Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence.

I had always wanted to be a teacher. I’ve only been in the job six months, but I’m getting out. I didn’t come to teaching to be sexually harassed every day.’ 

As her colleagues dispersed at the end of the staff professional development session I had just delivered, a young female teacher stayed behind, waiting for the others to leave before approaching me.   

She had only graduated from teacher’s college six months before, and had started out at this NSW school with high hopes. But her enthusiasm soon plummeted as she endured multiple instances of highly sexualised behaviour directed at her, such as a Year 10 boy asking her to join him in the gym’s storage room for sex. She developed anxiety and insomnia. ‘It’s taken all the enjoyment out of teaching,’ she told me. ‘I just can’t do it anymore.’ 

Since then, more female teachers have told me they were abandoning the teaching profession for similar reasons. The litany of their experiences is confronting. One was asked by a male student why she ‘loved c–k so much’. Another was told to ‘suck my d—‘, and another that she had ‘a mouth that belonged on Pornhub’. Yet another was called the ‘c’ word on many occasions. One learned she’d been ‘upskirted’ under her desk. One discovered her photo had been morphed into a deepfake porn image, and another had a fake account set up in her name offering sexual services.  

All felt powerless to stop the harmful behaviours directed towards them — let alone to protect their students from similar violations. 

It is no mystery that schools are bleeding teachers: with sexualised behaviours like those described above, increasingly routine. There is also a perceived lack of safeguarding of teachers and students most at risk, as well as a lack of appropriate response and redress. 

Harmful Sexual Behaviour (HSB) in the classroom, school grounds and on school transport  puts affected teachers and students at significant risk of negative health outcomes, including PTDS, anxiety and depression. Children and young people subjected to HSB are vulnerable to having their social and emotional development disrupted. Some parents feel they have no choice but to pull their child out of school (as in a recent case of a 12 year old girl subjected to rape ‘jokes’ and threats by boys the same age at their public Victorian High School (‘Mum’s horror at rape threat to Melbourne schoolgirls’ Herald Sun, March 13, 2025) 

The stark reality of so many schools becoming sites of abuse is laid bare in a report published late last year by Collective Shout in partnership with author and parenting educator Maggie Dent. The Sexual Harassment of Teachers (SHoT) report is an analysis of data from a national survey circulated through our networks, social media posts and email promotions. The survey was prompted by anecdotal accounts of sexual harassment Maggie and I were hearing in our engagement with schools (some of these accounts published in Eureka Street in 2022). The aim was to get an idea of the prevalence of sexual harassment in Australian schools. 

The survey went live in November 2022, and responses were collected until the survey closed in June 2023. Of 1012 respondents, 93.9 per cent were women, 5.6 per cent were men, and the remaining 0.5 per cent identified as non-binary/non-conforming or preferred not to say. Given 2023 data showing women comprise over 74 per cent of the teaching workforce (ACARA, 2023) and studies overwhelmingly demonstrating that sexual harassment disproportionately impacts women, it is unsurprising that the majority of survey respondents were women. 

Most of the survey responses reported incidents of male students engaging in inappropriate sexualised behaviours towards female teachers and female students. The teachers described being propositioned, threatened with rape, subjected to sexist slurs, demands for nudes, and mimicking of sex acts. Nearly half of respondents had also witnessed the sexual harassment of a colleague.  

Almost 80 per cent of survey respondents were seeing more sexualised behaviour in schools. Peer-to-peer sexual harassment was found to be on the rise, with two-thirds of respondents reporting having witnessed the sexual harassment of a student by another student. As well, more than half reported having received at least one disclosure from a student about being sexually harassed. 

Problematic sexualised behaviours were being observed even in primary school-aged children.The survey found that 12.7 per cent of reported sexual harassment incidents were perpetrated by students in Years 4 to 6, and 3.2 per cent were perpetrated by students in kindergarten to Year 3. Behaviours included the use of sexually explicit language and imitating sex acts seen online. One survey respondent described Years 5 and 6 students sending nudes after being continually asked to do so by their male peers, with the photos then being passed around to other boys. 

One respondent noted incidents of children showing other children pornography, making sexual noises, choking other children in the playground, and simulating sex on other children from as young as the age of 4. 

A significant number of teachers attributed increased incidents of HSB to students’ exposure to explicit imagery online. In line with research that pornography is a primary source of sexual ‘education’ for young people, survey respondents reported that students were accessing Pornhub to ‘learn about sex’, and that children were accessing pornography on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Twitter — even from their school iPad.  

Survey data revealed that sexual moaning and groaning was common. ‘Teachers reported this behaviour as one of the most frequently occurring forms of sexual harassment witnessed in their classrooms,’ the report states. Just over half of survey respondents who had been sexually harassed at school said they experienced sexual groaning noises made at them. One respondent wrote: ‘The sexualised noises are the worst because nobody seems to take it seriously! Yet my classes are constantly interrupted by moaning, groaning, choking, gagging noises.’ 

Teachers are also reporting a growing number of incidents involving deepfake image-based sexual abuse, in which faces of female teachers and students taken from social media or even official school group photos are morphed into porn using readily available AI tools and nudifying/undressing apps.  

AI is being weaponised against women and girls and acting as an accelerant to sexual harassment, intimidation and control. Sex crimes are being monetised, with boys even selling these deepfake sexual forgeries to other boys.  

Teachers were alarmed by the predatory and threatening attitudes expressed by a growing number of boys: ‘Girls in year 7 are being told by boys that they will be raped’, and ‘older boys [state] they intend to rape their future partners when they grow up.’ One teacher responded, ‘I had a student tell his girlfriend about his rape fantasies involving me. He also threatened to rape his girlfriend if she told anyone.’ 

In porn, boys see women treated with a complete lack of respect and even violence in porn, with no acknowledgement of their worth as persons but only existing to be brutalise. As Michael Coney of the UK male behaviour change organisation ‘Men At Work’ recently wrote on X: ‘Porn is the #1 form of misogynistic propaganda. It teaches boys the visual & behavioural grammar of male supremacy, with which it invites them to identify. It’s the eroticisation of power imbalance between male and female humans. Famous ‘toxic influencers’ stand on porn’s shoulders.’ (April 3, 2025) 

Such exposure contributes to normalising boys treating their female teachers and classmates with disrespect, and objectification – and rarely with empathy. In this porn-flooded ecosystem the developing sexual templates of young people are particularly vulnerable, with growing concern regarding the impacts of viewing porn on brain structure and function and, consequently, behaviour.  

Explicit sexual content also bombards young people through their social media feeds, with Big Tech utilising manipulative algorithms for clicks as  part of a larger digital culture that collectively influences youth behaviour. What many people do not realise is that social media platforms popular with young people are significant conduits of porn-themed imagery.  

The 2023 report A Lot of it is Actually Just Abuse, by the UK Children’s Commissioner, found social media was a significant site of exposure to pornography for young people, with Twitter the most likely platform followed by Instagram and Snapchat. The average age of first exposure was 13. By age 18, 79 per cent had encountered violent pornography online.  

The Wall Street Journal found content from adult sex content creators was being pushed to 13-year-olds after just three minutes of creating test accounts with an age restriction of 13. The feeds were dominated by sexualised content within 20 minutes if the sexually suggestive content was watched to the end. The study demonstrated that Instagram continues to provide children with inappropriate adult-oriented content.(in the last week I’ve reported multiple porn videos on TikTok as well). 

A report by France’s equality watchdog, the High Council for Equality between Women and Men, found 90 per cent of porn featured violence against women, with much of it amounting to torture. There is substantial evidence of an association between exposure to violent and/or misogynistic pornographic content and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours towards women. Pornography use is associated with (and predictive of) sexual aggression, teen dating violence, and experiences of sexual victimisation. 

This societal hellscape has set large numbers of boys on a trajectory into hostile and often criminal behaviours. 

Adolescent males have been identified as the cohort with the highest rate of sexual offending. (Recorded Crime – Offenders, 2018–19. Customised report. Canberra: ABS., as cited by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2020. Sexual assault in Australia. Cat. no. FDV 5. Canberra: AIHW0.  And child sexual abuse by known adolescents is now identified as the single most common category of sexual offending against children in Australia.  Mathews, B., Finkelhor, D., Pacella, R., Scott, J. G., Higgins, D. J., Meinck, F., Erskine, H. E., Thomas, H. J., Lawrence, D., Malacova, E., Haslam, D. M., & Collin-Vézina, D. (2024). Child sexual abuse by different classes and types of perpetrator: Prevalence and trends from an Australian national survey. Child Abuse & Neglect, 147, 106562). Violent pornography was identified as a factor. 

