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Melinda Tankard Reist


Chemist Warehouse forced to remove ‘virgin’ sex toy

Melinda Tankard Reist Add comments

Company slammed for aiding sexual fantasies for young girls

On Tuesday night, young Melbourne supporter (and kayaking buddy) Verity Thompson sent me a link through Facebook messenger, to the website of Chemist Warehouse, which featured a disembodied ‘virgin pussy’ – a replica vagina of a young girl with ‘realistic hymen’ just waiting for a man to ‘pop’.  Many people send me links to horrible things most days and while I (and Collective Shout) don’t have the resources to action everything, this product demanded a response. I shared with my activist colleagues and, within hours of us taking to social media about it, the product was removed from Chemist Warehouse’s site. While this once again demonstrates the power of collective action, we have to ask: why did Chemist Warehouse think this product was OK for them to flog in the first place? Where are its corporate ethics? And where is the Pharmacy Guild in all of this?

Here’s how News.com, Daily Mail and Smart Company reported on our win.

Chemist Warehouse pulls Virgin Pussy Palm Pal ‘realistic hymen’ sex toy from its website after backlash

news.com

  Campaign group Collective Shout slammed the retailer for stocking the product.

“Since when have chemists become defacto sex shops? Chemists are supposed to be selling products with medicinal and health benefits, not promoting pedofilic fantasies and eroticising young girls for profit,” Melinda Tankard Reist, co-founder of Collective Shout, told news.com.au.

Ms Tankard Reist said she had seen similar sex toys before, including a “Lolita Teenage Vibrating Vagina” and “realistic” sex dolls made to look like nine-year-olds, but never at a chemist.

“We see a lot of horrible things in our line of work as you can imagine, but this is incredible. For a company that might want to be seen as having corporate social responsibility, this seems like a radical departure,” she said.

“Don’t they care about the wellbeing of girls in the community? Why would they want to contribute to these fantasies of young girls existing to be ‘popped’ or ‘deflowered’?”

FULL STORY HERE

‘You are encouraging rape culture and paedophilia’: Chemist Warehouse comes under fire for selling ‘virgin’ sex toy

logo_mol_au

VPP CA CW

FULL STORY HERE

Chemist Warehouse removes virgin sex toys following social media backlash and activist campaign

smartcompanylogoCaitlin Roper from Collective Shout told SmartCompany this morning the product sexualises girls  and was clearly inappropriate for a chemist to be selling.

“We come across some pretty awful things in the course of some of our other campaigns, but I think with this one I was really genuinely surprised to see this item sold by a chemist under the guise of sexual health,” Roper says.

“I thought, what does aiding men in their sexual fantasies for children have to do with their health or wellbeing? We have campaigns to shed light on this epidemic on child sex abuse in schools and churches, but as a culture we continue to sexualise girls and present them as sexually appealing and even available.”

FULL STORY HERE

See also: ‘Child sexual abuse thrives in a culture that eroticises it’, MTR, Sydney Morning Herald

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November 6th, 2015  
Tags: activism, barely legal, Chemist Warehouse, child sexual abuse, children, collective shout, Daily Mail, Girls, News.com, paedophilia, Pharmacy Guild, rape, rape culture, sex toys, sexual assault, Smart Company, Social media, teens, violence against women, virginity

2 Responses to “Chemist Warehouse forced to remove ‘virgin’ sex toy”

  1. Antonella Gambotto-Burke
    November 7th, 2015 at 3:01 pm

    Melinda, I am reeling.


  2. Hecuba
    November 8th, 2015 at 10:39 pm

    It isn’t rocket science as to reason why yet another corporate male owned company was until recently opening selling ‘mens’ sexual fantasy toys to other males.’ Money is the reason and as we know mens’ global male created pornography industry is very, very profitable and revenue exceeds drugs and the global male created arms trade.

    Furthermore male corporate owned companies are colluding with men’s centuries old lie that women and girls only exist to be males’ disposable/interchangeable sexual service stations. This is why we don’t see ‘mens sexual fantasy toys depicting boy children as disposable/interchangeable sexual service stations for men to consume and then throw away.’ Because men have always claimed their sex is the only human one and hence males must not be portrayed/exploited as other males’ disposable/interchangeable sexual service stations!

    As usual malestream media whenever they report that yet another mundane respectable male/males have sexually preyed on women and girls; this is always perceived by the men in political power as ‘another deranged monster (sex conveniently omitted of course in mens’ reporting) rather than males enacting their male pseudo sex right to sexually prey on women and girls with male impunity!

    Men’s malestream media refuses to join up the dots and recognise that mens’ pornography industry is a very powerful male tool in reinforcing male hatred/male contempt for women and girls by constantly claiming females are males’ disposable/interchangeable sexual service stations.

    So whilst we women are rightly enraged at mens’ latest sexual degradation of us females we shouldn’t be surprised because men have always hated females and this male created product is men’s latest example of their pandemic male contempt/male hatred for females.


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