Pornography and the End of Masculinity

Did the title catch your attention? It caught mine when I found this article on AlterNet. I found it a very interesting and informative read. I had noticed the increasing trend both in pornography and even everyday society of peoples tolerance with cruelty and degradation, not just to women, but to others as well. For example, the government program for torture of "terror suspects" should have caused a firestorm of backlash from the public that seethed with anguish, fear and hatred of the government for employing these types of tactics , but at best, the general public had the anguish of a pissed off kitten.

Thats probably why the conclusion the author makes is what really rang true for me:

As is often the case, this paradox can be resolved by recognizing that one of the assumptions is wrong. Here, it's the assumption that U.S. society routinely rejects cruelty and degradation. In fact, the United States is a nation that has no serious objection to cruelty and degradation. Think of the way we accept the use of brutal weapons in war that kill civilians, or the way we accept the death penalty, or the way we accept crushing economic inequality. There is no paradox in the steady mainstreaming of an intensely cruel pornography. This is a culture with a well-developed legal regime that generally protects individuals' rights and freedoms, and yet it also is a strikingly cruel culture in the way it accepts brutality and inequality.

The pornographers are not a deviation from the norm. Their presence in the mainstream shouldn't be surprising, because they represent mainstream values: The logic of domination and subordination that is central to patriarchy, hyper-patriotic nationalism, white supremacy, and a predatory corporate capitalism.