is one of the reasons why we don't see media grappling honestly with pornography?
00:15:22
Speaker
Because like to a lot of these men, it's the sacred cow.
00:15:25
Speaker
They dare not touch what they hold so dear.
00:15:27
Speaker
That's perfect answer.
00:15:29
Speaker
So you said exactly what I was going to say.
00:15:32
Speaker
Exactly.
00:15:32
Speaker
Exactly.
00:15:33
Speaker
They are porn users, a lot of them.
00:15:35
Speaker
They are attached to their porn.
00:15:36
Speaker
I mean, you can see, when I watch a movie or a TV series,
00:15:40
Speaker
you can see immediately their porn use come out just by the way they talk.
00:15:45
Speaker
You know, I mean more the writers.
00:15:47
Speaker
You can see it's absolutely, you know, they're drenched in pornography.
00:15:51
Speaker
And I think it's the third rail for most men.
00:15:53
Speaker
They won't accept that pornography is bad because they've been using it, probably for the younger guys, for most of their, you know, adolescent and adult lives.
00:16:03
Speaker
It's addictive behavior is what it screams to me.
00:16:07
Speaker
Well, at the far end of the spectrum of effects is definitely addiction and it's growing, right?
00:16:11
Speaker
But it's not just all along the line pornography.
00:16:15
Speaker
You cannot look at pornography and come away unchanged.
00:16:19
Speaker
Now, because pornography is really the visual representation of the ideology of the manosphere.
00:16:26
Speaker
Nowhere is the ideology of the manosphere delivered so crisply, so cleanly, and so succinct as in pornography.
00:16:34
Speaker
And it's delivered to men's brains via the penis, which is an extremely powerful delivery system.
00:16:40
Speaker
So if you want to talk about the manosphere and the ideology of it,
00:16:44
Speaker
As I say, pornography is the perfect representation of it.
00:16:48
Speaker
And then it's like a loop because that feeds them going back to the Andrew Tates of the world.
00:16:53
Speaker
Because in pornography, you know, men make hate to women, not love.
00:16:57
Speaker
It's all about hate and rage and anger and she's a slut and she's a whore and certain things I can't say on the radio or the podcast.
00:17:06
Speaker
You can go right ahead.
00:17:07
Speaker
Okay, well, I mean, one of the terms they call her is a cum dumpster, you know, I mean, things like this.
00:17:12
Speaker
And of course, cunt all the time.
00:17:14
Speaker
She's a cunt.
00:17:15
Speaker
So I think in what's going on in our culture is that before boys have even laid claim to their own sexuality,
00:17:24
Speaker
the porn industry has come in and hijacked it, which is why the subtitle of my book is How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.
00:17:31
Speaker
And by, I mean, everyone's, but especially boys.
00:17:34
Speaker
And again, another story that I always like to tell about my son was, you know, we did a lot of,
00:17:39
Speaker
scaffolding and when he was about talking about issues and stuff.
00:17:43
Speaker
But when he was about 10 or 11, we talked about pornography.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I said to him, look, honey, you know, I can't be with you all the time.
00:17:48
Speaker
You don't want me there all the time, obviously.
00:17:51
Speaker
And so, you know, you, when you're out at some point or were you with friends or maybe you just stumble across pornography, I said, and I want you to think about something.
00:17:59
Speaker
I said, you have a choice to look.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so when you're making this choice, so this is what you should ask yourself.
00:18:06
Speaker
Who are you sexually?
00:18:08
Speaker
And at this point, we don't know.
00:18:09
Speaker
Are you going to be gay, straight?
00:18:11
Speaker
We really don't know.
00:18:12
Speaker
I said, but whatever you're going to be, it's going to reflect the beautiful human being that you are.
00:18:17
Speaker
And it's going to be yours and you're going to lay claim to it.
00:18:20
Speaker
I said, but if you look at pornography, they're going to steal it from you.
00:18:23
Speaker
These capitalists, and we used word like this in the house, these capitalists are going to steal it from you and you're not even going to own it.
00:18:31
Speaker
They're going to
Education and Awareness on Pornography's Effects
00:18:32
Speaker
own it.
00:18:32
Speaker
And that's a terrible thing to give away before you've even owned it.
00:18:36
Speaker
And to say how it then translates is when he was in college, he was going to with friends for a drink and he found out they were going to a strip club and he turned back and wouldn't go.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I asked him why.
