Opinion: Our kids exposed to an adult world

Melinda Tankard Reist

The Courier-Mail is to be commended for its series on the hypersexualisation of our young people — especially the impacts on children by allowing them to be exposed to porn even before their first kiss.

What has been documented here in the Generation Sext campaign is what I’m hearing everywhere I go.

The Australian Psychological Society has spoken out about their concerns for the wellbeing of children due to the easy accessibility of online pornography.  

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) is the peak medical body in Australia representing doctors across all specialties of medicine. The AMA have strong views on how sexualised media is negatively affecting our kids. And they have good reason to, they are dealing with the aftermath every day.

Written by Jas Swilks. Originally posted February 13th 2016 on 'Thoughts From Jas'.

TRIGGER WARNING: domestic violence, graphic discussions of violence against women and violent pornography. 

Melinda Tankard Reist as published on ABC Religion and Ethics

The Pornography and harms to children and young people symposium was recently held in Sydney.

Keynote speaker Dr Michael Flood appeared on The Drum to talk about the influence pornography is having on young people's attitudes towards sex and relationships. 

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.

Zoo Weekly has a long history of exploiting and objectifying women for the enjoyment of male readers. During this time, supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths have quietly profited from the sale of this unrestricted magazine in stores around the country. There are a lot of reasons why Coles and Woolworths should rethink the sale of Zoo Weekly, but we've narrowed it down to just 20, in no particular order.

Porn’s distortions need addressing in schools say educators

As published on Melinda Tankard Reist

Over the last few weeks, there have been various news media articles documenting the harmful impacts of pornography on young people.