Racist, sexist: why porn mags had to go

The last issue of the Picture magazine to ever hit shelves

On September 26 2019, I walked into the Park Street Sydney offices of Bauer Media Group, to meet with its CEO.

This moment had been a long time in the making.

In 2010 I wrote an expansive piece on the nature of porn titles in convenience stores - and the failure of our classification system to regulate them - for the ABC.

That same year as part of Collective Shout’s campaign against lad’s mag Zoo, I wrote this piece, ‘Because all women must be brought to their knees’, also for the ABC. Our campaign saw Zoo pulled from Coles five years ago – thanks to the help of a young Coles employee who, with support of her union, told Coles it was creating a “hostile workplace environment” by requiring young women like herself to sell the magazine and to see boys ogling the magazines in store. Coles subsequently pulled the title, which was “catastrophic for sales” and saw publication cease in 2015 (Zoo  devoted its final cover to us).

In 2019, we revived the campaign, this time focusing on The Picture and People Magazine.  The renewed campaign was prompted by my colleague Melinda Liszewski walking into a 7-Eleven store to get a Coke, when confronted with the headline “X-RATED AUSSIE TEENS 18 & 19-YEAR OLDS STRIP”  on the cover of  People Magazine. Our campaigns team spent many hours going through the titles. We discovered the fetishizing of schoolgirls, encouraging sexual fantasies for “fresh young flesh”, the extolling of nurses and female tennis players as existing for male gratification and pleasure and racially eroticized Asian women.  We asked how content like this could be permitted in a society that claimed to care about the status of women. We made the point that a sexist culture was grooming sexist boys and that these titles were normalizing that idea.

Our rapid-fire social media campaign highlighting the content and the failure of 7-Eleven to exercise corporate social responsibility, along with correspondence with the CEO, resulted in 7-Eleven pulling porn titles Picture and People from 700 stores three weeks later. BP soon followed, removing the titles from 350 servos. Then Bauer Media Group’s CEO Brendon Hill offered a meeting. He had good news. Only in the role a few months, he agreed with our views that these titles were inconsistent with Bauer’s core values and pro women position statements. It was a positive exchange. We commend Brendon for his actions.

What a year! Our team is tired...but elated. This year has seen us achieve some of our biggest wins in our 10-year history: and you helped us do it.

Here are some of our wins and highlights from 2019:

Following calls for BP service stations to stop profiting from sexist magazines, sexualising teen girls and encouraging sexual harassment, the service station chain has announced these magazines will no longer be sold in 350 of its company owned stores.

Angus McKay has heard your messages loud and clear. Thanks to you, all 700 7-Eleven stores have been instructed to remove pornographic Picture and People magazines from their stores. 

Listen: Melinda Tankard Reist on Sydney Live with Ben Fordham

In his reply to Collective Shout on Sep 3 7-Eleven CEO Angus McKay stated:

1. Once the nature of these magazines was brought to our attention, before your organisation contacted me, we made a stock recommendation change. I would acknowledge we should have been more across the nature of these magazines and taken action earlier. That said, once the team were made aware of the material they acted and changed our recommended range quickly.

2. I have personally written to all franchisees and store managers asking for the removal of these magazines. The note makes my, and the company’s, view on these magazines very clear.

3. Each store in our network is visited by a member of our operations team. They have been instructed to follow through on my instructions as a priority.

After a decade of Collective Shout campaigning against Wicked Campers sexist and degrading slogans and imagery, we are excited to announce our calls for uniform legislation across the country to deregister offending Wicked vehicles have been heard. Wicked Campers with offensive slogans will be banned from registration in all states and territories under a new plan signed off on at a national meeting of transport ministers.

According to The Advertiser, each state agreed to deregister vans that did not remove offensive slogans following a complaint, and to ensure the van could not be re-registered in another jurisdiction. This national approach would ensure this problem would be solved once and for all.

Katrine Hildyard, Labor’s shadow spokeswoman for the Status of Women said in a statement:

“together with women’s advocacy organisations including Collective Shout and the YWCA, domestic violence services and a range of other groups, we have been campaigning for a long time (for) the Marshall Liberal Government to pass our legislation to rid our roads of Wicked Camper Vans which promote violence against women. They have to date refused to do so.

“Whilst their actions are long overdue, I am glad to hear that Stephan Knoll has finally listened and is beginning to understand how wrong it is to use language which disrespects women and promotes violence against women.”

Thank you for standing with us and speaking out. We couldn't have done it without you!  

[UPDATED] WIN!

We call on Instagram to stop providing a platform for normalising the eroticisation of children

Content warning: discussion about child sexual abuse material and paedophilia

We hope you were encouraged by our recent Air Asia billboard win. Speaking out really is the language of change. I wanted to highlight a number of other positive outcomes that I hope will continue to encourage you. 

Mariner Watches have issued a formal apology after the release of some highly disturbing social media ads containing sexual violence.