These horror findings are the outcome for a society that has failed to make child protection and women’s safety a priority. We have come too late to recognise the pathway of violence, sexual abuse, harassment and coercive control, includes the grooming and indoctrinating role of pornography. 

There are, at last, some overdue efforts being made to reverse government’s dereliction of duty. 

An age verification trial is at last underway in Australia after the Federal Government reversed an earlier decision against it. In another welcome move, a bill criminalising the creation and distribution of Image Based DeepFake Sexual Abuse (commonly referred to as ‘deepfake porn’) has been passed. The NSW Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues (which I addressed last month) is also examining the harms of pornography. Big Tech mega corporations – which have facilitated predators, groomers, sextortion, porn and the eroticisation of underage children -are being called out, with tougher restrictions likely through online safety reviews and new industry codes to be announced soon. 

Our leaders would do well to examine and adapt to the Australian context, recommendations of the independent review Creating a Safer World: the Challenge of Regulating Online Pornography, undertaken for the UK government and led by Baroness Bertin, released on 27 February. The recommendations are: 1) tackling violence against women and girls, creating a culture of positive masculinity; 2) increasing accountability and onus on platforms for harmful pornographic content; 3) protecting those most vulnerable to exploitation and harms; 4) strengthening enforcement of pornography offences; 5) future-proofing against tech-enabled harms; and 6) strengthening governance and oversight. 

In addition, respectful relationships and consent education should continue, with pornography’s role as teaching non-consent a central plank. Boy’s must be modelled healthy visions of masculinity and discouraged from being bystanders and ignoring sexual bullying and intimidation of female peers. 

Without urgent redress, we will see an escalating culture of misogyny and harmful sexual socialisation and behaviours in our schools. And female teachers will continue to make a dash to the exits.  

Melinda Tankard Reist is an author, speaker, media commentator, and Movement Director of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation. She is co-edited with Maha Melhem of the SHoT report. Melinda is working on her eighth book, No is a Complete Sentence: a boundary-setting guide for girls. 

Reprinted from Eureka Street, April 11, 2025

15k students reached, 34 Collective Shout victories, landmark sexual harassment report released, Global Impact award: my whirlwind year!

As 2024 draws to a close, I thought I’d take the time to reflect on what a remarkable year it has been. Three overseas trips (Thailand, US and Europe), collaborating with global and domestic partners, addressing international and domestic summits on sexual exploitation, violence against women, child abuse and harmful sexual behaviours, trauma and education and online safety measures to help protect children from harmful content, addressing 15,000 students in 52 schools, co-editing the landmark Sexual Harassment of Teachers [SHOT] report, achieving a record 34 victories with my Collective Shout team and receiving an award for Global Impact in Washington DC. 

It’s been full on…and a sign of the times that my work is in more demand than ever.

15,000 students, 52 schools

A significant highlight this year was engaging with 15,000 students in 52 schools.

The Catholic Schools Office of Maitland-Newcastle booked my co-presenter Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones and I for engagements in 23 of their primary and secondary schools. It was a rare opportunity to have our message multiplied system-wide.

There were many moving and memorable moments. High among them was the time spent with students at Shire Christian School. 

I worked with the Yr 10-11 girls while Marshall worked with the boys. We then combined them for two workshops. In the first they worked in small groups identifying red and green flags in relationships. In the second, the girls shared with boys the challenges of being a young woman in this world and the boys did the same.

It was deeply affecting to hear girls share with the boys their desire to be treated as more than an object, not to be judged for their bodies, and to be friends with the boys. It was also moving to hear the boys talk about loneliness, mental health issues, pressures to be tough and not show emotion. Here’s Liam sharing what they boys wanted girls to know: 

It was a time of raw vulnerability which gave me hope that change might just be possible. Here’s what Head of Secondary Peter Richardson said regarding our student sessions: 

 

On our staff PD, Mr Richardson said:

“Melinda and Marshall skilfully guided our staff in recognising the impact of harmful influences and empower us with strategies to support our students in developing respectful relationships”.

And on the parent session: 

“This was an invaluable opportunity to unite in equipping our young people to navigate complex cultural messages with confidence and wisdom. I would wholeheartedly recommend Melinda and Marshall to any school looking for inspire real change and deepen mutual understanding among students, staff, and parents.”

And here’s some responses from girls in other schools that also helped make it all worthwhile:

New offering on sexual harassment + harmful sexual behaviours

New doors opened for me this year. A major highlight was developing a partnership with lawyer and child safeguarding expert Maha Melhem of Melhem Legal & Consulting. 

Maha is a lawyer and child safeguarding expert whose advice and reform work has been relied upon by independent regulators, national inquiry and reform bodies, schools and other child and youth-serving organisations.

She is the Director and Principal Lawyer of Melhem Legal & Consulting. She established this practice following her work with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Se*ual Abuse, where she led development of some of the Royal Commission’s key recommendations for law and policy reforms across Australia.

This time last year, Maha reached out after reading the personal accounts of girls re their experience of sexual harassment in schools which I’d shared to LinkedIn. The rest is history. Maha and I developed a new offering to assist school leaders, boards, heads of wellbeing and other professionals working with young people to address a significant rise in sexual harassment/harmful sexual behaviours. 

Maha Melhem, former Royal Commissioner Robert Fitzgerald, MTR

Maha and I were interviewed about our work on the ‘Best Interests Children’s Law’ podcast recently.

And listen to our conversation with Kelly Humphries for her ‘Off the Cuff’ podcast here.

MTR, Kelly Humphries + Maha Melhem

New partnership with Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones 

Marshall and I have teamed up to reach young men who, in this pornified world, need as much help as they can get. Educator, trainer and consultant, Marshall specialises in online sexualisation education, bringing over 25 years of experience working with children, youth, and families. He earned his PhD through the Discipline of Child and Adolescent Health at Sydney University’s Medicine Faculty, focusing on effective education solutions to address the negative impacts of adolescent exposure to pornography and social media. 

Porn and Violence Against Women

I added a new keynote and workshop to my line-up, on the links between pornography and violence against women. These presentations draws from global data, my published work, along with the first-hand experiences of frontline service workers and women and girls. In them I also unpack how we can respond.

Special speaking highlights

As well as the opportunity to engage 15,000 students, other speaking highlights were: addressing the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation [CESE]Summit in Washington DC, the World Without Orphans summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand, attended by 600 delegates from 42 nations, presenting at the global Age Assurance Standards Summit, co-presenting a masterclass on Safeguarding Our Schools – Addressing and Preventing Harmful Sexual Behaviours – with Kelly Humphries and Maha Melhem at the Trauma Aware Education conference in Brisbane, addressing the Professional Development Day for Family Support Services hosted by Catholic Care Rockhampton during Queensland Child Protection Week and chairing a session at the Ai Law and Community Engagement symposium The Evolving Landscape of AI at Monash University. 

With Idah (Zimbabwe)

With Idah and Karen (India), Anu (India), Michelle (Philippines) at the World Without Orphans global summit in Thailand

(right to left) Bernadette Anderson, program manager, Leonie Wovat, program manager, Robyn Anderson, Business Support and event coordinator at the PD for family support services in Rockhampton, QLD. Darumbal Country

At the CESE Summit in Washington DC our team had the privilege of meeting UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Reem Alsalem.

Caitlin, Renee, Reem Alsalem, MTR, Coralie

I also had the opportunity to interview Ms Alsalem on her report on prostitution and violence against women.

Ask the Therapist

Another special collaboration was with my long time ally Paul Lavergne. Paul has interviewed me in the past and wrote an endorsement for Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry (2011, co-eds MTR/Abigail Bray). Paul came up with an idea for a social media series called Ask the Therapist which we launched in April. Our Q + A series has been well received. You can find it on my Instagram and TikTok accounts.

“It’s out of control…it’s insidious…it’s not okay!”: SHOT report

Collective Shout, in partnership with parenting educator and author Maggie Dent, released the Sexual Harassment of Teachers [SHOT] report which revealed widespread sexual harassment of female teachers and female students by male students. I co-edited the report with Maha Melhem. 

34 victories for Collective Shout 

Collective Shout achieved a record-busting year with 34 wins against companies who objectify and sexualise women and girls for profit. As Movement Director and co-founder, I couldn’t be more proud of my amazing team! Read about our 2024 victories here.

Global Impact Award

I was very surprised to be presented with the Global Impact award at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit’s gala dinner in Washington. I accepted it on behalf of the brilliant women I am privileged to work with every day. Pictured here with Coralie, Renee and Caitlin who were in Washington with me. 

