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.