* * *
In July 2007, a thirteen-year-old girl was assaulted in toilet blocks and on a rooftop in a Sydney suburb. She was penetrated vaginally and orally by seven boys. The course taken by the assault followed the classic plot line of an average porn film in which one girl is surrounded by many men in a planned attack; it was as if the boys had taken their instructions directly from porn. The boys had cameras at the ready to record the violation and to post on YouTube as home made porn: after all, what’s the use of assaulting a woman if you can’t brag about your conquest later? Too many young men have become not only consumed by porn but have even taken to manufacturing it at home using their mobiles and computers.
The boys waiting their ‘turn’ in this attack told the girl to ‘smile like you’re enjoying it,’ just as women in porn are told to look like they’re having the time of their lives.6
One report of the attack claimed that the boys forced the girl to ‘take off her clothes and watched one another violate her, causing her to bleed’ (Alexander, 2009). Lawyers representing four of the seven attackers told the NSW District Court that a ‘lack of sex education’ was one of the reasons they did it (in Scheikowski, 2009). However, it wasn’t a lack of sex education that was at work here; rather, the actions of the boys suggest that their sex education through porn was very thorough indeed. What they lacked was an education in humanity, common decency and respect. It’s as if we are witnessing the death of feeling or empathy for another’s suffering.
This attack had overtones of another assault in Werribee, Victoria, in which a sixteen-year-old girl with an intellectual impairment was forced by a gang of boys to expose her breasts and perform oral sex on them. They urinated on her, torched her hair, threatened to shave her—and after, sold the DVDs they had made of the assault for $5 each to their school mates (Medew, 2008). In the western Melbourne suburb, the view that many expressed was that the boys were just ‘having a bit of fun’ (Robinson, 2006, p. 3).
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6 Some ex-porn performers talk about being beaten if they didn’t smile (see MacKinnon and Dworkin, 1998).
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Kerry Carrington’s words are painfully apt in so many cases of sexual assault against girls, including against Indigenous Australian girls, who don’t know they have a right to say ‘no’ (see McLellan, this volume). Carrington wrote that very few girls who are the targets of sexual assault
…possess the necessary legal knowledge or language to describe themselves as having been sexually assaulted without their consent. We can expect that this is especially so when they grow up in an environment where a degree of sexual intimidation is normal—where sex is expected, where sexual autonomy is not respected, where girls who do say no, are threatened, abused or ostracised, and where the pretext of romance is a lure for entrapment (1998, p. 161).
Coercion, force and unwanted sex
A 2008 report by an Australian anti-violence organisation, the White Ribbon Foundation, cited research showing that one in seven girls and young women aged between twelve and twenty have experienced rape or sexual assault. Among girls who have ever had sex, 30.2 per cent of Year 10 girls and 26.6 per cent of Year 12 girls have experienced unwanted sex. Fourteen per cent of young women said that a boyfriend had tried to force them to have sex, and six per cent said a boyfriend had physically forced them to have sex (White Ribbon Foundation, 2008, p. 18).
Ann Evans (2000) reports on a study in Adelaide that found that 32 per cent of young men aged 14 to 26 believe that it is acceptable to force a woman to have sex under certain circumstances. A study by the University of Western Australia published in 2009 found that coercion was a common reason for premature and unwanted first experiences of sexual intercourse (Skinner, 2009).
According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (Australia), ‘The increasing incidence…of boys perpetrating sexual crimes against women and girls in Australia might be an indication of a trend toward a more callous attitude in men’s sexual treatment of women created through the normalisation of the sex industry’ (CATWA 2008; see also Farley, this volume). It is not difficult to find even extreme examples of male violence these days.
Something that especially saddened me in research for this book and in my interaction with girls at schools and elsewhere, was the way they are treated in their everyday lives. I fear that we have gone backward. In a Canberra school in 2008, teachers told me of boys groping the girls in the classroom, even during class and with the teacher present. Girls were aware that male students were spending lunchtimes downloading porn on their mobile phones, which added to their sense of threat.
In almost every group of girls with whom I talk, I am told stories about verbal abuse, harassment and even sexual assault including rape. When I ask them why they don’t report the matter to police, they respond by saying things like: why make a fuss?; it hasn’t just happened to them but to lots of girls; what if they were blamed or weren’t believed; it’s something they just have to put up with. They also fear retribution. In the poignant words of a fifteen-year-old girl in Sex Lives of Australian Teenagers: ‘I’ve had friends who were raped, sexually abused, i’ve been molested, it’s just really sad to feel disconnected from your own self’ (in Sauers, 2007, p. 112).
Violence: the new sexy
We are also seeing the normalisation of male violence against women: violence and sex are merging.