Hiking the Camino  

I took time off in September-October to realise a long-held dream of walking the Camino pilgrimage trail from Portugal to Spain. Here I am at the end outside the Cathedral of Santiago De Compostela after walking 300 kms in 14 days. The journey was a tonic for body, mind and soul and I’m so grateful for all it gave me. 

At the end of the journey

Coming up!

Here’s my speaking schedule so far for 2025:

If you’d like to enquire about these dates or others, please email me: melinda@tankardreist.com

A new book for girls

I’ll have a new book out this year on boundary-setting for girls. It’s been coalescing in my mind for quite some time and I aim to get it out of my head and onto paper over the summer break.

Thank you to all who have partnered with me. I look forward to what we can achieve together in the year ahead. 

The ‘Best Interests Children’s Law’, podcast aims to “raise awareness about the rights and interests of children – one conversation at a time…”  Hosts are Arna Delle-Vergini, children’s law specialist and recipient of the 2023 Lawyers Weekly Women in Law award for Barrister of the Year and forensic psychologist William Wainwright.

Arna and William interviewed MTR and child safeguarding expert and lawyer Maha Melhem in their Melbourne studio and the episode went to air last week. It is described as follows:

‘Harmful sexual behaviours are considered a serious and growing concern in secondary schools. This harm can encompass a range of behaviours such as sexual harassment, assault, bullying and use of online technology to stalk, harass, groom and menace. The ongoing nature of these behaviours has catastrophic effects on those victimised and can implant and magnify attitudes and behaviours that will carry on to adulthood’. 

In the episode, we unpack widespread harmful sexual behaviours in Australian schools, explore contributing factors, and most importantly, how schools can respond. You can listen to it here and read Arna’s Linked In post about the program.

For school leaders wanting expert input on how to address these rising harmful behaviours, Maha and I have developed a specialist offering: ‘Responding effectively to harmful s*xual behaviours – what school leaders need to know’. Learn more here.  

See also: “It’s out of control…it’s insidious…it’s not okay!” Sexual Harassment of Teachers Report (published by Collective Shout/Maggie Dent. Eds Melinda Tankard Reist/Maha Melhem).

I was delighted to receive this wonderful endorsement from Shire Christian School, NSW, following a recent engagement as part of a 3-week tour across 4 states addressing students, staff, parents/community and taking part in major education, trauma and harmful se*ual behaviours conferences.

My co-presenter Dr Marshall Ballantine-Jones and I provide educators, parents and students with specialist understanding on:

• The impacts of se*ualised media, body image, mental health + relationships
• Addictions including gaming
• The impact of p*rn on the adolescent brain
• Se*tortion, AI/deepfakes, chatbots, grooming
• Negative online influencers
• Harmful se*ual behaviours
• Coercive control, red and green flags

We help young people clarify values, build respectful relationships, develop healthy habits and set boundaries.

I also have a high-level offering with child safeguarding specialist and lawyer Maha Melhem on ‘Responding effectively to harmful s*xual behaviours – what school leaders need to know’.  Maha and I co-edited the S*xual Harassment of Teachers in Schools [SHoT] report published by Collective Shout in partnership with parenting educator and author Maggie Dent recently.

You can learn more about what Maha and I offer.

To book us for your school, professional or community event in 2025 email: melinda@tankardreist.com 

Publishers: Collective Shout and Maggie Dent

Editors: Melinda Tankard Reist and Maha Melhem

A couple of years ago, we found ourselves comparing notes on the increasing accounts of sexual harassment of female teachers and students with parenting author and educator Maggie Dent. Maggie suggested we partner in a national survey, run through our networks, to get a better idea of the extent of the problem in our schools.

The results are now in and collated in our just-released ‘Teacher Sexual Harassment in Schools’ [SHoT] report. And they are deeply troubling. More than 1000 teachers responded. Almost 80% reported a rise of harmful sexual behaviours in their schools. It is our hope that these findings will act as a wake-up call to State and Federal Governments, Education Ministers and Departments, educational bodies, school leaders, parents & carers and anyone who cares about creating a safe educational environment. Teachers, and vulnerable young people, deserve nothing less.

Click here to read the full report

These are the key findings:

Prevalence of sexual harassment

According to the Sexual Harassment of Teachers Survey (SHoT survey), 46.9% of respondents have experienced sexual harassment within a school environment. 47.9% of women (93.9% of respondents) indicated that they had personally been sexually harassed. Overall, 80.6% of teachers who personally experienced sexual harassment at school, were harassed by a student. 

Respondents reported students mimicking sexual acts they had seen in pornographic content, making sexual propositions, and making rape jokes and threats.

“I had a student tell his girlfriend about his r*pe fantasies involving me. He also threatened to rape his girlfriend if she told anyone.” 

In addition to personal experience of sexual harassment, 49.1% of respondents witnessed the sexual harassment of a colleague within the school environment.

In 62.9% of these incidents, respondents reported that it was students who had engaged in the sexually harassing conduct.  

Sexually harassing behaviours appear to be perpetrated most frequently by male students, with sexual groaning, sexually suggestive gestures and sexual name calling being the most frequent forms of sexual harassment. Male students in Years 9-10 were identified by respondents as the primary aggressors in over half of all incidents reported against teachers. 

Teachers don’t feel safe

A total of 58.9% of survey respondents reported feeling unsafe in the classroom/school grounds following incidents of sexual harassment. 

“The safety of very large portions of the school community is at risk, not just physical safety but mental and emotional wellbeing.”

“[As a teacher I have] never felt so drained, mentally and emotionally, in the past two years dealing with the increase of this behaviour with no school supports in place.”   

Almost 8% of survey respondents have changed schools as a result of being sexually harassed, and close to 2% of respondents have left the teaching profession. 

Peer-to-peer sexual harassment

A total of 66.6% of survey respondents reported witnessing the sexual harassment of a student by another student. In addition, 57.4% reported receiving at least one disclosure from a student about being sexually harassed. Notably, 39.1% of teachers reported receiving between one and five disclosures from a student that they had been sexually harassed.  

Increasing reports of sexualised behaviours

A total of 79.9% of respondents reported an increase in sexualised behaviours in schools. Survey data indicates that sexual moaning has become a widespread and deeply concerning issue in schools. Respondents reported sexual noises being made at them by children as young as kindergarten to Year 3.

“Moaning is a big problem. Even ‘good’ kids are doing it to win favour with others…The moaning I’ve heard was from boys.”  

Teachers also reported an increase in Image Based Sexual Abuse (non-consensual creation, sharing or threatened sharing of nude or sexual images). 

“Students in grade 7 are coercing girls into sending child exploitation material.”  

Younger students engaging in sexual harassment  

Survey responses indicate that 12.7% of reported sexual harassment incidents were perpetrated by students in Years 4-6, and 3.2% of incidents were perpetrated by students in kindergarten to Year 3. 

“It is definitely happening at a younger age more and more!” 

“Year 5 and 6 students sending nudes after being continually asked to do so – photos then being passed around to other boys.”   

Survey respondents reported instances of children as young as Year 2 accessing and sharing pornographic content through personal devices or social media. 

Ignored, dismissed, excused: Inadequate responses

Many teachers reported that students often frame sexual harassment as “jokes” or “banter,” failing to recognise that making sexual jokes is a form of sexual harassment.

“Too many times I’ve seen male students get away with a warning for really inappropriate sexual behaviour towards female students because ‘they’re too young, just boys being boys…’”

Survey respondents emphasise the crucial role of parental involvement and proactive educational measures to address the behaviour and counter influences such as pornography and social media.  

“Parents need to acknowledge their child’s behaviour as it is by the law – sexual harassment. But they often ignore or excuse.”   

The situation is at crisis point. We have called for radical intervention, and a strong, clear, national and uniform response.

Reprinted from Collective Shout October 28, 2024

See also: Harmful sexual behaviours in schools: How should educators respond? 

Leading child safeguarding expert Maha Melhem joins MTR in staff professional development

For many years in my engagements in schools around the country, I have been privy to the accounts of vast numbers of girls who have shared with me their experience of routine sexual harassment by male peers.

These stories – relayed by girls from primary school to end of secondary – have become increasingly more concerning. They include accounts of touching, groping, being sent unsolicited dick pics, rape threats if they don’t share nudes, being subjected to sexist taunts, body judgement and daily experience of sexual moaning, groaning and sexual gestures.   
  
It is clear that much of this behaviour is an out-working of mass exposure to pornography, along with a normalisation of sexist, racist and violent behaviour across social media and gaming platforms and the malign socialisation of ‘manosphere’ influencers such as Andrew Tate.

The rise of adolescent-on-adolescent sexual abuse and the role of pornography as a contributor to attitudes which lead to abusive behaviour, is acknowledged in Australia by Our Watch and in the National Plan to Address Violence Against Women. 

