The paradox of pornography

The paradox of pornography:
[six specific paragraphs -- then a theory: ]

"The United States is a society that uses brutal levels of military force, including the illegal targeting of civilian infrastructure (such as in the 1991 Gulf War, when power, sewage, and water facilities were targeted) and the routine use of weapons that military officials know kill large numbers of civilians (such as cluster bombs that continue to kill long after the conflict is over, as unexploded bombs detonate for years). The culture celebrates this as evidence of our benevolence as we “liberate” other countries.

The United States is a society that locks up more than 2 million people, a higher percentage of its population than any other country, disproportionately non-white. The everyday conditions under which many of those human beings are kept in this prison-industrial complex are so harsh and degrading that leading human-rights groups condemn U.S. prison practices. The culture celebrates this as evidence of the superiority of our system of “justice.”

And the United States is a society that has built thousands of glittering temples to unsustainable levels of consumption -- called shopping malls -- in this wealthiest nation in history, while nearly half the world’s people live on less than $2 a day. The culture celebrates this state of affairs as the wondrous workings of the magical market.

So, there is no paradox in the mainstreaming of an intensely cruel pornography; pornographers aren’t 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, nationalism, racism, and capitalism.

What pornography says about sexuality, intimacy, and gender politics in the contemporary United States is frightening. What it says about our entire society is even more disturbing.



http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/index.html

Robert Jensen is a journalism prof"