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”.

[*Update: 7-Eleven CEO instructs 700 stores to remove porn mags]

Dear Mr McKay,

Collective Shout is a grassroots, not-for-profit movement advocating for an end to the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in advertising, media and popular culture. A significant element of our work is to call corporations to account for facilitating the development of sexist attitudes which contributes to harmful behaviours toward women and girls, as demonstrated in a growing body of global research (see for example here: and here)

Your company, 7-Eleven, has come to our attention due to the pornographic magazines you sell, which normalise and even encourage behaviour which is not only harmful but often illegal. Front covers with headlines like ‘Fresh Teen Flesh’ and promoting content relating toup-skirting and ‘nip slips’ are on open display including to children and young people.

One of our founders recently visited a 7-Eleven store in Brisbane and discovered that it was selling unrestricted magazines, People and Picture. These magazines contained X-rated material including ‘teen porn’ and ‘barely legal’ content promoting the idea that young women - often made to appear younger than they really are - want sex with older men.

Much of the content eroticises sexual assault and promotes illegal activity such as‘up-skirting’ and ‘nip-slips’. These magazines have been given ‘Unrestricted M15+’ serial classification. However the particular issues cited appear to breach the requirements of that classification. Loopholes in Australia’s classification system allow for these titles to be displayed and sold to an all-age customer base.

However, this does not absolve 7-Eleven of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and duty of care to stop distributing these unrestricted porn titles and immediately remove them from all stores.

We note 7-Eleven’s response to customer inquiries, that ‘modesty covers’ are placed over the magazines. This is an inadequate response. Subtitles promoting “X-rated Aussie teens” and up-skirting are still visible to customers. Moreover, the response does not address the main issue, that these magazines contain material that should not be available for viewing and purchase by an all-age customer base in the first place.

Given 7-Eleven’s well-known, specific appeal to teenagers and children, and that a number of your brands and promotions specifically target these groups (Slurpees, Chupa Chups, Krispy Kreme), we believe it is imperative for 7-Eleven to remove these magazines from sale and stop profiting from them.

We note 7-Eleven’s dedication to “Fairness and Integrity”, and your claims to behave with “respect and social responsibility”. However, authentic CSR needs action above words. We believe that your company is violating its CSR commitments by distributing unrestricted porn titles.

We urge you to address this and demonstrate you really do care for your community - especially women and girls who would welcome positive action on your part.

Yours sincerely 

Melinda Tankard Reist

Movement Director

Collective Shout 

Click here to see the PDF letter

Ask their execs to stop selling sexploitation today.

Take Action!

Contact 7-Eleven. Tell them women and girls are not sexual objects and to pull 'unrestricted' pornographic magazines from sale in their stores. 

Website (if viewing on a phone and a contact form does not appear, click 'view full site' - small writing at the bottom of the page - then once on full site click ‘Contact us’ on top right menu which will take you to the contact form.) 

Message 7-Eleven on Facebook

Message 7 Eleven on Instagram

Tweet to 7-Eleven on Twitter

Call their Head Office on (03) 95410711

Write to them at 2/658 Church St, Richmond, Vic, 3121.

Leave a comment below to let us know if you receive a response.  

Earlier this month we exposed &-Eleven for selling porn magazines Picture and People with headlines such as 'X rated Aussie Teens' and ‘Fresh Teenage Flesh’. These mags are displayed in full view of children, and are often displayed right under the Krispy Kreme donuts. These magazines not only display pornographic content but also regularly feature nip slips and upskirting pics.

Upskirting is a crime in Australia yet men and boys reading this magazine are encouraged to peep on women who have not consented to their images being published and used in this way. 7-Eleven profits from normalising sexual harassment and contributes to a culture of violence against women. Kids who meet at 7-Eleven after school for Slurpees, Chuppa Chups and Krispy Kreme doughnuts are exposed to these harmful messages.

Here are just a few examples of editions showcasing 'nip slips':

You’d think that in an era of #metoo when sexual harassment is condemned everywhere, companies like 7-Eleven would think about their social responsibility to the community. 

Ask their execs to stop selling sexploitation today.

Take Action!

Contact 7-Eleven. Tell them women and girls are not sexual objects and to pull 'unrestricted' pornographic magazines from sale in their stores. 

Website (if viewing on a phone and a contact form does not appear, click 'view full site' - small writing at the bottom of the page - then once on full site click ‘Contact us’ on top right menu which will take you to the contact form.) 

Message 7-Eleven on Facebook

Message 7 Eleven on Instagram

Tweet to 7-Eleven on Twitter

Call their Head Office on (03) 95410711

Write to them at 2/658 Church St, Richmond, Vic, 3121.

Leave a comment below to let us know if you receive a response.  

Not sexually suggestive, but is sexually suggestive. Just two women posing in their underwear, but also two women in sexy lingerie expressing their sexuality.  

Fake-porn videos are being weaponised to harass and humiliate women: ‘Everybody is a potential target’

By Drew Harwell, as published at The Washington Post. 

The video showed the woman in a pink off-the-shoulder top, sitting on a bed, smiling a convincing smile.

It was her face. But it had been seamlessly grafted, without her knowledge or consent, onto someone else’s body: a young pornography actress, just beginning to disrobe for the start of a graphic sex scene. A crowd of unknown users had been passing it around online.

She felt nauseated and mortified: What if her co-workers saw it? Her family, her friends? Would it change how they thought of her? Would they believe it was a fake?

“I feel violated — this icky kind of violation,” said the woman, who is in her 40s and spoke on the condition of anonymity because she worried that the video could hurt her marriage or career. “It’s this weird feeling, like you want to tear everything off the Internet. But you know you can’t.”