00:18:48
Speaker
And I thought I was going to get the mother violence against women argument.
00:18:51
Speaker
But the answer was very interesting and really struck me.
00:18:55
Speaker
And he said, you know what, mom, I only have this one body to live in.
00:18:59
Speaker
And I don't think I could have started to live in this body if I would have been involved in exploiting a woman.
00:19:05
Speaker
And I just thought, that's it.
00:19:07
Speaker
It's his moral compass now.
00:19:09
Speaker
This is who he is.
00:19:11
Speaker
And he made that choice.
00:19:13
Speaker
And he thought about how he would feel.
00:19:17
Speaker
And I think that is critical for men and boys to begin to ask themselves, how do they feel?
00:19:22
Speaker
Because I know when I give lectures in colleges and what have you, and I just show a few images of pornography, and what's interesting is
00:19:31
Speaker
is that these college student males have never looked at pornography without an erection.
00:19:38
Speaker
Now, we know that when men get sexually aroused and get erections, they're not in any frontal lobe to start deconstructing the image they're masturbating to, okay?
00:19:47
Speaker
Their goal is to obviously get off as quickly or whatever as possible.
00:19:52
Speaker
So here they are in the very unsexual setting of a college hall listening to
00:20:00
Speaker
looking at the pornography that they have masturbated to over and over again, but without an erection.
00:20:05
Speaker
So it is the first time in their lives they have ever really looked at it.
00:20:11
Speaker
And they feel so many times what you see is they feel
00:20:16
Speaker
Horror and disgust, self-disgust.
00:20:18
Speaker
And that's not a good feeling, by the way, for anyone to have.
00:20:21
Speaker
But they get it.
00:20:22
Speaker
And I have to say, you know, I get no pushback in colleges anymore from the guys because they understand this is not good for them.
00:20:31
Speaker
This is not who they want to be.
00:20:32
Speaker
Because I say that, look in the mirror and ask yourself, do I want to be that boy or man who gets off on seeing violence against women?
00:20:41
Speaker
And in most cases, I'm happy to say they're not, even when they're using pornography, because the pornographers are fantastic manipulators.
00:20:49
Speaker
They know how to bring these boys and men in.
00:20:51
Speaker
They know how to grab them.
00:20:53
Speaker
They know how to send algorithms that pull them in from every social media site.
00:20:57
Speaker
So it's really interesting to see.
00:21:00
Speaker
the response that I get when I go out.
00:21:02
Speaker
Because you think, you know, because I can see as I walk in and start the lecture, I can see the young male students kind of hostility coming off them, thinking, what the fuck does this middle-aged woman know about pornography?
00:21:14
Speaker
And yet within 10 minutes, if they could reach out and touch me, they would.
00:21:19
Speaker
I see their whole bodies begin to relax, unfold.
00:21:24
Speaker
I watch their faces.
00:21:25
Speaker
You feel the change in the room.
00:21:28
Speaker
Because, you know, they think I'm going to come in and shout at them as a feminist and tell them, you know, they're disgusting and etc.
00:21:33
Speaker
And when they hear that I have empathy for what is happening to them from the industry and that I get how they feel.
00:21:42
Speaker
And then, of course, the women there, I mean, the light bulbs go off in their head.
00:21:47
Speaker
And often because so many of them have been raped and pornography has been implicated and they've never seen that before.
00:21:54
Speaker
So, I mean, he's kind of an extremely...
00:21:58
Speaker
emotional, moving reality when, you know, after I've spoken, I've got men on one side lining up and women on the other.
00:22:06
Speaker
Because they're beginning to see the world like they understand it in a way they've never understood it before.
00:22:12
Speaker
And they are hungry for it.
00:22:13
Speaker
And I mean, often I can't get off the stage.
00:22:15
Speaker
And when I start to leave, they're following me out to the parking lot.
00:22:18
Speaker
I mean, I've had them surrounding my car literally throwing questions at me.
00:22:22
Speaker
And you know what?
00:22:23
Speaker
There's something wrong there because where are the teachers?
00:22:27
Speaker
Where are the pediatricians?
00:22:29
Speaker
Why is it the first time they've ever heard anything like this is when they're in college?
00:22:34
Speaker
Well, you know, Gail, I brought this up to almost all of my friends.
00:22:37
Speaker
I'm 44 now.
00:22:39
Speaker
Almost all of my friends had their children in their 20s.
