ON Bookworld’s website, you can find My first cupcake decorating book, Children’s book of art and Children’s book of mythical beasts. But until recently, other beasts lurked among the titles hosted by the online book seller, the rebranded version of Borders.

Hundreds of titles appeared under the heading, Incest, titles far too explicit, not to mention disturbing, to be mentioned here.

Incest is a criminal act of abuse against children. About one-in-four is a victim of child sexual abuse. Yet companies are profiting from selling incest-themed fiction, supporting the views of abusers or potential abusers that it is acceptable to have sex with (i.e. rape) children.

Bookworld says it is working on solutions to monitor content more closely.

‘‘We agree with you that these titles should not be on sale and are very grateful that we have been made aware of them so that we can remove them from the site and ensure none like them will be available on Bookworld in the future,’’ said Bookworld’s Kim Noble.

While their prompt response is welcome, didn’t one staffer notice the titles and ask questions? And while Bookworld says it didn’t market the titles, surely carrying them at all achieves the same thing?

Why no audit checks of the data feeds they were channeling through their site? Why effectively traffick contraband materials without checking they weren’t breaching Australian laws?

It is just the latest example of the mainstreaming of child sexual assault material.

The Federal Government has established a royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. There are various other state and internal inquiries. Rightly so. The issue is a blight on our nation and everything must be done to stop it. But while millions are spent on these inquiries, we live in a culture which sends messages that child abuse is sexy. There’s no inquiry into the permission-giving drivers which encourage and enable the sexual abuse of children.

Like teen-themed sex toys which eroticised sex with girls advertised through Condom Kingdom; or a Melbourne sex store advertising a ‘‘back to school’’ sale complete with school uniforms, blackboards and apples for the teacher.

Amazon also lists incest titles. Last year, a global campaign forced a recall of A paedophile’s guide to love and pleasure.

Then there’s porn in the corner store. Pictures include one of a girl (allegedly over 18 but posed as a child, which is illegal) on a bed in bobby sox and pigtails, holding a hand puppet.

For years, child development advocates have called for action, sending multiple copies of illegal titles to the Classification Board. Board chief Donald McDonald has written hundreds of ‘‘please explain’’ letters to porn distributors but none bother replying. The board’s annual reports bear that out, documenting ‘‘no reply received’’.

The system is broken. Jeff Sparrow’s new book, Money Shot, reveals the contempt porn profiteers have for the system. Those in the industry say the risks of getting caught aren’t that great. Sparrow writes: ‘‘The adult industry of Australia was almost entirely outside the legal system . . . the remote possibility of a fine was like the spectre of shoplifting, an annoyance that just went with the trade.’’

Why haven’t state and federal attorneys-general, who are responsible for classifications, done anything to intervene?

Melbourne author Jayneen Saunders wrote Some Secrets Should Never Be Kept about helping children stay safe from child sexual abuse, but she has struggled to get a publisher and has been prevented from reading from the book at public places such as libraries, because of the nature of the content.

Yet, mainstream companies can profit from trading in products encouraging child sexual assault.

All these permission-giving examples undermine child protection. The idea it is acceptable to fantasise about children is given the tick by those who profit from trading in such fantasies.

If we are serious about addressing child sexual assault, when are governments going to address the culture which fuels and feeds it?

Despite the fact the system is stuffed, the Australian Law Reform Commission has endorsed selfregulation.

There are endless complaints about all the above and more, but the system doesn’t change.

I’ll vote for whoever decides to take this seriously.

Published in the Sunday Herald Sun March 3 2013

Primed to accept brutality as normal in romantic relationships

It’s not enough that classic works of literature like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights are to be given a 50 Shades of Grey makeover (read how Catherine Earnshaw enjoys bondage sessions with Heathcliff!). Or that there are 50 Shades of Grey mother and daughter cooking classes (whip up ’Playroom Pretzel Ropes’ and ‘Bondage Wrapped Shrimp’ with mum!) Or ‘My mummy pretends Christian Grey is my daddy’ slogans on baby jumpsuits complete with charming handcuff motifs.

The ‘50 Shades’ juggernaut rolls on, consuming everything in its wake. Now the latest market is teens who are being targeted with spin-offs from the phenomenon.

We know 13 and 14-year-olds are already reading this ode to sadism, receiving an early lesson in submission 101.

In the multi-million dollar best seller, Anastasia Steele has to sign a contract agreeing to do whatever her lover Christian Grey wants. She must be available on call.

