What has the ‘pornification' of pop culture done to women?

Sydney Morning Herald

28-05-2025

Author and journalist Sophie Gilbert. Credit: Urszula Soltys
For me, there is a little too much about reality television, but it's a big part of the culture so there's no way of avoiding it, from Big Brother and An American Family . And Gilbert introduces me to one I'd never heard of before: Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire , which she describes as 'the beginning of reality TV's determination to view twenty-first century women through a nineteenth century frame: Jane Austen heroines who, deprived of agency or power of their own, could only compete to claim status and self-betterment through their looks, their alliances and their rivalries'. Pretty much.
Or, as Jerry Hall said in 1985, 'My mother said it was simple to keep a man, you must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.' Hall updated it: 'I said I'd hire the other two and take care of the bedroom bit.'
But by far the most striking, most frightening, aspect of the book is the way in which Gilbert has both drawn on, and expanded, the work of philosopher Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex and Gail Dines' Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Porn trains us.
Porn trains us in how to be women. And worse, it trains men in how to treat women. 'It has trained a good amount of our popular culture ... to see women as objects, as things to silence, restrain, fetishise, or brutalise,' says Gilbert. The fleshed-out concept of pornography as a textbook for how women must be in their lives is terrifying. Now I've read Gilbert's persuasive arguments, I'm embarrassed I've ever been persuaded otherwise. I've never felt so wrong in my life. There is now, she argues, a 'pornification' of everything, including music.
We saw, in the 90s, a distinct shift from angry, abrasive and 'thrillingly powerful women' (Madonna, for example) who were suddenly replaced by, ah, girls. Soft, sweet, compliant. But what about when the anger, directed at women, appears in the lyrics of male artists?
After the 90s, there was a shift away from 'thrilling powerful women' such as Madonna. Credit: Associated Press
Gilbert cites a 2006 German study that revealed that those who listened to sexually violent and aggressive songs, including Eminem's Superman and The Offspring's Self Esteem , were more likely to have negative thoughts about women. Sure, it's fine to think what you want, but the men in these studies were also far more likely to have 'thoughts of vengeance' directed at women.
Pamela Anderson's sex tape was 'revenge porn before we even had a name for it'. Credit: Getty Images
What about when men go further than just thinking about vengeance? In 1995, an electrician fired from the home of Pamela Anderson and her first husband Tommy Lee broke into their home, stole a video of the couple having sex and spread it everywhere. It became the 'Pamela Anderson' sex tape, the first of its kind, revenge porn before we even had a name for it, says Gilbert.
Yes, appalling when Anderson's sex tapes were broadcast and sold for all to see. But now that kind of thing happens frequently. The victims aren't always famous, but they are just as stripped of agency as Anderson was all those years ago, but they don't have the same back-up. They wear their shame in private and maybe their parents aren't even convinced it wasn't the fault of the victim.
Gilbert explains how we got to the stage where exploitation is the fault of those who suffer it. And as she points out, 'The logical extension of objectification is dehumanisation.' Why would anyone care about the non-human?
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Gilbert's book is bleak, well-argued and compelling. And unlike many in this genre, there are no real recipes for hope beyond small sites of forward lash. She writes: 'I have no idea what happens next. But history suggests that women will be much harder to sideline than the Trump‐Vance administration may anticipate.'
I hope she's right. But will we ever really get to post-feminism? Sure, when we get to post-patriarchy. As Gilbert makes clear, we've got a long way to go, baby.