00:22:42
Speaker
And then I had a second wave of friends in their 30s having children.
00:22:46
Speaker
And every time I go to talk to them, I have two responses.
00:22:49
Speaker
One in my own self, I'm like, oh, if they have boys, I need to talk to them about pornography.
00:22:54
Speaker
And then I did a critical breakdown and I was like, no, you need to talk to everyone who has children because boys or girls, they're all falling prey to this like harmful culture.
00:23:02
Speaker
But what was so shocking to me was when I brought it up to every single friend, they were like, oh, it's like they didn't even hear what I was saying.
00:23:10
Speaker
Like they couldn't imagine that their child would ever have access to pornography.
00:23:14
Speaker
And I was saying to them, the only guarantee is that your child will have access.
00:23:18
Speaker
If you don't talk to them about it, who will?
00:23:20
Speaker
Well, you know who will?
00:23:22
Speaker
The porn industry.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:24
Speaker
And the weird thing, I went to a digital safety conference, like a digital conference online a couple of years ago.
00:23:29
Speaker
And I remember they said that like somebody asked them, they were like,
00:23:32
Speaker
well, how soon should we give our child a phone?
00:23:34
Speaker
And they directly said, when you're ready for them to have access to pornography, because that's when they'll see it.
00:23:40
Speaker
That's when they'll see it.
00:23:41
Speaker
And the crazy thing is that, you know, I talked to a lot of women my age and younger, and it seems like the things that you were outlining that's in pornography, like, you know, anal sex and strangling, all of these things that we saw that was just very, very prominent in porn.
00:23:53
Speaker
Like a lot of these women are now saying that it's become really normal in their dating lives, that they've gone on dates with men and that men are asking to strangle them.
00:24:01
Speaker
or to do, you know, unnatural sex acts they wouldn't usually be comfortable with, but they feel like they have to go ahead of it because they're like, it's so normalized.
00:24:09
Speaker
And like, you know, whenever I've spoken to people about how that's like one of my biggest things is like, I will not date a man who watches pornography.
00:24:16
Speaker
They're like, well, then you're going to have no one to date because it's impossible.
00:24:19
Speaker
You won't find somebody like that.
00:24:20
Speaker
And so like, we have to compromise.
00:24:22
Speaker
So like, you know, how would you push back against those people who feel like they have to compromise because otherwise they have no options?
00:24:28
Speaker
Okay, well, first of all, let's just talk about the strangulation.
00:24:30
Speaker
A recent study showed they interviewed first-year women college students, and they asked them about not their overall history of their sex life, just the last time they had sex, and one in three reported being strangled.
Navigating Relationships in a Porn-Influenced Society
00:24:48
Speaker
Oh, my sweet Lord.
00:24:50
Speaker
What the hell?
00:24:52
Speaker
Wait, how long ago was this study?
00:24:54
Speaker
Recent.
00:24:55
Speaker
Recent.
00:24:56
Speaker
One in three.
00:24:57
Speaker
And that was just their last act.
00:24:58
Speaker
It wasn't, you know, over their sexual lifetime.
00:25:00
Speaker
It was one act, last time.
00:25:03
Speaker
So first of all, we're talking about one in three.
00:25:05
Speaker
Secondly, the question about, what was your second question, I'm sorry, about?
00:25:11
Speaker
How would you push back against women who say that if I have the standard of porn, like they, you know, I won't have anyone to date?
00:25:16
Speaker
Let me put it this way.
00:25:17
Speaker
Let's think about other groups that are oppressed.
00:25:19
Speaker
And I'm going to say, for example, I'm going to speak about myself.
00:25:22
Speaker
I'm Jewish, OK?
00:25:23
Speaker
Would I ever date a man who enjoyed reading anti-Semitic literature?
00:25:29
Speaker
Right?
00:25:30
Speaker
If you're an African-American, would you date a white guy who enjoyed racist media?
00:25:39
Speaker
So why do women date guys who like misogynist media and actually masturbate to it?
00:25:46
Speaker
And I understand that if you take out all the men who've used pornography, your dating pool is down to probably five.
00:25:53
Speaker
I don't know, very low.
00:25:54
Speaker
I mean, the problem here, because my students would come up all the time in my feminist theories class, is that, look, you cannot expect to meet a man who has not used pornography when you're dating.
00:26:05
Speaker
You cannot.
