Madonna turns her back on the cause of women

In exposing the breast of a 17-year-old fan, Madonna sets back campaigns for respect and consent

There were the tired and predictable sexual props.

The pole dancing. The sexualised dancers dressed as nuns.

The on-stage spanking by her dancers, crew and band (all 19 of them) as she lay face down across the knees of one of them before her skirt was wrenched up.

The porny pantomime of bending-over for maximum genital exposure; the de rigueur playing with her crotch.

But this time – at the Australia end of her 7-month 4-continent, 82-gig, $1.31 billion-earning Rebel Heart tour – Madonna introduced a new sexual prop.

A living one. A fan, 17 years of age.

The 57 year old mega star acknowledged a star-struck Gold Coast barista and aspiring model, by pulling down her corset top and exposing her left breast to the audience – and to the world (forever).

Madonna told the audience that the young woman – two years younger than her own daughter Lourdes – was ‘the kind of girl you just want to slap on the ass and pull’. (‘Pull’ is helpfully defined in Urban Dictionary as ‘Word used to describe the successful act of attracting a person to such an extent that you would be able to snog or perhaps bone them if you so desired’).

Given Madonna’s declaring of such a fantasy toward the young woman, talk of what followed as being an ‘accident’ is barely believable.

Madonna, having essentially ‘groomed’ the teen by telling her she had the body of a Victoria Secret Model, then aggressively exposed the girl’s breast.

‘Oh s—. Oh sorry, sexual harassment. You can do the same to me, good luck,’ Madonna said flippantly.

In these few seconds the material girl gave an ‘up yours’ to global campaigns around respect, consent, bodily integrity and the right of any woman anywhere to say ‘no’.

This is the same woman who derided Janet Jackson’s infamous 2004 Superbowl ‘wardrobe malfunction’ by saying: ‘You don’t have to show your nipples to be interesting, and it doesn’t mean you’re cutting edge if you do.’

But exposing another woman’s nipples is OK and cutting edge, apparently.

This was an intrusive, non-consensual act, with all the elements of abuse present. An archetypal gesture of sexual harassment, played for entertainment.

Madonna once declared ‘Behind everything I do, there’s a tongue-in-cheek comment on myself, or a more serious message on the social level.’ (Georges-Claude Guilbert, ‘How One Star’s Self-Construction Rewrites Sex, Gender, Hollywood and the American Dream’ (2002)). The more serious message here is that my right to earn money by sexually humiliating you in public takes precedent over your integrity.

Madonna has been hailed for ‘her interpretations of feminine power, gender relations, sexuality and cultural identity. She has been described as a “threat to the status quo”.’

In the scenario on the Brisbane concert stage, the only plausible interpretation of feminine power is that Madonna holds it and a 17 year old girl does not. And a ‘threat to the status quo’? When considering the power dynamics (mega star, young fan), the age difference (40 years), the star’s massive wealth as a global pop culture icon, Madonna’s actions serve to reinforce the status quo when it comes to lauding it over women who have less power in the world.

This was an intrusive, non-consensual act, with all the elements of abuse present. An archetypal gesture of sexual harassment, played for entertainment.

This act conveys that exposing the breasts of a teen girl who only a few months ago would have been deemed a ‘minor’ is now just part of what constitutes entertainment.

It says that any young woman should enjoy uninvited sexual attention. That it comes from another woman suggests how an ascendant ‘lads culture’ is now mimicked by some women.

It allows some men to say – ‘See, women are just as bad’. They’re not of course, but it helps them justify their own behaviour.

The glib comment ‘Oh sorry, sexual harassment’ – mocks what sexual harassment means in the lived experience of women (documented in a book I just launched, Whispers from the Bush by Dr Syke Saunders, about the sexual harassment of women in rural areas). Madonna even featured convicted rapist Mike Tyson in the opening video to her shows, hardly a measure of support or empowerment to victims of sexual violence.

The young woman did not choose to expose herself on stage before an audience. Madonna chose this for her, chose to make a spectacle of the woman and of her vulnerability.

Cue: ‘But she enjoyed it!’

The young woman said she wasn’t ashamed about the incident: ‘Why would people assume I am humiliated by my own breast, nipple or body? I didn’t realise my boob was such a big deal – it was nothing to me.’