The global research also acknowledges violent pornography as a factor, most recently in an analysis by leading Australian researchers in the International Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect which found “By far the most common child sexual abuse perpetrator in Australia is another under-18 known to the victim.” (See MTR Twitter thread summary).
  
Schools have a duty of care to keep students safe and to abide by legal and moral obligations to ensure an educational environment free from sexual harassment and violence. Schools are struggling to meet these obligations, and may become legally liable when students experience harm in school settings.

I have been increasingly asked to assist educators to develop their response, to prevent and ameliorate inappropriate behaviours and to assist students harmed by these behaviours.   
  
To meet this need and fill a significant gap in the education space, I am delighted to announce that lawyer and child safeguarding expert Maha Melhem will join me in high level staff professional development sessions this year.

Maha’s insights from extensive professional experience will help our clients improve responses to harmful sexual behaviour and promote the safety of students in school settings. 

Maha Melhem

Bio

Maha Melhem is a lawyer and child safeguarding expert whose advice and reform work has been relied upon by independent regulators, national inquiry and reform bodies, schools and other child and youth-serving organisations.
 
Maha is the Director and Principal Lawyer of Melhem Legal & Consulting. She established this practice following her work with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Se*ual Abuse, where she led development of some of the Royal Commission’s key recommendations for law and policy reforms across Australia.

She previously led reform work as Director of Policy and Legal for the NSW Children’s Guardian; she was a senior lawyer with the Australian Law Reform Commission on the national Family Violence Inquiry and sole in-house legal adviser for the NSW Commission for Children and Young People.

What we offer:

• A description and critique of the problem drawing from global research and first-person accounts of young people   
•  An overview of key legal obligations to respond to risks and incidents of harmful sexual behaviours in schools 
• Insights for policy and practice – protecting students from harmful sexual behaviour.   

If you’d like to know more please contact me at melinda@tankardreist.com.

See also: ‘Porn’s grooming starts young’, Melinda Tankard Reist, Eureka Street essay. ‘There are reports some students are making sexual moaning noises at school. Here’s how parents and teachers can respond’. – Daryl Higgins, Gabrielle Hunt, The Conversation, January 31, 2024

When the moaning stops: How porn is damaging young people

In July last year, Eureka Street editors asked me to join selected Australian thinkers and commentators to contribute a long-form essay on a major social issue. I chose to write on the malign impact of pornography on a generation of young people, drawing from alarming stories girls were sharing with me in schools across the country, and from the global literature. These 6000 words are a lament, yes, but go beyond that, pointing to some hopeful signs and a better path forward for our young people. While originally subscriber access only, Eureka has kindly agreed to allow me to reprint the essay in full and make it available to a wider readership.

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence.
The noise greets her the moment she walks into the classroom. The sound is guttural, a low, insistent moaning. It begins with one boy. Quickly others join in, enjoying her confusion and embarrassment when she understands the intended meaning. It is a daily sport. I first became aware of the phenomenon of sexual moaning in our institutions of learning when visiting a large public school in regional Queensland early in 2021. I asked the girls what messages they would like conveyed to their male peers.

‘Please ask the boys to stop making sexual moaning noises in class.’ This was new to me. ‘How many of you have heard boys make these noises?’ I asked. In unison, 300 girls raised their hands.

It wasn’t just in the classroom either, they told me. It was on the school bus. At weekend sport. At a party. In the line-up at Maccas. While walking down the street. Even at home, where an older brother had trained the younger in the art of sexual groaning. But this community was not an outlier.

From then on, I asked every female student in every school I was able to enter in the COVID-disrupted year that followed if they had been similarly confronted. ‘Yes, of course we hear these noises.’ ‘It’s normal.’ ‘We thought we just had to put up with it.’ They think this practice of boys simulating the noise of orgasm at any female in their midst is normal. Not unusual, not rare, not out of the ordinary, but normal.

I added ‘Please ask boys to stop making sexual moaning noises’ to other messages girls routinely asked me to relay, including:

Please ask the boys to stop telling us about the porn they watched last night. Please ask the boys to stop ranking us according to the bodies of porn stars. Please ask the boys to stop making jokes about our bodies. Please ask the boys to stop rubbing up against us in the corridors. Please ask the boys to stop sending us dick pics. Please ask the boys to stop pressuring us for nudes.

These everyday sexual affronts tell us a great deal about how entrenched the objectification of girls is. They also tell us how widespread is the callousing of our young men, the erosion of empathy, the decay of civil behaviour, and the social arson caused by mass pornography saturation.

‘These everyday sexual affronts tell us a great deal about how entrenched the objectification of girls is.’

At a NSW Christian School just before the June 2021 lockdown, girls said boys were filming themselves simulating masturbation using hand sanitiser bottles.

At a Perth public school, girls arrived on their first day back after lockdown to be greeted with photocopies of boys’ penises taped to their lockers. And the most recent story, from a regional NSW public school: boys were masturbating on the school bus in front of girls.

Choking, bruising, bondage, whipping, rape-play: p*rn-driven expectations

Exposure to pornography has been linked to an increase in in sexually aggressive behaviour and adolescent dating violence. Boys wanting to enact the signature acts of pornography on girls has also become more common. More young men expect facials (ejaculation on the face), anal, and oral sex. Debby Herbenick, a leading sex researcher at Indiana University, advises students, ‘If you’re with somebody for the first time, don’t choke them, don’t ejaculate on their face, don’t try to have anal sex with them. These are all things that are just unlikely to go over well.’

More girls tell me boys expect to choke them: ‘He put his hands around my neck without even asking.’ Young women experience fear and some suffer injuries after young men carry out porn-inspired sex acts on them, including anal sex and strangulation. Strangulation is not ‘kink’; it is a red flag for homicide and should be treated as such.

A UK study found that girls were being coerced into anal sex they didn’t want and found painful. The main reason they gave for engaging in the act was that boys ‘wanted to copy what they saw in pornography’.

‘If I have a girlfriend, do I need to strangle her when I have sex with her?’ queried a boy, as recorded in a 2016 report by UK Labour MP Sarah Champion titled Dare2Care: national action plan for preventing child abuse and violence in teenage relationships.

Allison Pearson wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about a conversation she had over dinner: ‘A GP, let’s call her Sue, said: “I’m afraid things are much worse than people suspect.” In recent years, Sue had treated growing numbers of teenage girls with internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex; not, as Sue found out, because they wanted to, or because they enjoyed it, but because a boy expected them to.’

And yet Teen Vogue has published an anal sex guide for teens, further normalising the practice.

These porn-inspired behaviours spill over into TikTok. ‘KinkTok’, a popular genre within TikTok, has 6.2 billion views on a platform where more than 30 per cent of users are minors. There you will find teens promoting choking, whipping, bondage, sadism and submission. A 15-year-old is depicted fantasising about being choked. Many girls present themselves covered in bruises from rough sex. Growing in popularity is the ‘consensual/non-consensual’ (con-non-con) genre, also known as ‘rape play’.

Our Watch, Australia’s peak body addressing violence against women, notes the concerns of young people themselves in their background paper Pornography, young people, and preventing violence against women, including: ‘that pornography could create uncertainty and demands around sexual relationships from their male peers and partners’ and ‘that young men may pressure young girls to perform unwanted, degrading, painful or violating sexual acts that they have seen in pornography’. As one 17-year-old female observed: ‘I am worried about the effect porn has on boys my age i.e. the expectations they will place on me and other women as a result of viewing porn.’

Girls are expected to provide sex acts for tokens of affection. Asked, ‘How do you know a guy likes you?’, a Year 8 female student replied: ‘He still wants to talk to you after you suck him off.’ A male high school student said to a girl: ‘If you suck my dick I’ll give you a kiss.’

Young women are saying yes when they mean no — what Katherine Kersten in the Star Tribune describes as ‘the default of the yes’. They don’t want to appear inexperienced or unwilling or anything other than ‘sex positive’, even when it means compliance with degrading acts that leave them feeling cold and used.

The culture around young women tells them that depersonalised, hurtful sex is actually hot and this is what empowerment looks like, so you really should be up for it and if you’re not, there is something wrong with you.

The ubiquity of porn also leads to girls being classified based on how they compare, which is taking a toll on their mental health. UK author, journalist and mental health advocate Rachel Kelly writes:

While both sexes have ready access to pornography, girls tend to be more objectified by it. Studies suggest that porn use can reduce the capacity for intimacy, feed body shame or encourage coercion into unwanted sexual acts. According to [David] James [deputy head of Lady Eleanor Holles, a private girls’ school in south-west London], ‘Girls are objectified and classified more quickly and publicly than ever before.’

