Now that I'm on Christmas break I finally have time to read again, so I've been tearing through Robert Jensen's Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I was a bit skeptical at first, but the book is actually less moralistic and personal than I had expected it to be. Jensen essentially targets society's expectations of a socially constructed masculinity as the source of violence and woman-hate within pornography. Rather than placing blame on any one group, he asks that we move away from masculinity toward a world where we can simply be human.
Jensen was very much inspired by Andrea Dworkin, one of my favorite radical feminist authors and activists. Many people (feminists included) think that Dworkin was too bold, too offensive, and too radical, but I think otherwise. The only real feminism is radical feminism--fuck sugarcoating the issues to appease the mainstream. Dworkin was an activist who spoke out and acted against rape, domestic abuse, and pornography. She fought adamantly against the left-wing liberals and libertarians who insisted that porn was about freedom and self-expression, an argument that I have never been able to comprehend. One of my favorite quotes from her sums up my bewilderment totally: "In pornography we literally see the will of women as men want to experience it." As long as we live in a patriarchal society, porn will never reflect the true sexuality, experiences, desires, thoughts, hopes, dreams, will of women.
The ladies and I will be reading our own writing as well as pieces that have inspired us tonight on the show! I will be reading some of Jensen and Dworkin, so be sure to listen in!
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