“Not to bring up Robert Jensen every three sentences, but he’s made a point that I find extremely salient when it comes to how porn affects women’s lives. If I have to go to court tomorrow, or I have to go discuss my career with my boss, or I have to work on a project at work or school with men, or I have to deal with a cop, or I have to rely in any way on a man in a position of authority to treat me fairly, shouldn’t it worry me to think he might have been watching a film the night before in which a woman has her head shoved into a toilet while someone uses her like a piece of toilet paper? I know some of you may say that the authority figure in question probably wouldn’t be equating me with the woman he jerked off to the night before, but can someone really suspend their sense of empathy long enough to jerk off to an image like that and then see me as an equal human being the next day? Doubtful. And men get together every day to make decisions that affect women’s lives. Men decide whether to promote women, whether to give them raises, whether to hire them, whether to take their claims of sexual harassment seriously, whether to pass a law that hurts or harms their rights to equal pay for equal work, safe and effective health care, etc. “
