Robert Jensen: Blow Bangs and Cluster Bombs (via Daily Churn)

Not for the faint of heart or stomach... a category that apparently doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of American men who get off on the humiliation of women or other "enemies".

One of the facts initially censored from a journalist's report during that war was that on the USS John F. Kennedy, pilots watched pornographic movies before flying missions, apparently to help get them pumped up to drop bombs. The censor told the journalist that the facts were too embarrassing to allow to be published.

...

What do blow bangs and cluster bombs have in common? On the surface, very little; pornography and war are different endeavors with different consequences. In pairing them, I am not making some overarching claim about the connection between patriarchy and empire.

But I can say this: To be effective, contemporary mass-marketed pornography and modern war both require cruelty and contempt. The pornography I watched in the summer of 2001 was about the cruelty of men and men's contempt for women. The war I watched in the fall of 2001 was about the cruelty of Americans and Americans' contempt for people in other parts of the world.

See also the Israeli soldiers who broadcast porn from occupied TV stations in Ramallah