Book: Big Porn Inc.

There’s quite a buzz around at the moment about a new book about porn. Big Porn Inc (edited by Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray) is written to help combat the mainstreaming and normalisation of porn. It is a compilation of pieces written by women and men who are sick of watching pornography eat away at women, children and society.

Big Porn Inc is not an anti-sex book. As is written in the introduction: “Challenging the sexist and racist pornographic industrialisation of intimacy is not an anti-sex position. Pornography is a distortion of respect-based sexuality“.

Supre Called to Account

The following article appeared on news.com.au earlier this week, proving that people power works:

TWEEN clothing brand Supre is under fire after running sexual adverts featuring a topless model in its latest clothing campaign.

The Advertising Standards Bureau said it had received many complaints about the images that appeared in print and on buses that show young topless girls in jeggings  (a jeans-leggings cross) with only their hair covering their breasts, as well as the television commercial that contains “sexualised content”.

As a result, all Supre posters in store have been taken down and it has pulled its bus campaign.

“The board noted that the image is a large image on buses and is therefore able and likely to be seen by a very broad audience, including children,” the case report read.

“The complaints focus mainly on the sexualised content, the time slot in which the ad is shown, and also the promotion of body size,” said Sari Mattila, an ASB spokeswoman.

“The bureau is now in the process of contacting advertisers on receipt of the complaints.”

The ASB is also investigating the TV ad which features a model dancing provocatively in her bedroom.

“If the board considers that the ad breaches the code, the advertiser is asked to remove the ad,” Ms Mattila said.

The ABS case report refuted claims by Supre that it had targeted the 18-35 age group.

“The board strongly disagreed and noted that the Supre brand is attractive to and very popular with teenage and pre-teen girls,” the report read.

The jeggings campaign has also been blasted by online groups fed up with Supre’s “highly sexualised” campaigns.

“This is a continuation of Supre’s irresponsible marketing,” online group Collective Shout spokeswoman, Melinda Liszewski, said.

“Supre is very popular with 11 to 13-year-old girls.

“Collective Shout supporters have been sending complaints to Supre as these are sexualised ads aimed at a young market,” she said.

The company declined to comment.

“We are currently still working with the ASB on this so would not be able to comment until our response is finalised,” a Supre spokeswoman said.

Collective Shout featured an article on these ads on May 30, Mia Freedman posted about it yesterday and Mumbrella featured an article on Sunday. Many people were unhappy about this ad, they spoke up and now it’s gone. Hip hip hooray for people power!

In further news, high street stores in England have taken a stand and have “banned padded bras and ‘sexually suggestive’ clothes for young girls”. Read more about that here.

Credits:

News.com.au

Mt Ommaney Centre

Melinda Tankard Reist – Raising a Collective Shout

(As featured in the Autumn issue of Enhance Magazine)

After securing an interview with Melinda Tankard Reist, I was thrilled. You know when there’s someone you really respect, who expresses everything you’re thinking, someone you really want to meet one day? Well for me, that was Melinda Tankard Reist.

Sex n Social Justice: What to Tell Your Children

A few weeks ago we were talking on Twitter about The A21 Campaign’s Key2Free project. Some of you may remember I had worn a key on a necklace on January 21 to help raise awareness of Human Trafficking. I looked like a bit of a geek wearing a massive old car key around my neck but I did get to chat with a few people about the subject. Problem was, one of those was my seven year old daughter who wanted to know what Human Trafficking was. I didn’t know what to tell her so I told her the bare minimum and made a mental note to be better prepared next time. Many of you echoed my comments on this. Hence, this wonderfully informative interview with a professional in the area of child psychotherapy!

This week we’re priveledged to have Psychotherapist Collett Smart answering our questions on discussing sex and social justice with our children. Collett provides counselling to children, adolescents and their families. She is also involved with Collective Shout: For A World Free Of Sexploitation.

Here she generously provides insight gleaned over her 20 year career:

Melinda Tankard Reist on Raising Children

One of the greatest ways we can impact this world is by raising our children to be responsible, healthy, compassionate adults who will be proactive in seeing justice served. In a culture rife with immorality, innappropriate sexuality and boundless greed, raising healthy children is difficult.

Someone once said, “The standard you walk past is the standard you set.” Melinda Tankard Reist is a women who takes this responsibility seriously.

Melinda is an author, speaker and advocate for women and girls. I spent some time with her this week and she shared some great advice for raising healthy children in a sex-saturated culture. I had a video all prepared but to my great disappointment, YouTube couldn’t load it (lesson learned about massive files!) So, here’s the (less fancy) typed version..

Warning: some strong sexual abuse topics discussed

What advice can you give parents trying to raise healthy children in a sex-saturated culture?

There are a number of things I advise parents and I’m not saying I’ve got it all right. It’s a constant challenge to raise happy, healthy, resillient children in a culture which undermines our efforts to do that.