Gail Dines (born 29 July 1958) is professor emerita of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts.
[7] When she was 18, after reading Robin Morgan's book Sisterhood is Powerful (1970), she abandoned Orthodox Judaism and became a radical feminist, later calling her relationship to feminism "a passionate love affair".
[12] Finding it increasingly difficult to live with the hyper-masculinity of Israeli culture,[6] the family moved to the United States in 1986, where Levy began studying at Harvard Business School.
[20] In February 2011, Dines was invited, with fellow anti-pornography activist Shelley Lubben, to debate Anna Span, a pornographic film director, at the Cambridge Union, when it proposed the motion: "This house believes that pornography does a good public service.
[24] Dines' book Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (2010) received mixed reviews, with some critics citing what they saw as her use of inflammatory language.
[26] In "A Feminist Response to Weitzer" in the same journal, Dines wrote that her book had used theories and methods of cultural studies developed by, among others, Stuart Hall and Antonio Gramsci.
[27] Also in 2011, after Dines wrote about the porn industry in The Guardian,[28] Lynn Comella, women's studies professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, excoriated the book as "downright toxic", accusing her of failing "to address counterevidence".
[29] Robert Jensen reviewed the book favorably, saying it describes how "porn culture has been a setback to gender justice" and that while "the worst racist stereotypes have been eliminated from mainstream movies and television, they flourish in pornography".
[30] Robert Muller in Psychology Today says that her historical survey of the porn business is well researched, but that her connecting pseudo child pornography and actual child molesting in particular uses bad research, and concludes "Despite a bent toward sensationalism, the book will help female and male readers question their beliefs about sex and also question where those beliefs come from.
[34] After writing a letter in 2014 in pursuit of Jewish students' interests, the professors said their lives were made miserable, and they became the focus of antisemitic attacks.