A guest op/ed by Jordan Owen on the relentless double-talk and lateral thinking of authoritarian anti-porn fanatic Gail Dines —
When Gail Dines made her infamous 2011 trip to Australia and faced extremes of support and ridicule she’d never expected, she was featured in a number of high profile media venues, not the least of which was a so-called “porn wars” debate panel with Dr. Leslie Cannold.
In the course of that event, she compared the porn industry to 1960’s hippie protestors who, when threatened with police brutality, would shout “chicks up front” so that the women in the group would form a human shield. Gail stated that the purpose of this was so that the women would get beaten instead of the men when in reality it was to discourage the police from using force altogether.
Nevertheless, she declared that the porn industry similarly placed “chicks up front,” meaning that the industry used (often intimidated, bullied) female performers as representatives in the Pro/Anti porn debate. This has been a regular tactic for Dines: dismiss any female performer who speaks up by declaring that she’s just a shill for Big Porn and act as if the male producers are cowards for not facing her directly.
Dines has even used such language in her recent Twitter posts with regards to the upcoming protest of the London Stop Porn Culture convention, but then released a Counterpunch article in which she dismisses the group organizing the protest, Sex & Censorship, as being comparable to the Tea Party because the organization was founded by Jerry Barnett, a prominent UK pornographer.
Barnett, Dines moans, “was described by the BBC in 2008 as ‘the boss of the UK’s biggest adult website’, and is now chairman of the Adult Industry Trade Association.”
So which is it Gail? You’ve decried the evil ‘porn industry’ using female performers in place of male execs more times than George W. Bush said “stay the course” and now you want to dismiss your opponent Mr. Barnett for doing and being… exactly what you’ve supposedly wanted all along!
It’s not like he’s hiding or anything; he posts regularly on the S&C website and is expected to be at the physical protest as well. But time and again Comrade Dines shows that she isn’t about open discussion, just finding whatever straw excuse will most quickly dismiss the opposition.
There is also an important difference to note between the phony grassroots organizing being done by the corporate interests in the Tea Party and Mr. Barnett’s campaign: the regulations that the Tea Party-backing corporations opposed only directly affected people in the corporate strata: the execs who stood to gain or lose depending on how the pendulum of regulation swung. That is not the issue here.
What Gail is championing — the imposition of internet filters along with legislation that allows the British government to imprison porn users on a whim — is a profound strike against the freedom and liberty of all people living under the Crown. Mr. Barnett is not duplicitous in this matter because he has business interests that would suffer as a result.
Gail, on the other hand, is the one who is attempting to convince the citizenry of the UK (and anywhere else she spreads her lies, bigotry and paranoia) to vote away their freedom for their own good — and that is a revolting and unforgivable deception.
Gail Dines and the Magic of Lateral Thinking by Jordan Owen
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEi6rCDu9u8
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