13 Facts About Gail Dines

Gail Dines was born on 29 July 1958 and is professor emerita of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College in Boston, Massachusetts.

Gail Dines was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Manchester, England, and attended King David School.

Gail Dines obtained her BSc from Salford University, where she met her husband, David Levy, who was studying at the University of Manchester.

Gail Dines embraced Marxism but became disillusioned with the British left when the students' unions voted to support that Zionism is racism, following United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which meant Jewish student groups were denied funding.

Swastikas were painted on Jewish homes; in a pub with Jewish friends, Gail Dines heard a nearby group say they could "smell gas".

The couple had a son, who was born while Levy was in Lebanon with the Israel Defence Forces, although both he and Gail Dines opposed the war in Lebanon.

Gail Dines joined the Israeli peace movement and has continued to be critical of the expansion of Israeli settlements and the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

Gail Dines worked at Wheelock College in Boston from 1986 for around 30 years; she became professor of sociology and women's studies there and chair of its American studies department.

Gail Dines is a founding member of Stop Porn Culture, co-founder of the National Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, and founder of Culture Reframed, which aims to have pornography recognized as a public health crisis.

Gail Dines expressed opposition to the academic journal Porn Studies when it was founded, arguing that the "editors come from a pro-porn background where they deny the tons and tons of research that has been done into the negative effects of porn," and that they're "cheerleaders" for the porn industry.

In "A Feminist Response to Weitzer" in the same journal, Gail Dines wrote that her book had used theories and methods of cultural studies developed by, among others, Stuart Hall and Antonio Gramsci.

Also in 2011, after Gail Dines wrote about the porn industry in The Guardian, 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".

In 2007, Gail Dines wrote an article about media sensationalism related to the Duke lacrosse case after appearing on a CNN interview.