00:26:06
Speaker
But what you have to do is educate him, show him where to go and read,
00:26:12
Speaker
Right.
00:26:13
Speaker
You'd have to do the education as many men have written about this, Bob Jensen, Jackson Katz.
00:26:17
Speaker
And then he has to stop.
00:26:20
Speaker
And if he doesn't stop at that moment, that's when you walk away.
00:26:23
Speaker
Because really, if you're looking for a guy that's not used porn, I don't know where you're going to find them.
00:26:28
Speaker
Right.
00:26:28
Speaker
I really don't.
00:26:30
Speaker
But if they have used it and come to see the light that what it's done to them and how it's changed them.
00:26:38
Speaker
And when I say see the light, I'm not talking in a religious way, of course, I'm talking in a progressive feminist way.
00:26:43
Speaker
If they continue to use it, then you have to walk away.
00:26:46
Speaker
Women have to be more willing to walk away from men.
00:26:50
Speaker
They have to be.
00:26:51
Speaker
You try as much as you can.
00:26:53
Speaker
You don't kill yourself doing it because it's not our job to educate men.
00:26:56
Speaker
But unfortunately, it's fallen on us.
00:26:59
Speaker
And if he won't listen, then you walk.
00:27:01
Speaker
You walk.
00:27:01
Speaker
Because you cannot do that to yourself.
00:27:04
Speaker
You cannot internalize that and be with a man who has developed such a level of misogyny through pornography.
00:27:12
Speaker
Remember, they're not born misogynists, but it doesn't take much pornography to turn them into misogynists.
00:27:16
Speaker
It doesn't take many Andrew Tates to turn them into misogynists.
00:27:20
Speaker
So you then have to walk away.
00:27:22
Speaker
But
00:27:22
Speaker
You know, in my class, it was so heartbreaking because, you know, when I had a lot of gay men in my class as well, and pornography is totally stitched into gay male culture as well.
00:27:32
Speaker
And the heterosexual women and the gay men in my classes had the same problem.
00:27:37
Speaker
They couldn't find a man today who would stop using pornography.
00:27:40
Speaker
You know, there was no guys out there.
00:27:43
Speaker
And so it was so painful to see.
00:27:45
Speaker
But also it was great to see because I swear my students grew like six inches during the class.
00:27:51
Speaker
their bodies, the way they stood, the way they actually thought about themselves, you know.
00:27:57
Speaker
And it was such a privilege to be part of teaching young women, you know, a radical type of feminism.
00:28:03
Speaker
And it's not really radical, right?
00:28:05
Speaker
It's basic to say, you know, sexual violence and pornography and all of that.
00:28:10
Speaker
But in this culture, it's radical to do that.
00:28:13
Speaker
And, you know, they would come into class day one and I'd say, you know, how many of you are feminists?
00:28:18
Speaker
And maybe two hands would go up.
00:28:20
Speaker
And we'd talk about porn and they'd all come out with this liberation agency bullshit, you know, stuff.
00:28:25
Speaker
And by week four, I swear they were ready to tear down the porn industry with their bare hands, if need be.
00:28:32
Speaker
And it doesn't take much to bring consciousness to women.
00:28:37
Speaker
It does not because their lifetime experience is getting them ready for consciousness.
00:28:43
Speaker
Because suddenly what happens when you discover feminism is everything goes bang, bang, bang, bang.
00:28:49
Speaker
Suddenly your life makes sense.
00:28:50
Speaker
I remember me discovering it at 16 in a cafe in London reading Right Wing Women by Andrew Dworkin and the introduction to it for the English.
00:29:00
Speaker
And it was like there, in that introduction, my entire life made sense.
00:29:06
Speaker
in a way
Empowerment through Feminism
00:29:07
Speaker
it never had before.
00:29:07
Speaker
And that's what it is like to wake up.
00:29:11
Speaker
It's like you've been looking in the world in black and white and suddenly it's in colour.
00:29:15
Speaker
You never realised what it looked like.
00:29:18
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever seen Thelma and Louise, but it's a wonderful, wonderful movie.
00:29:25
Speaker
And it's really about Thelma's
00:29:29
Speaker
movement into feminism.
00:29:31
Speaker
At one point, you know, they've been driving for days, no one's slept.
00:29:36
Speaker
And Thelma says, I'm so awake.
00:29:38
Speaker
I've never been this awake in my life.
00:29:40
Speaker
Everything looks different.
