‘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 

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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>>

New song by Delta’s man feeds rape myth

Can someone please tell Brian McFadden that ‘taking advantage’ of a woman when she’s drunk is sexual assault and against the law?

Because he seems to have missed the announcement.

The Irish singer-songwriter and ‘honorary’ Australian on account of his four-year engagement to songstress Delta Goodrem, McFadden today officially releases Just The Way You Are (Drunk at the Bar).

The barn-dance meets rap recording is described here as the novelty song from hell and hard to beat as the worst song of the year (and it’s only February).

But apart from its all-round awfulness it’s these lyrics which, with International Women’s Day almost upon us, show us just how far we haven’t come.

I like you just the way you are, drunk as shit dancing at the bar, I can’t wait to take you home so I can do some damage

I like you just the way you are, drunk as shit dancing at the bar, I can’t wait to take you home so I can take advantage

Describing the song as “infectious”, Universal Music in a statement Friday said the dance track will “rattle around in your head for hours”. Doing some damage, taking advantage of a woman under the influence of alcohol… is this the soundtrack we want going round and round in the heads of males?

Just one more message reinforcing the rape myths circulating in our culture: that inebriated girls are asking for it, and that you’re not really to blame. One more message encouraging boys to help themselves. I love you just the way you are, drunk, because it’s easier to get what I want that way.

A recent UK study found that 48% of males aged 18-25 did not consider rape to have taken place if the woman was too drunk to know what was happening.

There’s a kind of party atmosphere around these criminal assaults, with many men boasting about their conquests. An on-line genre known as ‘Passed Out P*ssy’ encourages men to share photos online of women and girls they have taken advantage of while drunk. ‘She’s drunk? Don’t call a taxi and make sure she gets home safely! Call your friends, have some fun and share the pictures!’ men are exhorted.

Love you just the way you are (drunk at the bar) helps legitimise this behaviour.

McFadden – also a judge on Australia’s Got Talent and a father of daughters – hasn’t taken well to the criticism. He swears on his heart that he wrote the song for Delta.

That’s right, ‘Can’t wait to do some damage’ is the sort of poetry McFadden writes to demonstrate the depths of his love for his bride-in-waiting. Look into my eyes Delta, he croons, I stayed up all night writing this ode to love, just for you my darling. Wow, lucky girl Delta.

Perhaps he even expects her to swoon?

The song was first played on 2Day FM’s Kyle & Jackie O show last week. Jackie O – who could also benefit from reading ‘Consent for Dummies’ – gushed that it was her “new favourite song”. “I love it, I’m a big fan of this song… this song rocks.” 

And Kyle Sandilands, not exactly legendary for his sensitive treatment of young women -recall the lie detector scandal involving a 14-year-old rape survivor – said, “It’s a fun sort of song.” 

Discussing this with Nina Funnell who campaigns to end sexual assault and is a member of the NSW Premier’s Council on Preventing Violence Against Women, she says McFadden’s lyrics echo a broader culture which ostensibly opposes rape while simultaneously demonstrating no real understanding of what actually constitutes sexual assault.

“Unfortunately many people still believe the myth that most sexual assaults are committed down dark alleys by strangers in balaclavas. This myth is damaging as it conceals the reality that the overwhelming majority of sexual assaults are committed by people known to the victim – usually a family member, friend, someone they go to school or work with.

“It is important that we recognize that the sort of behavior that some people are referring to as ‘taking advantage’ may legally count as sexual assault. In NSW the consent laws now state that a person cannot give consent if they are intoxicated to the point that they lose the capacity to do so, such as if they are passed out. To ‘take advantage’ of someone in such a state would unquestionably constitute sexual assault”.

“Having sex with a woman who does not have the capacity to consent is not called ‘taking advantage’. It’s called rape. Calling it ‘taking advantage’ reclassifies an action from being a serious crime to a negative but essentially trivial behaviour with no legal dimension whatsoever. “

Alison Grundy a clinical psychologist in the field of sexual violence for 20 years, describes the lyrics as “one more open demonstration of the contempt shown to women’s human rights and the fundamental legislation that is place to protect them”.