One of the terms is: ‘The submissive shall submit to any sexual activity without hesitation or argument’. This is presented as true love rather than as a powerful man controlling a naïve young woman having her first sexual experience.

Anastasia feels “demeaned, debased, and abused.” But Grey is wealthy and showers her with gifts. Isn’t that so romantic? Cruelty is OK, as long as there is a happy ending.

Now teens are being sold their own versions, promoted as’ erotic fiction’ helping them ‘explore their sexuality’. But what is it that is being eroticised?

One of the most new popular titles for young people is Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire. Here’s an extract about the reaction of main character Travis after Abby sleeps with him and leaves without saying goodbye:

“Travis is a fucking wreck! He won’t talk to us, he’s trashed the apartment, threw the stereo across the room… He took a swing at Shep [roommate] when he found out we helped you leave. Abby! It’s scaring me! … he’s gone fucking nuts! I heard him call your name, and then he stomped all over the apartment looking for you. …he tried to call you. Over, and over and over…His face was… I’ve never seen him like that. He ripped his sheets off the bed, and threw them away, threw his pillows away, shattered his mirror with his fist, kicked his door… broke it from the hinges! It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

Ah, young love. Travis, unhinged, goes around destroying things when he can’t get his way. He tries to blackmail Abby and limit her freedom. Obsession and jealousy are misread as love.

One young reader wrote on the Goodreadings site “I felt like Abby was in danger throughout the entire novel…anyone as needy as Travis is dangerous, in my opinion, especially when alcohol is in the mix”. Smart girl.

We are seeing a trend toward the acceptance of brutality as normal in romantic relationships. I heard a 15-year-old boy say he slaps girls and pulls their hair during sex because he read they liked it. Some girls expect to receive bruises from sex. Why say it with flowers when you can show it with beatings?

The view that ‘erotic’ fiction is an alternative to kids visiting porn sites has not been demonstrated. Even if they read one or two books, the bombardment of sexual imagery and porn online will barely be dented. Average age of first exposure to online porn is 11.

Age social affairs writer Michelle Griffin has argued that kids should be reading porn-themed books, recommending ‘House of Holes’ for the school library and family bookshelf. This is the book described by The Guardian as a “porn fest.”

There is a difference between literature which help teenage girls interpret their natural curiosity in sex and their bodies and literature which seeks to shape or exploit it.

Melbourne mother Helen Parkes wrote to me: “There are 12 & 13 year olds in my daughter’s class reading 50 shades and other ‘steamys’… I don’t think these are positive in any way even as a tool to ‘begin dialogue’. I want my daughter and her friends to spend a few years participating in school plays and sports instead of grooming themselves for men before they even know who they are and what they enjoy”.

Girls and young women describe cold, soul-less sexual experiences in which they are expected to be service stations for boys, pressured to ‘put out’, with no concern for their emotional wellbeing.

Will these so-called erotic novels help develop respect-based relationships? Real connection and intimacy? I doubt it. Yet that’s what girls say they want. In this months’ Girlfriend, the magazine’s sex survey shows 76% of readers are not sexually active – 56% say it’s because they are waiting for real love.

Reading material that portrays sex as a part of caring, complex, human relationships is a way of promoting healthy physical and psychological development. We should be equipping and empowering young people to make positive choices about their sexual lives rather than training them in domination and submission.

Perhaps it’s time for some explicit content on love and authentic human connection?

Published in the Sunday Herald Sun Dec 23, 2012

See also: Shades of Grey spin offs for teens: MTR on The Morning Show 

Doing good instead of bingeing is all class: MTR in Sunday Herald Sun

Scarlett* (she asked me not to use her real name) from Victoria, wrote to me about her experience of Schoolies.

While on schoolies I heard numerous stories of girls I go to school with having sex in club toilets with complete strangers before schoolies to ‘get it over and done with’… They feared that if they went on schoolies as virgins, they would be deemed ‘losers’…
While on schoolies, some of my closest friends had sex or gave oral sex or hand to complete strangers as they felt it was ‘expected of them’ by the boys and because ‘it’s schoolies!’.
At clubs and bars we went to boys chanted ‘tits out for the boys’… If boys came up to the girls and chanted ‘show us your tits!’ the girls would take their tops off or show their bra, because a massive group of horny boys chanting at you is pretty forceful.
…There was also a wet-shirt competition, prizes for lesbian kisses and games which included miming a blow job. They had to take off items of clothing to stay in the game…
Many of the girls were under the influence of alcohol and yes, boys did prey on drunk girls – I overheard two boys saying to each other ‘let’s get these girls drunk and take them down to the beach’.