00:29:42
Speaker
And of course, it looks different, because she's come to feminist consciousness, and the world looks different.
00:29:48
Speaker
And then at one point, Louise says to her,
00:29:51
Speaker
Susan Sarandon says to her, you know, about, you're not going to go back, are you, and leave me here like this?
00:29:56
Speaker
And Thelma says, I can't go back.
00:29:58
Speaker
I would die if I went back.
00:30:00
Speaker
And I think many of us feel that, that if we left our feminist consciousness, what would be left of us?
00:30:04
Speaker
Who would we be?
00:30:06
Speaker
It would need a lobotomy to take my feminism away, you know, because it's given me a life.
00:30:11
Speaker
It's made who I am.
00:30:12
Speaker
It's made me a life of purpose.
00:30:15
Speaker
This is, I feel so identified to this because one thing that Diana and I have an ongoing conversation about is like, Diana comes from a very loving household where her father very much prized her independence and her agency and her ability.
00:30:29
Speaker
And I come from a hyper conservative Christian.
00:30:32
Speaker
I called him Neo Rumsfeldian back in the day.
00:30:35
Speaker
Just like this, I was, you know, having to listen to countless hours of Rush Limbaugh in the car.
00:30:40
Speaker
Right.
00:30:40
Speaker
And of course, like as somebody who went on to pursue her PhD, I was always asking questions like this doesn't make sense.
00:30:47
Speaker
This doesn't add up.
00:30:48
Speaker
And I was met so often with violence.
00:30:50
Speaker
Right.
00:30:50
Speaker
Because I was daring to question his authority as a man.
00:30:54
Speaker
And so it really took me a very long time to come to feminism because I had been trained to avoid anything like that or to be called a tree hugger or a commie Marxist or like, you know, there was no end of insults.
00:31:09
Speaker
But when I finally really did embrace feminism, that's what I felt finally free to be who I am and to be liberated as a human being.
00:31:19
Speaker
And I think that's often what women are missing.
00:31:22
Speaker
But you know what, with that, there's nothing like it.
00:31:26
Speaker
I mean, there's absolutely nothing like embracing it and realizing who you are.
00:31:30
Speaker
But it's a tough thing to come to because what you're going to have to do is withstand all the insults, the pressure, the way that people think about you as a feminist.
00:31:41
Speaker
But believe me, it is worth it.
00:31:43
Speaker
It is so worth every drop of whatever gets thrown at you because you have a life.
00:31:48
Speaker
You have a sense of self.
00:31:49
Speaker
You see the world differently.
00:31:51
Speaker
Feminism is not.
00:31:53
Speaker
just looking at pornography and understanding it's bad or violence against women.
00:31:57
Speaker
It's a whole worldview.
00:31:58
Speaker
And it's also carries a worldview of how we're meant to be as human beings as well.
00:32:03
Speaker
And the notion of kindness and compassion and love and connection to the earth and connection to each other.
00:32:10
Speaker
I mean, it is just an entire worldview that once you step into, I don't think there's any going back.
00:32:16
Speaker
I don't think there's ever any going back.
00:32:18
Speaker
I don't see any going back.
00:32:19
Speaker
I totally agree.
00:32:20
Speaker
I definitely think that there's
00:32:21
Speaker
a lot of benefit in standing your ground and living a life on your terms.
00:32:26
Speaker
Because, you know, despite the fact that I did come from a very supportive family structure, I mean, you know, we all come from cultures that are constantly telling you to compromise with men and constantly telling you that this is an unrealistic expectation to have of them.
00:32:38
Speaker
And like, don't you want to be married?
00:32:40
Speaker
And like, you know, you can't have such a hard and rigid line.
00:32:42
Speaker
And I've personally never understood why you shouldn't have standards for your own life.
00:32:47
Speaker
I mean, if I choose not to
00:32:49
Speaker
have a partner that watches a lot of pornography.
00:32:51
Speaker
I don't know who that's hurting except me and him.
00:32:54
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:32:54
Speaker
Like, but people have these fixed ideas about what they think other people should live their lives like.
00:32:59
Speaker
And, you know, and a lot of people have compromised.
00:33:02
Speaker
And I think a lot of them want to make sense of their own compromise, right?
00:33:05
Speaker
If they've compromised to have a partner that portrays a family image by day and then goes back and watches pornography by night, they have to, you know, it has to make sense to them in some way.