Girls are overwhelmingly socialised to put others’ feelings before their own. Girls are still taught to shrug and downplay everything as if it’s no big deal.

Girls are overwhelmingly socialised to put others’ feelings before their own. Girls are still taught to shrug and downplay everything as if it’s no big deal.

The young woman was launched into this very publicly. She has been rewarded with media exposure, thousands of additional Instagram followers, validation and attention for a ‘hot’ body, flights and VIP seats for her and her mum to Madonna’s final Sydney concert, being singled out again by the star (‘beautiful Josephine’), and being thrown – like a bridesmaid – a bouquet of flowers.

How can this young woman complain now? She would look ungrateful. As a whole, Madonna’s conduct takes on the appearance of classic abuse – harm followed by a making up so that the victim feels they can’t do or say anything without being disloyal and ungrateful.

This is not about whether young women should be ashamed of their bodies. Of course they shouldn’t be. This is about an act done to a woman that was uninvited and unasked for. A powerful older woman who should know better has made a decision to have this girl’s name and body exposed forever.

There is little room here for talk of irony, paradox, reinvention, or of Madonna as transgressive. Repeating a mantra that Madonna helps women feel empowered, that she is a feminist patron saint and feminist role model does not make the grade. What we witnessed is the antithesis of empowerment for women.

Lauded of being in control of her own sexuality, Madonna takes it away from others.

Madonna has turned her back on the cause of women.

Reprinted with permission from SBS Life.

Refuting the lies, debunking the myths

There’s nothing quite like receiving the first copy of the new book you’ve just had published, in the mail. You take it out of its packaging. You run your hands over the cover. You flick through (hoping no mistakes will leap out!). You turn it around in your hands. You read the back page, struck anew by the wonderful acknowledgements other writers, activists and academics you hold in highest esteem, wrote for you. You think of the friends who urged you on to the finish line. And how fortunate you’ve been to have a publisher who believes in your work and backs you all the way.

The feelings evoked are right up there with the birth of your children. OK, not quite. Four children. And now, five books, safely delivered.

Prostitution Narratives Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade is my fourth book with Spinifex Press (Defiant Birth, Getting Real, Big Porn Inc, now this one). And my first co-authored with Dr. Caroline Norma. When I first had the idea for a collection of first-person accounts of formerly prostituted women, I knew it couldn’t happen without Caroline, who is a leading authority on prostitution and trafficking globally.

Harm rendered visible

With a prologue by Irish abolitionist Rachel Moran, who tells her story in her autobiography Paid For. My Journey through Prostitution (2013), then introduction by myself and Caroline, the essence of the book is the 20 survivor stories who render visible the harm done to women in the global sex industry. Their intensely personal accounts are followed by three commentary pieces – one by an ex-pimp, another on the johns and punters, by Collective Shout’s Caitlin Roper, and finally, a case for the Nordic Model by Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT, Meagan Tyler. The cover artwork Legal Slave, is by survivor and contributor Genevieve Gilbert. With official publication date April 9, our  book will be launched in Melbourne April 10 by UK journalist, author and broadcaster Julie Bindel. A number of contributors, including Rachel Moran, will also speak at the launch. It will come at the end of a 2-day conference at RMIT University on ending global sex trade abuse.

Here’s an extract from the introduction:

Prostitution survivors speak out

Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard Reist

Prostitution Narratives presents powerful stories by women who have survived the prostitution industry. The testimonies collated in this book bear witness to the effects of prostitution on women and girls, and bring to life its dismal statistics.

Such stories are rarely published. Instead, it is the profiteers who are most dominant and influential in speaking and writing about prostitution. This billion-dollar industry seeks to persuade the world that prostitution is a service like any other that allows women to earn vast sums of money, and to travel and enjoy life’s luxuries. In large sections of the media, academia, public policy and the law, the sex industry has had its way. With money no obstacle, its polished representatives repeat the mantra: sex work is work, prostitution is a job like any other, and the sex industry should be treated as just another business enterprise.

