by GAIL DINES
Last week, midway through a leisurely Saturday afternoon, I got an email from MSNBC asking me to be on the Melissa Harris Perry Show a week later (July 7th). I was delighted to accept, as MHP is not your usual American journalist. A professor of political science at Tulane University, she is an outspoken African American feminist and a progressive voice in a media landscape dominated by right-wing talking heads. MSNBC is a rare media oasis in the U.S. where one gets to hear some actual critical analysis, so I—mistakenly, it turned out—thought this was going to be one of the few positive experiences I’ve had working with corporate-controlled media. In all honesty, after many years of being on talk shows in the U.S., I have come to expect very little in terms of integrity from the media. Their job is to boost ratings by making stories entertaining and light, and God help anyone who gets in their way.
I spent a long time on the phone with MHP’s producer talking about my research on the harms of porn and the ways women in the industry—especially women of color—are financially exploited and physically and emotionally dehumanized and debased. Given MHP’s feminist politics and her scholarly work on the representation of African American women in U.S. history, I was excited to do a show with an interviewer whom I expected would be engaging and thoughtful, in contrast to the usual adolescent sniggering I get from the male journalist who suddenly finds himself in the awkward position of interviewing a feminist who doesn’t think porn is fun. 
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2 Responses
This is the reality of male controlled corporate media and it is happening not just in the US but here in the UK too. Last night Channel 4 news put out a ‘fluffy piece’ concerning news that some publishers have decided to rewrite certain literary classics. Apparently these works need to be ‘made more erotic’ (read pornified) in order new readers can understand the works more easily!
Classics such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice both written by female authors and wherein copyright is no longer an issue are to be rewritten as soft-porn, because wait for it – ‘sex’ has to be constantly written about and these books contain no ‘sex’ whatsoever. ‘Sex’ is code for phallocentric mens’ belief that women are men’s disposable sexual service stations and this propaganda has to be constantly repeated otherwise women might just rebel and challenge men on their obsession with phallocentricism and reject men’s claims women are innately sexually submissive and desire to be subjected to sadistic male sexual torture.
The male interviewer was uncomfortable discussing the pornification of literary classics but no worries his female interviewee Zoe Margolis (a young woman who has profited by writing about her sexual activities) and the male interviewee a professor of literature didn’t engage with criticising publishers’ claims ‘literary works need to be rewritten. Instead the brief interview was one whereby all engaged in trying to outdo each other in claiming ‘isn’t reading about sex fun? When I was a boy I used to enjoy reading those naughty (read porn) magazines and it didn’t harm me! This supposedly qualified as a serious interview – two men and one woman engaged in trying to outdo each other by claiming ‘I’m not a prude/reading about sex is so much fun!!’
Malestream media must have high fived because another potential disaster was averted and instead the old misogynistic message was repeated – male sexual domination over women is ‘fun’ because women want it and need it!
As Gail Dines rightly asserted ‘ These images, just like the ones in The Help, are part of the media world that creates ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that undermine all women’s rights to full equality, dignity, and justice.’
Except Ms. Dines did not state who benefits from these images so I will help her by rewriting her last sentence: ‘These images, just like the ones in The Help, are part of the malestream media world that creates male-myopic ideas, male myopic attitudes and male myopic beliefs which maintain male domination and male control over all women and ensure male oppression of women globally cannot be changed or challenged.
Well said Jennifer Drew. Your response is a noteworthy article in itself – very eloquent and well put. I can’t add anything except – I agree!