Porn Generation
Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future is a nonfiction book by American conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. The book was published by Regnery; a later Simon & Schuster-distributed ebook listing gives a February 5, 2013 release date, a length of 232 pages, and ISBN 9781621571056.[1] Google Books and other bibliographic listings identify the work as a popular-culture and social-science title centered on Shapiro's criticism of sexual liberalism and pornography's influence on American youth culture.[2]
Background and argument
The book appeared in the early phase of Shapiro's public career, after Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth and before Project President. Publisher materials describe the book as based on first-person reporting, interviews with people connected to the pornography industry, and conversations with psychologists, educators, and students.[3] Publishers Weekly, in a later author page for Shapiro, summarized the work as part of his early sequence of books arguing that social liberalism was corrupting American culture.[4]
The book's argument fits Shapiro's broader early social-conservative writing. It treats pornography, entertainment culture, sexual permissiveness, and moral relativism as related forces shaping adolescent expectations and public norms. Later biographical discussion of Shapiro's early books has treated Porn Generation as a bridge between his campus-focused critique in Brainwashed and his later interest in media, celebrity, and cultural institutions.
Reception
Two located reviews were critical of the book. In a 2006 review archived by PolicyArchive, Chaim I. Waxman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs sharply criticized the book, arguing that Shapiro overstated his authority as a judge of popular-culture morality and understated the extent of American public discomfort with offensive media.[5] A review in The Harvard Law Record similarly faulted the book as overbroad and polemical, while noting Shapiro's stated self-presentation as a young conservative critic.[6]