Right-to-prostitution groups present women in sex businesses as ‘escorts, hostesses, strippers, dancers, sex workers’. Prostitution is euphemistically described as ‘compensated dating’ and ‘assisted intercourse’ with women who are ‘erotic entrepreneurs’. But the sex industry’s public relations campaign makes little mention of the damage, violation, suffering, and torment of prostitution on the body and the mind, nor of the deaths, suicides and murders that are common. It is in its economic interest to do so. As long-time abolitionist Melissa Farley observes, much of the business must be concealed and denied in order for it to continue:

There is an economic motive to hiding the violence in prostitution and trafficking … prostitution is sexual violence that results in massive economic profit for some of its perpetrators … Many governments protect commercial sex business because of monstrous profits …

This information [on the harms of prostitution, pornography and trafficking] has to be culturally, psychologically, and legally denied because to know it would interfere with the business of sexual exploitation.

In critiquing the business of sexual exploitation, the accounts in this book sit outside the sphere of mainstream publishing in exposing the prostitution trade for what it is: violence against women.

Prostitution Narratives begins with, as mentioned, Rachel Moran’s Prologue where she identifies the ideology of ‘sex work’ as a dehumanizing force that conceals the reality of prostitution. The survivor testimonies which follow then unpack the reality of commercial sexual exploitation. From the streets to strip clubs, to brothels and escort agencies, from web-camming to the filming of prostitution for the pornography industry, from underage girls groomed for prostitution through child sexual abuse, to young women caught up in a criminal world of gangs and drugs, to students, artists, and single mothers desperate to survive, the chapters of this book have a unifying thread: their contributors survived, got out, and want the world to know what being prostituted was really like…

In order to better understand and respond to the global human rights violation that is prostitution, we must first comprehend what the sex industry looks like and does to the girls and women most affected. For this, first-person accounts by survivors are the only way to begin.

Brooke, 21, tells her story for the first time

Brooke, 21, survived a year of abuse at the hands of her porn-fuelled boyfriend who bashed her if she resisted the porn inspired acts he demanded. Last Tuesday Brooke and I shared a platform at a breakfast gathering of civic leaders, teachers, police domestic violence & social welfare workers in Toowoomba, to discuss the relationship between pornography and violence. Bravely sharing her story for the first time, Brooke moved the room to tears. She is a living expression of the direct suffering women endure at the hands of men living on a diet of pornography. Here’s what she said at the event (slightly edited).

MTR with Brooke at City Women community breakfast

My name is Brooke, I’ve lived in Toowoomba for two years. I have been involved in a domestic violence relationship and this morning I’m going to share more about this so called relationship. I first met John when I was 18 years old we both lived close together and soon became great friends.

It wasn’t long after becoming friends with John that we both started dating, I was overjoyed that I finally had someone who loved me for me but I soon came to realise that this wasn’t the case. A month into the relationship he had beaten me twice, mentally abused me about my weight and looks. He couldn’t go anywhere with me as I was too ugly and didn’t fit into the size of clothing that he wanted me to.

So I was left at home stuck with his abusive step father who loved John and would do anything to stop me from being happy. Soon before I knew it, I couldn’t eat. I was allowed coffee and smokes, that was all. I developed an eating disorder.

No longer allowed around my friends, I couldn’t call anyone if I wanted to see anyone it had to be with John and when he wanted to leave we had to leave then and there. I soon lost my friends my personal trainer had started to notice the bruise and cuts but I couldn’t say anything in fear she would be hurt. I was alone scared and lost.

John was addicted to porn. He would watch porn on TV, his phone and had videos saved to his iPod. It didn’t matter where he was, if he wanted to jerk off he would pull out his mobile and go for it. If I refused to have sex with him, he would sit there doing his business while telling me what I was missing out on, how pretty these girls were, if only he knew them I real life. His mind had been filled with this image of what pretty woman had to look like and I was supposed to look and act like them.

One night I refused to have sex with him. I was hit, kicked in the gut and nearly lost my life all because he couldn’t get internet, his phoned had gone flat and I refused. His girlfriend wouldn’t give him sex but my best friend did. We were at his auntie’s house for a birthday party the weekend before my 19th birthday.

My 19th birthday wasn’t a birthday I want to remember, but I do. I was told I wasn’t allowed a small cake as it would make me even fatter and he couldn’t have that. As a present I was beaten three times that day and punched 20 times by midnight. I was too sore to fight him anymore. I wanted my life to end then and there but I couldn’t do anything so I asked him to kill me instead.

