Stop Porn Culture is an international
feminist anti-porn organization with branches in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
, and the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
. It works as an advisory body, trains trainers, and builds public health educational materials based on empirical research. It has a network of volunteers and activists and collaborates with other organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Some of its work is grassroots activist work.
History
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, concurrent with the rapid growth of the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and the increased accessibility to
pornography that it provided,
feminists
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male poi ...
in the U.S. began to organize to discuss the proliferation of pornography and of "violence associated with its production and consumption". Some of the discussion participants decided to rebuild a national movement, similar to one of the previous 20 years, to address the harms of the pornography industry. Several feminists developed a contemporary version of the
slide show
A slide show (slideshow) is a presentation of a series of still images ( slides) on a projection screen or electronic display device, typically in a prearranged sequence. The changes may be automatic and at regular intervals or they may be manu ...
s developed in the 1970s to be used as an educational tool and to inspire action against the
pornification
Pornification is the absorption by mainstream culture of styles or content of the sex industry and the sexualisation of Western culture, sometimes referred to as raunch culture. Pornification, particularly the use of sexualised images of women, is ...
(or
sexualization
Sexualization (or sexualisation) is to make something sexual in character or quality or to become aware of sexuality, especially in relation to men and women. Sexualization is linked to sexual objectification. According to the American Psycholog ...
) of culture. Stop Porn Culture was created from these efforts.
Mission
The Stop Porn Culture mission statement reads:
:Stop Porn Culture is dedicated to challenging the pornography industry and an increasingly pornographic pop culture. Our work toward ending industries of sexual exploitation is grounded in a feminist analysis of sexist, racist, and economic oppression. We affirm sexuality that is rooted in equality and free of exploitation, coercion, and violence.
Activism
Gail Dines
Gail Dines (born 29 July 1958) is professor emerita of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts.
A radical feminist, Dines specializes in the study of pornography. Described in 2010 as the world's leading anti-p ...
, founding member of Stop Porn Culture, wrote ''Pornland.'' In 2014 a documentary, with the same name, was released and promoted on the Stop Porn Culture website, and is described as "an ideal introduction to the core arguments of the feminist anti-pornography movement."
Stop Porn Culture works to create awareness on what it calls the current "porn culture." Much of this work is done online through online lecture videos and social media work as well as through workshops and conferences for Feminist Slideshow Training. It is an unpaid organization and recruits through a volunteer and internship program focused on marketing, digital writing, video editing, and social media projects.
In 2013 Stop Porn Culture started a petition against the journal ''
Porn Studies
''Porn Studies'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering the study of pornography. It is published by Routledge and was established in 2014. The editors-in-chief are Feona Attwood (Middlesex University), John Mercer (Birmingham City ...
'', a first-of-its-kind, peer-reviewed publication focused on porn studies. Stop Porn Culture's co founder Gail Dines claimed that the journal has a pro-porn bias, a claim that the journal denied.
See also
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Anti-pornography movement in the United States
An anti-pornography movement in the United States has existed since before the 1969 Supreme Court decision of '' Stanley v. Georgia'', which held that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes, by establishing an imp ...
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Anti-pornography movement in the United Kingdom
The anti-pornography movement in the United Kingdom is a social movement that seeks to reduce the availability of pornography in the country. The movement originates from two distinct perspectives: some feminists oppose pornography because they re ...
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Free Speech Coalition
The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) is a non-profit trade association of the pornography and adult entertainment industry in the United States. Founded in 1991, it opposes the passage and enforcement of obscenity laws and many censorship laws (with t ...
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Morality in Media
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), formerly known as Morality in Media, is an American conservative non-profit known for its anti-pornography advocacy. The group has also campaigned against sex trafficking, same-sex marriage, sex ...
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XXXchurch.com
XXXchurch.com is a non-profit Christian website that aims to help those who struggle with pornography. It ministers to porn industry performers and consumers. The organization describes itself as a "Christian porn site designed to bring awareness ...
Bibliography
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References
External links
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{{Radical feminism
Feminism and history
Anti-pornography feminism