“An intriguing exploration of user-generated pornography, erotically-charged art, and changing sexual practices in Hong Kong and mainland China. People’s Pornography goes beyond the well-known facts of China’s attempts to censor the Internet to the often humorous and inventive efforts of Chinese netizens to jump the Great Firewall.”

Clarissa Smith, University of Sunderland, author of One for the Girls!

“Katrien Jacobs presents an engaging, sober, and controversial analysis of a pornographic culture caught among the equally fierce forces of government control, consumer culture’s manipulation, the diffusive nature of the Internet, and the citizens’ own conflicting desires. Anyone interested in China will find this book informative and eye-opening.”

Laikwan Pang, Chinese University of Hong Kong

“Katrien Jacobs is among the most curious and innovative writers on the topic of sexuality and technology working today. Most research on pornography and the Internet has focused on the West, so People’s Pornography is a very welcome addition to our understanding of both these areas. Jacobs’s book is a fascinating examination of sex, citizenship, and politics.”

Feona Attwood, Sheffield Hallam University

 “Sigel’s The People’s Porn attempts the ambitious, unglamorous, but fascinating work of drawing together for the first time an archive of handmade erotic objects made over two centuries of American history. From erotic scrimshaw made by nineteenth-century sailors to amateur polaroids, it charts a course through the ways in which apparently ‘ordinary’ men and women represented sex in all its variety—cis and trans, straight and queer, in couples or groups, with people or animals and somewhere in between—via prison pornography, pop-up erections, masturbating Santas, and feminist embroidery. In doing so, it tells a story of hidden desire that has often been overlooked.”

History Today