Feminist: Sex culture setting women back

Melinda Tankard Reist's group targets billboards and other advertising it considers inappropriate. Photo / Supplied

"Raunch culture" has set back women in Western societies more than 50 years, says a visiting Australian feminist.

Melinda Tankard Reist, a founder of a group called Collective Shout which names and shames companies using sexual images of girls, says we are raising children in a "pornographic landscape".

"I think we have gone backwards," she said.

"Raunch culture has taken us back. It's an absolute tragedy. These were issues being raised by feminists in the 1950s and 60s."

Ms Reist, a controversial figure in Australian feminism because of her opposition to abortion, will speak at a forum run by Christian-based lobby group Family First in Auckland this week.

She has written two books about abortion, including one profiling mothers who refused to abort babies that were likely to have deformities, and argues that medical and social pressure to abort such fetuses has restricted women's choices.

She has also edited a new book, Getting Real, in which 15 Australian writers challenge the "sexual-isation" of girls.

"We have seen the proliferation and globalisation of sexual imagery," she said.

"[Women's] liberation has now come to be seen as the ability to wrap your legs around a pole, or flash your breasts in public, or send a sexual image of yourself to your boyfriend so he can pass it around his mates. Girls think that empowerment lies in their ability to be hot and sexy."

Ms Reist said children were learning sexual behaviours from advertising on billboards and in the media.

"We've had boys in primary school request sexual favours [of] girls because of the impact of sexualising imagery and the view that that is what girls are there for - male sexual gratification," she said.

"I work with sexual assault counsellors and they are seeing a spate of 12- and 13-year-old girls being anally sexually assaulted by groups of boys who film it and pass it around."

Ms Reist said the media culture distorted healthy sexuality.

"It's trading on and exploiting what should be a healthy desire and turning it into a tool of capitalism to make money. And it's primarily the bodies of women and girls that are used to do that."

Ms Reist said Collective Shout, founded five months ago, had shamed Australian companies into taking down inappropriate billboards, withdrawing a line of push-up bras for girls aged 6 to 12, and withdrawing Cotton On's line of children's clothing carrying sexualised slogans.

The Cotton On clothing was also withdrawn in New Zealand after a campaign led by the National Council of Women last year.

Collective Shout is also asking candidates in this month's Australian election to tighten censorship controls on pornography sold in petrol stations and all-night grocery shops.

"The whole system relies on consumer complaints, and a lot of good people don't want to look at porn," she said.

"A few of us have chosen to look at stuff and say, 'What is this doing in the 7-Eleven [convenience store] next to the lollies?'"