VIOLENCE, GENDER, AND PORN
A discussion sparked by Larry Flynt

From Merriam-Webster:

synchronicity 2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality -- used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

Of course, I'm a skeptic and don't really buy into such things. However, it is interesting how after my remarks in the previous post linking gender socialization to women's approval of violence in the extremist anti-abortion movement, I decided to listen to a Democracy Now discussion between two pro-erotica feminists about violent images in pornography. The talk drifted into issues of gender:

Why that kind of cruelty -- it's interesting, the cartoon she describes is not what would be in vogue in the vulgar cartoon world of today. Isn't that strange? Not because people got nicer or better, but because interestingly, and we see this in contemporary images all around us both real and fantastical, the societal tension right now is about emasculation and submissive men and men being made fun of or degraded in a, like, oh, you're nothing but a little girl, but I'm going to make a mockery of you. I'm going to rape you. So, now we have -- and I'm not pointing at any particular magazine, but this is -- if you look at the kind of underground -- the kind of humor that makes a lot of people sick to the stomach and other people like laugh in embarrassment, the topics have changed. And they will continue to change and they need to be looked at in terms of, you know, what is -- what is this shadow side that's haunting us? What is the American sexual zeitgeist that gives rise to certain feelings?

Click here for the rest--it's quite an interesting segment, and you can either read a transcript, listen, or watch.

I think that gender has a lot to do with why people are violent, and by gender, I mean socially defined roles for males and females. America is shocked when it learns of extreme acts of violence, but the country seemingly freaks out when such violence is caused by a woman. In other words, most people seem to believe that men are somehow naturally aggressive while women are naturally docile. But it's far more complicated than that. When women in the radical anti-abortion movement cheer on violence against abortion providers, it's a good bet that such an attitude comes from a deep belief that it is their personal duty as women to advocate such behavior. When straight men murder gay men simply because they are gay, it's a good bet that they feel that their sense of identity as men, their very masculinity, is threatened. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I think I'm onto something.

Could it be that violence, in some part, is spurred on by people's belief in who they are?

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