Word: porn
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Both rape and porn are based on a view of women as sex-machines. Images of women as pieces of meat, ready for the butcher's knife, are common. Women's bodies are shown not whole, but in pieces--chopped up, without heads, brains, personalities...
Both rape and porn are based on a view of men's sexuality as brutal and aggressive. To be a "real man" means being able to "slam it" to a woman. The equation of male sexuality with violence is also carried over into some male homosexual pornography...
Finally, both porn and rape are based on a view that women are there for the taking, available to be possessed, "asking for it." A rapist may claim that he attacked a woman because she "asked for it"...by wearing tight jeans, a halter top, even going braless. Only when women are perceived as purely sexual creatures can their individual will be so ignored, and can the victim be blamed for the acts of the aggressor...
...pornography, this does not necessarily mean their attitudes will change. The definition of women as passive, masochistic, and dependent is so pervasive, so ingrained in us on so many levels, that simply eliminating one link in the reinforcing culture will not be effective. Instead, we must work to make porn's portrayal of women--objectified, brutalized, and degraded--as offensive to most people's tastes as would be the portrayal for entertainment of the lynching of Blacks or Hitler's "Final Solution...
Feminists fighting pornography generally do not advocate censorship for the above reasons. Yet that does not mean we have to sit back and let porn be shown in our communities and dormitories without protest. As friends and peers, we can demand of fellow students consideration of the issues involved, and if not total agreement, at least respect for our feelings. There is no excuse--save sexism masquerading as thoughtlessness--for the showing of porno films in dining halls or the acceptance of ads from magazines such as Bang...