For our first discussion group of the new year, on 29 January 2024, we chose Robert Jensen’s hard-hitting 2007 book ‘Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity’, the PDF of which is freely available via highlighted link to Robert Jensen’s website.
“People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it’s about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it’s about men’s cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 14)
Having bought and originally read Getting Off 15 years ago (in 2009), shortly after it was published, Björn suggested the book for January as he felt that it was a classic book on radical feminist theory written by a man on the subject of pornography. Over the years Robert Jensen has become one of Björn’s favourite male writers on subjects including the sexual exploitation industries, gender ideology, white privilege and the climate. What appeals particularly in terms of Jensen’s style of writing is the personal, humane and balanced style that is easy to understand.
“When we become men—when we accept the idea that there is something called masculinity to which we should conform—we exchange those aspects of ourselves that make life worth living for an endless struggle for power that, in the end, is illusory and destructive not only to others but to ourselves.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 5)
Robbie and David agreed that the book was easy to read and very interesting from the beginning from a theoretical perspective. In Getting Off Jensen argues that we should approach the study of pornography in the same was as any other form of mass communication (p. 47), which is studied through textual analysis (i.e. the narratives used), the production and how the media are used. Jensen’s aim was to focus on the first aspect of study, looking at the ideology that porn conveys. Though in the book he briefly also touched on how pornography is used for contextual purposes he pretty much stuck to this aim.
We initially discussed the reinforcement of men’s attitudes towards rape / perpetration of sexual offences towards women and girls through the consumption of pornography. In other words, does the consumption of pornography turn some men into rapists and would some of them not rape women and girls was it not through having sexual entitlement and rape myths reinforced through the medium of pornography? This seems an impossible question to answer, but we looked at it in the broader sense of men’s aggression in society, which we felt Jensen was trying to articulate in speaking about men being stuck playing ‘King of the Hill’, which represents the competitive aspects of men’s thoughts and behaviours (some might refer to this as masculinity) of which rape culture is an aspect.
“we have to let go of the comforting illusion—that there is some clear line between men who rape and men who don’t rape, between the bad guys and the good guys.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 108)
In this context, David was particularly interested in the question: Why does porn exist? What role does it play socially? Björn very much felt that Jensen was arguing that Jensen provides men with an easy way to get what they want sexually (an orgasm), without the complications of having to build and maintain relationships, without facing their fears surrounding rejection. As disconnected as it is from meaningful, reciprocal romantic and sexual interactions with women in their lives, it is a way of getting stimulation and a form of sexual release without the need to be vulnerable or to invest in another human being.
“The trends in contemporary pornographic movies are quite clear: The men who consume pornography enjoy watching sexual activity in which women are less than fully human. Me like to watch sexual activity in which women are treated with cruelty.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 61)
We also linked to Gail Dines’ Pornland, which we read in July 2023 (you can read our notes on Portland here). Whilst both Pornland and Getting Off contained very explicit descriptions of the content of pornography we felt that Dines’ book focussed more on research and numbers, whilst Jensen took a more ‘sociological’ approach to the subject, which meant that it did not feel that there was too much overlap between the two.
Robbie felt that one drawback of Jensen’s sociological approach was that some of his more generalised claims weren’t supported by research findings and as such not as powerful or convincing to some as they could have been. With Jensen being a man, some of us felt that his honest writing regarding his own experiences of pornography and his journey away from using it made it not only relatable, but also inspiring in terms of our own quests to become fuller human beings.
Comparing Pornland and Getting Off, we also noted both of them focussing on what we would all consider hardcore pornography. Having grown up as part of different generations, Robbie wondered how much of the pornography industry is actually made up of this violent, degrading and dehumanising content, rather than softcore pornographic videos and images (what some might nowadays call ‘vanilla porn’).
Robbie struggled to imagine that most men are watching this very violent, extreme and degrading content, rather than for instance images of nude women or videos of naked women taken showers which was quite widespread before the internet.
Björn, who is on the older spectrum of the group that makes up millennials, very much felt that when he was 15 or 16 and had unbridled access to the internet, the lack of restriction made it so much easier to find and access hardcore pornography than it was before, when you were unable to go into a sex shop or rent the titles rated 18 or 18R.