“Now we have thirty years of research to show that the sexualized and violent messages of popular music, media and video games do shape and provoke male aggressive and sexualized violence. I wonder how long it will be before songs like this are seen as inciting crimes under the criminal code?

“Not soon enough for those of us who work with victims on the long road to recovery after experiencing the ‘do some damage and take advantage’ behaviour lauded in this song”.

So there you have it. A fun sort of song about sexually exploiting women – doing damage to them – to top off a night out. Let the good times roll. Just not for the one in five women over 15 who are sexually assaulted in this country. 

As published on ABC’s The Drum Unleashed

Nina Funnell, who I’m happy to say is become a regular contributor here on the MTR blog, has written a thoughtful analysis of the dead-women-are-sexy Monster video clip soon to be officially released by rapper Kanye West. It has been encouraging to see the issue attracting global coverage. Here’s Nina’s piece.

Sex, death and Kanye West: music clips need to get real

Supposedly “sexy” music videos are usually not, writes Nina Funnell.

What do you think of music video clips these days? Too sexy? Too raunchy? Too smutty? Not me. I’m going to go out on a limb and say today’s video clips are not sexy enough. In fact, they are not sexy at all. And they never have been.

Watching heavily made-up women squeeze into too tight clothes and ridiculously high heels before grinding back and forth on an imaginary phallus, all while trying to maintain their contrived ‘come-hither’ look and big hair, does not make me think about sexual intimacy, true sensuality or deep and satisfying physical pleasure. It just looks like hard work.

Video clips said to be too sexual rarely offer anything other than a contrived, heavily choreographed and deliberately manufactured version of a hollow and artificial sexuality. It’s all so sad and so predictable.

Advertisement: Story continues below While many commentators argue that video clips over-sexualise women, the real problem is they actually deny the sexuality of women all together. Instead of analysing the clothes and dance moves within these clips, we should look at how desire functions.

As so often in popular culture, women are expected to appear desirable, but to be completely lacking in all desire of their own. The best example of this is Britney Spears in her Hit me baby days and Jessica Simpson circa 2002. Both Spears and Simpson stated they were virgins and intended to remain so until marriage. Meanwhile, they would grind back and forth wearing tiny outfits all designed to titillate. In other words their sexuality was to be consumed and enjoyed by everyone except themselves.

The “sexually rapacious virgin” is just one paradox of our sexualised pop culture. But a while back I began to wonder where our sexualised pop culture is really heading. At some point all the bouncy hair, big boobs and tiny skirts just gets old. These days humping a pole is not so much risqué as passé.

So once sex (or rather, the limited and stereotypical representations of pop-culture sex) gets tired, what becomes the new frontier in risqué representation?

Well, if the new Kanye West clip for his single Monster is anything to go by, sexualised death might just be the answer. In the teaser to the clip, two dead women in lingerie and high heels swing back and forth from a metal chain, hanging from the ceiling. Another two young women are slumped on a bed, like lifeless mannequins. A man advances on them. His intentions are clear. The whole clip is littered with eroticised female corpses.

It’s not surprising really. If sexualising live women has become boring, why not sexualise dead ones?

Of course many people will defend the clip in the name of art. Others will say viewers have the capacity to differentiate between dark fantasy and reality.

But others will disagree. Recently commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist criticised the blatant erotization of female death. In it she writes: “The men don’t seem horrified at all by the female corpses littered through the haunted mansion, the apparent victims of a serial killing. In fact, they seem to quite like it. It seems to turn them on.”

“The clip is not only interested in fetishizing female bodies – it revels in fetishizing female pain, female passivity, female suffering and female silence. The ultimate female is the quiet, passive female – a mannequin – who accepts violence, abuse and suffering while remaining hot and sexy.”

Since then a petition has been set up against the full clip being released.

So what are we to make of it? Is this just another articulation of our Twilight and True Blood inspired preoccupation with death and the eroticization of lifeless flesh? Or is there something unusually twisted, grotesque and misogynistic about depicting and sexualising dead looking women in this context?

Perhaps Kanye West is merely trying to be controversial and daring in an industry where sex (at least sex with living women) has become passe and predictable.

