Summary: Is porn is human rights issue? Dr. Gail Dines, Professor of Emeritus of Sociology, unequivocally says, yes. Dr. Dines has been researching and writing about the porn industry for well over 25 years. She is a recipient of the Myers Centre Award for the study of human rights in North America and the author of numerous books and articles, including PornLand: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. She is the founding President and CEO of the non-profit <a href="https://www.culturereframed.org/">Culture Reframed</a>. Gail is also described as one of the leading anti-porn scholars and activists in the world.<br> <br> She states, <br> "We need to see pornography as a harms issue and not a moral issue. That pornography was happening to real women and it had real-world consequences on women both in the industry and outside the industry, and that it really grew out of the radical feminist anti-violence movement. Where we began to see the relationship between pornography and violence against women."<br> What Does Pornography Have To Do With Human Rights?<br> Anne, founder of Betrayal Trauma Recovery, sees the similarities in the abuse within porn and the cross-over abuse by porn-users. She adds, <br> "The same abusive thought processes: entitlement, feelings of superiority, are going to remain and that is very dangerous. What we’re seeing right now is so many men claiming to be in recovery yet they’re still exhibiting these abusive behaviors: lying, manipulation, anger. I don’t know whether the porn has stopped or not, right, because the lying continues, but at the very least we can see that the abusive behaviors are continuing."<br> So why all the hype about the sex-positive movement? What does this mean? Dr. Dines explains, <br> "The more privileged a woman is and the further away she is from ever having to be in pornography in order to put food on the table for her kids, the easier it is to endorse it as empowering. It’s a very privileged white position to say pornography, and I have to add in there prostitution because a lot of the same women who are pro-porn argue that they’re pro-prostitution, it’s a privilege white position because most of those women who have the argument are so far away from ever having to be in porn or ever having to be in prostitution. The first rule of feminism is to do no harm to women and pornography is one of the most harmful forms of visual representation that we have that delivers to men’s brains, a very clear image of misogyny."<br> Anne agrees and explains the experiences of women she speaks with everyday,<br> "At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we see it as a consent issue with wives of porn users. That they are unaware of what is going on and so they are not technically able to give their consent in that situation because they’re being lied to in their most intimate relationship. So, it is an abuse issue. It’s an emotional abuse issue. It’s a consent issue. It’s a human rights issue. We’re trying to help people understand that so that they can really view pornography use with the lens of severity that it actually deserves."<br> How Is Pornography Related To Human Rights Issues?<br> What about the men in this situation? Dr. Dines explains,<br> "The porn industry is traumatizing a generation of boys and a lot of these boys who grow up into young men feel deep shame about what they’re watching. They want to stop watching it. Some of them are habitual or addictive users and they are so grateful that someone has come in and said: “Is this who you really want to be? A guy who gets aroused to images of violence against women?” I would say for many of them the answer is no, they don’t want that. They’ve just been pulled into this trap that this predatory industry has laid for them and I think to suggest that boys or men are on the hunt for violent misogyny as a somehow biological imperative of masculinity is really to lower the bar about men."<br> She adds,<br>