Airbrushing and Photoshop long ago opened photos to easy manipulation. Now, videos are becoming just as vulnerable to fakes that look deceptively real. Supercharged by powerful and widely available artificial-intelligence software developed by Google, these lifelike “deepfake” videos have quickly multiplied across the Internet, blurring the line between truth and lie.

But the videos have also been weaponised disproportionately against women, representing a new and degrading means of humiliation, harassment and abuse. The fakes are explicitly detailed, posted on popular porn sites and increasingly challenging to detect. And although their legality hasn’t been tested in court, experts say they may be protected by the First Amendment — even though they might also qualify as defamation, identity theft or fraud.

Disturbingly realistic fakes have been made with the faces of both celebrities and women who don’t live in the spotlight, and actress Scarlett Johansson told The Washington Post she worries that “it’s just a matter of time before any one person is targeted” by a lurid forgery.

Johansson has been superimposed into dozens of graphic sex scenes over the past year that have circulated across the Web: One video, falsely described as real “leaked” footage, has been watched on a major porn site more than 1.5 million times. She said she worries it may already be too late for women and children to protect themselves against the “virtually lawless (online) abyss."

“Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image or anyone else’s onto a different body and making it look as eerily realistic as desired,” she said. “The fact is that trying to protect yourself from the Internet and its depravity is basically a lost cause. . . . The Internet is a vast wormhole of darkness that eats itself.”

Read the full article at The Washington Post.

They even film themselves doing it [video]

We recently called out skincare company Frank Body over their 'Send Nudes' lip and cheek tint, a product that through its name serves to normalise and legitimise the sexual harassment and requests for nude images experienced by teen girls. A group of adolescent girls approached the company with their concerns, but Frank Body dismissed them. 

A few months back, we called out skincare company Frank Body over their cosmetic product ‘Send Nudes’. The product, a lip and cheek tint, features the image of a naked backside with the phrase 'Send Nudes'. 

Schoolgirls as young as 12 will be taught how to send naked selfies in Victorian schools.

The ‘Art of safe sexting’ program is to be rolled out in classrooms to instruct school girls how to ‘safely’ send nude images of themselves, apparently by cropping out their heads and faces and any identifying features.

In a five-minute video on Rosie website, girls are told that “sending a nude pic of yourself can be a fun and flirty thing to do” and given tips on “sexting done right”. It also provided information about relevant laws and some of the risks of sending naked images.

Program author Briony O’Keefe argued, “We know they are going to engage in it, so a harm minimisation approach is really important.” However, experts have slammed the program and accused it of promoting misinformation.

Former Victoria Police officer and cyber-safety expert Susan McLean called the information “flakey” and “a crap resource”, and emphasised there was no safe way to send a naked image.

Collective Shout co-founder and advocate for women and girls Melinda Tankard Reist said that encouraging teen girls to crop their heads and faces out of sexualised images serves to further dehumanise girls:

“The art of safe sexting' advises girls to crop out their faces from nude images before sending. This just de-humanises the sender even more and exposes the complicity of the program's designers in encouraging girls to send de-personalised/ disembodied sexual body parts for boys to get off on.”

The program does a disservice to girls by promoting sexting as a potentially fun and sexy activity. The reality is more complicated, with many teen girls reporting feeling pressured and coerced to send nude photos, and a widespread culture of sexual harassment, disrespect and male entitlement.

Growing Up in Pornland: Girls Have Had It with Porn Conditioned Boys- Melinda Tankard Reist

A study out of Northwestern University earlier this year revealed teen girls’ experiences of being pressured to send nude images. Researchers analysed 500 accounts from teenage girls, finding two-thirds had been asked to send explicit photos, with boys engaging in threats and harassment if they did not comply. In response, 20% of the girls gave in.

The adolescent girls shared both immediate and long-term repercussions of saying no to boys’ demands. Out of the 500, only 12 said there was no backlash from refusing boys’ requests for naked images. Girls described feeling trapped, stuck or scared of the consequences of saying both yes or no. One reported death threats after saying no. Read more.

Closer to home, a Plan International Australia and Our Watch survey in 2016 of 600 girls aged 15-19 found that levels of abuse and harassment were endemic:

58% agreed girls often receive uninvited or unwanted indecent or sexually explicit material such as texts, video clips and pornography.

51% agreed that girls are often pressured to take sexy photos of themselves and share them.

82% believe it is unacceptable for a boyfriend to ask a girlfriend to share naked photos of themselves.

Girls as young as ten being coerced into sending sexual images- Collective Shout

The harm minimisation approach which encourages girls to crop photos of identifying features implies that the only harm in underage girls sending naked photos of themselves lies in later being identifiable. However, she would be identifiable by other means if the recipient wanted to get revenge and share the image. It’s also not unheard of for men and boys to photoshop heads onto such photos.

The program completely ignores the overarching problem of girls existing as a pornographic supply for boys. We do not see websites devoted to ‘dick pics’ or to humiliating men and boys, however boys trade sexual images of girls like trading cards. Encouraging girls to participate ‘safely’ does not challenge this culture of objectification or the entitlement of men and boys. It is clear this practice does not quench boys thirst for objectified women, it makes it worse.

“Harm minimisation” fails to address the actual factors at play- the pressures on women and girls to send sexual images against their will. Teaching young women how to acquiesce to men and boys’ coercion and sexual demands is not a solution.

While there is a need to have frank and open discussions with young people about sexting, legitimising the practice as a fun, sexy activity does a great disservice to girls, many of whom have openly described their reluctance.

Far from empowering young women, the ‘Art of Safe Sexting’ encourages underage girls to tolerate and embrace requests for sexual images even while teen girls are reporting feeling trapped, stuck, scared, pressured and coerced. Legitimising sexting does not minimise harm, it undermines girls’ ability to say no.

Further reading:

 Why is Frank Body asking young girls for naked selfies?