Jerry Barnett became active in the anti-racism movement as a teenager in the late-1970s, and for the next several years was involved in anti-racism, anti-fascism, anti-apartheid and other causes of the 1980s left. He began a software career in the mid-1980s, and was an early Internet user, getting his first email address in 1988. When, in 1995, the web started to become popular, he started a business to develop web software. Among his early projects was one of the world’s first commercial porn sites. This work led him gradually into the kafkaesque world of ‘liberal’ morality campaigners and the anti-sex attitudes of the British state.

As morality campaigners and the British state set out to censor the new medium, Jerry resumed his activism, becoming a lobbyist against censorship, and a regular defender of sexual expression and free speech in university debates and in the media. In 2012, he closed his software business, set up the Sex & Censorship campaign, and started work on Porn Panic!, his first book, which was published in August 2016.