If so, he’s a bit behind the times. After all, the fashion industry has been depicting and sexualising passive, pale, expressionless and lifeless looking women for eons. Models with skeletal bodies and vacant stares have been the standard in high-end fashion advertisements for some time now.

The irony is that if we’re talking about what most red-blooded heterosexual men actually find attractive, it is rarely a sickly looking corpse. Most men I know are attracted to women who are active and confident in exploring their own sexual pleasure.

Maybe one day, video-clips will get truly radical and start offering representations of actual, three-dimensional females complete with realistic sexual agency.

Nina Funnell is a researcher in the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW. Read the piece online here.

What’s entertaining about women in lingerie hanging by their necks on chains? What’s artful about images of drugged, unconscious women about to be sexually assaulted?

Nothing.

It’s misogyny, graphic and simple.

Instead of artistic expression, political and social commentator Zerlina Maxwell described Kanye West’s music video for Monster as “a rape scenario set to a soundtrack.”

Yet that’s not what many commentators are saying about the gruesome and degrading images in the rapper’s video, which has yet to be officially released even though it’s all over the Internet either in full or in part.

West has suggested that the video’s necrophilia and brutality are aimed at generating controversy and sales. Still, there’s a profusion of intellectualizing and rationalizing about the video.

Much of that commentary includes attempts to absolve African-American men from criticism of their misogynist lyrics and the grotesque images of violence perpetrated on white women because of the history of slavery and colonialism.

Among the most inflated and convoluted praise for depravity as art comes from progressives. Salon.com’s Tracy Clark-Flory deliberately set aside the question of misogyny and wrote that the video “offers a fascinating Rorschach test of our current sexual culture.”

Writing on The Atlantic’s blog, Chris Jackson deflected the question of misogyny saying he couldn’t answer it given all the other examples in popular culture.

Instead he fatuously wrote: “Kanye is like [French Renaissance writer] Montaigne, who said of himself that he doesn’t record being, but passing … The most difficult and most intriguing aspect of Kanye as a rapper is that you never know whether he’s celebrating or satirizing an idea or doing both at the same time.”

However, it’s worth noting that Jackson’s Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates disagrees.

Coates described the video as “boring racism, boring sexism that hearkens back to the black power macho of Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver at their worst … the work of a failed provocateur boorishly brandishing his ancient affects.”

…Far from breaking new ground, West’s video only sinks to a deeper level of depravity, bringing the mainstream closer to what’s come to be known as torture porn.

Read article here.

Sign Care2petition here.

Sign Change.org petition here .

See also:

‘So decapitated women are fine with you Kanye West?’ here yesterday.

 ’Prevent official release of Kanye West’s women hating “Monster” video’ on The  Butterfly  Effect blog .

Pornography will always be exploitative

I recall a few years ago being interviewed (read ‘debated’) by two young men on an Adelaide radio station, on the issue of prostitution and trafficking. After cataloguing a litany of harm caused as a result of the global trade in the bodies of women and girls, the boys came up with what they thought was the perfect solution. Each woman in prostitution could carry a document declaring she was “traffick-free”.

This encounter was brought to mind when Melbourne academic and women’s activist Caroline Norma sent me this piece dismantling the proposition that pornography can be ethical.

Caroline Norma is a lecturer in the School of Global Studies at RMIT University. I’ve published her before here. 

In ‘The ethical dilemmas of Cocaine and bottled water’  (The Australian, Monday), Minister for Human Services and Minister for Social Inclusion Tanya Plibersek calls on Australian pornography consumers to ‘ask themselves about the circumstances of the manufacture of what they’re watching’ so they can start to make better decisions about the materials they masturbate to.

She asks them to more closely consider the ‘life choices available to the participants’ in pornography so that they can ‘ethically’ choose ‘non-exploitative’ materials to download.  To her credit, Plibersek makes this argument within the context of a general discussion about the benefits of the government’s “clean feed” internet regulation initiative of which I am a supporter.