Courtney Mitchell, 18, wrote to me too. Her experience was quite different.

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of joining a team on a short term trip to Thailand and Cambodia with Destiny Rescue. We spent time with poor and disadvantaged children and young people and saw how life is for those much less fortunate than ourselves.
My team had chosen to spend their schoolies giving instead of getting. It was inspiring to see them exchange a week of partying to spend an afternoon levelling out a soccer field so orphaned boys could play safely or playing with little girls rescued from the sex industry.

It was touching to think that money had been diligently raised all year not to hire a three-bedroom apartment and cover alcohol costs but to fly to the other side of the world with a willingness to get uncomfortable.

What better way to start life in the real world than by visiting the real world – and gaining awareness, preparation and perspective as a result?

If ever there was a case for re-considering the traditional schoolies ritual, it’s here in the stories of these two young women.

This so-called rite-of-passage – more like a week-long binge – sees hundreds arrested for serious assault, drunk and disorderly conduct, drug possession and obstructing police. Scarce resources are deployed to mop up the mess.
Many girls suffer sexual violence. Some families are left grieving the loss of a child who died at a schoolies event.

Of course young people should be able to let off steam, have fun and say farewell after being together with the same people for over a decade. We want them to revel in freedom and new beginnings.

But has the good wish to prove and redefine oneself, to grow and move on, turned into an empty, hollow and even toxic initiation?

It appears that young people themselves think so.

In fact most wish they’d never gone. University of Wollongong research found seven out of 10 of teens attending rated the experience as negative.

Why can’t we offer them something better? Provide incentives to participate in something affirming and positive, which won’t leave them with sadness and regret?

Fortunately there are a number of alternatives already on offer which deserve more publicity so that next time girls like Scarlett will have healthy options. Here’s a sample (check in your area for other programs).

• Schoolies Revolution
An initiative of HopeBuilders International, this not-for-profit work to break the cycle of poverty. It “challenges young people to step out of their comfort zone and do something radical. By turning away from the traditional “schoolies” young people are given the opportunity to give back to world’s poor”. This year students helped build a school, visited slums, visited prisons and looked after orphans in Uganda.

• Operation Timor-Leste (Rotary Club of Kerang)
Kalamunda schools (W.A) join a team to engage in community building activities in a small East Timorese village. The aim is to help young people think and act as global citizens, develop mutual cross cultural awareness and achieve personal challenges,

• Shepparton Schoolies Alternative
Students from a Lutheran College in Adelaide work with young refugees in Shepparton. The school hopes to strengthen and grow the connections with refugee communities.

• Crossroads

Crossroads is a two-week pilgrimage for Year 12 school leavers from the Melbourne, run by the Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese. Students engage with remote communities, where they do volunteer work.

• ‘Coolies’ Program
Run by De La Salle College, the Coolies program takes 12 school leavers to for a month to work as unskilled labourers (‘coolies’) in rural villages and try to improve the lives of the poor. Students have built a new primary school classroom and toilet block.

• StormCo
STORM Co. is a youth initiative of the South Pacific Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It sends teams of trained young people to work for, learn from, and encourage individual communities, especially in remote parts of Australia.

Published in the Sunday Herald Sun Dec 16, 2012

Sober reality of young lives ruined by drink

EVERY weekend the group of 13 and 14-year-old girls got together and played a game. They’d stand in a circle and drink straight spirits. The girl who remained standing the longest, won. Some needed their stomachs pumped afterwards. The doctors who told me about treating girls like this almost every weekend have every right to feel demoralised.

The use of alcohol has become more widespread and acceptable for children and young people. They are drinking more often and at riskier levels.

Forty-three per cent of 16 and 17-year-olds say they drink to get drunk; two-thirds of 16 and 17-year-olds think that ‘‘it is OK to get drunk occasionally’’.

In the past 10 years, about 15 per cent of all deaths of 15 to 24-year-olds were due to risky drinking.

But should we be surprised, when the alcohol industry seeks to recruit young people into a lifelong habit?

Alcohol products are designed, packaged and promoted to normalise alcohol use for young people.

Grog companies spend billions embedding their brands in the lives and lifestyles of young people.

The underage alcohol market brings in more than $100 million in profits for the industry. Sporting gear bears alcohol brand logos. Spirit brands run competitions to win electric skateboards and use social media to get their message to young people.

If a beer or spirit ad gets 10 million views on YouTube, an average of 600,000 children under the age of 17 will see it.

Promotions link booze to sports, music celebrities, sex and an enviable lifestyle.

