I teach people about porn.  That’s my job, or part of it, as an assistant professor in the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies program at Temple University. In January 2023, I launched a brand-new college-level course that focuses on the study of porn with a very specific goal: to help heal the painful social divisions in our country.  It’s no secret that waking up in America today often means waking up to deep, painful, social and political divisions, which seem to be intensifying with alarming speed. Each time I read a new headline stoking the flames of these divisions, I become more certain that thoughtful, less fraught conversations about porn and sexuality education are part of the solution to healing our wounds and bringing us back together. My goal is to make the unspeakable, speakable. We need to make talking about sex and porn as normal as talking about the weather. The more normal we can make these conversations, the more likely we are to recognise our shared humanity, reconnect with our human-ness, and stop hurting each other. Thinking this is one thing. Acting on it is another. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I needed to practice what I preach if I was going to make something I wholeheartedly believed into a reality. So in January 2023, I walked into my boss’s office and said the words that would get most employees sent to Human Resources: “Porn ― I want to teach a course about porn.”Before I could even finish the sentence, I partly regretted it and wished I coul