Increasing numbers of young people are playing games featuring graphic sex and violence, in which the female characters are prostituted, attacked or raped. Some of us worked to ban a Japanese rape-simulator game that was based on players raping a mother and her two young daughters, one of whom was ten and carrying a teddy bear. The website described the game as ‘a new type [of] molesting game with more beautiful 3D images…Players can get the new excitement like never before.’7 We succeeded in outlawing its download in Australia.8
A March 2008 episode of America’s Next Top Model, shown in a 6.30 pm Sunday slot on Channel 10 before Australian Idol, featured a ‘crime scenes’ segment (shot in Australia) in which the aspiring model had to pretend she had been brutally murdered. The model who looked the sexiest in death was the winner of the episode. The categories were: ‘pushed off rooftop,’ ‘organs stolen,’ ‘electrocuted,’ ‘stabbed,’ ‘decapitated’ and so on. Girls, you must look sexy all the time—even when you’re dead.
Continuing the murdered woman theme, a European clothing and shoe company, Loula, put together an ad campaign in 2008 featuring murdered women. To celebrate the opening of the company’s new store in Melbourne, a full page glossy advertisement ran in Harper’s Bazaar depicting a murdered woman in the boot of a car. The ad, in an issue out just in time for International Women’s Day, was pulled after outrage expressed by women’s anti-violence groups. In 2005, a Melbourne woman had been left for dead in the boot of her car for five days after an attempt on her life, mere blocks from where the store was to open (Tankard Reist, 2009).
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7 ‘Government must act immediately to end access to downloadable gang rape game,’ Women’s Forum Australia, February 25, 2009, http://womensforumaustralia.com/images/pressreleases/090225%20downloadable%20rape%20game.pdf. Anti-violence activists in the US have received death threats for their attempts to ban the game (personal communication, May 13, 2009). As I finalised this introduction, the Sydney Morning Herald reported (June 6, 2009) that a Japanese software industry body had decided to ban computer games in which players simulate sexual violence against women: http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/japan-bans-sexual-torture-software/2009/06/06/1244234406067.html
8 Richard Fraser, Manager, Content Assessment Section, Australian Communications and Media Authority, email communication, April 7, 2009, re online content complaint (Reference 2009000101/ACMA-197982360).
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Girls and women are pitted against each other through sexualisation. Ads for Skins She sportswear, popular with young women, purvey women-hating messages such as,
‘Get a body to die for…and watch other women line up to make your funeral arrangements.’ Other slogans include, ‘Get the body every other woman would love. To spit on,’ and ‘…for legs that will feel like heaven. And that’s exactly where other women will want to send you.’
How far we haven’t come
Young women write to me about the pressures they feel in a sexualised culture. Nadia, who is nineteen and lives in regional Victoria, wrote, ‘No wonder females today think they are not good enough for men, because men have these bizarre standards that they have to have a “sexy” girl with a good body that makes them look good.’ Nadia wrote that after her relationship broke up, ‘I was abused with text messages that I was a fat tree stump and that I needed to go onto a treadmill for five days straight in order to look good. He was a pig who degraded me so bad, who constantly judged me on my appearance’ (personal correspondence, June 16, 2008, used with permission).
Kate, a Canberra teenager, wrote: ‘The feelings of worthlessness and loss of self that I developed while with the last two boyfriends were more than I could bear and I spent my life trying to please them by “perfecting” my image.’ Kate was hospitalised for two months with an eating disorder. On leaving hospital, and in Year 11, she was confronted with ‘Posters of semi-clad models staring me in the face telling me to conform to the ideals I had spent two months in hospital trying to dispel from my mind. Certain words screamed louder. Skinny. Diet. Size. Shape. It was EVERYWHERE! The world seemed to be throwing my eating disorder ammunition I couldn’t combat’ (personal correspondence, June 14, 2008, used with permission).
And Tara from Perth said:
I am 19 years of age and have a close group of male friends, and my very close group of girl friends. Most of these girls have nearly perfect Body-Mass Indexes. They are all smart and kind and none of them are ugly. Their faces however are NOT anywhere near like a model. When asking my male friends…their opinions of my friends can be summed up in phrases such as ‘Ew’ ‘oh-my-god-kill-me-now’ and ‘I was expecting bad but this is…’ and I know that it is not just my friends. In 4 past workplaces, High School and University, the trend has been the same…most of the guys I know are cruel in their judging of women (personal correspondence, February 12, 2008, used with permission).
Young women like Nadia, Kate and Tara have a desperate need to have their voices heard above the noise of a sexualised body worshipping culture.
Getting Real
As the essays in Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls show, you don’t have to be embittered and in need of a new body to care about the sexualisation of girls in the media and popular culture.
Dr Emma Rush summarises the global research on the evidence for sexualisation and the risks of sexualisation which undermine the strong social norms that prohibit sexual interest in children. Together with Andrea La Nauze, Emma Rush kick-started the debate on sexualisation of children in Australia, in two key reports for the Australia Institute in 2006. (In her chapter, Julie Gale reveals material discovered in a Freedom of Information request that validates the Institute’s claims about the use of underage sexualised models by a major Australian retailer.)
Author and publisher Maggie Hamilton, drawing on her extensive work in the field, gives a solid overview of the issues facing young girls and the impacts on their mental, emotional and physical health.
