“There are many parents who know exactly what's going on and they willfully turn a blind eye."

Last week, our very own campaigner Lyn Swanson Kennedy was featured on an episode of ABC’s Four Corners, Kidfluencers.

(Four Corners: Keana Naughton)

Industry at odds with efforts to end men's violence against women

Campaigns Manager Caitlin Roper was asked to comment on the survival of the "skimpies industry" in a post #METOO era during which women have increasingly testified to and called for an end to sexual objectification and harassment.

The inherently misogynistic skimpies industry is built on the practise of dressing female bar attendants and wait staff in bikinis and lingerie to serve as sexual entertainment for male customers.

Last week was Triple J’s ‘Porn Week’, with a special focus on stories about pornography and “discussing all things porn”, promising to examine “every facet of pornography”.

Three teenagers have a conversation about how online pornography has impacted on their lives in a new video from ABC. The seven-minute video explores the ways in which unrestricted access to pornography shapes young people’s sexuality, their intimate relationships and view of themselves and their bodies.

In a digital age with unrestricted access to hard core pornography, children are being exposed at unprecedented rates and from younger ages. Children are viewing increasingly violent and degrading pornography, typically before they’ve experienced real life sexual encounters. Pornography has become the primary means of sex education for young people, but what does it teach?

“[Porn] is creating an expectation”

Kiki, 19, told ABC she had experienced pressure from male sexual partners to replicate sex acts they had seen in pornography:

“My boyfriend at the time would just nag me and nag me and nag me at the time to do anal. I ended up having to turn around and stop and say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that’ before he retreated… it’s not kind of like ‘Hey, I’m curious about this.’ It’s like, ‘You should do this, I want you to do this.’ They push and push and push.” 

Kiki’s sentiments have been expressed by many young women who have similarly described experiences of coercion and unwanted porn-inspired sex acts instigated by male partners. (Read more here).   

Porn industry blames parents for children’s exposure to porn

Throughout the short video, various spokespeople for the pornography industry shrugged off responsibility for the harms to children who were exposed to hard core pornography, arguing it was up to parents to monitor their child’s internet access.

Ron Jeremy, one of the most famous male porn performers of all time, argued it was not the porn industry’s responsibility to depict healthy sexual relationships. Jeremy, who was a special guest at Sexpo, was last week barred from the industry’s own Adult Video News awards after multiple rape allegations. “Watch your goddamn kids,” he said.

But when the teens featured in the video were asked if they felt their parents could control everything they looked at on the internet, their response was a resounding no. “No, there’s no way you could. To a 13-year-old, parents say ‘No more internet’ so he takes his smartphone down to public wi-fi.”

It’s near impossible for parents to compete with the multi-billion-dollar global sex industry, one that aggressively markets and has successfully mainstreamed its product, and opposes any measures that may curtail its profits- such as age verification on pornographic websites.

Parents need to be educated, but at best, all we can really do is prepare our children for the inevitable.

Last week we exposed Frilledneck Fashion, a dancewear company posting sexualising images of pre-teen girls on social media. Today ABC News ran a feature on our campaign.

While it may not be as readily accessible as porn, the research on porn is nonetheless abundant.

Just last week, while the ABC ran a panel discussion on Australian attitudes toward porn, another new study implicating porn made headlines: "Anal sex study shows climate of painful coercion affecting young girls."

The study found "the main reason that young people also cited for engaging in the act is that boys 'wanted to copy what they saw in pornography'."

There are hundreds more studies like this one. So many, in fact, that studies are being combined in meta-analyses to assess the overall trends across thousands of pieces of data: sexual assault study shows link to pornography use; pornography use linked to higher rape acceptance attitudes; nearly half of all young women have been sexually coerced; and so on.

Sexualised Violence isn’t Alright, Just because a Woman is the Perpetrator

BBHMM revels in the eroticization of total power, control and domination over another woman. But we are expected to see it as empowering, because Rihanna and her henchwomen are the agents of this control

By Melinda Tankard Reist 

Last week, our WA State Coordinator Caitlin Roper wrote about some of her experiences receiving violent rape threats for running Collective Shout campaigns. Her piece was published by The Guardian news website and sparked discussions about the ongoing issue of online threats by men to female activists and the weaknesses in law enforcement and social media systems to effectively deal with these crimes. 

Last night, Caitlin and Talitha Stone were interviewed on ABC's Lateline, sharing their stories of activism and the threats that typically followed.

Watch the video here: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4121651.htm

Talitha recalled being targeted by Tyler the Creator's 1.7 million twitter followers with a barrage of threats and vitriol and the police's failure to adequately address the situation. Caitlin shared how her twitter profile had been copied and used to solicit sex to men on the internet in her name, and how the police response was to suggest she use a 'more plain' photo on her twitter profile.