I am totally impressed with Robert Jensen's Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I heard him speak on the CBC, caught the tail end of an interview. Then I tried to order the book, only to be told it was not in stock. My dear wife found a way to get it for me, although it arrived just after Christmas. I'm nearly done (just half a chapter and a post-script left). This is the book I have been wishing would be written by Christians, but I fear never will. This book took serious bravery to write. From what I have read on the topics of pornography addiction and masturbation coming out of the Christian world has always left me feeling like they missed the point. Jensen resonated so loud I was going aha all the way through. In fact he unpacks stuff about the domination embedded in pornography that I had intuited a ways back. This is a matter of justice, plain and simple.
I have yet to see Christians responding to pornography as they should. If they are please point that out to me as I'm not sure I can not act now that I've read this book. The typical Christian response is twofold: 1) pornography is indicative of the decline of this world and 2) the Christian should simply flee from pornography. Jensen isn't trying to mitigate his risk in a fallen world, no he is saying we need to face this head on. And his book does this (sometimes with quite explicit descriptions), it calls the reader to save themselves by taking on pornography.
Core to Jensen's message is a feminist critique of masculinity. Jensen is convinced that masculinity is not a helpful social construct in that anything we could ascribe as a good trait of masculinity is really a good trait of humanity. So Jensen argues that masculinity and even femininity should be replaced entirely with a call to humanity. I find this rich.
I dare you to read this book. I dare you to write this book for a Christian market, God knows we need something real on this subject.
5 comments:
While your review of Jensen's work is correct, I am amazed at your arrogance to assume that Jensen is not a Christian. Is there some mark other than baptism, the sign of the cross, that reveals to you who is and who is not a Christian. You state that you are sad a Christian has not written such a work, you may be surprised if you knew Jensen...
Cowboy, I didn't mean that at all as a slight against Jensen. I was rather trying to slam my fellow Christians for being so retreatist and paranoid about anything to do with sexuality.
As far as where his faith committments fit, he is pretty upfront in that book about being a secular person. So I am going by what he said. I am not a fan of Rahner's idea of Anonymous Christians. But I am not so arrogant to assume that someone has to fit my definition of a Christian to be either a whole and spiritual person or someone who has profound insights into truth. If you read my blog you might find that out about me. I'm usually pretty careful.
BTW I would love to meet Jensen, I have tremendous respect for his work.
Is this Robert Jensen the same as Robert W Jensen, author of the wonderful two volume systematic theology set?
Here is a link to this author's CV.
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/vita.htm
ok. Thanks. I checked out the blurb on the author at Amazon and realized that he's not the same Robert W Jensen.
Post a Comment