Feminist research into, and women's reflection upon, experiences of sexual violence long ago established that rape involves the sexualization of power, the fusing in men's imaginations of sexual pleasure with domination and control. The common phrase "rape is about power, not sex" misleads; rape is about the fusion of sex and domination, about the eroticization of control. And in this culture, rape is normal. That is, in a culture where the dominant definition of sex is the taking of pleasure from women by men, rape is an expression of the sexual norms of the culture, not violations of those norms. Sex is a sphere in which men are trained to see themselves as naturally dominant and women naturally passive. Rape is both nominally illegal and completely normal at the same time.

So, there's nothing surprising in the observation that some pornography includes explicit images of women in pain. But a healthy society would want to deal with that, wouldn't it? And from my research, both through these content analysis projects and my reading of material from the industry, it seems clear that mainstream heterosexual pornography is getting more, not less, cruel. A healthy society would take such things seriously, wouldn't it?

Infinite are the ways we can be cruel

There are only so many ways human beings can, in mechanical terms, have sex. There are a limited number of body parts and openings, a limited number of ways to create the friction that produces the stimulation and sensations, a limited number of positions from which the friction can be produced. Sexual variation, in this sense, is finite because of these physical limits.

Sex, of course, also has an emotional component, and emotions are infinitely variable. There are only so many ways people can rub bodies together, but endless are they ways different people can feel about rubbing bodies together in different times, places, and contexts. When most non-pornographic films, such as a typical Hollywood romance, deal with sex they draw on the emotions most commonly connected with sex, love and affection. But pornography doesn't, because films that exist to provide sexual stimulation for men in this culture wouldn't work if the sex were presented in the context of loving and affectionate relationships. Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.

That means pornography has a problem. When all emotion is drained from sex it becomes repetitive and uninteresting, even to men who are watching primarily to facilitate masturbation. So, pornography needs an edge. Pornography has to draw on some emotion, hence the cruelty.

When the legal restrictions on pornography slowly receded through the 1970s and '80s, and the presentation of sex on the screen was by itself no longer quite so illicit, anal sex became a standard feature. Anal sex was seen as something most women don't want; it had an edge to it. When anal sex became routine in pornography, the gonzo genre started pushing the boundaries into things like double-penetrations and gag-inducing oral sex – again, acts that men believe women generally will not want. The more pornography becomes normalized and mainstreamed, the more pornography has to search for that edge. And that edge most commonly is cruelty, which emotionally is the easiest place to go for men, given that the dynamic of male domination and female submission is already in place in patriarchy.

This analysis is not news to the industry. As Jerome Tanner put it during a pornography directors' roundtable discussion featured in Adult Video News, "People just want it harder, harder, and harder, because like Ron said, what are you gonna do next?" Another director, Jules Jordan, was blunt about his task: "[O]ne of the things about today's porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, so many fans want to see so much more extreme stuff that I'm always trying to figure out ways to do something different. But it seems everybody wants to see a girl doing a d.p. now or a gangbang. For certain girls, that's great, and I like to see that for certain people, but a lot of fans are becoming a lot more demanding about wanting to see the more extreme stuff. It's definitely brought porn somewhere, but I don't know where it's headed from there."

Director Mitchell Spinelli, interviewed while filming the first video ("Give Me Gape") for a series for his new Acid Rain company, seemed clear where it was heading:

"People want more. They want to know how many dicks you can shove up an ass," he says with a shrug. "It's like Fear Factor meets Jackass. Make it more hard, make it more nasty, make it more relentless. The guys make the difference. You need a good guy, who's been around and can give a good scene, fuckin' 'em hard. I did my homework. These guys are intense."

We live in a culture in which rape and battery continue at epidemic levels. And in this culture, men are masturbating to orgasm in front of television and computer screens that present them sex with increasing levels of callousness and cruelty toward women. And no one seems to be terribly concerned about this. Right-wing opponents of pornography offer a moralistic critique that cannot help us find solutions, because typically they endorse male dominance, albeit not these manifestations of it. Some segments of the feminist movement, particularly the high-theory crowd in academic life, want us to believe that the growing acceptance of pornography is a sign of expanding sexual equality and freedom. Meanwhile, feminist critics of pornography have been marginalized in political and intellectual arenas. And all the while, the pornographers are trudging off to the bank with bags of money.

I think this helps explain why even the toughest women -- women who at rape crisis centers routinely deal with sexual violence -- find the reality of pornography so difficult to cope with. No matter how hard it may be to face the reality of a rape culture, at least the culture still brands rape as a crime. Pornography, however, is not only widely accepted but sold to us as liberation.

The struggle for men of conscience is to define ourselves and our sexuality differently, outside (to the degree possible) the domination/submission dynamic. It is not an easy task; like everyone, we are products of our culture and have to struggle against it. But as a man, I have considerable control over the conditions in which I live and the situations I am in. Women do not have that control. Women are vulnerable in a different way. Women are not just at risk of sexual violence but also have to deal with how men, who disproportionately hold positions of power in this society, view them. Women do not, and cannot, control that in the short term.

