ABC News 'Nightline' Addresses Porn and Teen Brains Tonight

LOS ANGELES—One hint that the brainiacs at ABC News phoned in the report on how porn affects the teen brain—disseminated in article form and also on Nightline tonight—is the fact that they could not even manage the correct name for their expert, Gail Danes! It's Gail Dines, of course, but what's in a name ... or an area of expertise. Apparently, neither matters to ABC News, because Dines is a sociologist by training, not a neurologist, psychologist, psychiatrist or anything remotely resembling someone who can speak authoritatively about the brain. But who's counting, right? "Danes argues that pornography, which has never been easier to find and view, is 'sexually traumatizing an entire generation of boys,'" writes the Nightline staff. Dines is then quoted as saying, "You[r] average teen, when he clicks on 'porn' in Google, what does he think he is going to see, breasts maybe? In reality, he is catapulted into a world of sexual violence. He doesn't have a reservoir of experience. He has probably never had sex." As anyone who has followed Dines knows, that violence claim is her main shtick. She repeats the charge ad nauseam to any audience that will listen, and the audiences are many. She has recently addressed the British House of Commons, advised Iceland ministers on anti-porn legislation and was even brought onboard the 2257 trial by the U.S. Justice Department as an expert witness, despite her having no actual expertise on the subject she was there to address. The judge specifically noted her unbridled bias against the industry, but allowed her testimony anyway. ABC News did the same thing in its own way, but such is the state of journalism's approach to modern pornography. Oblivious to nuance, resistant to critical thinking, and all too willing to cite questionable source—including a recent British Channel 4 report, Porn on the Brain—the media swallows whole the unproven claim that porn alters anyone's brain. And then they have the gall to quote Cindy Gallop, an entrepreneur pushing her own supposedly more "realistic" porn site, who self-servingly observes, "Children are viewing hard-core porn years and years before they ever have their first sexual experiences and it's shaping their view of what sex is. That is why what we're doing is so important." That's not all. Another more authentic producer, Jincey Lumpkin, also is included in the piece, and she too takes the bait and throws the industry under the bus as she also promotes her own porn, stating, "Porn is a fantasy that can't ever stand in for sex education. The way that it is put out there, often times you just feel like a woman is nothing but an object or a hole, and I try to offer an alternative to that." It's sad (if not surprising) to see a major media network do such shoddy and simplistic work, but it's downright depressing to see porn producers repeat the same lines that people have been spouting for years. Gallop and Lumpkin believe they are special, doing important things and holding the line against a violent, patriarchal, woman-hating industry, but are they really any different, or more special, than so many other people in and out of this industry who make porn? See, that's how most people get into porn production—to make concrete what they imagine in their heads, to make the sort of porn they themselves want to watch. Sometimes it's "normal," sometimes it's "weird," sometimes it's "violent" and sometimes it's downright "disgusting," but each one of those designations is ultimately determined according to the eye of the beholder, and not because Gail Danes, Cindy Gallop or even Jincey Lumpkin labels it so. They are of course entitled to their opinions, but so are we all. Teen brains deserve better than this.