Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry

Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray (Eds)

Release Date: 6 September 2011

RRP: $36.95 (310 pages)  

... our primary concern with pornography is not that it is offensive (although it often is), but that it is subordination and degradation—mostly of women. It is a human rights issue.

The unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.

Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography.

Contributors: Abigail Bray, Anna van Heeswijk, Anne Mayne, Asja Armanda, Betty McLellan, Caroline, Caroline Norma, Caroline Taylor, Catharine MacKinnon, Christopher Kendall, Chyng Sun, Diana Russell, Diane L Rosenfeld, Gail Dines, Helen Pringle, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Jeffrey Masson, Julia Long, Linda Thompson, Maggie Hamilton, Matt McCormack Evans, Meagan Tyler, Melinda Liszewski, Melinda Tankard Reist, Melissa Farley, Natalie Nenadic, Nina Funnell, Renate Klein, Robert Jensen, Robi Sonderegger, Ruchira Gupta, Sheila Jeffreys, Stella, Susan Hawthorne.

When anthropologists from Planet Upsilon report on how civilization failed, Big Porn Inc will probably be Exhibit One.  I thank the authors for the courage to wade throught this material and put together this awesome book that drags us kicking and screaming to what so many do not want to know about corporate sex. - Martin Dufresne, anti-sexim activist, Canada

This powerful and humane book is a breakthrough. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring which began the environmental movement, Big Porn Inc shows us we are poisoning our own spirits, and that an ugly misuse of thousands of women, including very young children, is the dark and criminal underside of the insatiable need for more. —Steve Biddulph, author of The New Manhood and The Secret of Happy Children.

Big Porn Inc is a must read for anyone interested in the human rights of women and children. The book is cogent and alarming, yet hopeful that together we can create a world where women and children are not hurt and degraded. Big Porn Inc is a much needed blueprint for ending the global porn industry. —Christine Stark, author of Nickel

Big Porn Inc unleashes a cascade of emotions—shock, disgust, guilt, rage, and heart-felt admiration for the victims of the porn industry … A landmark publication sure to help open the eyes of the public to the modern scourge of porn and amplify the call for greater decency and respect. – Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University

Melinda Tankard Reist is a writer, speaker, blogger, media commentator and activist against the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls, and violence against women. Her third book Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls (2009) is in its fourth printing.

Dr Abigail Bray is a research fellow at the Social Justice Research Centre at Edith Cowan University. She has published widely in leading international academic journals on anorexia, child sexual abuse, moral panics, and child pornography. She is the author of Hélène Cixous: Writing and Sexual Difference (2004) and Body Talk: A Power Guide for Girls (2005) with Elizabeth Reid Boyd .