When a female student has a meeting about a research project with a male college professor who the night before was watching "Gag Factor #10," who is she to him? What is she to him?

When a woman walks into a bank to apply for a loan from a male loan officer who the night before was watching "Two in the Seat #3," what is he thinking?

When a woman goes in front of a male judge who the night before was watching "Sopornos #4," does she want to throw herself on the mercy of the court?

But some will argue: How can you assume that just because men watch such things they will act in a callous and cruel manner, sexually or otherwise? It is true that the connection between mass-media exposure and human behavior is complex and not well understood. Social scientists, like most experts, argue both sides. I think the evidence clearly shows that in some cases pornography influences men's sexual behavior. But whatever one's view on that, this fact is not in question: Lots of men -- including professors, bankers, and judges -- pay money to watch those images and masturbate to orgasm watching those images. And they aren't simply images of sex. Often they are images of men being sexually cruel toward women.

If you are a woman, ask this: Do you want to seek out such a man as a partner?

If you are a man, ask this: When seeking a woman as a partner, would you advertise that you enjoy these images?

Why not?

This all would be easier if we could pretend that these images are consumed by some small subset of deviant men -- if we could answer the question "what kind of men like those things" by pointing to emotionally disturbed men, or pathological men who have some problem that could explain this. Then we could identify and isolate those bad men, maybe repair them. But the answer to the question is: Men like me. Men like all of us. Men who can't get a date and men who have all the dates they could want. Men who live alone and men who are married. Men who grew up in liberal homes in which pornography was never a big deal and men who grew up in strict religious homes in which no talk of sex was allowed. White and black and brown and any-other-color-you-can-imagine men. Rich men and poor men. And all the king's men.

I am not suggesting all men use pornography, or that all men who use pornography want material in which women are hurt and humiliated, or that all men who use pornography are bound to then want to hurt and humiliate women. I am simply saying that much of the pornography in the United States records scenes of women being hurt and humiliated; that men masturbate to orgasm to those images; and that those men are not deviants but are acting on the cultural norms that are widely taught. And I am suggesting that these facts should matter to us; they should scare us.

There is no way to say this that isn't harsh

I am sorry for what I am about to write, because it is harsh, and it may not be fair for a man to write this. But this is the truth, and I am more afraid of what will happen if we don't face the truth than of being harsh or unfair.

Men spend $10 billion on pornography a year. 11,000 new pornographic films are made every year. And in those films, women are not people.

In pornography, women are three holes and two hands.

Women in pornography have no hopes and no dreams and no value apart from the friction those holes and hands can produce on a man's penis. If anyone doubts that, let me describe one more video from my research, one more video from the mainstream section of a store that carries adult product, where men rent and buy films to help them masturbate.

"A Cum Sucking Whore Named Kimberly" is a 2003 release from Anabolic Video Productions. The tape is a compilation of five scenes featuring Kimberly, taken from five other films produced by this company. The first scene is from "World Sex Tour #25," in which two men explain that this will be Kimberly's first anal scene and first d.p. Kimberly is French Canadian and speaks little or no English. At the end of the scene, when the men ejaculate into her mouth, she starts to gag, and the two men tell her (through a translator off screen) that she has to swallow the semen, which she does. Through the translator, they tell Kimberly to say, "Thank you for fucking me in Montreal." Kimberly says, "Thank you for fucking me in Montreal." The scene ends with the two men talking later about the experience. "We blew out her asshole," one says. This is how the film presents Kimberly's introduction to what she will be in pornography, what men want her to be.

The remaining scenes follow Kimberly through her "career" in pornography, finishing with "Gang Bang Girl #32." In this scene a frustrated football coach berates his players after practice, asking them whether they are "football players or fags." He says they will lose the game the next day, which he wouldn't mind if his players were men -- he just hates to lose with fags. He turns to the assistant coach and says, "prove to me they're not fags" before walking away. The proof will be in the 13 players having sex with Kimberly, one of the cheerleaders in the stands. She comes down to the field and engages in sex in a variety of different positions. As the men wait for their turn, they stand around her, masturbating to keep their erections, joking and laughing. At one point she is in a double-penetration with a third man's penis is in her mouth while she masturbates two other penises.

She is three holes and two hands.

One by one the men ejaculate, most of them into Kimberly's mouth. One man ejaculates into a protective cup and then pours it into her mouth. The last man ejaculates inside her vagina, and then she stands and catches his semen in her hand. She moves forward to face the camera and starts to lick it off her hand. At first she can't quite bring herself to do it, but then she does, making a pained face and gagging slightly. The scene ends with the men dumping the water from a large jug on her.

Anabolic Video made that gang-bang film and sold it once. It was successful enough to excerpt and sell again. Men rented and purchased these tapes, and masturbated to orgasm while watching Kimberly in those positions. And they keep buying and renting. As I write this, "Gang Bang Girl" is on videotape number 34 and World Sex Tour is on number 27. There are 10 tapes in the "Cum Sucking Whore Named …" series.