Rising rates of mental health problems and self-harm

Over exposure is making teens pawns to porn

A 15-year-old boy confided in me after I addressed his class at a Sydney school last year. He cried as he told me he had been using porn since the age of nine. He didn't have a social life, had few friends, had never had a girlfriend. His life revolved around online porn. He wanted to stop, he said, but didn't know how.

Do young people need to read porn themed novels?

From Melinda Tankard Reist's blog

The Age has covered our protest against Rivers for appropriating the image of a dead woman in fishnet stockings and stilettos on the front of a catalogue headed "10 deadly deals" as described on the Collective Shout website and here. I was amused to see River's spokesman describe our interpretation of the catalogue cover as "weird and draconian".

So if we weren't meant to interpret the woman as being dead - murdered even - why the heading "10 deadly deals"? Is she merely under the couch searching for her missing purse? The damn remote? Or playing hide-and-seek badly? If she tripped and fell wouldn't the heading be '10 clumsy deals'? If we've got it so wrong, why doesn't Rivers tell us what they meant to convey with the image and wording?

Here's Michelle Griffin's piece which also mentions some of our other actions against eroticised violence against women in advertising. We can't be blasé about this trivialisation of violence against women.