“The success of the porn industry largely depends upon the willingness of heterosexual men to buy its products, to enter into a contract which provides them with (vicarious) use of a female body for their arousal or amusement.” Professor Karen Boyle, Everyday Pornography
“In a sexist society, where sex for a ‘real man’ entails sexually lording it over a woman, the biggest profits for pornographers lie in digging deeper into this misogyny. Throw in a relentless battle with other firms… and you have an industry dedicated to documenting and ratcheting up the sexual abuse of women.” Kat Banyard, Pimp State
“Anyone willing to feed off women’s bodies and use them as raw materials to make a profit has no right to call themselves feminists. Even porn without overt violence is a form of exploitation since it reduces women to a series of body parts.” Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
“The accusation levied towards anti-porn feminists is that while we are wasting time focusing on images of people having consensual sex, the battle for equality is hindered. But there are real women in pornography and, whether the violence is acted out or real, the message is that brutality equals sexual pleasure, and in a world in which rape is commonplace, this is a harmful message” Julie Bindel, The Guardian
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here