The police had been called for a domestic between John and his mum not long after and I was hidden in the bedroom too scared to come out. I could have been free that night but I stayed in fear. He was fine, he watched porn again that night like nothing happened.

I don’t know why but I asked a friend to meet with me knowing the risk. I had I told John I was going to the gym but instead packed a bag of clothes taking nothing but one bag with me to this friend.

After meeting my friend we went to her friend’s house where the next day I was taken to Goodna Youth Service and put on to D.V connect. I was moved that day to Brisbane where he found me, then moved to the Gold Coast where he once again found me. I was so desperate for him to just leave me alone that I tried to kill myself but survived. Why, I’m still working that out. After being released from hospital I was transferred to Toowoomba.

Since moving to Toowoomba, John has found me but I have decided not to run anymore. I can’t keep doing it as I have a life here. I now live in a safe supportive family, I’m currently studying and looking for part-time work and volunteering at The Base soup kitchen.

If porn was not in John’s life, I believe I would have been treated correctly as a woman who had feelings not an object to be tossed away like it didn’t matter.

If you know anyone in any sort of bad relationship or come across someone wanting help I beg you to help them. You don’t know their story but you can be the one to save them.

See also: ‘Growing up in Pornland: Girls Have Had It with Porn Conditioned Boys’, MTR, ABC Religion and Ethics

Most gendered harm is not reported in the bush

I had to ask for access to a bathroom once a month because I had my period! So eventually instead of access to a bathroom, they got me access to a Toyota so that I could drive away to a toilet. So the entire crew knew exactly when I was cycling every single month. And … they used to piss in the connecting pipes for me to discover when I got back from the drive. And looking back on it now I also realise that the blokes were also pissing on my boots when I was gone – I see now but at the time I was just so confused and baffled by it all. – Female miner, aged 21

A week ago I had the honor of speaking at the launch of Whispers from the Bush, a new book by ANU academic Dr Syke Saunders (from which the quote above is taken). Publisher Federation Press describes the book as follows:

Australian women are enduring a cultural epidemic of workplace sexual harassment in remote and rural workplaces – the experience is rife, rampant and as hard to contain as any infectious disease. Whispers from the Bush – The Workplace Sexual Harassment of Australian Rural Women is the first book to focus upon the nature, pervasiveness and reporting of sexual harassment in rural Australian workplaces. Drawing upon 107 interviews conducted with rurally located employees and employers about their experiences and observations of sexual harassment at work, it shines a light upon a phenomenon largely hidden or minimised by silence, distance and an atmosphere of ‘saturated masculinity’. The book seeks to give voice to the ‘whispers from the bush’ by exploring themes such as:

• the impact of male dominance and mateship on the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment within the rural workplace;

• the complex survival behaviours adopted by many rural women in response to sexual harassment as it occurs – most surprisingly, extending to women blaming women;

• rural employee and employer attitudes towards the disclosure of sexual harassment; and

• the limited reach and effectiveness of laws against sexual harassment in rural Australia.

The Women Lawyers Association of the ACT, together with the Women’s Legal Centre and Legal Aid Commission (ACT) hosted the launch as which I, Syke Saunders and Deputy ACT Discrimination Commissioner, Belinda Barnard, spoke.

Reading Skye’s book was an intensely personal experience. I had to re-visit my experiences and those of other women I knew, which I’m only beginning to process decades later. A literary journal has expressed interest in a contribution based on the whole speech, so I’ll let you know when that is published. For now, here’s an extract from my launch address.

When Skye first asked me to write an endorsement for this, her new book Whispers from the Bush, my first thoughts were: at last.

This book fills a gap. It gives voice to women we rarely hear from.

Beyond the romantic notions held about life in the rural frontier – the ‘bush imaginings’, ‘the imagined embodiment of the iconic rural ideal,’ there are stereotypical patterns of male dominance and ‘rampant maleness’ in the rural heart of blokeland – identified in Whispers from the Bush as ‘the dominant male bush construct’ and the ‘masculine architecture of rural life’. This pattern of dominance contributes to female inferiority and submission, discrimination, marginalization, histories of violence and – as this book attests – sexual harassment as a cultural norm.

