Part of the problem that I have is her choice to automatically dismiss any sex-positive feminist critiques - which you're implicitly doing too by calling hers a feminist critique rather than including the sex-negative tag required to provide a reasonably accurate pointer at the form of feminism behind the critique.

I've done plenty of reading on both sex-positive and sex-negative feminisms' attitudes towards porn, but Dines' mixture of disingenuous reframing and shrill moralising reminds me more of anti-abortion activists than anything else and contributes rather more to my opinion of Gail Dines than my opinion of the more rational sex negative critiques of porn.

(I'd recommend the blog series Prude's Progress - it's not a porn critique but an excellent exploration of sex negativity fully thought through)

I'm upvoting you for linking to Prude's Progress which looks like somebody trying to think critically about something. And also for the change in tone. I'll try to match you as best I can.

I think the notions of 'sex-positive' and 'sex-negative' are kind of weird, personally. When I read those terms, my mind tends to translate it into "people who think mainstream pornography is fine" and "those who think mainstream pornography has issues."

I guess what I feel is missing from the comments you've made so far is your personal attitude towards pornography. It's easy for all of us to criticize this or that thinker, but it's much harder (and more painful) to introspect and consider what our own attitudes say about us.

Let me volunteer to go first: I've consumed a great deal of pornography in the past, and it's only this year that I stopped in earnest. Looking at pornography made me feel depressed, disconnected from my feelings, and I noticed that it made it hard for me to relate to women in my daily life. Not 'hard to relate' like I couldn't talk to them, but in that I felt uncomfortable talking to somebody as a human being when I'd just watched images that really degraded them.

Now, I was raised in a very liberal Scandinavian country, and my parents are far from prudes. Neither of my parents demonized sex, and growing up, they always said "it's okay if you do it, just make sure you use protection." So the discomfort I felt in looking at porn didn't come from being raised in a moralistic, Bible-thumping household.

When I read Gail Dines book, I find my own thoughts reflected back to me. I find your label of "shrill moralising" somewhat offensive, but you may also be offended by some of the things that I am saying.

Also, and this is important to me, I think it's very possible to get too rational about the whole discussion. You referenced "rational sex negative critiques of porn." I am fine with logic and reason, but I often notice that people who focus too much on rational arguments are avoiding a frank discussion about their own emotions or the emotions of the women being discussed.

Anyway, if you've read this much, thank you. Hopefully you have a better understanding of my perspective now.

There's a lot more to both sex-positive and sex-negative discourse than their opinions on pornography, and even those opinions are generally more nuanced than 'fine' versus 'has issues' (the pervocracy blog's ongoing excoriation of fifty shades of bad consent is an example of sex-positive critique, to my mind).

I'd note also that I didn't intend to call your words shrill moralising; any offence involved was supposed to be directed only at Gail Dines' writing style.

I think ... mostly I think that an HN comment thread isn't going to be nearly an optimal vehicle for the relatively deep discussion I think we'd need to have just to get as far as having a shared set of terminology with which to debate things. If you think that it's worth continuing to try, mst at shadowcat.co.uk will reach me and we can take it from there.