WARNING: Graphic content

*Content warning- extreme sexual violence*

'Humour' that demeans women and trivialises family violence is not funny

‘Porn is presenting rough sex and anal sex as something normal, and teenage boys are learning from their screens that it often involves violence and humiliation’ – Nikki Gemmell

How encouraging to read the concerns a number of us have been attempting to raise for close on a decade now, in our national broadsheet The Australian.

Wicked Campers slammed in South Australian Parliament

The following is taken from the Second Reading of the Motor Vehicles (Offensive Advertising) Amendment Bill in South Australia. The Hon Zoe Bettison, member for Ramsay, spoke in support of proposed legislation to deregister Wicked Campers if they do not abide Ad Standards rulings:

I rise this morning to support the Motor Vehicles (Offensive Advertising) Amendment Bill brought to this house by the member for Reynell. It is unfortunate that we have to talk about this because it seems quite simple that this is unacceptable. We want to propose reforms to the vehicle registration laws banning the registration of vehicles displaying obscene, sexist and racist messages.

We have modernised our society. We have called out violence against women, and I, personally, have worked diligently to ensure that our state is an inclusive and welcoming community that treats people with respect. That is why I am so disappointed and appalled by the harmful messages on the Wicked campervans that are freely driving around our state. Our community deserves better. Our community is better than this.

Despite South Australia being the first Australian state to grant women the vote and to stand for parliament, and the first to legally prohibit racial discrimination and sexual discrimination, currently there is nothing that prohibits these vans with offensive slogans from being on the roads of our state. Not only are they not acceptable but they should be removed immediately. Some might argue that we simply cannot see the funny side of these slogans. They are right; there is nothing funny about these slogans. Normalising violence against women and treating it as a punchline undermines all our efforts to reduce violence. They cause immediate offence and hurt across our community by perpetuating sexist attitudes that we are working tirelessly to change.

To quote our most recent former prime minister: not all disrespect ends in violence, but all violence starts with disrespect. This was an incredibly strong statement that he made because we have to call it out; whether it be in the workplace, the sporting field or down the street, that disrespecting women must end. We live in a country where one woman is killed every week by a current or former partner. We have come a long way, but there is still much work to be done. These messages undo decades of advocacy and women's empowerment and this is the kind of thing that we must make sure we stand up against in the future.

Wicked Campers promote their rental vans to backpackers and tourists who are likely to be visiting South Australia's most popular tourist destinations. While we as a state are promoting our festivals, our natural beauty, our food and wine, encouraging people to linger longer and enjoy what we love about South Australia, our visitors see these outlandish, highly visible vans at these great destinations. We are giving mixed messages to people. We are a global city. Tourism is one of our key economic drivers.

We invite tourists to come and enjoy what we love about South Australia, but in their face, in the car park, are these vans with offensive slogans. How does that match who we are? How does that match who we want to be? Think about our young boys and girls: we need to continue these messages from a very early age. We need to call out disrespect and we need to call out violence, yet we have these very visible slogans on the back of a van. How do you explain to your child that that is okay to be in public?

These are deliberately offensive slogans: 'Drink till she's pretty,' or, 'I've often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can't get my wife to go swimming.' These are vulgar statements. It is not just women that these are offensive to; they are offensive on many levels: sexism, racism, paedophilia. They go to the heart of the attitudes around domestic violence and violence against women. They also glamorise and trivialise drug use. In some cases, they even promote rape and murder. This is not what we want people to see when they visit South Australia. It is not what South Australians want to see in our state. A standard that we walk past is a standard that we accept.

I urge this house to support the motion and remind the house what we are supporting here: the cancellation of a vehicle's registration if it displays advertising material found to breach the code, preventing the refund of part or whole of the registration fee paid, preventing the transfer of a vehicle's registration when cancelled, preventing the renewal of registration unless the offending advertisement is removed, and purporting to prevent judicial review of the decision to cancel a vehicle's registration. This is what the bill does. But what it really does is send the strongest message that obscenity, racism and sexism is unacceptable in South Australia.

The bill has been adjourned. Read more here. Check our website for regular updates.

TAKE ACTION

Petition: Drive Wicked Campers off the road

South Australian supporters, please contact your Liberal MPs and ask them to support this bill. If you are not sure who your local member is click here and choose your district.

See also:

"Nothing says romance like choking on a ...."- Collective Shout

Bill to ban sexist Wicked Camper vans- The Mercury

Queensland Opposition calls on all states to ban Wicked Camper vans- ABC

#Winning

Collective Shout in the Sydney Morning Herald

Actor Charlie Sheen has a long history of violence against women, with sexual assaults, battery and threats against women spanning over two decades. 

January 1990: While in their home, Sheen reportedly accidentally shot fiancée Kelly Preston in the arm. The relationship ended shortly after. In 2011, Sheen claimed she accidentally shot herself, using the story for a comedy routine:

"I was downstairs early in the morning making coffee and I thought she was still asleep upstairs," he said, regaling the crowd. "And I heard a f--king gunshot go off. I thought, 'She did it, she finally f--king did it. She killed herself and they're going to f--king blame me.'" So I abandoned the coffee, because a gunshot in the morning will wake you up better than a nice cup of coffee," he said, drawing increasing laughs from the crowd.

"I come around the corner and there's naked Kelly Preston at the top of the stairs, holding her wrist, staring at me, covered in blood…and I thought, that's pretty f--king hot," he explained, before quickly adding, "I didn't. I didn't." After tending to Preston, laying her down, grabbing towels and bandages and managing to stop the bleeding, he got around to asking her what happened. As you would.