However, I am concerned that Plibersek appears to align herself with the ‘dolphin-free tuna’ crowd of pornography apologists when she makes the argument that men’s consumption of pornography is acceptable, as long as the women in it are found to be willing.  There are various groups that defend the production, consumption, and distribution of pornography in Australian society, including the Eros Foundation, the Sex Party, and Scarlet Alliance. However, different to the crowd Plibersek aligns herself with, these groups are generally blunt in their public pronouncements that pornography, prostitution, and all other parts of the sex industry should be celebrated and legalised.

Most defenders of pornography cannot afford to be so upfront about their support of the sex industry. The industry worldwide is too closely associated with organised crime, trafficking, the exploitation of women and children, callous forms of sexuality, and drug addiction among people in the industry. So, people like Plibersek who have to defend pornography in a family-friendly way, alternatively rely on the ‘dolphin-free-tuna’ strategy.

‘Dolphin-free tuna’ was created as a marketing gem of the commercial fishing industry to respond to declining public consumption of canned tuna because of concern that dolphins were being killed in its production. There is, of course, no possible way that the canning industry can ensure that dolphins do not become ensnared in the nets of trawlers that supply tuna to them. But canning companies nonetheless get their suppliers to sign a ‘pledge’ that the tuna they sell has been caught with no loss of life to dolphins.

Similarly, there is no possible way that pornography consumers can know that the pornography they are masturbating to has been produced using women who are not exploited or have ‘life choices’, as Plibersek puts it. On the contrary, just as the production of canned tuna inevitably causes loss of life to dolphins, the production of pornography inevitably causes psychological and physiological harm to the women and girls who are used to make it.

The women who have their bodily orifices pounded, poked, and prodded during the production of pornography are facing pretty grim ‘life choices’. If their entry into the sex industry wasn’t paved by incest, mental illness, poverty, drug addiction, or homelessness, then their exit from the industry will be shadowed by these problems and more.

The women who must live, work, and interact with men who consume pornography are also facing less than ideal ‘life choices’. They must acquiesce to the blueprint of female sexuality that pornography imposes on them through their husbands’ and boyfriends’ expectations in the bedroom, and they must put up with an overall lowered status in a society where men think that ejaculating on a woman’s face is an acceptable and normal activity.

Girls, too, suffer the effects of male pornography consumption, regardless of how many ‘life choices’ are enjoyed by the women who are used to make it. They must grow up in a society where the practices of pornography—anal sex, pubic hair waxing, turkey slapping, and deep throating—have become normal sexual behaviour for a whole generation of boys. Girls are also caught up in the harms of pornography when they are groomed for sexual abuse by men who normalise their crimes by showing them ‘erotic’ pictures.

Instead of teaming up with the dolphin-free-tuna crowd of pornography apologists, Plibersek should reconsider the significant harms of pornography and support an increasing number of women’s organisations in Australia that are standing up against the sex industry. These organisations, including the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia and Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation, reject the idea that the sex industry can ever be anything but an institution that promotes women’s second class social status.

The only ‘ethical’ choice in relation to the sex industry is to shut it down in the same way the tobacco industry in Australia has been forced to face imminent demise.

Cross ‘em off your Christmas list

Jingle bells, Christmas is here. Well, it was here around October according to most retailers! But that’s another blog entirely. So it’s time for you to fill the Christmas stocking, Christmas hamper or car boot with goodies again.

Throughout the past year, Collective Shout has taken action to create a world free of sexploitation. Now it’s your turn to create a shopping bag free of sexploitation this Christmas.

Below is a list of products, brands, people and companies who have been ‘naughty’ and not nice this year. Actually they’ve been exploitative, degrading and disturbing.

Here is a list of corporate offenders we have crossed off our shopping list this year. We encourage you all to do the same.

Roger David

Thousands of people spoke out against Roger David shirts featuring objectifying images of gagged and half naked women.  Roger David have never addressed concerns about these shirts and continue to stock them.  Shop somewhere else for men’s clothing this Christmas.

City Beach

Degrading images usually reserved for the centre pages of fhm or Ralph magazine, have now found their way onto t-shirts marketed primarily towards teenagers, via the T.I.T.S brand stocked by City Beach. If you don’t see these items in City Beach, you will see them wherever a person chooses to wear them. City Beach is contributing to the pornification of culture! Don’t buy from City Beach this holiday season.

