Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

United States, expressed the weary anger and astonishment ofwomen who keep knocking their heads against this particular brickwall:If we think talking it all out has brought us [men and women]closer together in the last few years, we have only to broach thesubject of rape. Men seem incapable of understanding whatrape means to a woman—the sense of total violation, or themere threat of rape as a lifelong shadow over her freedom ofmovement.. . .T he central division is between the sense of rape as an act ofhostility and aggression, as women see and know and experienceit, and rape as an erotic act, as fantasized by m en. 39Men do not believe that rape or battery are violations of female willin part because men of influence have consumed pornography in theprivate world of men for centuries. Men of sensibility andintelligence and cultural achievement have always incorporated itsvalues into their mainstream cultural work in art, religion, law, *literature, philosophy, and now psychology, films, and so forth. Inmany cases, these otherwise thoughtful men have been educatedabout women and sex through pornography, which they see ashidden, forbidden sexual truth. The most enduring sexual truth inpornography—widely articulated by men to the utter bewildermentof women throughout the ages—is that sexual violence is desired bythe normal female, needed by her, suggested or demanded by her.She—perpetually coy or repressed— denies the truth that pornographyreveals. It is either/or. Either the truth is in the pornography orshe tells the truth. But men are the tellers of truth and men are thecreators of and believers in pornography. She is silenced altogether—sheis not a voice in the cultural dialogue, except as anannoying or exceptional whisper—and when she speaks, she lies.She hides and denies what pornography reveals and affirms: thatshe wants it, they all do. He has the power of naming and in*The harlot nature of women is a premise of law relating to sexual violenceagainst women. That is why it is nearly impossible for a woman to provethat she has been forced.