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 .
Defiant Birth
Defiant Birth says that society’s demands for physical perfection are placing enormous pressure on women to terminate ‘imperfect’ foetuses diagnosed by prenatal technology.
The intensely moving and courageous stories of 20 women who continued their pregnancies despite immense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations to terminate, are told in Defiant Birth.
Defiant Birth is the story of women from around the world who were told they should not have their babies because of perceived disabilities – either in the child or themselves. Facing silent disapproval and sometimes open hostility, the book chronicles what happened when these women went ahead and had their babies anyway.
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Defiant Birth challenges widespread medical, and often social aversion to less than perfect pregnancies or genetically different babies. It also features women with disabilities who were discouraged from becoming pregnant at all. Tankard Reist argues that the widespread practice of prenatal screening and abortion are a continuation of eugenics, which is a view that we must weed out the imperfect in order to perfect the human race. Those with the best genetic makeup are valued over those considered genetically flawed. “Prenatal screening may appear to give pregnant women more power but often it actually takes choices away,” says Tankard Reist. Defiant Birth tells the frank and courageous of women who have persevered through enormous adversity, social prejudices and suffering to defy the worst predictions.
Faking It
Author: Selena Ewing Editor: Melinda Tankard Reist
Do you read women’s lifestyle magazines? Know someone who does? Have you thought about how magazines might affect you when you read them? While millions of women around the world seem to lap up the magazines’ mix of fashion, sex, relationship advice and product promotion, Faking It takes a more cautious and critical view.
Faking It reflects the body of academic research on magazines, mass media, and the sexual objectification of women.
Getting Real
NOW IN ITS FOURTH PRINTING!
PB / $34.95 / ISBN 9781876756758
“Getting Real contains a treasure trove of information and should be mandatory reading for all workers with young people in health, education and welfare” - Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Adolescent Psychologist
ABOUT
Getting Real puts the spotlight on a critical issue of international concern: the sexualisation and objectification of girls and women in the media, popular culture and society more broadly.
Girls and young women are growing up in an increasingly sexualised environment. Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a ‘thin, hot, sexy’ norm.
Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Getting Real brings together for the first time, some of the most vocal critics of the widespread pornification of culture. Academics, psychologists, authors and activists, they call corporations, the media and the sex industry to account for creating this toxic environment.
Contributors: Tania Andrusiak, Steve Biddulph, Abigail Bray, Selena Ewing, Melissa Farley, Julie Gale, Maggie Hamilton, Noni Hazlehurst, Clive Hamilton, Renate Klein, Betty McLellan, Louise Newman, Emma Rush, Melinda Tankard Reist and Lauren Rosewarne.
Giving Sorrow Words
Giving Sorrow Words: Women’s Stories of Grief After Abortion (Duffy&Snellgrove, 2000) is a collection of personal stories of 18 Australian women and how they felt after their abortions. Many felt pressured by others to have abortions and were unprepared for what they would go through.
What reviewers said:
“true…compelling and wrenching…Reist’s book, like Bringing Them Home, is a compendium of information we had to have…Read this book…” – Bob Ellis The Age
…powerful and moving…strangely uplifting…a staggeringly powerful, and at times heartbreaking read.’ – Bendigo Advertiser
“harrowing – Daily Telegraph
“heart-rending” – The Australian
“A ground-breaking, deeply pro-woman experience” – Tharunka, University of NSW
“Exposing one of the last taboos…deeply emotional and uncomfortable” – Sydney Morning Herald
“A moving, enraging and ultimately liberating collection of women’s stories. Compelling reading for everyone, no matter their position on abortion.” – Dr Renate Klein
Updating…
Available now
Now in its FOURTH printing!