Dr Lauren Rosewarne, author of the finely researched Sex in Public: Women, Outdoor Advertising and Public Policy (2007) describes how women continue to be portrayed in advertising in sexualised ways. As Rosewarne asks in her book, why is it that if a man were to put up a pin-up of a naked or semi-naked woman in his office this would be considered sexual harassment, but advertisers put up giant billboards in the public space with sexual depictions of women with little to stop them (Rosewarne, 2007, p. 3)?
Professor Louise Newman speaks in the authoritative voice of a medical professional who has worked at the coalface with troubled girls.
Public intellectual Dr Clive Hamilton writes a thoughtful and reflective piece on how young women are sold out by a hypersexualised culture which expects them to be constantly sexually available. He observes that where once teenage sexual activity was a sign of rebellion, now it is those who refrain who have become the dissenters. ‘This refusal signals independence of mind…Once only the timid and compliant held back from sex; now it is the confident and courageous who refrain…“Bad” no longer signifies rebellion but compliance.’
Selena Ewing who authored the cutting edge magazine-style research paper Faking It (Women’s Forum Australia, 2007), revisits and elaborates on the paper’s findings about body image issues and young women.
Author and academic Dr Abigail Bray provides important commentary on photographer Bill Henson’s exhibition, exploring how labelling of critics as zealots and fanning the flames of ‘moral panic’ shut down legitimate and necessary debate.
Author of a number of books on prostitution and trafficking and recognised as a global authority on the subject, Dr Melissa Farley makes a compelling argument that ‘trained by popular western culture, girls learn to present a hypersexualised, prostitution-like version of themselves to the world.’
My long time co-worker in many projects, biologist, author and women’s health researcher Dr Renate Klein, authors an essay on how the medicalisation of girls goes hand in hand with the sexualisation of girls.
Long time women’s advocate, author and psychotherapist Dr Betty McLellan situates activism against the sexualisation of girls within the broader context of advocacy for women and girls in the women’s movement. McLellan demonstrates how off the mark it is to interpret the ‘sexual revolution’ as a great leap forward in women’s quest for equality.
Steve Biddulph, whose writings have assisted many parents in raising boys, offers personal reflections on girls and the stifling, life-sucking culture in which they are being raised: ‘In a piecemeal, cumulative way, this is invading and tarnishing girls’ vision of themselves, making it almost impossible to put together a positive and integrated sense of self.’
Tania Andrusiak, author of Adproofing Your Kids (2009), challenges all women to make changes at a personal level, especially in the way they treat each other. Tania calls for supportive alliances and friendships across the differences that women have. ‘If more women reassured each other that they had companions on this battlefield, if we decided to create a supportive sisterhood, if we chose to give each other a break and stop competing, how much easier would it be?’
Getting Real ends with the inspiring contribution of comedian and founder of Kids Free 2B Kids Julie Gale, whose appearances at events dressed as a cross between a Bratz doll/Pussycat doll/ Playboy bunny have become almost legendary. Julie shows what one woman’s activism can achieve, stirs us into action and gives us hope for change. Her chapter seemed the perfect note on which to end this collection.
This book is not only about girls. It has to be about women as well. We make no apology for that. Girls become women, and the way each is treated will have an impact on the other. It is a continuum: just as women are infantilised in pornography, little girls are adultified for male pleasure. We can’t address the sexualisation of girls in isolation. If the sexualisation of girls has become normalised, so has the sexualisation of women. Children won’t be freed from this harmful culture unless women are as well. This book calls for a re-personalisation of girls—and women—in which we recognise that all are unique and deserving of respect. The same applies to boys and men. We all need to be re-sensitised to the importance of being treated with respect and dignity.
Identifying real values, resisting dehumanisation: a new movement for women and girls
A culture obsessed with exhibitionist sexualised display and climbing as high as you can on a sexual hierarchy limits the freedom of girls to explore all the other facets of their lives. The American Psychological Association makes the vital point that ‘sexualization practices may function to keep girls
“in their place” as objects of sexual attraction and beauty, significantly limiting their free thinking and movement in the world’ (APA TSG 2007, p. 22).
Girls should be rewarded for thinking for themselves, exploring meaning and values and making a mark in the world that goes beyond the airhead cult of celebrity and fashion. They can be engineers, scientists, lawyers and politicians. They can be hairdressers, teachers, army officers, journalists and mothers. They are valued in boardrooms, universities, the media, sport, banking, disaster relief and international diplomacy. But just when it seems we have made so much progress, young women are told to let their bodies do the talking:
Shush girl shut your lips,
Do the Hellen Keller and talk with your hips
—‘Don’t Trust Me’ by 3OH!3
3OH!3 not only gets her name wrong (it’s Helen Keller). The group also seems not to care how disrespectful their song is in appropriating the name of such a heroine as Keller, a visually impaired woman who overcame many obstacles; an advocate for women and people with disabilities, a militant suffragist who not only didn’t talk with her hips, but was completely unconcerned with outward appearances.
A young artist I know who struggles with an eating disorder and exercise addiction expressed it this way: ‘I feel it’s essential that not only girls, but women, are able to identify the real values we should nurture, and the deeply dishonest images and ideas we are fed’ (personal correspondence, July 22, 2007).
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