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There’s Hope in the Cultural Fight Against Pornography
The Emmy-winning miniseries Adolescence (2025) explores rising sexual entitlement and violence among young men. Much of the blame is directed at misogynistic influencers like Andrew Tate. But figures like Tate only affirm and perpetuate impulses young men have already internalized from a pornified culture.
Journalist Jo Bartoscht and activist against child exploitation Robert Jessel make this case forcefully in their book, Pornocracy, arguing that pornography isn’t merely a private habit but a dominant cultural force deeply entrenched in modern social life. They define pornocracy as “a society in which political power, culture, relationships and identity are shaped or dominated by the purveyors of pornography” (1).
Their central thesis is that we’re all subjects of the pornocracy, whether a creator, viewer, complacent bystander, or antiporn advocate. Our entire culture is being shaped by worldwide sexual exploitation.
Pornification of Everything
Pornocracy is a self-consciously feminist book, but Bartosch and Jessel more closely represent the second-wave feminism of the 1970s and ’80s than that of today, in both their condemnation of “sex work” and their approach toward men.
The authors observe, “Half a century of feminist-led anti-porn theory has made a negligible impact on men’s willingness to be aroused by the degradation of women. To reduce the death grip of pornography on our culture and society, we have to convince men that porn hurts them” (37).
This is likely why so much of contemporary antiporn literature focuses on addiction, loneliness, isolation, and self-esteem issues that arise from a pornified culture. It’s all true, but it’s shameful that the mass exploitation of women and children is an insufficient incentive to purge porn from every kilobyte of the digital domain.
It’s shameful that the mass exploitation of women and children is an insufficient incentive to purge porn from every kilobyte of the digital domain.
The authors emphasize how pornography disproportionately harms women, but they always have an eye toward how this has severed men and women from one another, separating sex from a sense of mutual self-giving and trust. “These men no longer have mutual sex”; they’re only using their sexual partners for self-gratification (48).
Beyond the individual consequences of pornography consumption, Bartosch and Jessel offer an incisive exposé on the broader effects of the pornocracy, delving into the deepest and darkest corners of an industry whose annual revenue is twice as much as Hollywood’s. The research, statistics, and anecdotes are staggering, even for those with some background knowledge.
For example, 88 percent of pornography performers experienced sexual abuse as children, and this abuse is perpetuated in the porn industry through verbal abuse, rape, physical assault, and third-party control. Investigations into sites like OnlyFans, which claim to be a more ethical avenue for sex work, reveal the same patterns of coercion, abuse, and sexual enslavement.
Digital Natives Are ‘Porn Natives’
When porn consumption is so great and expansive, what does that mean for “digital natives” who have only ever known the digital age? It might be accurate to refer to Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and younger cohorts as “porn natives.” It’s the air they breathe.
Like many young people, I saw pornography first as a preteen, before I’d ever kissed a girl or held her hand, or had any “sex talk” or “sex education.” Pornography was my sex education. According to a 2019 BBC survey of 18-to-25-year-olds, this is true for more than half (55 percent) of young men and 35 percent of young women. I can only imagine it’s much worse in 2026. It’s hard to wrap our minds around how catastrophic this is. For everyone—especially young men—sex has been irreversibly pornified.
For many young men, all interactions with women are sexualized interactions. Perhaps most revealing, the authors of Pornocracy recount a report from someone in educational leadership, saying, “Practically each day we’d have an issue with some boy requesting nudes or asking for porn recommendations from female pupils, but it’s not necessarily malicious. . . . I’d say there’s a plurality of boys who don’t know how to talk to girls in a way that’s not overtly sexual” (62).
They argue this is perpetuated by sex education curricula that promote “sex positivity” and the idea that “any sexual behavior is valid” (66). Pornography, they suggest, doesn’t satisfy sexual urges and preferences; it shapes and malforms them in increasingly perverse ways.
The situation is dire. The book’s content is hard to stomach, and it’d probably be triggering for anyone with a history of sexual trauma. But we must understand how bad things are in order to imagine a future beyond the pornocracy.
Third Way Forward
In the concluding chapter, the two authors diverge paths and offer separate views on the path forward. These could broadly be categorized as a top-down approach (Bartosch) and a bottom-up approach (Jessel).
Bartosch rightly lays out the positive steps that have come about recently through law and policy efforts, especially regarding age-verification laws for both pornography users and creators. For example, a woman named Laila Mickelwait has launched a political assault on pornography websites in recent years, causing PornHub to purge 91 percent of its catalogue (shrinking its inventory from 56 million to 5.2 million videos and images).
For many young men, all interactions with women are sexualized interactions.
This was achieved simply by targeting their potentially illegal content, where the accounts couldn’t verify the participants’ ages. Furthermore, rather than instituting age-verification laws for individuals accessing pornography, PornHub has completely backed out of 23 states (and counting).
Bartosch desires to hold these companies accountable and punish criminal activity. But she wants to help those on both sides of the screen: the women and children being exploited and the men addicted to watching it happen. Part of that process includes porn-addiction being declared a public health concern and regulated on that basis.
Jessel takes a different approach. He begins by questioning the pornocracy: “Where does its strength come from? How is it vulnerable? What does it fear?” He responds, “My answer to all three questions is the same. It is the consumer; the men, and some women, who sustain the industry” (141). We must become ashamed of pornography. Jessel concludes with a call to recover our humanity:
We are creating new worlds where the mind has become disconnected from the body; where digital and physical reality are merging, blurring, queering. . . . Somehow we need to reforge the link between sexual intercourse and love—or, more fundamentally, simply to rediscover the joy of real sex. This alone would be a meaningful first step in the long journey to reconnect with what makes us human (144–45).
There is so much correct in both these portraits. However, Jessel explicitly mentions that his objections to pornography are “strictly Darwinian” and “have little or nothing to do with faith-based morality” (142).
On the contrary, this has everything to do with faith-based morality. Science lacks a firm basis for words like “evil” and “wrong”; only religion can fill those terms with real meaning. Nevertheless, we should be thankful for common grace, which enables nonbelievers and believers alike to recognize an objective moral evil.
Neither Bartosch’s nor Jessel’s approach will solve every problem with pornography, though they certainly can help. We also need the church to proclaim the good news to sexual sinners, which would lead to them shaming the shameful, honoring the honorable, and consecrating what’s been desecrated.
This book’s content is challenging and, at times, explicit. Nevertheless, Pornocracy presents a wake-up call for pastors, policy-makers, and parents alike. We’re making advancements toward justice, but new enemies are underfoot with the dawning of AI, sex robots, and the systematic depersonalization of sex. We must press on toward a new sexual revolution that more closely reflects God’s moral order.
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