People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it's about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men's cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people-- men and women-- to face.
Interpretation
The quote addresses the deeper issues of cruelty towards women within the context of pornography, revealing societal discomfort with this truth.
Robert Jensen explains that the societal struggle with pornography is often mischaracterized as merely about sex. Instead, it delves into the more troubling dynamics of male cruelty towards women and the unsettling enjoyment that some men derive from this cruelty, which is a far more complex and difficult issue for society to confront.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about media representation of women.
The pornographers are not a deviation from the norm. Their presence in the mainstream shouldn't be surprising, because they represent mainstream values: The logic of domination and subordination that is central to patriarchy, hyper-patriotic nationalism, white supremacy, and a predatory corporate capitalism.
This is the simple discovery which we must confront. We were given a place in the creation, with a beauty beyond telling, and we have failed to care for it. And as our collective contempt for the non-human world has intensified, so has our contempt for each other. We have failed to care for each other.
I'm not lonely, and I think that has a lot to do with what's on my bedside table rather than what's in my bed.
Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
Her visits to her former hometown were infrequent and often painful. Pilgrimages fueled by the tepid oxygen of family duty, unease, guilt. The more Esther loved her parents, the more helpless she felt, as they aged, to protect them from harm. A moral coward, she kept her distance.
A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.
And it was just the three of us - three bodies and two people - the three who knew what had happened and too many layers between all of us too much keeping us from one another.
She had borne so long the cruelty of belonging to him and not being claimed by him.
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