"Our recent ad campaign was offensive, distasteful and an act of poor judgement. We want to ensure the public that Mariner does not promote sexism or violence against anyone and posting these pictures was a mistake that will not be made again" 

A sexually violent video game called Rape Day set to be released this month on gaming platform Steam will no longer go ahead after the distributer Valve pulled the game from the platform. 

“After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.”

And it was recently announced that a new Government directive came into force which will stop the entry to Australia of people convicted of violent crimes against women and children.

“Australia has no tolerance for perpetrators of violence against women and children,” Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs David Coleman said.

“The message is clear: if you’ve been convicted of a violent crime against women or children, you are not welcome in this country. Wherever the offence occurred, whatever the sentence – Australia has no tolerance for domestic violence perpetrators."

Collective Shout welcomes this change. After years of campaigning for the government to take a stand it is a positive step in the right direction. 

Thank you for being a part of a movement that is making the world a better place for the next generation. 

*Content warning- extreme sexual violence*

“You think about how nice it would be to die. But then you think about how nice it would be to rape Kristina or Ashley before you die.”

Set to be released in April on gaming platform Steam, Rape Day is a game that allows users to assume the persona of a sociopath who rapes women during a zombie apocalypse. Developers describe the content as including violence, sexual assault, non-consensual sex (which is more accurately described as rape), obscene language, necrophilia and incest.

The game features a range of scenarios where the male persona preys on and rapes naked women with cartoonish large breasts, who are positioned as vulnerable and depicted frightened, screaming and in pain. In a scene where the man rapes a non-responsive woman, text appears on the screen: “Because she is no longer struggling against you, you grow bored.” In another scenario, the man puts a gun in a woman’s mouth, threatening to “blow [her] brains all over the dirt” and rape her corpse.

A preview of the game on Steam, including the pornographic and sexually violent content described above, was visible to users aged from 13. Steam’s negligence in exposing children to this disturbing content was further showcased in a brief disclaimer at the bottom of the page that read, “This game is marked as ‘adult only’. You are seeing this game because you have agreed to continue to this page.”

In response to backlash over the game’s blatant promotion of rape and violence against women, distributor Valve pulled the game from the platform. Valve issued a weak, vague statement explaining their reasons for withdrawing the game. At no point did Valve condemn any of the sexually violent material, content that would be illegal under Australia’s classification laws. Instead, their decision to pull the game appears to have more to do with protecting their financial interests than any objection to violence against women:

“After significant fact-finding and discussion, we think ‘Rape Day’ poses unknown costs and risks and therefore won’t be on Steam.”

While it’s good news that Rape Day has been withdrawn from Steam, how was this game allowed in the first place? How long was this horrific content visible to children before it was removed? And will it be hosted somewhere else?

Back in 2009, a similar game 'Rapelay' which allowed users to simulate the rape of a mother and her two daughters, was banned after a single complaint by Collective Shout co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist. 

In our work against the sexual exploitation of women and girls, we highlight the connections between the sexualisation and objectification of women and girls, and real life violence against them. We cannot address an epidemic of men’s violence against women and simultaneously treat violence against women as a source of entertainment. 

With your support, Collective Shout has continued to challenge sexploitation at every level during 2018. It is because of our supporters all over the country (and overseas) that our collective voice and impact continues to grow so thank you and here's to keeping up the fight in 2019!

Here’s a few of the highlights from this year:

We successfully lobbied for legislation against Wicked Campers that will see vans with explicit slogans de-registered and off the road.

We were invited to collaborate in the first Australian research to examine links between advertising, equality and women’s health, conducted by Women’s Health Victoria. You can read it here.

We contributed submissions to the following government inquiries: Submission on the ​Enhancing Online Safety Act 2015 ​and Online Content Scheme Reviews and Commonwealth Modern Slavery Bill 2018.

Online shopping app ‘Wish’ pulled child sex dolls from sale following our campaign.

We rebooted our campaign against sex store chain Honey Birdette’s window ads in family shopping centres, which continues to gain momentum. Over 70,000 people have signed our petition calling on shopping centres to take action against the retailer’s porn-inspired ads.

We joined a coalition of women’s groups, survivors and academics in signing an open letter against the normalisation of sex dolls and sex robots.

Co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist was a speaker at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit in Washington, DC.

We exposed Frank Body for using the language of sexual harassment to promote their ‘send nudes’ cosmetic.

Our campaign calling for serial domestic abuser Charlie Sheen’s visa to be revoked received international media attention.

Collective Shout activists Melinda Liszewski and Caitlin Roper, along with co-founder Melinda Tankard Reist, gave speeches at the Australian Summit Against Sexual Exploitation at RMIT university in Melbourne.

We successfully defended our movement against legal threats from Sexpo. Sexpo had brought a law suit against Collective Shout after our campaign against Sexpo’s promotion of live-streamed porn shows on public buses. Our victory was documented in Dignity Journal.

We reached thousands of young people who are now more equipped to navigate a sexed-up world.

As always, we couldn’t do it without you! We look forward to your continued support in the new year.

If you would like to contribute financially to our work you can do so here.