Sponsorship of football, lads’ mags and music festivals sends a message to young people that the brand understands them and that drinking is something everyone needs to do to have fun and friends.

Music is also used to push alcohol to kids. In a study of 793 popular US songs, a research team found one in five had explicit references to alcohol and a quarter named a specific brand.

The latest Zoo magazine tells its 28,000 readers aged 14 to 17: ‘‘Here’s a good reason to go out, get slaughtered and urinate on a policeman: even industrial quantities of booze won’t destroy the grey matter’’ (which isn’t true).

Alcohol consumption causes more than 5000 deaths and 80,000 hospital visits in Australia yearly. The economic cost is about $36 billion a year.

In a paper delivered to the Right to Childhood conference in Sydney recently, Professor Mike Daube made the case for suing the industry, making it pay for the human damage.

‘‘There is massive evidence on the impacts of alcohol on our community. It is a health problem, a social problem, an economic problem, a law enforcement problem, a cultural problem,’’ Prof Daube said.

‘‘It is a cause of death, injury, violence, domestic violence, child abuse, workplace losses, road crashes.’’

Prof Daube says industry self-regulation codes are limited and toothless. The industry is skilled in countering threats to its sales by downplaying health and other consequences of alcohol use and promoting its own soft education.

What minimal regulation exists is not enough to prevent the massive alcohol-related problems we are seeing.

With a million dollars a day spent sanitising and glamourising alcohol directly to young people for whom it is actually illegal to purchase, how can the meagre budgets available to school for drug and alcohol education compete?

Advocates for change urge the following: PROPER curbs on alcohol promotion; REFORM of the tax system so that we can’t buy alcohol cheaper than bottled water; CURBS on the increasing numbers of sales outlets — often where their presence normalises drinking for young people; A FUNDAMENTAL rethink of licensing laws to quell the drunken violence plaguing our cities; LEGISLATION to prevent secondary supply to children and tougher penalties for supplying; EFFECTIVE warning labels; RAISING the legal drinking age.

Surveys show under-18s feel strongly about the levels of alcohol marketing they are exposed to and want regulation that provides stronger protection. They also want more health warnings. It’s time for real action to stop more damage.

As published in the Sunday Herald Sun Nov 18, 2012

Friday 19 October, 2012 • 9am-5pm: Sydney

NSW Parliament House, 6 Macquarie Street, Sydney

The erosion of childhood is becoming a social and cultural trend of great concern to child development experts as well as the broader community. Commercialisation, sexualisation, body image dissatisfaction and over exposure to violent imagery are some of the key factors. A growing body of scientific evidence and expert opinion has transformed the debate about this trend into an important issue with major implications for mental health, public health, education and policy. We look forward to meeting you at this unique event.

Click here for more information.

Dr Ramesh Manocha, Convenor and Chairman

‘Is it possible the DSM could become the book of appeasement, refuting questions of morality and legal culpability with regard to child abuse and exploitation?’

Last week Salon ran a comment piece by Tracy Clark-Flory which opened:

We usually hear pedophilia talked about in terms of mental illness – if not evil – but Aug. 17 a motley crew of self-identified “minor-attracted persons” and mental health professionals have gathered in Baltimore to talk about it as a sexual identity. At hand is an issue deeply important to both groups: the revision of the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia.

I asked Professor Caroline Taylor, Foundation Chair in Social Justice at Edith Cowan University, and Founder and Chair of Children of Phoenix, a charity that provides scholarships and mentoring support to children, adolescents and adults affected by childhood sexual abuse, to respond. Caroline has written for me before (‘A child failed: how 120 men got away with the sexual violation of a 12-year-old girl’ ) and is also a contributor to the soon-to-be-released Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global porn industry (Spinifex Press).

I have written elsewhere on the mental gymnastics employed by some of the judiciary when it comes to accepting either the vocabulary of excuses put forward by child sex offenders to exculpate them from responsibility for their offences, or minimising the harm suffered by child victims.

Of course these arguments, attitudes, utterances and opinions would not hold currency were it not for the lawyers who advance them on behalf of their clients and quarters of society that either accept them or give them tacit approval via a passive and apathetic response.

This week UK judges severely weakened legal rules that limited sex offenders’ unsupervised access to their own children. Judges declared that it was a human rights violation to prevent offenders’ from having this access. After all, they said, family life and unfettered access to ‘family life’ is their right – the rights of child victims factor in only as a secondary issue. Despite the rhetoric and declaration of a charter of human rights for children, they continue to have their status at citizens of equal worth negated. More troubling is the fact this so often occurs when children are most in need of protection from sexual predation or sexual violence.

