The end of the world looks like pornography.
Or so says Robert Jensen, professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
In his lecture on pornography Thursday night, Jensen spoke for about an hour on feminist critiques of modern pornography in front of a crowd of approximately 20 people. The event took place in the Freeman Center for Jewish Life, and was sponsored by the Women’s Center as part of the annual Founder’s Lecture series.
During his speech, Jensen said he thinks pornography has a tendency to weaken people’s ablity to understand each other.
“When I say pornography is what the end of the world looks like, what I mean is pornography is a picture of a world in which men’s empathy has been undermined,” Jensen said.
Jensen started his lecture by summarizing the ideas of radical feminism activist Andrea Dworkin.
“[She said], ‘porn is not just sex on the screen. It’s sex presented in the context of domination and subordination of women.’” Jensen said.
Jensen then described five modernized sexual practices portrayed in pornography that have gained momentum in the last five years, explaining each practice’s potential for violence and humiliation.
“The intensity of the scene, the erotic charge of the scene comes from the degradation of women,” he said.
Jensen also spoke on what he calls “the paradox of pornography.” The paradox, he explained, is that although pornography becomes more mainstream, it also becomes more violent and more racially offensive.
Modern pornography, occasionally labeled interracial—denoting a pornography film featuring at least one non-white person—often features black men with white women, Jensen said. He added that this displays a subconscious form of racism.
“When you reach the limits of what you can do physically, you have to find new ways to degrade women,” Jensen said. “You can humiliate them by forcing them to have sex with ‘demonized’ Black men.”
Junior Julia Finch, a women’s studies major who attended the event, said she has discussed pornography in her classes.
“It’s something that’s important for people think about, to critically analyze anything they consume,” she said. “I’m... not against it, or for it, I think it’s something that’s really interesting to look at—how pornography has become such a huge part of our society.”
Marty Liccardo, the gender violence prevention specialist for the Women’s Center who arranged Jensen’s lecture, also noted the importance of discussing pornography.
“The purpose of the Founder’s Lecture is to pick a contemporary topic that’s affecting our folks and talk about it in an intentional way,” he said. “Pornography is a binary topic, either good or bad. Our hope and goal is to challenge that binary.”
The question and answer session and a book signing followed Jensen’s speech.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Due to technical problems resulting from a power outage, an unedited version of this story was published in Friday's newspaper. The correct version of the story has been published above. Please contact Will Robinson (wrr3@duke.edu) if you have further questions.
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