My second review about a porn critique in about as many days, and this book actually has a central thesis to it (unlike "Girl on Girl", which read more like a look back at the 2000s)

I tend to agree with Dines in that pornography is an industrialized product. And, as everyone knows, industrialized products are made to be sold to consumers. For the pornography industry to maintain its profits, it needs to be destigmatized and made increasingly visible in the mainstream; hence, pornification of the culture.

Many words are devoted to the vile and inhumane treatment of the performers and the ever more extreme acts they must perform in front of the camera. We've heard this all before.

Dines makes one brush with an interesting idea after briefly invoking Marx. She doesn't think her audience is ready for a discussion about base and superstructure, but she does at least attempt to plant that seed of an idea in the unaware reader's mind that it's a two way street: that pornography, in its current, extreme form is a reflection of the culture and labor relations that produced it, and that the culture and labor relations in turn will be further shaped by it.

Pornography is not, she hopes we understand, some sort of natural outcome of human sexuality.

The final chapters get into more obviousness about racist tropes in pornography and the rise of pedophilia-adjacent pornography (the teen category) which veer toward sociologist word salad and shaky moral appeals backed by very small samplings of data and peppered with quotes from experts.