In the same week, a US conference was held on ‘pedophilia’ under the rubric of men who are ‘minor-attracted – in other words men who desire and seek to sexually abuse children. The conference sought to advance the rights of this particular group of men by influencing the revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to better reflect a particular understanding of pedophilia as a psychiatric illness.

The DSM is the psychiatric bible and has been criticized for its development as a diagnostic manual based largely on incomplete and unscientific data – indeed psychiatrists ‘vote’ on additions and revisions and much research has highlighted the gendered nature of the psychiatric illnesses proclaimed in the book with some disorders being so ridiculous they beggar belief.

That fact that many have been removed or revised in response to societal and cultural awareness and changes in attitudes to gender and race is a testament to how mental illness can be socially constructed and even vanish from our vocabulary and treatment as society and psychiatry reconcile certain social and cultural beliefs and attitudes.

The psychiatric nomenclature declaring certain types of sexual offenders or men who declare they have not yet engaged in sexual activity with a child but have a predilection of sexual attraction to children, as individuals with a mental illness as opposed to criminals (or at least potential abusers) is a worry for many reasons.

Why is this ‘illness’ the almost exclusive problem of men and not women? It is an ‘illness’ that has been going on for centuries without recourse to any successful treatment.

I have a problem with the term ‘pedophile’ because it can be literally translated as a lover of children. Chat rooms for pedophile advocates highlight that they do not seek to ‘hurt’ children, but it is patently clear they have no concept – morally or otherwise – of what it is to ‘hurt’ a child. And believe me in my professional work I have seen first- hand the hurt suffered by children by ‘pedophiles’ – hurt that punctures the very soul of young lives and leads to damage across adult lives.

If we accept it is an illness then it is an illness afflicting almost exclusively men and has inflicted a tsunami of catastrophic damage to the lives of countless millions of children that amounts to an emotional genocide across time and place that appears to have no end.

Those advocating for these men are concerned that the law and society misunderstand ‘pedophiles’ and view them alongside ‘molesters’ of children. There exists a problem in the teasing out of men who are sexually attracted to children but say they have not acted on it as opposed to men who say they are sexually attracted to children and have acted on it.

As studies continue to show, men who are sexually attracted to children will generally move to act on that attraction. Those who have not as yet physically acted on that attraction may very likely seek other forms of intimacy with that attraction perhaps by way of viewing child pornography or engaging in contact that might not be sexual but may well still be harmful to a child’s healthy development.

We should feel a strong discomfort about a group seeking to define the parameters of what they say is their sexual orientation and have it accepted as an illness when that particular ‘illness’ can and does lead to various forms of abuse and exploitation of children around the world.

There is also the problem of normalizing the idea that many men harbor sexual desires for children. At a time when we are battling the enormous and endemic problem of child pornography and child sex tourism, we need to ramp up our collective check of society’s moral compass on accepting, even reluctantly, that sexual desires for children are a modern illness afflicting men around the world. 

There are moral, ethical and even psychological questions as to why the sexual predation, desire and sexualisation of children is the almost exclusive domain of men. In late modern society we need to ask ourselves some strong questions – is the sexualisation of children a link to the sexual desire for children and the growing market in child pornography and child sex tourism. And again to ask why these issues have the common denominator of children and men. 

I worry about the gendered nature of an illness where men harbor sexual desires for children – and which research consistently shows so many men will act upon – and want this targeted behaviour to be classified as an illness. We have become a humanity that pathologies our behaviours and actions to an extraordinary degree, thus removing notions of responsibility, decency and a solid moral compass.

The 20th century is marked by consumerism with our identity linked to what we buy. I buy therefore I am, is the credo. And just as our high consumerism causes so much destruction – professionals have helped us craft a language of illness and pathology about our buying habits. Why reflect on a problem and see ourselves as central to it when we can tell ourselves it is an illness and thus another ailment in society we can seek treatment for.

Is it possible the DSM could become the book of appeasement refuting questions of morality and legal culpability with regard to child abuse and exploitation?

It is not the redefinition in the DSM that will ‘cure’ this peculiar illness of men nor provide the type of moral erudition needed to tackle the world wide problem of child sexual abuse. It is the refining of humanity and our capacity to deal with an entrenched crime inflicted on children.

See also: ‘Crimes cloaked in euphemisms’, Goddard and Mudaly.  The Australian, Aug 25, 2011 

THE ACTIVIST MELINDA TANKARD REIST

When Lady Gaga toured here last year with Monster Ball, young girls were treated to a video clip of the star being vomited on and greedily eating something akin to a human heart. Her face and body were covered in blood.