The behaviours described should not surprise us. They are the inevitable outcome of a generation of young people having grown up alongside the global commodification of sexuality: coming-of-age in a society in which the sex industry, harnessed to aggressive consumerism, has popularised the selling of female flesh.

P*rn’s grooming starts young

Parents and carers share with me distressing stories that demonstrate the gangrenous impact of porn on children, and how it influences children’s ideas of sexuality. One mother writes a harrowing account about how her child’s life unravelled after being exposed to porn from the age of eight. I’m told of children inappropriately touching other children, using sexual language, playing ‘sex games’, requesting sexual favours:

‘My 10-year-old granddaughter was approached by a boy while waiting for the school bus and asked, “do you do arse?”’ 

‘My eight-year-old found a note in her school bag which read, “Ready for sex?”’

‘An eight-year-old boy told my eight-year-old girl he wanted to “f**k you hard”’

‘A 10 year-old boy told my 10-year-old daughter that he was going to break in and rape her.’

‘My daughter was sexually assaulted at her primary school, aged six, in a four-month campaign of violence by six boys in her class and the year above. They called her a bitch, hit, punched, kicked and pushed her over as well as touching her genitals to frighten her. The school called it rough play — I wonder where all the men got the idea that sexist terrorism was play?’

In a chilling submission to the 2016 Senate Inquiry into the harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the internet, the late Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs AO drew links between pornography and child sexual abuse, paedophilia and child-on-child sexual abuse. She cites evidence of a four-year-old boy requiring a chaperone to stop him assaulting other children in ‘sex games’ at a South Australian kindergarten, a six-year-old boy who forced oral sex on boys in the school cubbyhouse, and a group of boys who followed a five-year-old girl into the toilets, held her down and urinated on her in a ‘golden shower’.

Heidi Olsen, a US sexual assault nurse at a children’s hospital in Kansas City, echoes Professor Briggs’ findings regarding child-on-child sexual abuse. The most common group of perpetrators of sexual assaults that she sees is children aged 11 to 15 years old. ‘These kids aren’t even old enough to drive. Yet they are committing the most sexual assaults in our region.’  

When Olsen looked through past records, she found hundreds of child sexual assaults that had been perpetrated by another child. She notes that pornography was often the main or only factor that influenced a child to act out in a sexually harmful way.

‘To compound the issue,’ she writes, ‘we live in a culture that continuously normalises pornography and refuses to acknowledge the ugly truth that it fuels sexual assault and rape culture … I see kids who think that anal and oral sex are normal before you’ve even gone through puberty. I come face-to-face with stories about kids who do not listen when a victim repeatedly tells them “No!” Why? Because they’ve seen the violence, the strangulation, the slapping, the name-calling of women a thousand times in pornography and they think that it is “normal”.’

The situation is similar in the UK, according to the findings of a study conducted at Middlesex University: the extensive survey of 11–16-year-olds regarding online pornography found that some of the children’s approach to sex was informed by pornographic scenes, with 21 per cent of the 11- to 12-year-olds and 39 per cent of the 13- to 14-year-olds saying they wanted to emulate the behaviour they had seen.

‘This mass, industrial-level grooming of our young is causing lasting damage to their social and sexual development and leading to even more women and girls being viewed as less human.’ 

A 13-year-old boy quoted in the report said: ‘One of my friends has started treating women like he sees on the videos – not major – just a slap here or there.’ And a girl the same age observed: ‘It can make a boy not look for love, just look for sex, and it can pressure us girls to act and look and behave in a certain way before we might be ready for it.’

And in this Australian qualitative study, workers on the frontline observed a strong link between pornography and harmful sexual behaviour in children: ‘from a young age they’ve accessed pornography … and they’re exposed to this idea that sex and aggression [are] linked and … that you don’t necessarily need consent, and that “no” might mean “try harder”.’

This mass, industrial-level grooming of our young is causing lasting damage to their social and sexual development and leading to even more women and girls being viewed as ‘less human’ and ‘more object’; undoubtedly, it will see more reports of sexually motivated crimes involving young men.

Breeding a generation of sociopaths: women as sex objects, sexual playthings, and rape myth acceptance

Pornography inhibits men from integrating empathy with their sexuality, resulting in the socialisation of a generation of sexual sociopaths. – Benjamin Nolot[1]

Terry Schilling observed in First Things that ‘a 13-year-old with a smartphone in 2019 has greater access to porno­graphy than the most depraved deviant could have dreamed possible two decades ago.’

The 2020 Our Watch report Pornography, young people, and preventing violence against women highlights frequent depictions of violence and stereotypical representations of men and women in pornography:

Studies have highlighted the high frequency of specific violent behaviours, largely directed at women, including gagging and verbally abusive language, and the more generally prevalent portrayal of male dominance and female submission … research suggests greater pornography use is associated with less progressive attitudes about gender roles, a belief that women are sex objects, and rape myth acceptance.

 An alarming account from the frontlines was relayed to me by Di McLeod, Director of the Gold Coast Centre Against Sexual Violence:

In the past few years, we have had a huge increase in intimate partner rape of women from 14 to 80+. The biggest common denominator is consumption of porn by the offender. With offenders not able to differentiate between fantasy and reality, believing women are ‘up for it’ 24/7, ascribing to the myth that ‘no means yes and yes means anal,’ oblivious to injuries caused and never ever considering consent. We have seen a huge increase in deprivation of liberty, physical injuries, torture, drugging, filming and sharing footage without consent.

Research shows a clear difference between adolescent male sex offenders and their non-offending peers: early exposure to porn. A meta-analysis involving 59 studies and 17,000 adolescents found that those who offended were significantly more likely to have had early exposure to pornography. And a study of 4564 young people aged 14 to 17 in five European countries found a significant association between boys’ regular viewing of pornography and perpetration of sexual abuse and coercion.

The number of sexual offences recorded in the Republic of Ireland has almost doubled since 2003, with most of this increase occurring in the past three years. In 2016, one in five rapes in Ireland was committed by a juvenile. Authorities are linking the increase in sexual violence to porn consumption. Eileen Finnegan is the clinical director of One in Four, a national organisation counselling sex crime victims and also treating offenders, all of whom had begun offending by 10 or 11 years of age. They developed what Finnegan calls ‘a deviant interest’ in sexual violence. ‘The escalation is astonishing,’ she says of the rise of rape porn and its access by children.

The long-term impacts of porn-as-sexual-training-wheels have been occupying my mind. The boy who makes sexual moaning noises at girls and doesn’t get pulled up for it. The boy who sexually harasses them in the school yard and never gets called out. The boy who shares his cache of female student nudes (many underage) and is rewarded with the back slapping of his mates. The entitled boy, never penalised — in fact enabled and covered for by apologists everywhere — is then let loose upon the world. Perhaps he ends up in law enforcement as a police officer or judge. If he has absorbed the rape myth that no means yes, and then ends up presiding over a rape trial, how will he judge fairly? Is this the reason we see over and over suspended sentences, community service orders, and minimal sentences applied to men who assault women and girls and create, consume and distribute child sexploitation material?

I fear we have allowed a diminishing of the seriousness of these crimes — and a significant reason is because porn conditioning transforms the criminal debasing of the female body into extreme pleasure.

Talk dirty: The pornification of consent education

Millions in Federal Government funding is being thrown at the development of consent and ‘respectful relationships’ programs. Of course, we are all desperate for something to be done following Chanel Contos’s collection of 6,756 testimonials of sexual assault, unwanted sex, and coercion shared by female students and the subsequent campaign to ‘Teach us Consent’.

But early indications are that a number of the emerging groups ‘educating’ on these issues will only make matters worse. One prominent group shared on Instagram its advice to purchase a ‘sex worker’ to practice on, experiment with sex toys and ‘sexual furniture’, role play, swinging, group sex, sexting (‘fun’) and ‘talking dirty’ during sex.

A large all-male troupe (claiming to “empower boys to become great men”) engaged a male porn performer – in an industry renowned for eroticising the denial of consent – to make a video for boys on consent.

Links to his pages (which include the performer on porn sets) were provided. Making its way around boy schools, including Catholic schools, this group also features a presenter who photographs himself in porn-style poses on his Instagram, semi-naked, lying face down on a bed with his bum exposed, fantasising about being watched through his window and taking selfies in bulging high cut jocks with the wording ‘delivery for I.C. Wiener??’

How does promoting a male porn performer, providing links to pages which will take boys to porn, and providing links to a presenter’s Instagram account where he poses semi-naked and fantasising about voyeurs peeking through his window ‘provide boys with the critical emotional and social skills they need to lead flourishing lives for themselves, their relationships and their communities?’

