Mt Isa Airport takes action after complaint

Recently we were contacted by Susan McLean (AKA The Cyber Cop) to say that a store at Mt Isa Airport had merchandised soft toys right next to soft porn. 

We contacted the airport via Facebook and email. 

Good afternoon Coralie,

Please accept our apologies for having missed the Facebook post regarding the concern in Mount Isa.

I actually visited the Airport yesterday and requested that the Retailer relocate the toys to a new location and place the Men’s magazines onto the highest shelf out of the sightline of children. 

There was certainly no intent by the retailer to offend any member of the public and they are very willing to assist us with ensuring a good experience when in our Airports. 

Please feel free to contact those who raised concerns and let them know that we are always willing to make changes and listen to guest feedback. 

Thank you.

Prue.

Whilst we were pleased that the items were re-merchandised to so as to prevent children from seeing them we wonder why an airport needs to even stock a soft porn mag like The Picture in the first place. The mag contains "nude girls" as well as "advice columns written by strippers". It claims to be "A weekly magazine squarely aimed at anyone who has a sense of humour and likes looking at women without their clothes on."

There is more research out now on the harm that sexualised imagery does to society. This study here analyses many other individual studies http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496

"A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity.”

There are also many links to violence against women such as this from the Our Watch website:

WHAT DRIVES VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN?

Violence against women is serious and prevalent. It is primarily driven by gender inequality, and reinforced or exacerbated by a number of other factors. 

Gender inequality is a situation in which women and men do not have equal power, resources or opportunities, and that their voices, ideas and work are not valued equally by society. 

Gender inequality provides the underlying social conditions for violence against women. It operates at many levels – from social and cultural norms (the dominant ideas about men and women in a society), to economic structures (such as the pay gap between men and women), to organisational, community, family and relationship practices. 

It would be great to see the airport take a stand and not allow harmful pornographic magazines to be sold on it’s premises.