pornocracy
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: pôr-nŏk-rə-sē
ipa: /pɔːˈnɒkɹəsɪ/
ipa: /pɔɹˈnɑkɹəsi/
rhymes: -ɒkɹəsi
Forms: form: pornocracies
Etymology: Probably borrowed from German Pornokratie, first found in the writings of Austrian-born Biblical scholar Alfred Edersheim (1825–1889), from Ancient Greek πόρνη (pórnē, “female prostitute”) + -κρᾰτῐ́ᾱ (-krătĭ́ā, “-cracy”, suffix indicating “government, rule”); analysable as porno- + -cracy.
Senses: examples: text: [Pierre-Joseph] Proudhon had a consistent—many have called it reactionary—preference for smaller and more personalized social units. His passionate defense of the traditional rural family (and attendant hatred of the “pornocracy” of Paris) was part of a relentless localism that tended to prefer Burgundy to France, Franche Comité to Burgundy, and the individual family and village to Franche Comité.
ref: 1980, James H[adley] Billington, “Schism: Marx vs. Proudhon”, in Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, →ISBN; republished New Brunswick, N.J.; London: Transaction Publishers, 1998 (2009 printing), →ISBN, book II (The Dominance of the National Revolutionaries: The Mid-nineteenth Century), page 301:
text: Even in the confident era of bourgeois patriarchy prior to 1848, actresses had ben, at best, disgraced women who might atone for their mistakes through self-sacrifice. In the three ensuing decades, fear of pornocracy had run high. Could views of theater women transcend fears of sexual indulgence and seduction so that actresses might become honored citizens? Would they ever take their places as members of the second sex along with bourgeois wives and mothers? Improbable before 1880, these changes were realized under the Third Republic.
ref: 2001, Lenard R. Berlanstein, “Imagining Republican Actresses, 1880–1914”, in Daughters of Eve: A Cultural History of French Theater Women from the Old Regime to the Fin de Siècle, Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 159:
text: The [Dead Sea] Scrolls' visions, like those of latter-day apocalyptists Jim Jones and David Koresh, of Islamic jihad and West Bank Kahanists, can become pornocracies of violence, acted out with a horrifying relish for blood.
ref: 2006 October, John Lamb Lash, quoting Neil Asher Silberman, “Messianic Madness”, in Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing, →ISBN, page 78:
text: No legitimate questions concerning the abuses by pornocracies are now permitted, for those rulers who prostitute their ethical and moral values for a handful of gold and a bunch of dilapidated dwellings are only fit to shovel shit from one ship to another.
ref: 2014, Defassa, “The Meaning of Words”, in Masculism, Rothersthorpe, Northamptonshire: Defassa; Paragon Publishing, →ISBN, page 51:
text: It now rather unmistakably appears that pornocracy is the name that should be given to the Governments of both Great Britain and the United Sates of America in the twentieth century - and before - but the latest century will do for the enlightenment of the misindoctrinated young men and women of today.
ref: 2017, Rosine de Bounevialle, The Candour A.B.C. of Politics, page 87:
glosses: A government by, or dominated by, prostitutes or corrupt persons.
examples: text: If the 'meritocrat' – the 'natural' aristocrat whose success is not beholden to class or background – was a key component in the 1970s mythology, was the pornocrat the 1970s cold-light-of-day equivalent? And if the pornocrat was such a key player and empire builder, does that imply the evolution of a fully fledged pornocracy, a culture organised around the economic logic of pornography? […] The pornocrat controls and selectively distributes sexual capital – thus obscenity laws both help and hinder him – knowledge, 'freedom', sexual technology, the means of stimulation and success. The pornocracy is essentially inhabited by two classes – there are the pornocrats themselves and the swinging elite surrounding them and there are the 'punters' over whom they rule benevolently.
ref: 1998, Leon Hunt, “Coming Clean … from Robin Askwith to Mary Millington”, in British Low Culture: From Safari Suits to Sexploitation, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 131:
text: [Bill] Clinton won the 1993 presidential election, strongly supported by the homosexual community, 95 percent of which voted for him—providing more than his margin of victory. If an American president is the greatest fictionist, and if it is not so much his politics as his poetics that helps structure the American popular unconscious, it is logical that up until the 1980s Clinton appealed to neither traditional macho patriarchy nor radical feminist matriarchy, but by the 1990s he was appealing to the “pornocracy” of that period.
ref: 2006, Takayuma Tatsumi, “Pax Exotica: A New Exoticist Perspective on Audrey, Anna-chan, and Idoru”, in Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-pop America (Post-contemporary Interventions), Durham, N.C.; London: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 123:
glosses: A societal culture dominated by pornography.
Derived terms: pornocrat
pornocratic