And in Victoria, primary school children are being taught how to engaging in sexting ‘safely’ and to ask permission before sending other children sexually explicit images.  

In a March 2022 tweet, Professor Alan McKee, a pro-porn academic, asked ‘What’s the best porn for young people?’ His advice is found on the Sex School hub, which offers ‘a carefully curated selection of independent porn films that are worth watching’, along with tutorials on BDSM, ‘Squirting’ and porn. While the site is for supposedly for over-18’s, Sex School hub is easily accessible to any student. McKee talks about ‘healthy’ or ‘ethical’ porn. But there is no way to make porn ‘ethical’ or ‘feminist’, as my colleague Caitlin Roper explains.

We are teaching young people how to avail themselves of the sex industry, generate their own porn and share it, tie each other up, inflict pain, consume porn and talk dirty as pleasurable constituent elements of enjoying sexuality.

Talk dirty.

There’s no sweet talk, no love letters (texts), no sensual touching, no intimate whispering. No slow burn, no gradual unfolding, no emotional investment, no beauty, no transcendence.

The young man who has never known the sweetness of holding the hand of a girl he likes is instead trained to use his hands to whip her, to wrap around her neck, to put her own hands in handcuffs. The exquisite sensation of the first brush of one hand against another is replaced with detached cruelty. Girls are reduced to porn fantasy sex props and treated with sexualised contempt. They are expected to acquiesce to cultural expectations formed by pornography — and when they do, it’s called ‘consent’.

If boys don’t experience girls as human, if they are socialised by what I have elsewhere labelled ‘the world’s largest department of education’ to be without inhibition and predatory in their sexual behaviours, how does even the best consent education program stand a chance?[2]

And, given this, how do they learn about the meaning, purpose, and ethics of sex? As Angela Franks writes: ‘Without a sense of a true good in relationships we don’t know to what we should consent.’[3]

Away from intimacy and tenderness

In their 2013 paper ‘Pornography and the male sexual script’, Chyng Sun and colleagues describe the nature of most porn: ‘with online mainstream pornography overwhelmingly centered on acts of violence and degradation toward women, the sexual behaviours exemplified in pornography skew away from intimacy and tenderness and typify patriarchal constructions of masculinity and femininity.’

What does it mean to skew most of a generation away from intimacy and tenderness and towards a woman-as-masturbatory-aid model? It means any woman is up for grabs, the subject of casual dehumanisation by men indoctrinated with a power-over-pornographic-vision of entitlement. And it makes consent a mere hurdle to get over. As Emma Pitman observed in a 2018 essay in Meanjin:

The prioritising of dominance means that these men are always taking, but never receiving; they are always exerting, but never engaging. Mutuality is not welcome. At worse, consent is not only irrelevant, but actually runs counter to their objective. Uncurbed entitlement precludes them from the emotional intimacy that comes from shared vulnerability. Objectification thrives where empathy is lacking; the two cannot comfortably co-exist.

Because of porn-created malformed desires, ejaculation trumps (fun-killing) empathy every time. This leaching of empathy leads to the trivialising of relationships, to disposable connections, and to the development of a class of automatons robbed of loving intimate experiences, including the incomparable sensuality of skin-on-skin contact. Preferring techno seclusion with inanimate screens, they become aroused when walking to a room and seeing their laptop open and always ready. Says Gabe Deem, activist at Reboot Nation:

When we become sexually aroused or have a sexual thought, we crave a screen, we crave novelty, we crave a shock, something new, something we can keep clicking on. But when we’re with a real partner, you see her once, there’s no novelty, there’s nothing new, and your body hasn’t been trained for skin-on-skin contact, it’s been trained for hand-on-keyboard contact.[4]

I explore the impact on real-world partners in my forthcoming book, He Chose Porn Over Me: Women Harmed By Men Who Use Porn, published by Spinifex Press this month. From the introduction:

The women — and, for those who were mothers, their children — were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy. Sex became mechanical. ‘We only ever had porn style sex, we never made love,’ writes Maggie. Respect, connection, and love — the bindings that keep a relationship intact — unravelled. Porn colonised their union, their families and homes, and seeped into every aspect of their lives, leaving women rejected and scarred and knowing they were being compared to other women and would never match up.

The 25 personal accounts painfully illustrate Robert Jensen’s critique in his book The End of Patriarchy: ‘If we look honestly at pornography, we see a world in which empathy and compassion — the emotions that make stable, decent human communities possible — are overwhelmed by a self-centered, emotionally detached pleasure-seeking.’[5]

The time is surely overdue for a cultural reckoning.

It is now the most vitally important thing for all of us, however we may be concerned with our society, to try to arrive at a clear, cogent statement of our ills, so that we may begin to correct them. – Thomas Merton

How do we reverse this loss? How do we rescue humanity’s soul from this poisonous pornified ecosystem, resist atomisation, build healthy human bonds and create a society in which all can flourish?

The welfare of the community must come before vested interests

I hope this essay has made it clear that we cannot leave the sexual formation of the young in the hands of the global pornography industry. It is an unfair battle, with struggling parents pitched against the might of a multi-billion-dollar industry. The porn industry must be reined in.

Fortunately, MindGeek, parent company of PornHub, was hauled before the Canadian Parliament’s ethics committee last year to account for allowing trafficking, rape videos, non-consensual image sharing and content involving minors to be posted on its platform. Moves are afoot for criminal investigations and multiple civil lawsuits are being filed by victims. As a result of a global campaign, Mastercard stopped processing Pornhub transactions.

‘We have an entire generation exposed to this material really in the absence of any government or industry regulation.’

We need government regulation. As Professor Michael Salter from the University of NSW has said: ‘It is well past time we had a serious conversation about regulation around adult content; we have age verification for online gambling sites — there’s no reason why this should not be applied to adult content sites as well. Basically, we have an entire generation exposed to this material really in the absence of any government or industry regulation.’

The Federal Government in 2021 committed to proof-of-age protections as one obstacle in the way of children accessing porn sites. It instructed the eSafety Commission to come up with a roadmap for the rollout of an age-verification system. The Commission is to report by the end of the year. The new government must not allow this process to be derailed by vested interests who desire zero regulation of the internet. Those selling access to pornography will always oppose legislation that in any way limits it.

Researchers Keen, France and Kramer note that neoliberal policies that favour the interests of corporate players ‘may be too optimistic, if not naïve’. Australian and UK internet service provider companies have resisted regulatory practices, as this conflicts with their corporate objective to ‘sell access’; restrictive policies that would limit children’s Internet use would ultimately affect their bottom lines.

Deradicalising boys and a porn-critical insurgency

Men and boys are experiencing ‘moral injury’ caused by participation in gravely unethical behaviour. My colleague James (not his real name), a research scientist at Oxford, has written profoundly about the need to deradicalise boys from porn. After being exposed to porn aged 11 and following decades of consumption, he ‘stopped seeing women as human beings’. Immersion in dehumanising online subcultures resulted in ‘a radicalisation behind laptop screens and smartphones that preaches the objectification, dehumanisation and hatred of women and normalises sexual harassment, rape and child abuse.’

James said he needed to rebuild his sense of morality in order to ‘return to thinking that abuse is wrong and should be condemned and stopped, not something you masturbate to. I had to re-learn empathy. I had to start seeing women as human beings again and not just living sex dolls.’

Growing numbers of men like James are speaking out against porn’s toxic scripts.

Another sign of hope is that young people themselves express a desire for something better. They know this culture is making them sick, leading to disharmony and wounding, a hatred of self and hatred of life. They are seeking emotional and community connections. I see more teen girls, recognising the damage the porn experiment has inflicted on them, now refusing to play its game. They are acting personally and politically.

A young woman, Tylor Jean, tweeted last year: ‘Why am I supposed to empower myself as a girl by “reclaiming” everything misogynistic and degrading and pornified … I’d rather “reclaim” my rightful dignity, and humanity IMAO omg’

And more young women are contacting me to say: We stood up for ourselves! We called the boys out for moaning at us and now they’ve stopped doing it!

Growing numbers of the new generation are signing up to activist movements campaigning against porn and rape culture, including Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation, the movement I founded with friends more than a decade ago. It is wonderful to witness. Where we, the adults, have failed them, perhaps it is they who will turn this mess around.

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Melinda Tankard Reist is a writer, speaker and Movement Director of Collective Shout. Her seventh book, He Chose Porn Over Me is available now.

