Porno? Chic!: how pornography changed the world and made it a better place - Hardcover

"Brian McNair has done more than almost anyone to reframe how we look at the relations between sex and the media and the ways that sex is represented in a wide range of cultural forms. Porno? Chic!, his latest contribution to the debate, is a response to the increasingly hyperbolic claims that are made about the effects of pornography and pornified culture. This is a brave and forthright book which is to be welcomed in the current climate of fear and panic about both sex and the media." Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Porno? Chic! examines the relationship between the proliferation of pornography and sexualised culture in the West and social and cultural trends which have advanced the rights of women and homosexuals.

Brian McNair addresses this relationship with an analysis of trends in sexualised culture since 2002 linked to a transnational analysis of change in sexual politics and sex/gender relations in a range of societies, from the sexually liberalised societies of advanced capitalism to those in which women and homosexuals remain tightly controlled by authoritarian, patriarchal regimes.

In this accessible, jargon-free book, Brian McNair examines why those societies in which sexualised culture is the most liberalised and pervasive are also those in which the socio-economic and political rights of women and homosexuals have advanced the most.