00:33:13
Speaker
They have to make their peace with that in some way.
00:33:15
Speaker
I don't think they make sense of it.
00:33:16
Speaker
I think they make excuses.
00:33:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:19
Speaker
The ultimate sense of it would actually result in you couldn't stay.
00:33:24
Speaker
I mean that in like a twisted way of like, they have to justify their choices, right?
00:33:27
Speaker
And so the way they justify their choices are by attacking yours.
00:33:31
Speaker
Because if everybody around them is adhering to the similar structure, because the thing is, once you prove to them that they didn't need to make that choice, their entire reality crumbles, right?
00:33:39
Speaker
Because I choose to not compromise on that front, their entire reality will crumble.
00:33:43
Speaker
If you belong to a culture that's that misogynistic, like I come from a South Asian culture where almost everyone gets married by their late 20s and 30s.
00:33:49
Speaker
It's like unheard of to be a single woman into your 40s.
00:33:52
Speaker
And it's not the norm.
00:33:53
Speaker
You know, I mean, there are definitely single women, but it's not the norm.
00:33:56
Speaker
And they certainly aren't like held up by the community as pillars of like aspiration.
00:34:00
Speaker
Nobody is aspiring to be a single woman.
00:34:02
Speaker
And so a lot of the pushback you get is, well, what are your reasons?
00:34:05
Speaker
Like justify your standards, you know?
00:34:08
Speaker
And so if you have a standard such as like, well, I don't want to watch someone who watches and consumes misogynistic media.
00:34:12
Speaker
They're like, well, that's very unrealistic, especially pornography.
00:34:15
Speaker
I mean, I'm not even saying misogynistic media in general, because we'll be here.
00:34:18
Speaker
We'll have to tackle the entire TV and film industry.
00:34:22
Speaker
But specifically with pornography, they're like, well, we don't get it because that's just who men are.
00:34:25
Speaker
Boys will be boys.
00:34:26
Speaker
Men will be men, you know?
00:34:28
Speaker
And it seems like we're coming back into that system and we're regressing back into that system because we actually had this discussion a couple of weeks ago about
Media Portrayal of Women and Sex Work
00:34:35
Speaker
Anora as well.
00:34:35
Speaker
And I think I was telling you about how the director and his wife, who was the producer of the film, like enacted sex acts for the actress to copy when she was filming, which I thought was really strange because when people asked her, do you need an intimacy coordinator?
00:34:49
Speaker
She was like, nah, I mean, I think that should be left up to each actor as opposed to it being something that's to ensure the actor's comfort, you know, because this is also for,
00:34:58
Speaker
Young women who enter the industry who might not be comfortable advocating for themselves.
00:35:02
Speaker
But in some ways, I wonder, do you think that intimacy coordinators and people like that are helpful?
00:35:06
Speaker
Or do you think it's a band-aid to the situation in some way?
00:35:08
Speaker
Because it still doesn't address the root depiction of the pornified way in which we consume media.
00:35:15
Speaker
I think that's absolutely true.
00:35:17
Speaker
But I also think they're necessary because you have many young women on the set.
00:35:21
Speaker
And one of the things that the Me Too movement did and Time's Up was to show
00:35:27
Speaker
just how many young women had been raped on the set, sexually harassed.
00:35:31
Speaker
So I do think intimacy coordinators for those women are excellent.
00:35:35
Speaker
Do I think it will in any way shift the misogynist media?
00:35:39
Speaker
No, I don't think it will.
00:35:40
Speaker
But it will make life better for that individual actress, which she needs that protection.
00:35:47
Speaker
The whole notion, I remember when I won all the Oscars and everything, and one of the speeches that the writers and directors gave is, we stand with you, sex workers.
00:35:58
Speaker
Well, first of all, I never used the term sex work because it legitimises the pimps and the johns and delegitimises the experiences of the women in the sex industry.
00:36:07
Speaker
But I remember Rachel Lauren wrote a wonderful piece, I can't remember where it was, and she said, okay, you want to stand with us?
00:36:14
Speaker
Then take an eight-hour shift and get fucked by as many men as we do.
00:36:18
Speaker
And then you tell me that's what standing with us looks like.
00:36:21
Speaker
And, of course, it just brought it all into clarity that these, they stand with you.
00:36:26
Speaker
What are Hollywood stars going to do when they stand with women whose job it is to be fucked by as many men?
