Harvey Norman did the right thing. Myer should follow. Designed by Fifty Fifty Concepts and supplied by Independent Suppliers, Betsy is described as the ‘Sexy bikini babe ultimate bottle opener’. She is ‘hilarious’. Why is this bottle opener sexy, hilarious and the ultimate in bottle openers? Because it works by inserting the bottle into Betsy’s […]
Ritualised aggression designed to keep women in their place Listen to this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLh0RMpit1k[/youtube] Does it send shivers up your spine? Make you feel chilled? That’s what it did to me. The chanting pack, the ‘No means Yes’ mantra, the threatening insistent tone, the sense of ritualised aggression. It felt like something the Klu Klux Klan […]
Ad Standards Bureau upholds complaints The Advertising Standards Board has upheld complaints against Calvin Klein for billboards suggestive of sexual violence against a woman. The Board received 50 complaints against the ad. I first mentioned the billboards in ‘Sexism: alive and well in Australia’, published on ABC The Drum Unleashed September 29. Last week I […]
Calvin Klein: selling the degradation of women (Trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault) “I cannot escape one simple fact: that if we continue to subject future generations of young men to great barrages of aggressive, misogynist, over-sexualized and violent imagery in pornography, movies, computer games and advertising, we will continue to see the rates […]
On Monday I ran here a guest blog post by Caroline S. Taylor, Foundation Chair in Social Justice and Head of the Social Justice Research Centre at Edith Cowan University, on the case of the 12-year-old Tasmanian girl forced into prostitution by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, while in the care of community protection […]
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 […]
Crime Commission report reveals failure to act Three alarming reports in News Ltd papers about child on child sexual abuse. More children are exhibiting problem sexual behaviour including assault of other children. Story 1: Children sexually abusing children ‘ignored and denied’ Teachers and childcare workers have raised the alarm over an increase in children coercing […]
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 […]