The highest rates of violent crime such as sexual assault have consistently been in rural Australia. As Skye writes: “The further from the metropolitan capital the higher the per capita rate becomes for violent crimes, such as assault, domestic assault and sexual assault. Numerous other reports have concluded that the rate of crime and abuse in rural and remote Australia are much higher than any set of data has suggested, primarily because of the growing levels of under-reporting.” Recent studies also reveal a “consistent pattern of higher rates of alcohol consumption and consequent harm within regional and rural Australia than in urban areas.”

95 percent of gendered harm is not reported in the bush.

Reading Skye’s book has forced me to confront aspects of what happened to me growing up in a country town.

I am the daughter of a farming family in rural Victoria…

It is only fully now, decades later, that I look back and see the entrenched sexism that, being young and lacking the language to describe, I didn’t know how to deal with.

The editor in chief’s hand on my leg in his car and comments about my breasts (taking me ‘under his wing’ as a work experience student – how do you make a complaint when the perpertrator is the man in charge?), the sexually loaded jokes about my body, descriptions of sex acts I didn’t understand (especially when a male radio announcer and close friend dropped by – he was gay, but that didn’t matter), the male bonding over assessing the bodies of any woman passing through the building, the porny calendars on the walls of the print room (I was so pleased to see Skye include pornography as an expression of sexual harassment in the workplace).

A male editor used a piece about cancer caused by sun exposure as an excuse to publish an image of a topless woman.

Possibly the worst incident was the metal ruler up my skirt. I was made to feel I’d asked for it and told to stay out of the ‘lay out’ room where the man worked night shift, though I had to walk through that room to get to the ladies’ toilet (After the incident I had to walk around the building and climb rough cement steps to access the toilet). When I read Chapter 5 ‘When the boys come out to play’ I saw myself there – a paragraph on the humiliation of women in the workforce included: “rulers are thrust under skirts”.

…To be both young, unformed in feminist thinking and not knowing I had any rights, made speaking out almost impossible

One of the first pieces I wrote as a cadet journalist was about the opening of a women’s refuge in my town. These experiences were the seedlings of my later feminist activism….

I commend Skye for giving voice to women in rural and regional areas whose lives have been harmed by sexual harassment.

May Whispers from the Bush break the silence of rural women.

May it empower and strengthen them to speak out and no longer put up with mistreatment. May it contribute to solidarity among our sisters in dusty, remote places.

All of us who live or lived in these places – and have parts of our heart remaining there even when we have moved on – owe Syke a debt of gratitude.

Time for a new code of practice to stop sexualisation of girls in an unregulated industry

Jemma Nicoll

In 20 years of involvement in Australia’s dance industry, I have seen first hand the impacts on girls and young women, as a result of the imposition of hyper-sexualised messages – from broader culture of course. But also from within the industry I love. Too many girls are expected to engage with adultified choreography, costuming, music and language. From body weight obsession and appearance dissatisfaction, to ‘yo yo’ dieting, anxiety and other poor mental health outcomes, the consequences of growing up in an environment conditioned by the sexualised pressures young dancers absorb, will only become more prevalent if we don’t act soon.

Jemma Nicoll

In April 2015, the first of a series of articles I had written surrounding the sexualisation of children in the industry was published here on MTR. Titled ‘The Sexification of Young Dancers Inside Australia’s Booming Dance Studio Scene’, the article gained traction quickly – reaching thousands of readers nationwide and attracting  mainstream media attention. It was said to have generated the largest and most widespread discussion so far on the state of children’s dance education. What was originally a final assignment to complete my Journalism degree, it so very nearly was filed to collect dust and remain unread before I sent it on to MTR, in the hope she might be interested.

The article’s publication has now lead to my involvement  in a national call for a total overhaul of the industry as it relates to children.

With over 418,000 children enrolled in dance across the country, the industry is quite possibly the largest unregulated child-related industry in Australia. Detrimental consequences of the industry’s self-regulatory state are reflected in the sentencing of prominent Sydney dance teacher Grant Davies who has pled guilty to 47 charges of child pornography and sexual abuse.

