And yes, if a man assaults a woman he is to blame Channel 9 media celebrity Kerri-Anne Kennerley has attracted attention for her comments on Mornings with Kerri-Anne, likening women who are picked up by male footballers to strays. She was discussing with former AFL star footballer Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt, the alleged assault of a […]
Published today on Sexism: alive and well in Australia Virginia Haussegger is right to lament the status of women in other countries and the brutalities and indignities they suffer daily. But attitudes towards women in our own so-called liberated western democracy desperately need an overhaul as well. While I frequently write about the objectification of […]
Whether it hurts the woman or not, the men don’t care The sex industry done well at spinning prostitution as a positive good for all involved. This piece in The Irish Times cuts through the gloss and shows what life is like for many prostituted women (and there’s no reason to believe these experiences are […]
The brutalisation of girls In the past couple of weeks I’ve met or heard from young girls whose experiences give further disturbing insight into just how bad things are for girls right now. A 12-year-old girl approached me after I addressed the question ‘Are girls being treeated as sex objects?’ before an audience in Sydney’s […]
The latest in eroticised violence in advertising There’s no shortage of material documenting the mind numbing levels of violence against women and girls in the world. This blog is in many ways a testament to that, documenting the treatment of women and girls in the 21st century, lest we forget the scale of human rights […]
Visions of hell from Africa Two recent and deeply disturbing ABC Four Corners documentaries have me thinking about how much women suffer. About how common, even normalised, their suffering is, and how little is done to address it. Late last month, Four Corners broadcast the documentary ‘Heart of Darkness’ about the systematic rape of women […]
Today, a guest blog post from my friend and Collective Shout colleague Melinda Liszewski, affectionately known as ‘The Other Melinda’. Melinda has been a long time campaigner against the objectification of women. She is fondly known as the young woman who took on Blokesworld in 2005 – an event celebrating everything men love, e.g. fast […]
Stop Porn Cultures conference: how industrialised porn harms us all I’ve just come back from the US where I attended the Stop Porn Culture conference in Boston. While I can’t say I enjoyed it quite as much as the enchanted evening listening to James Taylor and Carole King perform in Washington (my smooth-taking mate DJM from […]
There are some books which chill you to the core. The Natashas: Inside the new global sex trade (Arcade, NY, 2003) by award-winning Canadian journalist Victor Malarek is one such book. A brutal expose of the lucrative trade in the flesh of women and girls from Eastern Europe, The Natashas is a testament to human […]
Lindsay Lohan goes with the (blood) flow [Trigger warning. Images of violence, self-harm] It seems nothing is off limits to be sexified for the purposes of grabbing attention and flogging stuff, whether it be a company’s products, a music video, or reviving a celebrity’s flagging career. Glamourising violence against women as sexy is the latest […]
Last month I briefly mentioned a Tasmanian case in which a father, a registered sex offender convicted of possessing child pornography, was given visitation right to his two daughters. I thought the story warranted a more in-depth examination, so I asked Caroline Norma to take a closer look. Caroline is a PhD candidate with the […]
Sexualisation, pressured sex, pornified music video clips, Kiely Williams PR campaign for the women-love-rape movement, a little boy having his wish to go to a strip club granted, leg waxing for little girls, sexism in Christine Nixon reporting: a selection of articles from the last couple of weeks reflecting the status of women and girls. […]