From here we also started to talk a little about the economic model of the industry. In Getting Off Jensen had briefly spoken about the vast income generated from the pornography industry. These numbers, being 17 years old now, are of course no longer meaningful. Whilst accurate numbers are of course difficult to come by, estimates often speak about numbers between $50-$100 billion a year. Even the lowest estimate is a huge number, if you consider that cinema goers spent a ‘mere’ $9 billion on tickets in 2023.
The numbers are even more staggering if you consider how much free pornography is available online, without any cost to men who watch it. But here is the crux with 21st century porn. Whilst it might be ‘free’ to find, consume and masturbate to pornography for a huge swathe of men, this does not mean that there is no income. At this particular point in time the pornography industry is like a very established tree with deep and far-reaching roots, which is generating profit from all corners of society. One of these corners if of course online advertising revenue generated through mere site visits.
A 2020 article in the New York Times explained this in very simple terms: “Pornhub rakes in money from almost three billion ad impressions a day. One ranking lists Pornhub as the 10th-most-visited website in the world.”. With the population continuing to grow and the reach of the internet ever increasing, this model alone will mean that profits will continue to increase unless governments and international organisations do not take actions. Of course there are also other factors at play, which help the pornography industry and the wider, related sexual exploitation industries increase profits, which are new models of income generation.
20 or 30 years ago there were ‘porn stars’ who broke through into ‘mainstream’ media, resulting of course in more ‘interest’ in the porn that featured them. Nowadays you have OnlyFans creators and influencers with millions of followers, whose widely shared content will attract the next generations of porn users and ‘income generators’ for the industry.
In terms of politics, David made a really interesting observation about the similarities between the current political climate in terms of gender ideology and the political climate related to pornography in the 1970s. Just like anti-porn arguments in the 1970s came from radical feminists and people on the right wing of the political spectrum, albeit often different reasons, we are now seeing that the opponents of gender ideology are also to be found (or said to be found) in the radical feminist movement and on the right wing of the political spectrum (again for often different reasons).
Left / liberal political points of view are often situated on the other side. The left is ‘accepting’ and supports what they call ‘sex work’ from what seems to be an utterly uncritical ‘anything goes’ stance. It feels like these liberal attitudes are particularly difficult to dispel, perhaps within pro-feminism especially for us as men. A couple of times in the last few weeks we have been criticised for “telling women what they can and can’t do” when speaking out against pornography and prostitution. Supporting a radical feminist an anti-pornography and anti-prostitution stance as men can put us in a difficult position.
Currently it feels important for us to remember that it is very easy to frame our opposition to the sexual exploitation industries as ‘men telling women what to do’, whilst if we were supportive of ‘sex-work’ it would be much harder to frame this as ‘men telling women what to do’. In essence they are the same thing however. They are our positions, our opinions, based on our understanding of the political theory called radical feminism. They are nothing more or nothing less. We are not standing on the side of the road telling women to sell their body for sex, nor are we saying to women who sell their body for sex “you should not do this, because…”.
Towards the end of the evening David said that he felt there was something a little contradictory in Jensen’s point of view that pornography means that our societies have no qualms when it comes to embracing cruelty, degradation and violence, whilst at the same time this not being confronted in society. Robbie and Björn both felt that there were double-think or cognitive dissonance reduction mechanisms at play in a way that we are able to put things out of our minds if we in some way feel disconnected from it either through distance (wars a country may wage unjustly in foreign countries) or through the medium (as in pornography where we are physically removed from the actual acts), whilst at the same time being presented with very one-sided narratives like the ‘empowered sex worker, who loves her job’.
“the dominant masculinity in the United States today…is the masculinity of a mob, ready to rape.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 1)
This lead us back to the discussion about why this degrading and gruesome porn exists in the first place and we wondered whether there was something universal about the cruelty it depicted. We were reminded of the idiom “It’s like watching a car crash.” when talking about something where you cannot look away and wondered whether the cruelty, the gruesomeness is somehow an aspect of hardcore and degrading pornography that ‘entices’ men into it. We were reminded of for instance of the abuses of Abu Ghraib prisoners which were documented in film and video or the recent videos Hamas took during their violent attacks in October 2023.
“I’d like to show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I really believe that we serve a purpose by showing that.” From an interview with a veteran of the pornography industry.”
Robert Jensen – Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (p. 69)