The same girls saw highly sexualised and porn-themed dance routines.

Gaga’s young audience picked up all the information they needed about tour dates and tickets from articles such as ”Lady Gaga: Ooh la la! Cool concerts” in Girlpower magazine – aimed at girls aged between seven and 13. Moshi Monsters, lip gloss, toys, puzzles – and Lady Gaga – all in the one issue.

The Lady Gaga juggernaut was again marketed to young girls this visit, with competitions to be in Wednesday night’s ”Monster Hall” audience and her “Little Monsters”, as she called them, dressed in Gaga garb and performed Gaga dance routines for the cameras in Sydney streets during the day.

Viewing her music video clips, girls are exposed to sadomasochistic sexual fantasies, simulated sex acts and more phallic symbols than can be counted. In Telephone, they see Gaga stripped and thrown naked against prison bars, girl-on-girl violence as a fellow inmate is kicked in the head with stiletto heels, and Gaga and Beyonce drive off in their “Pussy Wagon”.

Lady Gaga contributes to a broader cultural story being read by young people every day. They observe a script loaded with eroticised violence, themes inspired by the sex industry, lyrics celebrating the debasement and degradation of women.

Girls are taught their value lies in baring their flesh: that attention and social cachet are achieved through exhibitionism. Liberation is about taking a ride on a disco stick, sucking on anything resembling the male organ and offering yourself as a sexual service station for boys and men.

While Lady Gaga is described as avant-garde and counter-cultural, really she is none of these things. She is further entrenching stereotypes about women and sexuality.

Dyed hair, crazy costumes, pornographic accoutrements, pelvic thrusting and grinding do not a revolution make. Little girls need a lot more than a musical porn peep show to understand this.

Read more

See also: Going Gaga over raunch dressed up as liberation, Melinda Tankard Reist

See this t.shirt?

Where do you think we found it? Some niche not well known store specializing in glamourised violence against women motifs for a specialist market into that kind of thing? For order in a surf magazine marketing women in sexually submissive poses to boys? Perhaps through a more risqué on-line t.shirt seller who missed the movement for women’s equality?

No.

This t.shirt was found in a Cotton On store in Merrylands NSW and passed on by a supporter.

We at Collective Shout don’t have much respect for Cotton On. OK, Cotton On Kids did remove children’s jump suits with sexualized slogans after a protest led by our mate Julie Gale of Kids Free 2b Kids a couple of years ago. But Cotton On has become quite the seller of pornified images of women. Here’s a few more:

Collective Shout member Caitlin Roper from Perth decided she’d had enough. So she began collecting names of high-profile people who would be willing to put their name to a statement against these t.shirt. This week she launched her broad and diverse list of names. The 60-strong line-up includes Steve Biddulph, Professor Jennifer Bowes, Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs, Associate Professor Karen Brooks, Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, UNICEF’s Aivee Chew, World Vision’s Tim Costello, Richard Eckersley, Dr Lance Emerson, Dr Michael Flood, Clive Hamilton, Professor Elizabeth Handsley, Hon Alistair Nicholson, Noni Hazlehurst, Professor Susan Paxton, Dr Emma Rush and Dr Joe Tucci, to name a few.

The statement reads:

We, the undersigned, are opposed to the production, distribution and sale of clothing, such as t-shirts, with highly sexualized adult images on them. Clothing that depicts semi-naked women as willing and available for sex, or as victims of violence, objectifies them and undermines equality and respect for women.

Sexual harassment laws prevent unsolicited exposure to sexual material in the workplace. However, these laws do not extend to the public space. The general public, including children, are involuntarily confronted by graphic sexual and even violent images and slogans on t-shirts. Ironically, examples of the images worn in public spaces cannot be printed by the media and have been removed from facebook due to their inappropriate nature.

This clothing contributes to the sexualisation of children by reinforcing the notion that their value is based on their sex appeal, as well as imposing a limited, stereotypical, pornographic aesthetic in their everyday lives. Research indicates that sexualisation is harmful to children’s cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality and beliefs.

Degrading sexual images are also known to act as triggers of distress for victims of sexual assault and violence.

We call for an inquiry or review of the current legislation for regulating offensive material in public. We call on clothing retailers to cease the sale of clothing that degrades women by posing them in a highly sexualized manner or as victims of violence.

Read more here. 

