It is not a big step to envision this other as a de-humanized, physical object, one it is justifiable to disempower and control. This process of segregating, myth-making, objectifying, and subjugating supports many kinds of social inequality. When physiology is the prime basis of the definition of likeness or otherness, the paradigmatic and dominant form of social inequality is sexism. Pornography widely disseminates the kind of imagery by which we are convinced to perceive those who are physiologically different from ourselves as other . Pornography reduces human beings to physical objects, and it portrays and idealizes actions that define that object as other, an object to be controlled.
Pornography is an expression of materialism and reductionism.
It denies the humanity and the human aspirations of what is defined and portrayed as other. When men and women define each other as other, it is impossible for us to be friends across the great sexual divide. Those who cannot be our friends are potentially our enemies and certainly are not to be trusted. We treat those we cannot trust as other, and thus phallocentric culture reproduces itself. The cost of this reproduction is increased violence and increased violation due to attempts to control those we have defined as other.