Students
Our Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist travels across Australia helping your young people navigate a sexed-up world.
Melinda unpacks the harms of sexualisation, objectification, pornography and porn culture, explore the impacts of limited stereotypes and look at how harmful cultural messages contribute to distorted ideas about bodies, relationships and sexuality.
With the issue currently in the limelight, Melinda’s in-demand presentations have been updated to incorporate new material covering consent and respectful relationships.
Melinda's presentations will help your young people reject sexual pressure, enforce personal boundaries, act in accordance with their values and aspire to relationships based on mutual respect and empathy.
Melinda also offers presentations for staff, parents and community groups.
Get in touch with us about booking Melinda for your next event here.
Parents and Carers
Recommended resources
Raising Resilient Kids
Raising Resilient Kids is a collection of insights from some of Australia’s most celebrated experts in education and psychology including contributions from Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, Susan McLean, Melinda Tankard Reist and numerous others. It is packed with key research and practical, common-sense tips that have been proven to work.
How to talk to your kids about pornography
Exposure to pornography is inevitable. Because you care about the healthy sexual development of your child, you need to alert them to p*rn’s dangers and how they should respond if they see it. Full of practical tips, advice and discussion questions that will foster productive and meaningful conversations between you and your kids.
Good Pictures Bad Pictures
Best seller internationally, Good Pictures Bad Pictures is an illustrated book you can read with your child. For kids 5-10, this book gives children practical steps to take if they are confronted with porn on-line.
Neurosurgeon Dr Donald L Hilton, calls Good Pictures Bad Pictures a “remarkable and timely tool to teach the neuroscience of avoiding pornography addiction in a way that kids can easily understand.”
One parent described this book as “A great way to talk to children about pornography without the awkward, uncomfortable feeling.”
Order books at www.melindatankardreist.com
More info for Parents and Carers, including resources for keeping your child safe online or for reporting online illegal content can be found here.
Research
Abstract
Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research
Sexually objectifying portrayals of women are a frequent occurrence in mainstream media, raising questions about the potential impact of exposure to this content on others’ impressions of women and on women’s views of themselves. The goal of this review was to synthesize empirical investigations testing effects of media sexualization. The focus was on research published in peer-reviewed, English-language journals between 1995 and 2015. A total of 109 publications that contained 135 studies were reviewed. The findings provided consistent evidence that both laboratory exposure and regular, everyday exposure to this content are directly associated with a range of consequences, including higher levels of body dissatisfaction, greater self-objectification, greater support of sexist beliefs and of adversarial sexual beliefs, and greater tolerance of sexual violence toward women. Moreover, experimental exposure to this content leads both women and men to have a diminished view of women’s competence, morality, and humanity. Limitations with the existing research approaches and measures are discussed, and suggestions for future research directions are provided.
More research can be found here.
Porn Harms
Growing up in Pornland: Girls have had it with Porn conditioned boys
Melinda Tankard Reist is a writer, speaker and co-founder of Collective Shout. She co-edited Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global porn industry.
"[I want] better education regarding sex for both boys and girls [and] information about pornography, and the way it influences harmful sexual practices."
These are the words of Lucy, aged 15, one of 600 young Australian women and girls who took part in a just-released survey commissioned by Plan Australia and Our Watch. The survey, conducted by Ipsos, gathered responses from the girls and young women aged 15-19 in all states and territories.
In the survey report, entitled Don't send me that pic , participants reported that online sexual abuse and harassment were endemic. More than 80% said it was unacceptable for boyfriends to request naked images.
Sexual bullying and harassment are part of daily life for many girls. Young people are speaking out more and more about how these practices have links with pornography - and so they should, because they have most to lose.
Pornography is moulding and conditioning the sexual behaviours and attitudes of boys, and girls are being left without the resources to deal with these porn-saturated boys. Read full article