Meaning of pornocracy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The period of the papacy known as the saeculum obscūrum (Latin for “dark age”), and also as the “Rule of the Harlots”, which began with the installation of Pope Sergius III in 904 and lasted for sixty years until the death of Pope John XII in 964, during which time the popes were strongly influenced by the Theophylacti, a powerful and corrupt aristocratic family.
   capitalized, historical, often
2. A government by, or dominated by, prostitutes or corrupt persons.
   derogatory, figuratively, often
3. Alternative letter-case form of pornocracy.
   alt-of, historical
4. A societal culture dominated by pornography.
   derogatory

Equivalents

Examples

“Under the pornocracy (government of harlots) in the first half of the 10th century, the Papacy was degraded and all Italy torn by factions.”

“Monsters of impurity, avaricious wretches, poisoners, have occupied the papal see. A learned bishop (Maret of the General Council) expresses himself with holy indignation in reference to the frightful enormities of the tenth century. This epoch deserves to be designated under the title of the Pornocracy; that is to say, the government of prostitutes, for Theodora, Marozia, and other ladies of rank at that time, placed on the pontifical throne their paramours and their sons, who were no better than themselves.”

“[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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“[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.”

“Monsters of impurity, avaricious wretches, poisoners, have occupied the papal see. A learned bishop (Maret of the General Council) expresses himself with holy indignation in reference to the frightful enormities of the tenth century. This epoch deserves to be designated under the title of the Pornocracy; that is to say, the governmentof prostitutes, for Theodora, Marozia, and other ladies of rank at that time, placed on the pontifical throne their paramours and their sons, who were no better than themselves.”

CEFR level