00:36:33
Speaker
and, you know, called all the names.
00:36:34
Speaker
So I just, it made me crazy watching that whole period with that film and that he won an Oscar.
00:36:41
Speaker
How hideous is that?
00:36:43
Speaker
Did you hear that Cheryl Lee Ralph was asked about the Oscars and like who would win this year?
00:36:49
Speaker
And she said, well, just look at the stats.
00:36:51
Speaker
Like more women portraying prostitutes in film have won Oscars than any black women ever.
00:36:58
Speaker
That's true.
00:36:59
Speaker
I mean, I think, I believe she literally said, if you want to win an Oscar, get on the poll.
00:37:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, two things.
00:37:04
Speaker
If you want to win an Oscar, either play a prostituted woman or a Holocaust victim.
00:37:09
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:11
Speaker
I mean, there are more women who have played sex workers who are, well, prostitutes who have won the Oscar than there are black women who won the Oscar or any other minority.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
The last count I had was 16 out of 25.
00:37:23
Speaker
So 16, 25 were nominated for an Academy Award who played prostituted women as 16 won, which is an incredible amount.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:37:33
Speaker
And the funny thing is, I mean, the film doesn't really depict the character in a positive light anyway.
00:37:39
Speaker
I mean, she kind of gets essentially used by everyone around her.
00:37:42
Speaker
So, I mean, at the end of the day, they're kind of validating her.
00:37:45
Speaker
points we're making about the industry in general.
00:37:47
Speaker
That character has very little agency and is used by a lot more powerful people around her in the film.
00:37:53
Speaker
She doesn't really have any power in the structure at all.
00:37:56
Speaker
And she's kind of depicted to be like a woman with stars in her eyes who's like, I'm in love with this person, this oligarch son, and he just takes her for a ride.
00:38:04
Speaker
So it seems like it's actually surprisingly a weirdly realistic depiction of what it would be like if you were
00:38:10
Speaker
a prostitute that met a very wealthy Russian oligarch's kid.
00:38:13
Speaker
But they're making it seem like this is supposed to be empowering for women who are in that profession, or people who are pimping women out.
00:38:23
Speaker
It's a pimp and john's view of what prostitution is.
00:38:29
Speaker
If you really want to show prostitution, I mean, I couldn't imagine that film winning an Oscar.
00:38:36
Speaker
I was going to say, we always hear about the prostitutes and it's always through this sort of filmy lens, but we never ever, and again, this is part of their like sacred cow.
00:38:45
Speaker
We never actually see, you know, the seediness and the depravity of these men who are the jobs and the pimps, right?
00:38:52
Speaker
And if you notice the films that do well are always like the, she's a hooker with a heart of gold, like pretty woman depiction of prostitution.
00:38:59
Speaker
It's always like, oh, but she has a great heart.
00:39:01
Speaker
And it never actually focuses on the ugly side of what she has to do for a living.
00:39:05
Speaker
And it always gives you this Richard Gere kind of attractive guy that she latches onto, as opposed to the reality of men that they have to deal with.
00:39:14
Speaker
You know, it's interesting, Matt.
00:39:15
Speaker
Think about Hollywood.
00:39:17
Speaker
And that made Julia Roberts' career and also made a fortune.
00:39:22
Speaker
And the first thing that Hollywood does when a film makes a fortune is it makes...
00:39:27
Speaker
a second version and a third version and a fourth.
00:39:30
Speaker
Why was there no Pretty Woman Part 2?
00:39:32
Speaker
Because the answer would be, well, you know what her film was after that?
00:39:36
Speaker
Julia Roberts' film after that?
00:39:38
Speaker
Sleeping with the Enemy.
00:39:39
Speaker
That would have been Pretty Woman Part 2 because that's exactly what she'd be doing.
00:39:43
Speaker
She'd be sleeping with the enemy.
00:39:45
Speaker
I mean, can you imagine they're on the honeymoon, the prostituted woman and the johns,
00:39:49
Speaker
And so they have an argument over, I don't know, whether they have steak for dinner or whatever, lobster or whatever.
00:39:55
Speaker
And what's he going to turn around and say to her?
00:39:57
Speaker
You dirty whore.
00:39:58
Speaker
I picked you up off the streets.
00:40:00
Speaker
You disagree with me.
00:40:01
Speaker
You're going back to the streets.
00:40:01
Speaker
Could you imagine what her life would look like married to the John?