Support ‘Say no to porn t.shirts’ Facebook page

See also: Showing respect for women the AFL way

Cranking out porn and violence against women: Krank Clothing

A hotel worker’s allegations of sexual assault by IMF chief and possible French presidential candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn are disturbing. But also disturbing is the way the case is being reported in some sections of the media.

Strauss-Kahn has been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a woman at his expensive hotel suite in New York. This is a summary of the story from the New York Times:

According to the law enforcement official, the woman entered Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s suite early Saturday afternoon by saying “housekeeping.” She heard no answer and believed that the suite was unoccupied. She left the door open behind her, as is hotel policy.

She went to the bedroom and a naked man rushed from the bathroom to the bedroom. She apologized, the law enforcement official said, and tried to leave.

But according to the official, the man chased her, grabbed her and shut the door, locking it. He then pulled her toward the bedroom, the official said, and tried to attack her there.

He dragged her to the bathroom, the official added, and forced her to perform oral sex. The police said the woman eventually escaped from the suite and reported the attack to other hotel personnel, who called 911.

So how did Crikey headline this story yesterday? Like this:

Although it is common in American usage, the word “maid” used to describe the woman also conjures up pornographic fantasies of Fifi the French maid in a skimpy frilly apron. But Strauss-Kahn was charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. How does a report of these charges warrant Oh la la, an expression of feigned surprise with a salacious undertone?

When the journalist Lara Logan was assaulted in Cairo, was that characterised as Oh la la and a “sex scandal”? Of course not. But allegations made by a hotel cleaner against a French high official seem to be attracting a different approach.

Other women who have had dealings with Strauss-Kahn allege a history of reckless indifference to consent in sexual matters. Strauss-Kahn himself had predicted in a recent interview with Libération that this history would lead to him being the victim of a set-up:

He said he thought he was under surveillance and named the three principal difficulties he foresaw if he was to stand for the presidential elections. “Money, women and the fact I am Jewish.” He added: “Yes, I like women … so what?” He said he could see himself becoming the victim of a honey trap: “a woman raped in a car park and who’s been promised 500,000 or a million euros to invent such a story …”

Jean-Marie Le Guen, a Socialist party MP who has known Strauss-Kahn for 25 years, said the story was “not credible” and inconsistent with what he knew of the politician’s character. “Seduction, yes, but no way would he use constraint or violence. A certain number of facts, and certain aspects of the story we are hearing from the press, make this not credible.”….

Le Guen said his friend knew he would be the target of mud-slinging but added: “What they are asking us to believe … it’s just hallucinations. I’m a doctor and I know this can happen. We knew there would be hyper-violent attacks on him [Strauss-Kahn]. We could hear the knives being sharpened in preparation.”

Seduction? That is not what the women allege. For example, Anne Mansouret, the mother of Tristane Banon (the goddaughter of Strauss-Kahn’s second wife) claimed on Sunday that Strauss-Kahn had attacked her journalist daughter in 2002, in the course of an interview. In a 2007 television program, Banon named Strauss-Kahn (it was bleeped) and she described him as a “rutting chimpanzee” in telling how she had struggled with him:

It ended very badly, because we ended up fighting … I told him clearly. … We fought on the ground, it was more than a couple of slaps, I kicked him, he opened my bra, tried to open my jeans. … It finished very badly. …

I got out of there and he immediately sent me a text message saying “So, are you scared of me?”… I had said the word “rape” when we were struggling to scare him, and it didn’t seem to scare him, as if he was used to it. After [the incident] he wouldn’t stop sending me text messages saying “Are you scared of me?”

In 2002, Banon’s mother persuaded her not to press charges. But Mansouret now says she is sorry to have discouraged her daughter to complain against him. “my daughter, despite the passing years, is still shocked by these facts”.

And yet the story here continues to be depicted as that of an aging libertine who has unfortunately been a little naughty with the hired help – unfortunate because of the consequences for his career. The Australian headline today read: “Brought undone by his sex life”. Sex life?

Little has been said about the possible impact on the woman. The New York Times reports that she is an African immigrant with a teenage daughter. Hotel employees were instructed not to speak to her about the allegations, but to give her a hug, “Because she is sad.”

Some French journalists are reporting that the allegation is unlikely because the woman is “très peu séduisante”. Very unattractive. Strauss-Kahn, who has not used his twitter account since Christmas 2010, posted a tweet today citing this report: (basic translations)”the lawyers were surprised at the appearance of the arrival of a very unattractive young woman”.