Dance educators have a significant responsibility to actively safeguard the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of all children within their care. It is in recognition of this responsibility, and my passion to see our young people thriving in the safest, most positive and supportive environments possible, that I have written a proposed ‘Code of Practice’ for dance educators and service providers. The code is an ethical framework designed to specifically combat sexualisation and harmful messages in children’s dance education, and empower teachers to adopt practices that holistically safeguard the well-being of our young people.

Such a policy does not exist. A governing authority to implement a policy in the 6,000 studios across Australia does not exist, and the Department of Education do not have a dance-specific policy in place for their in-school programs.

Until this day arrives, I and other concerned people have launched an association to bring this proposed policy to the Australian community. KidsPace Code Incorporated was set up in NSW  March 2 and has developed the KidsPace Dance Code of Practice, which is included in a submission to the current NSW State Parliament inquiry into Sexualisation of Children and Young People. With the endorsement of  well known and respected psychologist Steve Biddulph AM and a committee of passionate people from a range of sectors including education, welfare and child safety, we are excited to play our part in ensuring young dancers are thriving in positive, safe and supportive environments.

Parents, studio directors, teachers, school principals and anyone involved in the provision of children’s dance education can head to the website and register their interest to view the code.

Jemma Nicoll is a UTS Journalism graduate and freelance writer. She directs Inspire Creative Arts, a dance school in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire and is involved in mentoring and self-esteem development programs for girls. 

Further reading

“[I want] better education regarding sex for both boys and girls [and] information about pornography, and the way it influences harmful sexual practices.”

These are the words of Lucy, aged 15, one of 600 young Australian women and girls who took part in a just-released survey commissioned by Plan Australia and Our Watch. The survey, conducted by Ipsos, gathered responses from the girls and young women aged 15-19 in all states and territories.

In the survey report, entitled Don’t send me that pic, participants reported that online sexual abuse and harassment were endemic. More than 80% said it was unacceptable for boyfriends to request naked images.

Sexual bullying and harassment are part of daily life for many girls. Young people are speaking out more and more about how these practices have links with pornography – and so they should, because they have most to lose.

Pornography is moulding and conditioning the sexual behaviours and attitudes of boys, and girls are being left without the resources to deal with these porn-saturated boys.

My own engagement with young women over the last few years in schools around Australia, confirms that we are conducting a pornographic experiment on young people – an assault on their healthy sexual development.

If there are still any questions about whether porn has an impact on young people’s sexual attitudes and behaviours, perhaps it’s time to listen to young people themselves. Girls and young women describe boys pressuring them to provide acts inspired by the porn they consume routinely. Girls tell of being expected to put up with things they don’t enjoy.

Some see sex only in terms of performance, where what counts most is the boy enjoying it. I asked a 15-year-old about her first sexual experience. She replied: “I think my body looked OK. He seemed to enjoy it”. Many girls seem cut off from their own sense of pleasure or intimacy. That he enjoyed it is the main thing. Girls and young women are under a lot of pressure to give boys and men what they want, to adopt pornified roles and behaviours, with their bodies being merely sex aids. Growing up in a pornified landscape, girls learn that they are service stations for male gratification and pleasure.

Asked “How do you know a guy likes you?,” a Year 8 replied: “He still wants to talk to you after you suck him off.” A male high school student said to a girl: “If you suck my dick I’ll give you a kiss.” Girls are expected to provide sex acts for tokens of affection. A 15-year-old told me she didn’t enjoy sex at all, but that getting it out of the way quickly was the only way her boyfriend would settle down and watch a movie with her.

I’m increasingly seeing Year 7 girls who seek help on what to do about requests for naked images. Being asked “send me a picture of your tits” is an almost daily occurrence for many. “How do I say ‘no’ without hurting his feelings”? girls ask.

As the Plan Australia/Our Watch report found, girls are tired of being pressured for images they don’t want to send, but they seem resigned to how normal the practice has become. Boys use the images as a form of currency, to swap and share and to use to humiliate girls publicly.

Year 7 girls ask me questions about bondage and S&M. Many of them had seen 50 Shades of Grey (which was released on Valentine’s Day). They ask, if he wants to hit me, tie me up and stalk me, does that mean he loves me? Girls are putting up with demeaning and disrespectful behaviours, and thereby internalizing pornography’s messages about their submissive role.