Amazon.com

Amazon came under fire recently for selling a book titled The pedophile’s guide to love and pleasure: a code of conduct for child lovers. Since then more disturbing material has been found such as Understanding loved boys and boy lovers. Did Amazon act swiftly to remove these child abuse manuals when challenged? No, it defended it’s right to sell the child abuse instruction guide as free speech until they could no longer ignore the threat of global boycott.  A company that supports child abuse does not deserve your money. Don’t shop at Amazon.com

Supre

‘High Beams’… ‘Pussy Power’ … ‘Santa’s Bitch’ … ‘North Pole Dancer’ … All slogans on t-shirts at Supre, a retailer hugely popular with 11 and 12 year old girls. After loads of complaints sparked by an article on Melinda Tankard Reist’s blog in December 2009, Supre said they would remove the shirts. They lied, the shirts were seen on the clearance rack selling for $5. Don’t shop at a store that treats little girls this way.

Lynx

Where to begin with Lynx?  The Lynx Lodge dubbed a ‘virtual brothel’ by the media. The ‘pop up spa’ in Sydney’s Martin Place, providing passers by with the sexual titillation usually reserved for a strip club. Lynx have been combining deodorant with porn themes and marketing them to a teenage audience for years. They call this the Lynx Effect. The Lynx Effect is that men treat women as objects of sexual recreation. Do not support them this holiday season. Put their stinky, over-priced gift packs back on the shelf, because Lynx Stynx! Lynx have defended their campaign saying it is designed to give men ‘confidence.’ Having looked at Lynx’s facebook page, many men are now quite confident in treating women like pieces of meat.

Unilever

To add insult to injury, Lynx is owned by Unilever. Do you know what else Unilever owns? Dove. You know, the campaign for real beauty, where women are encouraged to be themselves, to love who they are, no matter what size, colour or age? Contrast the ‘campaign for real beauty’ with Lynx’s advertising and you will see why many are keen to ditch Unilever altogether. It’s easy to do, just look for the ‘U’ logo on the back of the label, then put it back on the shelf! Check out the full list of Unilever brands here.

Lovable

Lovable are using their affiliation with a leading Eating Disorders charity to further their reputation and profits, while undermining their work in every way. You cannot use a former ‘Miss Universe,’ a woman known for her ‘flawless’ physical attributes in a pornified campaign and claim to be helping to promote positive body image. Eating Disorders are serious mental health issues affecting a growing number of girls and women each year. Not something to be taken advantage of to increase your profits.  Lovable? As one commentator has put it, their behaviour is ‘hatable.’

Calvin Klein

Calvin Klein has a long record of pornified, degrading advertising. Recently we alerted our supporters to this billboard dubbed the ‘gang rape’ billboard. The Ad Standards Board received a large volume of complaints about this ad, sparked by articles  on Collective Shout and Melinda Tankard Reist’s blog. An Ad Standards Board representative even wrote to us asking us to advise supporters to use the online facility instead of fax or post – apparently the number of complaints was impacting their workload and online is easier for them to process. The Ad Standards Board upheld the complaints and the billboards were taken down. Read the outcome here. If you see the Calvin Klein logo on jeans, underwear or perfume, put it back on the shelf. This company does not deserve your money.

Diesel

Diesel has a history of sexualised and degrading ad campaigns. ‘Be stupid’ is one of these campaigns with the accompanying slogan: ‘smart may have the brains but stupid has the balls.’  Melinda Tankard Reist has written about that campaign here.

Diesel came to our attention again this year when images of their ‘sex sells’ campaign were plastered on the front of shop windows. This resulted in a flood of complaints from our supporters with at least one retail store agreeing to remove the posters.

Diesel again hit the media just recently. A US law school rented out their Library to Diesel for what they were told would be a tasteful photo shoot for jeans. The resulting images of models in their underwear crawling over the facilities and each other, were an embarrassment for the law school who said they were duped into allowing Diesel to use their facilities.