[1] Benjamin Nolot is an American filmmaker and founder of Exodus Cry, a Christian social activist group focussed on the issue of human trafficking

[2] See also Sophie Shead (13 Apr 2022), ‘Sexual assault is not a crime of ignorance: Why consent education does not address the real problem’ https://www.abc.net.au/religion/sophie-shead-sexual-assault-is-not-a-crime-of-ignorance/13838672, and Emma Wood (16 Mar 2021), ‘The significance of sex — can it be recovered through consent alone?’ https://www.abc.net.au/religion/consent-and-the-sex-dilemma/13253782

[3] See also Emma Wood (16 Mar 2021), ‘The significance of sex – can it be recovered through consent alone?’ https://www.abc.net.au/religion/consent-and-the-sex-dilemma/13253782

[4] Hamdija Begovic (2019), Pornography induced erectile dysfunction among young men. Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence, 4(1): article 5.

[5] Robert Jensen (2017), The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men. Spinifex Press, p 161.

Robert Jensen launches book, contributors speak of trauma – and rebuilding

My new book ‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’: Women Harmed By Men Who Use P*rn was launched into the world at a global online event last Tuesday.

American author, speaker and activist, Robert Jensen, launched my seventh title (and sixth with Spinifex Press). I spoke also, joined by four of the book’s contributors – Serena, Carla, Tash and Sarah McDugal.

‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’: Women Harmed by Men Who Use P*rn shatters the popular myth that p*rn is harmless. Personal accounts of 25 brave women reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their p*rn-consuming partners.

Dr. Gail Dines, Professor Emerita of Sociology, President of Culture Reframed, said she couldn’t put it down! “Occasionally a book comes along that changes the way we think about the world. ‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’: Women Harmed by Men Who Use P*rn is such a book. Reading the stories of women whose partners chose p*rn is both heartbreaking and enraging, and can no longer be ignored”, she wrote in an endorsement.

It’s a great pleasure to be here with you all to launch ‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’ into the world.

All my gratitude to the contributors – some of who have joined us today – including Serena, Carla, Tash and Sarah who will say a few words.

It has been a privilege to bring your experiences to light, thank you for your bravery, honesty, vulnerability and strength. As Robert says in his endorsement, your stories will be a lifeline to other women.

To my publisher – Spinifex Press – whose imprint now appears on six of my seven titles – thank you Renate and Susan so much for believing in this book – and getting it into print in record time! I am so fortunate that I have this brave, independent feminist publisher willing to put my words between covers and send them forth into the world!

To Robert Jensen who I first met at the Sydney Writer’s Festival a number of years ago. Thank you for your remarkable support and for endorsing and launching our book today. Your enthusiasm and passion for our cause means so much. Your line a few moments ago “This is a book saturated in women’s pain” is the perfect description.

And to the other endorsees – Gail Dines, Sheila Jeffreys, Paul Lavergne, Steve Bidduph and Anna McGahan. What you all wrote blew me away.

Caroline Norma’s excessive generosity to me has meant so much over many years. This book has benefited from her insight and wisdom and I’m delighted she’s called in from Japan to be here today.

Sarah McDugal is here too from Tennessee: Sarah came into my life at the perfect time – I’d come across her blog post re where you might end up if you marry a compulsive p*rn user – her line “Why choose to walk into hell?” is the title of her piece in our book. Sarah you’ve been an amazing support and sounding board through the process. The resource section also benefitted from Sarah’s significant input.

Special thanks also to Tash whose experience and insight also benefitted our book.

Paul Lavergne – with us today from Canada, – has been unwavering in his support of my work for a number of years. As a therapist working in the field, Paul provided invaluable advice. Look out for our ‘Ask the therapist’ podcast in the New Year!

To my Collective Shout team – Caitlin, Renee, Lyn, and Melinda L (who has been on leave) your love and loyalty sustains me daily. And to family and dear friends for upholding me through another book journey.

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‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’ came to fruition as a result of a Facebook post late last year.

A young woman had called off her wedding in the same week she discovered her fiancé was a habitual p*rn user.

Women commented: “I wish I’d called off my marriage!”, “I wish I’d seen the warning signs!”, “I wish I’d heard the advice: “Don’t date men who use p*rn!”.

I shared extracts of accounts they began sending me, resulting in more stories.

In a short time I had more than enough stories for a book. And now, here it is.

This collection gives us an inside look into the lived experiences of women in relationships with habitual p*rn-consuming men.

It strips away the dominant narrative about p*rn being not only harmless but a benefit to relationships and society. The PR spin of the global multi-billion dollar industry is ripped to shreds in this book.

The personal devastation – brokenness, abandonment, emotional turmoil, trauma is laid bare.

The 25 women in this book were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for p*rn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Felt inadequate, devalued, not able to compete, never good enough.

P*rn colonised their union, their families and homes, seeped into every aspect of their lives, leaving women rejected and scarred.

P*rn consumption changed the way their partner acted towards them.

“He used me like a blow up doll” writes Florence.

Women told of a total lack of respect for their boundaries, an overblown sense of entitlement, expectations that they would provide sex-on-demand, and participate in sex acts they found degrading and demeaning. The man’s gratification triumphed empathy every time.

Women described having to replicate the performance of women in the porn industry, with their partners expecting a ‘p*rn star experience’.

The women could tell when their partners were using p*rn or having a ‘relapse’, because the nature of the sex changed. “It was amazing how his behaviour changed when he was watching prn compared to when he was not watching it,” writes Maggie. “I knew when he had had a lapse before he even told me.”

It is difficult to refuse sex when in a relationship with a man saturated in p*rn experiences. In p*rn, women are up for it 24/7. And refusal is just another p*rn genre called ‘forced’ or ‘violated’ (Tankard Reist, 2021).

Forcing compliance was a standard component of the men’s sexual repertoire. Madeleine told me: “He would emotionally abuse me for saying no” (pers. com., 16 January 2022). And Kate wrote in this book: “After being forced to perform sexual tasks for his own pleasure, I would lie in bed and cry silently.”

Men asserted their sexual ownership over their partners. Women were subjected to what was essentially sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by p*rn, were intoxicated by sexualised power.

Some women made the stomach-churning discovery of child sexual exploitation material on their partner’s computer.

‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’ situates p*rn as a significant element in the perpetration of domestic abuse. The men in this book carried out physical, mental, financial, verbal, emotional and spiritual violence.

The p*rn the men were consuming translated into sexual and emotional abuse, and coercive control of their partners.[i]

Some women described near death experiences from p*rn-inspired sex acts, in particular choking (a red flag for homicide). A number of women were raped by their partners. One passed out after being choked during sex; another described being unable to breathe when he put his full weight on her and pressed her face into the pillow. Two women were pressured into sex shortly after the birth of a child, with one suffering the agony of torn stitches as a result.

‘He Chose P*rn Over Me’ is intended as a warning to young women: Why choose to walk into hell? (in the words of Sarah McDugal).

It’s for women drowning in self-blame; the women who think there is something wrong with them for feeling repulsed when men want to act out their violent fantasies on their bodies. And for the women who know, deep down, it’s not meant to be like this.

It is also a permission-giving book: women should not have to sacrifice their lives for a man who shows no desire to choose her over p*rn – who has allowed the erosion of his humanity and become a patron of a global industry built on the bodies of women and girls.

You should not be expected to sacrifice the rest of your life to a p*rn-twisted man who loves his p*rn more than he loves you.

The women who tell their distressing stories are now rebuilding and reclaiming their lives.

And they want their experiences to be of help to other women. They have generously offered their advice, in the hope that lessons can be learned – that relationships with men hooked up to p*rnography’s misogyny drip system will not lead to happiness and flourishing

I hope this book will help women demand higher standards in relationships, be more discerning, recognise the signs, and turn away from men who consume p*rn. And that, more broadly, individuals who value intimacy, connection, mutuality, empathy and compassion to quote Robert (as I do at the end of the book), “the emotions that make stable, decent human communities possible” (Jensen, 2007, p. 161) – will endeavour to protect these essential qualities from being devoured by the global p*rn industry.

You can order the book here.

(Please note that we can only accept Australian orders. All international orders should be made through Spinifex Press)

Schools must act urgently to address routine sexual harassment of female students and teachers

It was one year ago during a student workshop in Kingaroy, QLD, that Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist first learned of a growing trend in classroom sexual harassment – girls being subjected to sexual moaning, groaning and grunting noises by their male classmates. Without exception, everywhere MTR has travelled since, girls are reporting these same experiences.
 
But the sexual moaning by boys in class doesn’t just impact female students – it creates a hostile and unsafe environment for female teachers, too. MTR wrote about the issue again more recently, sharing the notes student Katie wrote on her hand during her talk. 

In the last couple of weeks I have also had female teachers approach me in tears, describing what it feels like to be greeted by these orgasm noises every time they enter the classroom. Sometimes the panting noises are played from porn videos through their devices. These teachers say they feel helpless, disempowered to stop it. One said she thought if she ignored it, it would go away. “I didn’t want to encourage them by reacting”, she said. “How is that working for you,” I asked. Not well, she admitted.

