Because it Hurts: Why Women and Men Aren't Feminists

I started crying on the bus this morning. Because of a book. My Feminist book club’s selection for this month in Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I can across a passage describing a discussion group on pornography that Jensen had lead with a group of women who (like me) work in centres that work with battered women and rape survivors. He describes the sadness in the room at the end of the session and quotes a woman who had been mostly silent until the end. He writes:

Throughout the workshop she had held herself tightly, her arms wrapped around herself. She talks for some time, and then apologizes for rambling. There is no need to apologize; she is articulating what many feel. She talks about her own life, about what she has learned in the session and how it made her feel, about her anger and sadness. Finally she says: ‘This hurts. It just hurts so much’.