I meet girls who describe being groped in the school yard, girls routinely sexually harassed at school or on the school bus on the way home. They tell me boys act like they are entitled to girls’ bodies. Defenders of porn often say that it provides sex education. And it does: it teaches even very young boys that women and girls are always up for it. “No” in fact means yes, or persuade me.

Girls describe being ranked at school on their bodies, and are sometimes compared to the bodies of porn stars. They know they can’t compete, but that doesn’t stop them thinking they have to. Requests for labiaplasty have tripled in a little over a decade among young women aged 15-24. Girls who don’t undergo porn-inspired “Brazilian” waxing are often considered ugly or ungroomed (by boys as well as by other girls).

Some girls suffer physical injury from porn-inspired sexual acts, including anal sex. The director of a domestic violence centre on the Gold Coast wrote to me a couple of years ago about the increase in porn-related injuries to girls aged 14 and up, from acts including torture:

“In the past few years we have had a huge increase in intimate partner rape of women from 14 to 80+. The biggest common denominator is consumption of porn by the offender. With offenders not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality, believing women are ‘up for it’ 24/7, ascribing to the myth that ‘no means yes and yes means anal’, oblivious to injuries caused and never ever considering consent. We have seen a huge increase in deprivation of liberty, physical injuries, torture, drugging, filming and sharing footage without consent.”

The Australian Psychological Society estimates that adolescent boys are responsible for around 20% of rapes of adult women and between 30% and 50% of all reported sexual assaults of children. Just last week , Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs argued that online pornography is turning children into copycat sexual predators – acting out on other children what they are seeing in porn.

A 2012 review of research on “The Impact of Internet Pornography on Adolescents” found that adolescent consumption of Internet pornography was linked to attitudinal changes, including acceptance of male dominance and female submission as the primary sexual paradigm, with women viewed as “sexual playthings eager to fulfil male sexual desires.” The authors found that “adolescents who are intentionally exposed to violent sexually explicit material were six times more likely to be sexually aggressive than those who were not exposed.”

I have asked girls what messages they might like me to pass on to boys. So far, these messages include: “Stop telling us we are wet,” “Stop commenting on our bodies,” “Stop demanding pictures,” “Rape jokes are never funny” and “Sex before the age of consent is illegal.”

The proliferation and globalisation of hypersexualised imagery and pornographic themes makes healthy sexual exploration almost impossible. Sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy and authentic human connection. Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship and love, but about cruelty and humiliation. As a recent study found:

“online mainstream pornography overwhelmingly centered on acts of violence and degradation toward women, the sexual behaviors exemplified in pornography skew away from intimacy and tenderness and typify patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity.”

It is intimacy and tenderness that so many girls and young women say they are looking for. A young woman told me that on dating sites she lists under “fetish” wanting to stare longingly into someone’s eyes and to take sex slow. She said if she didn’t put these desires in the “fetish” category, they wouldn’t warrant a second glance.

But how will young women find these sensual, slow-burn experiences in men indoctrinated by pornography? Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says of young men: “They don’t know the language of face to face contact … Constant arousal, change, novelty excitement makes them out of sync with slow developing relationships – relationships which build slowly.”

It is wrong to leave sexual formation in the hands of the global sex industry. We need to do more to help young people stand up against warped notions of sexuality conveyed in pornography.

Fortunately, the ill-effects of the pornographic experiment on relationships and sexuality are being named out loud. A groundbreaking Australia-first symposium on the issue was held at UNSW last month, to a standing room crowd, and a current Senate inquiry is gathering evidence of the distorting harmful impacts of porn on our young people.

Most importantly, it’s young people themselves demanding change. Josie, 18, is quoted in the Plan Australia/Our Watch report:

“We need some sort of crack down on the violent pornography that is currently accessible to boys and men. This violent pornography should be illegal to make or view in Australia as we clearly have a problem with violence and boys are watching a lot of pornography which can be very violent … This is influencing men’s attitude towards women and what they think is acceptable. Violent pornography is infiltrating Australian relationships.”

Girls like Lucy and Josie deserve our response.

As published here on ABC Religion and Ethics

Whispers from the Bush: MTR to launch new book on sexual harassment of rural women

I was honored when Skye Saunders asked me to launch her significant and timely new book Whispers from the Bush on Friday in Canberra. I’ll be sharing a little about my experience growing up and working in country Victoria and praising Skye for naming a problem that rarely gets mentioned.

