Pornography and the impact on women and girls: 20.4.2026

Jo Bartosh and Rob Jessel joined to the APPG to discuss their recent book Pornocracy, which examines the impact of pornography on women and girls.

Jo began by illustrating the devastating effect that early exposure to pornography can have on young women. This impact is physical as well as emotional and she outlined the shocking toll that changing sexual norms have had on women’s health.

Only Fans now has well over 300 million users. As the explosion of pornography enabled by technology has generated huge profits for misogynist entrepreneurs, it has also normalised behaviours and values that are changing social attitudes, even towards the most basic boundaries such as consent.

For lesbians, these new norms are particularly bleak. “Pornography has transformed female same-sex desire into a spectator sport for male consumption,”  Jo explained. The option for many has been to turn to gender identity clinics as they attempt to escape from their sex altogether.

Those whose job it is to deliver justice, from the police to judges, are ineffective. “We know that many will be regular consumers of pornography and they will have absorbed its values. Is it any surprise that most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a prison? “  Jo asked.

Rob talked about the link between the tech and porn industries, and without painting men as victims of pornography, he deplored the cynical exploitation of male vulnerability and loneliness for profit.

Even worse, he pointed to the experience of young people for whom pornography is their main source of sexual education and so end up “having their sexuality written for them by some of the worst adults in the world.”

Click to read the full text of the compelling speeches by Jo and Rob in the Useful Links section.