Strauss-Kahn, in contrast, is described as ‘a charmer of women’ , who has a ‘taste for the fairer sex’, is ‘unresistant to feminine attractions’  and ‘romantic’ . His reported perchant for repeated harassment of women is described as a ‘quirk’.

All this plays into Oh la la: charming old French admirer of women couldn’t keep from helping himself to the feminine attractions of a chamber maid. Albeit an unattractive one. (They should get their story straight on the “honey trap” scenario here.)

Strauss-Kahn has not has his day in court, and I am not assuming he is guilty. What I am taking issue with is reporting along lines that are very common in rape mythology. Men attacking women is not charming or romantic. They cannot be excused as ‘unresistant to feminine attractions’.

The unfolding story here of an unrestrained sense of entitlement to any woman from a journalist to a hotel worker. There’s nothing remotely Oh la la about any of it.

PETA deserves contempt for exploiting women, writes MELINDA TANKARD REIST

PETA needs to be renamed.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals would more accurately be described as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals But Not Women.

While the group calling itself the world’s largest animal-rights lobby protests loudly and sometimes violently against the use of animals as meat, it has no hesitation in treating women that way.

The pro-animal lobby’s latest stunt is to offer a free picture of model Vida Guerra naked for each donation over $5.

That’s right, give us five measly bucks and we’ll pimp you a “full new naked ad!” PETA is now acting as a distributor of soft-porn images.

PETA has a long history of using porn-like images of women to promote its anti-animal-cruelty work. This raises questions about the organisation’s understanding of the words “ethical treatment”.

While its manifesto opposes the use of “living creatures” for entertainment, it’s apparently OK if the living creature is a woman in a lettuce bikini. Or if she is a naked cover girl or “video vixen” such as Vida Guerra.

A recent campaign showed models getting up close and personal with vegetables.

“Why don’t you pick a vegetable and show us how much you love it,” the casting director instructed a swimsuit model.

This was is just one of many of PETA’s creations that denigrate women and reduce them to objects for sexual fetish fantasy.

In 2006 PETA portrayed women as party animals with udders instead of breasts. In the Milk Gone Wild clip – a play on the “Girls Gone Wild” genre in which women are encouraged to flash their breasts for the camera, women are shown as eager to rip off their tops and expose themselves to a large male crowd who urged them on, chanting at them to reveal their breast/udders.

The “udder babes” then squirt milk on the faces of the enthusiastic men.

Women are reduced to milk-producing cows flashing grotesque milk-spurting udders – all in the name of animal liberation.

Other campaigns have featured topless Sydney women in cages protesting KFC, women in flesh-coloured bikinis covered in fake blood wrapped in cellophane with the label “flesh” on the wrapping, like meat in a butcher’s shop, a dead naked woman as a stole and various naked and stripping images of a range of celebrities recruited for the cause, including Pamela Anderson and a Playboy Playmate.

An anti-rodeo advertisement depicted a young topless woman rolling in the hay with the slogan “Nobody likes an 8 second ride”.

Other sexualised images show naked women in shackles in a campaign against circuses.

Big Brother housemate Brigitte Stavaruk was approached by PETA to strip because of her “big assets” and Australian pop star and actress Sophie Monk was filmed naked on a bed of red chillies for the cause. It seems women have to take their clothes off to prove they really care about animals.

Fortunately, vegans and other animal-rights activists have spoken out against PETA’s sexist approach.

Vegansaurus!, a vegan eating-living guide based in the San Francisco Bay area, described the vegetables-as-phallic-symbols ad as “softcore porn masquerading as an anti-animal-cruelty video”.

Another well-known vegan blogger asked: “Are there exceptions in the vegan manifesto about how living creatures aren’t to be exploited for our entertainment?”

PETA’s behaviour harms the animal-rights cause. It also undermines campaigns against objectifying and exploiting women.

Those who care about both animals and equality for women should send their five dollars – or more – elsewhere.

                                                                                  Treating women like meat is a poor way to promote vegetarianism

Nina Funnell

Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is in trouble again. This time a furore has erupted over a controversial campaign where people who donate $5 or more to the organisation are sent a nude picture of Cuban-born model Vida Guerra. It’s the latest in a long line of PETA stunts that use nude women to sell vegetarianism.

Last year a PETA ad was banned from being played during the American Super Bowl. The NBC listed a number of concerns with the sexual explicitness of the ads, but PETA’s website boasts that the ad was simply “too hot for the Super Bowl”, stating it featured “a bevy of beauties who are powerless to resist the temptation of veggie love”. And then there’s the range of “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” PETA ads, which feature various naked female celebrities. Read more>>