Gender Porn Gender, Sexuality, Violence

Gender Porn

Gender, Sexuality, Violence and Pornography

What is the relationship between pornography and violence against women? How has technology affected this dynamic?

According to our reading, both in the texts by Renzetti et al. (2012) and Jensen (2007), pornography can carry significant implications regarding gender roles and hierarchies in our society. In particular, these texts point to the notion that the content of our pornography is a reflection of specific gender-role patterns and that these patterns generally cast the male as dominant and the female as subordinate. Indeed, not only do many of the scenarios described in Jensen's text imply that women exist only to satisfy the desires of men, but there is also cause to interpret from pornographic content that this submission even extends to a lust for violent treatment. According to Jensen, even in scenarios where women do not appear to initially desire male sexual attention, pornographic content inclines us to believe that "any woman who does not at first realize this can be easily turned with a little force" (p. 56)

2. How has access to pornography, it's level proliferation and the intersection of pop culture and pornography impacted definitions of masculinity and femininity? How has it impacted definitions and expectations of sexuality and sexual desire?

In many ways, the technological proliferation of pornography has had a detectable social impact. With the internet, the availability and accessibility of pornographic content has grown exponentially. So too has the opportunity for exploitative behavior to proliferate without any regulatory oversight. As a result, increasing variety and extremity of pornographic acts may be found with the ease of a search engine. Among other factors, this has increased access for younger online users, helping to stimulate an understanding of male and female interaction as being inherently sexualized and fetishized, Jensen warns.

3. Why is Jensen anit-porn? What is your opinion?

Jensen (2007) makes the case that sexuality has long been a context in which the male impulses to subordinate and subjugate women are borne out. If not inherently in the acts of sexuality themselves, often in the exhibited sense of entitlement and dominance, male sexuality is prone toward the undermining of femininity in favor of the satisfaction of male desire. In a great many of its incarnations, Jensen argues, pornography facilitates this orientation. Jensen asserts that as a consequence of the "patriarchal system in which we live, a key site of men's oppression of women -- a key method of control and domination -- is sexuality." (Jensen, p. 48) in other words, because our society is so notably tilted to favor the empowerment of men and the sublimation of female desires, sexual intercourse will frequently function as an extension of this imbalance of power. And as Jensen ultimately argues, the act of using pornography to arouse one's self is tantamount to reducing femininity and women to mere objects for the satisfaction of male sexual desires. The result, Jensen argues, is the effect of pornography reflecting back to us the worst possible qualities of our own masculinity.