The pornographic vocabulary of sex as the violent debasement of the female body had seeped out from screens and into the lives of the women I knew.
And there was one more thing, which happened more gradually: I heard from friends about the boyfriend who wanted to choke them, or the one who slapped them about in bed, or pressured them to do anal, or wanted to film it all. Though it seemed callow to admit it, I’d seen things in my research that shocked and upset me – real penetration of real women causing real pain. I began to suspect that it was futile to criticise Dines’ use of cohort studies to demonstrate connections between porn use and misogynist attitudes – repeating over and over that there is no control group of men not exposed to the insistent chauvinism of pornography is, ultimately, not very convincing or reassuring. I knew that there were parts of the argument I’d fudged, especially (and shamefully) around the racism and sexism that are embedded in the grammar of pornography.
I didn’t feel exactly like a winner, however. The debate dragged out for over a year, then collapsed unsatisfyingly, and I wrote a grumpy blogpost about it which led lots of people (most of them, it has to be said, men) to declare me the winner. In the end, I got the impression that we’d both slightly wrong-footed each other: I didn’t use the insinuations of sexlessness and prudery she’d anticipated, and her argument contained all the economic and ethical subtlety I’d foolishly assumed it would lack. I knew where it had come from, however: four years ago, Dines and I took part in a debate titled “Is Porn Hijacking Our Sexuality?” Dines, a veteran anti-porn feminist, argued for yes, and I put the case for no. I do not hate Gail Dines, so I was a little taken aback to see this statement on a comment thread. “Isn’t Sarah Ditum the feminist who hates Gail Dines?”
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