"She explained to me when she lifted my pants off the scale in the bathroom…the tiny revolver I used to carry…it fell out of the back jeans pocket and hit the floor and shot a bullet right between her legs," he explained amid much interjecting from his onstage cohort. "So she got hit with shrapnel from the toilet bowl."

September 1990: Sheen completed drug rehab a month after checking himself in.

October 1994: Sheen was sued by a young UCLA student who claimed he repeatedly struck her in the face and head after she refused to have sex with him. 

July 1995: Sheen testified in the tax evasion trial of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, admitting he spent almost $53,000 on the prostituted women she sold. 

December 1996: Sheen was arrested for allegedly beating his girlfriend Brittany Ashland, who was also a porn performer. Ms Ashland claimed he grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the marble floor of his home, threatening to kill her if she told anyone. 

June 1997: Sheen plead no contest to the charges in relation to his assault of Brittany Ashland. He was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term and two years of probation. 

May 1998: Sheen was hospitalised after a cocaine overdose. His father, Martin Sheen, turned him over to the authorities for violating his probation. Sheen later checked himself into rehab.

March 2005: Denise Richards, Sheen's second wife, filed for divorce while pregnant with the couples' second child. Richards alleged Sheen had a problem with drugs and alcohol. 

March 2005: Porn performer and escort Chloe Jones told the National Enquirer Sheen was one of her clients, and had paid her $15,000 for oral sex. Sheen's agent disputed the claim. 

April 2006: Denise Richards, Sheen's second wife, applied for a restraining order. In her statement to the court, she detailed a long history of drug use, gambling, paying for sex, abusive behaviour and threats, including threats to kill their dogs. Richards expressed her concerns about Sheen's pornography use, which included boys and girls who appeared to be underage, including girls with braces, pigtails and without pubic hair performing sex acts. Richards recalled an incident at her house on the 30th December 2005 where he pushed her over and threatened to kill her in front of their children: 

'Respondent then started to approach me. I was still holding Lola. I put my right hand up to block him and to shield myself and Lola. The Respondent pushed me, shoving me with his two hands between my shoulders. I was forced backwards and tripped over one of the children’s toys and fell on the floor with Lola. Sam was screaming the entire time and crying. Lola was also crying. When I was laying on the floor, the Respondent then pointed his finger at me and screamed,”I hope you f..king die, bitch.” I took both girls, sat on the couch and tried to calm them down. The Respondent turned away and as he was walking out the front door, said to me that he was going to have me killed. He said,”you are f..king with the wrong guy.'

In a conversation on April 9th, 2006, shortly before Richards obtained the restraining order, Sheen continued to make threats:

'He told me that “I will never get to court because I will be f...king dead!” He told me to enjoy my parents “while they are still around”. I took this to mean that he was not only going to do me harm but also do harm to my parents. In this conversation, I also brought up an old prostitute/porn star who he saw by the name of Chloe Jones. I saw on the news that she had died from undetermined causes. When I asked him if he had anything to do with her death, he said that he had “no comment”. He repeated “no comment” again when I asked him again.'

March 2008: Jason Itzler claimed he sent Ashley Dupre and another girl to have a threesome with Sheen for $20,000. Sheen's reps denied the report. 

December 2009: Sheen was arrested on domestic violence charges after an alleged altercation with his third wife Brooke Mueller, the mother of his twins, who claimed he held a knife to her throat. 

February 2010: Sheen was charged with felony menacing and misdemeanour third degree assault and criminal mischief in connection with the December arrest. He plead not guilty the following month, but eventually plead guilty and was sentenced to 30 days in rehab, 30 days probation and 36 hours of anger management.

February 2010: Sheen announced he was voluntarily checking himself into rehab. 

October 2010: Sheen was reportedly removed from The Plaza Hotel in New York after causing a disturbance and allegedly doing $7,000 worth of damage to the room. 

November 2010: Sheen was sued by Capri Anderson, a pornography performer who was with him at The Plaza, alleging he choked her and threatened to kill her. Sheen countersued Anderson, accusing her of extortion.

March 2011: Sheen's estranged third wife Brooke Mueller obtained an emergency restraining order after Sheen allegedly threatened to cut off her head, put it in a box and send it to her mother. 

October 2012: A man filed a police report after Sheen allegedly threatened to shoot him to death.

November 2013: Sheen sent an abusive tweet to his ex-wife Brooke Mueller, inviting her to fellate a hand grenade.

October 2014: Sheen was sued for assault and sexual battery by a dental technician after allegedly grabbing her breasts and punching her during a dental visit. 

June 2015: Sheen sent an abusive tweet to his ex-wife and mother of two of his children Denise Richards, calling her a "heretic washed up piglet shame pile". 

December 2015: Sheen's ex-fiancée Scottine Ross sued him for assault, battery and false imprisonment. She alleged he put an unloaded gun to her head and repeatedly pulled the trigger. 

April 2016: Sheen's ex-fiancée Scottine Ross obtained a restraining order against Sheen after a recording believed to be Sheen's voice said he would rather pay someone $20,000 to kick her in the head than settle her law suit.

June 2017: Sheen was sued by an ex-girlfriend for knowingly exposing her to HIV. Sheen knew of his HIV positive status in 2011, and had sex with her in 2015. She allegedly asked him upfront if he had any sexually transmitted infections and he said he was "fine" but told her later he was HIV positive. 

Open Letter: Collective Shout calls on Immigration Minister to revoke serial abuser Charlie Sheen's visa. Add your name to the open letter here.

“Domestic violence and femicide is a real issue, pairing that issue with alcohol is beyond disgusting.”