Disempowered men, lynch mobs and breast binding advice for girls
Two of my favourite women writers were published in ABC Religion and Ethics on the same day this week. Dr Helen Pringle (long time collaborator and contributor to Big Porn Inc) and talented emerging young writer Laura McNally, who I’ve published here a number of times before. Both are contributors to the new Connor Court […]
A Wicked Victory
People power forces Wicked Campers to withdraw misogynistic marketing Wicked Campers withdraws sexist slogans from vans after 110,000-strong change.org petition; petition starter Paula Orbea says it’s a “people powered win against sexism” The campervan company at the centre of a people-powered revolt over sexist van slogans has today issued an apology and committed to reviewing […]
How Wicked Campers intimidate, threaten and demean women
Wicked assigns women and girls to a place of inferiority: Dr Helen Pringle …Wicked Campers is a serial offender at the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB), which has formally considered dozens of complaints against the company since 2008. What is most striking over that time is that the ASB has completely failed to counter the campaign of derision […]
The Pornification of Julia Gillard
Framing Gillard in pornographic terms is part of a concerted backlash against women in power, argues Dr Helen Pringle This is an edited extract from an essay by Dr Helen Pringle in Bewitched and Bedevilled: Women Write the Gillard Years, a collection of essays published by Hardie Grant and edited by Samantha Trenoweth. This book, write the […]
Remembering Puangthong Simaplee: a life prostituted and ended at 27
What passing bells for those who die as cattle? By Dr Helen Pringle Ten years ago, Puangthong Simaplee died at the age of 27. She had been picked up in a police raid on a Surry Hills brothel on 23 September 2001, and was sent to Villawood Detention Centre. Three days later, she died in […]
Selling women hatred as freedom: why porn is not liberating
Big Porn Inc contributors continue to get a significant run in the media. In the lead up to our Brisbane launch tonight, here are recent pieces by Dr Meagan Tyler, co-editor Dr Abigail Bray, and Dr Helen Pringle. Porn: Just a bit of harmless fun? Pornography is great. Just a bit of fun. It doesn’t […]
Pornography: Who’s sleeping with whom? Challenging stereotypes about porn’s opponents
‘The central issue about pornography for a woman on the left like me is sexual subordination and how to end it’ Opponents of pornography are prudes, moralisers, hung up about sex and want to put all women in burqas . Right? Not exactly. Dr Helen Pringle tackles these weary and predictable stereotypes in a piece […]
General Pants Co and Ksubi: Selling objectification of women
Don’t support the marketing of female inequality Clothing retailers General Pants Co and Ksubi got together and made this: This image of a woman, her top half naked apart from gaffer tape over her nipples, is having her jeans unzipped from behind. The image, part of the ‘Sex! & Fashion’ advertising campaign, adorns the glass […]