Melinda Reist: Big Porn Inc

Firstly, my gratitude to some of the best women in the country for working on this book with me.

My co-editor Abigail Bray – the way your mind works and the way you put words together, is a wonder to behold. Thank you for significant support and solidarity.

This book is also the product of the brilliance and dedication of a number of women, primary among them Renate Klein, Helen Pringle and Caroline Norma.

To the contributors – counted among the bravest people I know. I am indebted to you for your willingness to contribute and for continuing to speak out in the face of unrelenting opposition. Your names make an impressive and compelling line-up.

To those who shared their personal stories of suffering harm and damage from their own or another’s pornography use, deepest gratitude.

To Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne at Spinifex Press for your belief in this project (even a cyclone couldn’t stop you!). Renate, thanks for keeping us on track and reminding us that there really was a deadline. And also for your special friendship over many years. Susan, for massive help with proofing (and so much more). Special acknowledgement to Deb Snibson for the strong cover design, Maree Hawken for careful and intelligent copy editing, Kath Harper for a comprehensive index, Nikki Anderson and Kate Page for publicity, along with Maralann Damiano, Jo O’Brien and Bernadette Green.

To our wonderful endorsees. Your support means so much.

I have been blessed with the support and friendship of great women: Abigail, Renate, Susan, Helen, Caroline – as well as Deborah Malcolm, Melinda Liszewski and my other Collective Shout colleagues. Significant thanks to Julie Gale for almost daily de-briefs and laughter, without which I’m not sure I would still be standing. To everyone who sent a word of encouragement through my blog and social network pages. Do not underestimate how much this means.

Finally, to my family who make significant sacrifices for my work. One day I hope to make it up to you.

First of all, I would like to salute the contributors for their integrity and life work; without them this book would not be possible, and I have learnt a great deal from all of them. Thank you Melinda for your courage, fortitude and friendship, for bearing the ‘terrible knowledge’ and staying strong. A special thank you to Renate, Susan, Helen, Julie, Caroline and the Collective Shout team, for immeasurable things, for the gift of such intelligent friendship, and for your passionate integrity. I would like to acknowledge the Edith Cowan University Social Justice Research Centre for supporting this book. Gabby, your infectious laughter and cool subversive mind is the best cure for the misogyny blues. Thanks Jonathan for large bottles of vitamin C, 500 soy smoothies, bags of health food and hysterical laughter. Thank you Charity for your integrity and wisdom, and for always being there for me. Thanks Peter, Sam and Martin for many interesting conversations about capitalism and pornography. Thanks also to my scattered and talented family for much support.

Vagelis – your solidarity, humour, courage, wise and kind advice, help with research, and inspiring political passion through difficult times, helped me stand when the knees of my soul were cut. This book is for you, comrade.

We live in a world that is increasingly shaped by pornography. The signs are everywhere:

• A urinal at the Clock Hotel on the Gold Coast in Queensland, shaped as a woman’s mouth with huge painted red lips.

• A music video by Kanye West featuring semi-naked women’s corpses hanging from chains, with West holding the head of a decapitated woman in scenes of eroticised carnage. [2] 2 http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/01/so-decapitated-women-are-fine-with-you-kanyewest/

• Ejaculation-themed images in advertising for face cream and alcohol. [3] 3 http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2008/07/10/ejaculation-imagery-in-ads/

• Porn-inspired t-shirts depicting women naked, bound and blood spattered, sold in youth fashion stores. [4] 4 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Say-no-to-porn-t-shirts/163212907070593

• A ‘Pippa Middleton Ass Appreciation Society’ Facebook page set up in honour of the sister and bridesmaid of Kate Middleton, attracting over 200,000 members. Men describe what they want to do to the 29-year-old: knock her up, bash her ‘back doors’ in, cause her injury such that she would need ‘straw and a wheelchair’. [5] 5 http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/05/pippa%e2%80%99s-arse-has-become-porn-for-the-slobbering-masses/

• A Facebook page dedicated to the facial cum shot titled ‘Smile or it’s going in your eye’ (“make sure every girl gets the message!”) had almost 12,000 members. [6] 6 http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=241705237082&ref=mf

• In the children’s holiday movie Hop , the cartoon teenage boy-bunny asks Hugh Hefner about spending the night at the Playboy mansion. [7] 7 http://melindatankardreist.com/2011/04/playboy-pushes-global-porn-brand-to-kids-in-easter-bunny-film/ It’s where all the sexy bunnies stay, replies the pornography mogul through the mansion’s intercom.

Big Porn Inc documents the proliferation and normalisation of pornography, the way it has become a global industry and a global ideology, and how it is shaping our world and the harm this causes. The global pornography industry is expected to reach US$100 billion in the near future. [8] 8 http://www.morssglobalfinance.com/the-economics-of-the-global-entertainment-industry/ In 2009, the UN estimated that the global child pornography industry made a profit of up to $20 billion (M’jid Maalla, 2009). Pornography money is buying governments, academic research, national and international corporations and law enforcement agencies.

This largely unregulated pornography industry has colonised private and public spaces at a rate that presents significant challenges to women’s and children’s rights. The mainstreaming of pornography is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of anti-women attitudes and behaviours and contributing to the sexualisation of children. The pornification of culture is leading to a form of hypersexism that entails an increase in physical, sexual, mental, economic and emotional cruelty towards women and children. This radical cultural shift is shaping the way we understand ourselves and others, both personally and politically.

Big Porn Inc demonstrates why a comprehensive and uncompromising intervention – first to expose, and second to rein in – is needed to challenge the global pornography industry. Drawing on empirical, legal, political, ethical, and philosophical arguments, this collection presents the work of leading international experts and activists who are combating the toxic industries and cultures of Big Porn.

Our book provides a powerful challenge to libertarian conceits that pornography is simply about pleasure, self-empowerment and freedom of choice. Challenges to the pornography industry that call attention to evidence of harm and the destruction of human dignity and rights are frequently derided as ‘moral panics’, a term designed to silence and humiliate political critics who threaten vested financial, political and ideological interests. Those who use the term ‘moral panic’ as an insult set up a reactionary conflict between ‘wowser’ types who have issues with ‘sex’ as against the more relaxed fun-loving sexual sophisticates. But challenging the sexist and racist pornographic industrialisation of intimacy is not an anti-sex position. Pornography is a distortion of respect-based sexuality.