“Pornography’s male-born explicitness renders visible what is invisible, woman’s chthonic internality. It tries to shed Apollonian light on woman’s anxiety-provoking darkness. The vulgar contortionism of pornography is the serpentine tangle of Medusan nature. Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature. The banning of pornography, rightly sought by Judeo-Christianity, would be a victory over the west’s stubborn paganism. But pornography cannot be banned, only driven underground, where its illicit charge will be enhanced.”

— Camille Paglia

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 35

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Pornography’s male-born explicitness renders visible what is invisible, woman’s chthonic internality. It tries to shed …" by Camille Paglia?

Camille Paglia 326

American writer 1947

Related quotes

“Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7
Context: But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography.

“A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—calls that penetration violation.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy.
Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

“Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice. And what a practice. The violation of an individual woman is the metaphor for man's forcing himself on whole nations […], on nonhuman creatures […], and on the planet itself […].”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

reflected even in our language—carving up "virgin territory," with strip mining often referred to as a "rape of the land" "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" (1974) in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist.