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.
We were, the two of us, still fragmentary beings, just beginning to sense the presence of an unexpected, to be-aquired reality that would fill us and make us whole.
No one is more conventional than a woman who is falling out of love.
I got a few marriage proposals in my 20s. I just wasn't ready. I just knew if I committed, I would've wound up doing something wrong, messing it up. I still felt like I had some living to do.
I've wondered what my sexuality might be, but I've never wondered whether it was acceptable or not. Anyway, who really cares whether I'm gay or straight?
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth women are not merely "tolerated", they are valued.
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