Published in the Daily Eastern News
Issue date: 2/20/07
Section: Opinions

Last week I decided to take an informal poll among the people who know me. I asked one question: "Do you think I'm a prude?" Nobody said yes, so some were surprised when I went on to say that I hold what is generally considered a prudish opinion: I hate porn.

Now when I say "porn," I'm not referring to all depictions of people having sex, but rather to what's been called "mainstream pornography." You know, the stuff that most of us have seen, and that many of us enjoy. The porn that depicts heterosexual encounters as being all about the pleasure of men, and very little about that of women. And the stuff that also depicts humiliation and cruelty toward woman as a part of the mix, and furthermore, as something that increases a man's pleasure.

Anti-porn writer and activist Robert Jensen makes a blunt but effective point about what's wrong with today's mainstream pornography -- it reduces women to "three holes and two hands." A woman's main value in porn lies merely in what she can do for a man with those holes and hands, and in what she'll allow him to do with them.

It may be that a gender imbalance has always been central to pornography, but it's also clear that for many reasons, it's now getting much worse. I prefer to label this latest trend in pornography, a trend whose details I will not describe in a school newspaper, "the Jackassification of porn." According to the industry's trade publication, Adult Video News, the fastest-selling DVDs and downloads are those with the most "extreme" action and images. Unfortunately for women, this new extremity takes the form of ever-more demeaning, abusive and painful treatment of the female actresses and characters.

Some fans of such porn might counter that their "adult entertainment" is actually changing in positive ways. I've heard people argue, for instance, that the increasingly popular scenes of women having sex together indicate that the pleasure of women is gaining more respect. My response is that such images are still filmed with a male viewer in mind. Consider this difference: while these pseudo-lesbian scenes are getting more common in mainstream porn, why are "man-on-man" scenes still nonexistent?

The answer is that the heterosexual male is the assumed buyer and viewer, and it's his pleasure and excitement that's always assumed to be most important. It seems that in most cases, these frolicking women are only warming each other up for the "real action," which happens when one or more men join in. And again, as with the more general "Jackassification" of so much of the entertainment currently produced for and demanded by young men, the subsequent action is likely to be more extreme and even violent than it used to be.

For those guys who watch porn, and for those women with partners who do so, I suggest that you ask yourself something. What does it say about a man when his normal response to sexual images -- his own arousal and excitement -- is not short-circuited by alarm or disgust over the dehumanizing treatment of women in most of today's porn?

Most of the men around us are not cruel and inhumane. So what's going on when this increasingly sadistic humiliation doesn't stop so many men from downloading porn, from buying it or from having a party around it with other guys?

Finally, I think there are two conclusions to make here. These dehumanizing images of women also dehumanize to some degree the ordinary male viewer, by discouraging his inherent capacity for compassion and empathy.

Understanding that point naturally leads to a second one: if a man turns away from such images because their cruelty saddens or even sickens him, he doesn't need to think of himself as a prude, a wimp or a wuss. He's simply becoming a fuller, better human being.
 
 

Tim Engles
Associate Professor, English

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