Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industy

Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry, edited by Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray, is a collection of articles from radical feminists, activists, and academics who all believe that pornography is not about "pleasure, self-empowerment and freedom of choice"; rather that  pornography represents the systemic subjugation of women as a sex class.  Therefore pornography is not about sex, it is a form of violence against women. I am an anti-porn, anti-sex industry feminist so it's fairly clear that I agree with the basic premise of this book.

I wasn't prepared for what I read. I had already read Gail Dines' Pornland and Robert Jensen's Getting Off. I even attended the Challenging Porn Conference in London in 2011. I already knew the links between pornography and the pharmaceutical/ medical business. I knew how the pornography industry uses "free sites" to suck people into payed-for porn. I knew the violence perpetrated on women's bodies. I knew how porn was predicated on racist constructions of the human body. I thought I understood just how mainstream violent and child pornography actually is. I had seen images I never wanted to see in the first place. I still wasn't prepared for this book.

I wasn't prepared for the soul-destroying mundanity of it all; of realising just well pornography is integrated into the capitalist economy; how horrifically common-place extreme violence is. I wasn't prepared for just how normal porn involving children and teenagers is. I wasn't prepared to read what men do to the bodies of women and children. I wasn't prepared to realise just how many men hate women.

I have  storified some of the quotes I tweeted out over the weekend whilst I was reading here. Allecto from Liberation Collective has written an excellent review here. It includes a graphic description of child rape so please take care before opening this link.

Big Porn Inc is an incredibly powerful book and I'm going to recommend it to every single person who tries to convince that porn is just a laugh and women like being brutally assaulted.