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violent and abusive sex as “hot and deeply satisfying for all parties” functions to erode social norms that define violence against women as deviant and unacceptable, norms that “are already constantly under assault in a male-dominated society” (96). As Robert Jensen makes clear, 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 a violation of those norms” (75).
Many contemporary literary texts serve to invoke more recent debates surrounding new forms of pornography, which include not only the growth of Internet pornography but also print pornography and erotica.1 They also rearticulate concerns about the negative “effects” of pornography on “beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour; especially the encouragement of violence against women, the endorsement of sexist and misogynist views, the destruction of childhood innocence, and the commodification of relationships” (Attwood 1). Jeffrey Weeks summarizes the real-world implications of these concerns by commenting that feminist contestation of pornography and sado-masochistic practices “relies on the argument that representations of violence can cause violence,” and that “sexual behaviour which flirts with power imbalances can sustain existing power relations” (125), a position equally contested by a minority of feminist academics: “The excuse for banning ‘violent’ porn is that this will end violence against women. The causal connection is dubious. It is indisputably true that very few people who consume pornography ever assault or rape another person” (Califia 236). It is in this minefield of political discordance that one approaches sexuality in contemporary literary texts, the discussion and evaluation of which is more pertinent in the twenty-first century than ever before when many young women who would call themselves feminists have “come to accept that they are growing up in a world where pornography is ubiquitous and will be part of almost everyone’s sexual experiences” (Walter 102). Linda Williams makes a similar point, arguing that feminists have begun to embrace the possibility that a rejection of pornography “emphasize[s]