What will 30 minutes at Chadstone Shopping Centre tell us about our pornified culture?

Coralie Alison as published at Collective Shout

Last Friday night I headed to Chadstone Shopping Centre to catch up with some of my colleagues from Collective Shout. I was there a little early and decided to browse the stores while I waited for the others to arrive.

I expected to see the odd front window or billboard using the same old tired exploitation of women, but the proliferation of sexualised and objectifying images right throughout the centre was quite overwhelming.

It started with Bras’N’Things. Normalising the Playboy brand once again, we’ve written about this before. While many associate Playboy simply with its branded items or magazine, Playboy Enterprises own various adult TV channels and websites, broadcasting brutal, hardcore pornography. Retailers that stock Playboy branded products are helping Playboy to produce and distribute content that objectifies and degrades women.

In a 30 minute period I found close to 50 images that to varying degrees objectified and sexualised women. Some of the images were on massive billboards in major department stores including one by Tom Ford featuring a fully naked woman to sell perfume.

There were schoolgirls in their uniforms shopping with their mum’s, casually browsing the items nearby. As I took photos, no one noticed, staff stood around in clusters engrossed in their own conversations. These images have become the wallpaper of society.

Women and girls receive the toxic message that their main value and worth comes from their sex appeal. The global research tells us that the proliferation of these images is linked to common mental health problems such as low self esteem, poor body image, eating disorders, depression, self harm and even suicide. We are making our girls sick. And we need to do something about it.

Some may say “But the women chose to be in the ad, it makes them feel empowered”.

Are we so sure about that?

“Five years after a famously suggestive Burger King ad ran in Singapore, the woman who appeared in it—without her permission, she says—has publicly excoriated the fast-food chain for humiliating her.“

We don’t experience life in a vacuum. From the earliest of ages women have been socialised into believing that our value and worth come from our physical appearance, desirability, and ability to attract male attention.
We are growing up in a pornified culture that gives women two options; to be invisible or to be f*ckable (to quote Gail Dines). So it is no surprise that for some women they feel empowered when they express themselves in a sexualised way as a model, however we cannot ignore the broader damage that this type of advertising does to women globally.

Sexist jokes, objectifying women, gender inequality are the root cause of violence against women. In her award winning documentary “Killing her softly” Jean Kilbourne said “turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step in justifying violence against that person.” If we truly want equality for women we need to think about how our individual choices affect women as a class.

Some may say “Well men are portrayed in sexualised ways too”. Most of the images I saw of men as I walked through the shopping centre showed them in business suits, in a position of power and control. Some even had their arm quite forcefully around a scantily clad women’s neck.

The overall message showed a clear power imbalance. What are we teaching our men and boys? And we wonder why young boys display a sense of entitlement in relationships.

So what can we do?

• Speak out: Try and have a friendly conversation with the staff in the store when you see these types of images. Don’t ever think that the salesperson has no influence in the company. Shannen spoke out at Coles about having to handle Zoo and it was instrumental in helping them decide to cease stocking the magazine.
• Write a letter to the manager or CEO. Let them know the harms of such advertising and that you will not be shopping with them until they change their ways. I wrote a letter to the local pub about their lingerie waitresses. It took 5 minutes to pull it together and they responded in less than 48 hrs saying the promotion was cancelled.
• Lodge a complaint to the Advertising Standards Board. We have a handy ‘Lodge a complaint’ page here to guide you in the right direction for different types of billboard, radio and TV advertising.
• Learn from it: Use these types of advertising as a teachable moment in the lives of young people that you influence. Ask the question “Why is that lady naked to sell a handbag?” Media literacy skills are crucial for young people to dissect the toxic messages that popular culture is teaching them.
• Take a photo and send it in to us at Collective Shout. As a grassroots movement we rely on the collective action of our supporters to pressure these companies to change their ways.
• Recruit pledge partners: Encourage business owners to sign our Corporate Social Responsibility Pledge. There are many clever ways to advertise a product without objectifying women or sexualising girls. If their product was any good they wouldn’t need sexism to sell it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a long list of businesses that signed our pledge that we could shop with with confidence?