00:40:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:05
Speaker
And the crazy part is I recall reading that that was not the version they were going to go with.
00:40:09
Speaker
When they made Pretty Women originally, it was supposed to be a darker look at prostitution, but they ended up changing it and making this like candy floss version where it's essentially a rom-com.
00:40:19
Speaker
But that was not the original version of it.
00:40:21
Speaker
It was supposed to be a darker look at it.
00:40:24
Speaker
And so, I mean, I don't know what was, you know, who came on board, maybe the producer changed and whatever.
00:40:28
Speaker
But like, I mean, I think they normalized it and they made it seem like it's actually fun in some ways to be a prostitute.
00:40:34
Speaker
Like, you know, there's a possibility.
00:40:36
Speaker
You go shopping.
00:40:37
Speaker
Yeah, you go shopping.
00:40:39
Speaker
You meet this attractive man.
00:40:40
Speaker
Expensive clothes, jewelry.
00:40:43
Speaker
You go to the opera.
00:40:45
Speaker
You know, the normal level they lie to the prostituted woman, you know.
00:40:49
Speaker
The other part that they never show, and of course, we know it's because of this, like having it be the third rail, as Gail called it.
00:40:54
Speaker
The other part is, you know, they never really show what women have gone through in order to have to become a prostitute.
00:41:02
Speaker
They come from a family where their father or their uncle is raping them.
00:41:05
Speaker
They come from oftentimes, most times, extreme poverty.
00:41:08
Speaker
Many of them are immigrants who have, you know, been fed the false golden promise of freedom in the Western world.
00:41:15
Speaker
I discussed this with you earlier, Gail, the movie Eastern Promises.
00:41:18
Speaker
which is something about this very premise.
00:41:20
Speaker
And it's like, they never want us to see the reality of how these women come to be prostitutes because it's a tragedy each and every time.
00:41:28
Speaker
And also how these women end up because, you know, you end up
00:41:33
Speaker
You know, even if you were a high-end, so-called high-end core girl, you know, I remember speaking to one of the police here who dealt with trafficking and prostitution, and she said, and she was very much, you know, in the camp of basically decriminalizing the women and criminalizing the johns, a very thoughtful woman.
00:41:51
Speaker
And she said, you know, you see these so-called high-end prostitutes in their expensive outfits.
00:41:56
Speaker
She says often that's all they ever own.
00:41:58
Speaker
They've got nothing else.
00:42:00
Speaker
That one outfit, they're destitute.
00:42:02
Speaker
I mean, you don't see where they end up on the street.
00:42:06
Speaker
And it's a very slippery rail that you go down as you get older because, you know, your body is so abused and, you know, you're so open to risks of STIs and stuff and difficult to get health care.
00:42:19
Speaker
So you don't actually see how these women...
00:42:21
Speaker
you know, go down that slippery slope and end up on the streets turning tricks for 20 bucks a day, you know, a turn.
00:42:29
Speaker
You know, I go to when I lecture in the universities and I get these academic women who drive me nuts and start saying, you know, how sex work is.
00:42:36
Speaker
And I said, and then in the end, the answer I've got to them, I say, look,
00:42:40
Speaker
How much money did you take out to get a bachelor's degree, a master's and a PhD?
00:42:45
Speaker
I mean, you must have a ton of student loans.
00:42:47
Speaker
And so you've got all these loans.
00:42:49
Speaker
Tell me, why did you bother?
00:42:50
Speaker
If being prostitute is so great, why didn't you start working at 14 on the street?
00:42:56
Speaker
You could have got $20 a shot.
00:42:57
Speaker
You wouldn't have all these loans.
00:42:59
Speaker
So why did you choose academia?
00:43:01
Speaker
And the reality is they chose it because they had choices.
00:43:04
Speaker
That's exactly it.
00:43:05
Speaker
And you know what?
00:43:06
Speaker
Prostitution is okay or pornography for her over there.
00:43:10
Speaker
It's just not something I would choose.
00:43:13
Speaker
Hi, everyone.
00:43:13
Speaker
We are so excited to have Dr. Gail Dines on the podcast today, and we know you want to hear more from her.
00:43:20
Speaker
But if you do, you're going to have to subscribe to our Patreon and listen to her on our bonus content, where you'll be able to get the entire interview that we had with her today.
00:43:30
Speaker
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
00:43:32
Speaker
Thanks for listening.