This last factoid surprised a lot of the people at the workshop (most of whom were female advocates against sexual violence) and it had also surprised Jensen. His conclusion? Let’s take the premise that porn is the eroticizing of domination. What more effective way to dominate a white woman than to make her have sex with men who are the bottom of the racial hierarchy and are usually portrayed in the media as sexual predators?

The advocates in Jensen’s workshop were full of questions: What can we do about this? How do we talk with young men about sex? Women are usually sexually assaulted by men they personally know; how is porn affecting how men see violence and sex?

Jensen had solid ideas including a real need for building a coherent feminist movement and also for creating spaces where men can talk with each other about porn and their own sexualities.

I was left thinking though about the consequences of extreme sexual acts that start in one area of the porn industry and migrate (so to speak) to other types of porn films. In effect, gonzo porn normalizes certain sexual acts and begins to alter ideas of what women’s bodies and men’s bodies can and should do. With more young people accessing porn on the Internet, how are their (and our) ideas about sexuality and our bodies being shaped by gonzo flicks….even when we’re not watching in that genre?

I also started wondering about an argument put forward by Jensen and others: people have a hard time criticizing porn because it means challenging patriarchy.

On this idea, I’ve reached a conclusion: no.

The reason people don’t criticize porn is that they don't want to give up what turns them on.

Yes, you can make great arguments about the way that patriarchy and racism shape desires but that only gets us so far. At the end of the day, criticizing the porn industry (without being a hypocrite) requires a person to re-consider what turns them on. And that process brings up uncomfortable feelings—not just about sex and power but also about race and intimacy. I don’t think many of us are willing to go there. And it’s this unwillingness perhaps even more than the desire to get off that keeps the industry in business.