Collective Shout began in 2009. There was growing concern about the sexualisation of children. The Australia Institute had released two ground-breaking reports on the issue in 2006 – Corporate Paedophilia and Letting Children Be Children. Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls (Spinifex Press 2009) followed three years later in 2009. Concerned individuals were asking what could be done to address the problem.
The name ‘Collective Shout’ came about as the result of a letter MTR received from Tania Andrusiak, who had contributed a chapter to Getting Real. “This book is a collective shout against the pornification of culture”, Tania wrote. The phrase “leapt out”, prompting MTR to initiate a new movement.
She contacted some like-minded women she already knew and others just contacted her out of the woodwork asking what could be done. In their work, the women – who were authors, activists, psychologists and eating disorder clinicians – were dealing with the fallout from a culture that told girls their value was determined by their sexuality. Rather than just trying to repair the damage to girls after it was done, this group of women decided it was time to create a movement to challenge the toxic culture sexualising girls, and upon meeting together in Canberra, they founded Collective Shout.
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