Pornocracy

They say everybody uses porn. They’re wrong. People don’t use pornography: it uses us. And you don’t have to watch it to be one of its victims.

In this thought-provoking and timely book, Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel expose how the multi-billion dollar pornography industry has humanity gripped in a chokehold. From rewiring our brains and normalising sexual violence, to shaping new protest movements, the pornographic revolution has achieved a stunning and near-total victory.

The triumph of the pornocrats is made more sinister by society’s widespread acceptance that “all men watch porn,” the denial of its devastating harms, and a lack of political will to curb the power of the global pornography business.

The authors answer the questions that politicians and policymakers are too scared to ask. Why, despite over half a century of feminist gains and lessons in schools on ‘consent’, do today’s school children display more sexist attitudes than their parents and grandparents? Do women really want to be choked and humiliated in bed? How can we fight back and reclaim sex, love and relationships?

Drawing on the latest research, Pornocracy charts how the neurological shifts caused by porn use reverberate through society. The book also warns of a dystopian future where AI-powered porn and sextech threaten to reduce us all to masturbating meat puppets on an algorithmic production line.

Provocative and powerful, Pornocracy tells the story of how pornography fundamentally changed—perhaps forever—what it is to be human. Acknowledgements


Introduction – Considering the Lilies

Chapter One — Not Your Granddad’s Porn

Chapter Two — How Porn Changed Our Brains

Chapter Three — Relationships with Porn

Chapter Four — Generation Porn

Chapter Five — Pulled Apart By Porn

Chapter Six — Phone Screens and Crime Scenes

Chapter Seven — Pornified Progress

Chapter Eight — The Death of Love

Chapter Nine — Resistance


Notes Jo Bartosch is a journalist, women’s rights advocate and assistant editor at The Critic.
Robert Jessel is a writer and campaigner with a particular focus on child exploitation, competing rights claims, freedom of speech, and the impact of new technology on humanity.