When Richard Desmond bought the Express, Jeanette Winterson bought some of his other titles. Here, she unpicks the message in the magazines.
Feminism seems to have had no effect on pornography.
There is much more of it than in the 60s and 70s, and it has become both mainstream and acceptable. I travel a lot, here and abroad, and at airports and railway stations, I have noticed the old top shelf is often double the size and halfway down. Reading the message is not easy. In the white corner are the likes of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon who have argued, with varying degrees of success, in the American courts and media, that all pornography is violence against women. In the red corner are the good-time guys, such as Hugh Hefner, Paul Raymond, Richard Desmond, who claim it's just business as usual and the girls enjoy it.