Pornocracy (2025), by Jo Bartosch and Robert Jessel, is a clarion call for a legislative and cultural revolution, one in which the depravity of pornography is recognised, its façade of respectability is pulled down, and the entire industry which profits from it is overthrown.
Their provocative title refers to the "system where our minds, relationships and laws are shaped by global-scale sexual exploitation." It is this which they seek to expose (which Pornocracy does comprehensively) and then dismantle (here, the results are more mixed).
This is not easy reading: this book doesn’t shrink from presenting the horrors of pornography, the exploitation which produces it, the damage it does those who view it and the dark places to which it takes us as a culture, and as individuals.
'Stranger Things' and endings
Over the Christmas holidays, Netflix released the final series of Stranger Things.Since the first series in 2016, we’ve …