Teachers – or would be teachers-  also responded in comments on this page. One wrote:
“From a teacher’s perspective, it is also done to intimidate and make female staff uncomfortable as well. Has been a huge issue since last year in particular. Some male students also play sound grabs on their laptops during class time to cause upset and disruption as well. It is horrendous to experience as a grown woman, I can only imagine the awfulness my female students would experience as well.”

And another who feel safer staying in the construction industry than retraining as a teacher commented:

“So awful that teachers have to deal with that on top of everything else! I’m about to decide on a commitment to retrain as a teacher but hearing this has really put me off. I really wouldn’t be able to deal with this behaviour. I can’t in any way see an acceptable means to address that in my classroom if this happened. I thought leaving a construction industry (dominated by male egos, gender pay gaps & gendered promotions) would mean my dignity and sexual harassment would be less of an issue. I don’t think I could avoid reacting and be extremely triggered by such behaviour and want to put those kids well in their place after basically threatening and offending every other student in the class. I’d feel helpless in protecting others rights and mine. I really hope there are measures in place for these situations…”

Given this moaning phenomenon – fuelled by porn and porn culture – has reached saturation point, I believe the time has come for consequences. Schools have a legal duty of care to provide a safe educational environment for students. As workplaces, they have a similar duty of care to teachers.

The response to MTR’s post was overwhelming. Countless parents and female teachers weighed in on their experiences with boys’ sexual moaning and their struggles to address it. One mother wrote,

“My children (Year 7 & Year 4) have been telling me about this happening in their classes and on the school bus. It’s very upsetting for them and it seems it just gets ignored.”
 
Inappropriate behaviour was coming from younger and younger boys.

It’s not just high school, I’ve heard the noises from boys in year 4.

Yep me too. Grade 3

I teach year 2 and 3 and my boys do it. I find it so disturbing every single time I hear it. It makes my skin crawl.

The boys in my daughter’s year 6 class do this all the time. It also used to happen in her year 5 class. I hate seeing how upset and uncomfortable she is when she tells me about it.

My daughter came home and said the boys have been doing it recently, grade 4!

Many of the boys making these noises apparently don’t understand what they mean, or why it is inappropriate.

My son is year 4 and he makes these noises. Many of his friends do it, which is where he got it from. Initially they had no idea what it was, just that they’d heard it from older kids and that people laugh when they do it.

My son has started making these noises from last year (yr 5). He has heard it in his classroom for the past year, I asked him if he knows what it means and he said no buy all the boys do it. It’s disgusting and makes me incredibly uncomfortable, I can only imagine how his 3 female teachers feel.

My students are always on TikTok which means they’re consuming media which is in no way age appropriate and they don’t understand that. They’re just copying a trend as far as they’re concerned.

Sexual harassment in class: a regular occurrence

Many female teachers described their experiences of being sexually moaned at in the classroom.

As a younger female teacher I have experienced this multiple times.

I work as a relief teacher only (not a full time classroom teacher), but am in middle and high school classrooms and I’ve experienced this so many times. Especially with year 7 and 8 boys. It is so extremely uncomfortable and I think the parents of these boys would be horrified if they actually saw the types of behaviours.

In addition to sexual moaning, a number of female teachers described regular sexual harassment in the classroom, including wolf whistling, inappropriate sexual comments, boys playing porn on their devices, masturbating, and being propositioned by male students.

I’ve dealt with male teen students who secretly play porn noises out loud from their phones or laptops, to disrupt the class. They play the female fake orgasm noises – it causes great discomfort for female students, but the girls are learning to grin and bear it

My son’s class (year 5) has been dealing with the same 2 children in various ‘sexual’ manners for almost 2 years, including groaning, gyrating, jokes and comments. This all came to a head last week when it involved asking the girls to “knock knock, suck on my…” among other more vulgar requests, including one girl (10) asking her mum what c*m is. In our school, I find it is the lack of seriousness the parents of the children take that makes the problem fester. To have my own son (9) come home and say to me “put my balls in your mouth” while grabbing his pants broke my heart. Schools are powerless when parents don’t take this seriously enough. 9 and 10 year old girls shouldn’t be sitting through ’empowerment’ sessions about sexual harassment.

Schools failing to address rampant sexual harassment

Many parents and female teachers reported that schools were not taking appropriate action to address sexual harassment of girls and teachers.
 
One mother recounted how her year 6 daughter was targeted by a group of boys who would moan in her ear, leaving her distressed. When her daughter told teachers that it made her uncomfortable they told her to ignore it. One teacher told the girl’s mother “Your daughter can also be flirtatious.”
 
Some schools were essentially enabling the sexual harassment of female teachers and students by dismissing their complaints and portraying the behaviour as “normal”.
 
After a boy in her year 6 class began humping the floor and moaning, one teacher was told by the Deputy Principal this behaviour was “age appropriate” and “normal” and that she should expect this kind of “smutty” behaviour because boys will be boys:

It infuriated me that the behaviour was considered “normal” and was thus not dealt with by leadership but I thought at least I was setting an example for the remaining students in the class that this behaviour was inappropriate and would not be tolerated in my presence … In my opinion, we’ve done these young boys a huge disservice by not addressing and redirecting these behaviours.

Eventually, the teacher left her job.

Some female teachers said when they reported sexual harassment to management, they were dismissed, not believed, or even blamed. 

“As a student teacher I was propositioned by a male student in the courtyard as I walked to class. The student was promptly suspended. However, in many places, male students openly disrespect female staff. When it is reported, oftentimes the male lead teacher will make the comment, ‘I never have this problem with this student’. They believe that female teachers are incompetent or we make this stuff up.”

“I’ve been sexually assaulted by two male students, one in grade 10 and one in grade 11 in my second year of teaching (I was 25). It was an awful experience and I didn’t feel supported by the all-male leadership team at all. If I had the experience I do now I would have taken it a lot further.”

“Worse still when you report this, you are questioned on what you report. You are questioned on your integrity. You are questioned as if maybe you have misinterpreted what you have heard. The boys blatantly lie, and you are questioned as if you made it up.”

“Having been in this industry for 20+ yrs, I can honestly say that the way male educators and school leaders respond to these behaviours can often be a big part of the problem.”

“It’s always our fault that we are sexually harassed. Sickening.”

“A few years ago a boy I taught in Year 5 consistently made sexually inappropriate comments to me during lessons. When I reported it I was told I was misinterpreting what he was saying.”

“I worked in an all-boys school and put up with constant issues like this daily including wolf whistling. Heads of school did NOTHING and shrugged it off saying “you’re a young female teacher and have come into their male environment, it’s gonna happen”. I was constantly intimidated by numerous sexualised issues and management would tell me “they’re just typical teenage boys” never offering support or advice. When bad behaviour was really poor and I reported it to management and was told “they probably fancy you so they like to muck up and do the wrong thing to get your attention”. I was always made to feel it was my fault for being female… I quit after a year of feeling constantly unsafe.

Some described serious negative impacts to their mental health. Linda, teacher of a difficult primary school class in Victoria, reported she was left traumatised and suicidal by her experiences.

I never heard these noises myself but I had a male student come and tell me that one of the trickiest boys had been making moaning sounds. I hadn’t even heard of this being a thing so didn’t even realise what he meant at first so the boy said they were very bad and were sex noises. I was absolutely mortified but I had no idea what to do. I was afraid to bring it up with this student because any kind of confrontation with him could escalate dramatically very quickly.

Things got so bad with this class I became suicidal. I thankfully am now teaching a different class and am doing much better but am still traumatised by it.

American woman Deedra Herring-Blackwood described her daughter’s experiences of ongoing sexual harassment at her junior high school in a speech at a school board meeting. A boy at the school had reportedly subjected her to regular harassment and had asked to see her breasts, FaceTimed her while masturbating, threatened to assault her, told him she was giving him an erection and pointed to his penis and smiled at her. When the girl reported it, she was told she could be taken out of class if she was uncomfortable. She has since been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  
 
Sexual moaning in class constitutes sexual harassment. It creates a hostile, unsafe environment for female students and teachers. Schools that fail to address it are facilitating a crime. We need schools to act now to address this form of discrimination against women and girls.

We are pleased to work with a growing number of schools determined to address this issue.

See also

Growing Up in Pornland: Girls Have Had It with Porn Conditioned Boys – ABC, Melinda Tankard Reist

Submission on National Inquiry into Workplace Sexual Harassment

Research finds girls asked for nudes by up to 11 boys a night

(Reprinted from Collective Shout, June 9, 2022)