We haven’t come a long way baby at all

On Thursday March 8, women around the world celebrated International Women’s Day. The advances made to improve women’s status are indeed worthy of recognition.

But we also have to acknowledge the tragic truth that the movement for women’s equality, in many ways, appears to have failed. At some stage, efforts to end the exploitation of women were overtaken by the movement for sexual liberalism. Women’s freedom was reduced to the freedom to be sexual playthings for male arousal and pleasure.

“Liberation” has come to mean a young woman’s ability to wrap her legs around a pole, to lap dance a man to orgasm, expose herself girls-gone-wild style, to hook up with multiple partners in cold soulless encounters and perform oral sex on schoolboys one-after-another at weekend parties in a routine charmingly known as “daisychaining”.

Liberation means being “free” enough to undergo surgical “enhancement”, to strip like a porn star, to allow yourself to be filmed by your boyfriend to show his mates and the world wide web of on-line voyeurs.

Sexual liberalism has not advanced women’s freedom, but eroded and undermined it. We are living in a sexually brutalised culture. We are seeing more harassment, stalking and rape, more alcohol-fuelled sexual abuse and plying of date rape drugs, more predatory behaviour.

We have allowed the development of a culture that is toxic to young women especially.

Rather than being seen as full human beings, equal and deserving of respect, young women are being barraged with hyper sexualised messages that turn them into sex objects.

Women have been sold a false empowerment which is destructive of their real selves.

Females are up for grabs on cruise ships, in toilet blocks in suburban shopping malls, and in Indigenous communities, awash with porn, where even baby girls have sexual diseases.

Diane Brimble lies naked and dying on a cruise ship after being given an overdose of the date-rape drug “fantasy”. One of the men accused of her death said: “She smelt ugly”. She was “black” and, a “dog” who had ruined his holiday.

A gang of 12 in Melbourne sexually humiliate an intellectually disabled girl, and flog the DVD to their friends for five bucks a pop. They urinated on her, threw her clothes in the river, set her hair alight and forced her to give them oral sex. Yet many defended their behaviour as boys just having “a bit of fun”.

Little girls are encouraged to develop sexy personas. Bras for 8-year-olds, bralettes for 3-year-olds, G-strings for 10-year-olds with slogans like “Wink Wink” and “Eye Candy”, T-shirts that read “You’re at the top of my to-do list” and “Hotter Down Under”.

Then there’s the “Peek-a-boo pole-dancing kit” for six-year-olds. It comes with “sexy garter” and DVD “demonstrating suggestive dance moves”. The kit promises to “unleash the sex kitten inside. … Soon you’ll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars.”

A little girls’ underwear line is pitched this way:

Gone are the days of voluminous, bulky and cumbersome underwear meant to be worn under layers of clothing. These days underwear has become briefer, bolder and more stylish. There is even underwear to complement different moods you wish to portray: frisky, seductive or mysteriously alluring.

Sex is glamourised even in girl’s magazines aimed at readers aged five to 13. Gossip magazines aimed at a pre-teen readership also encourage girls to behave in a sexual manner, with pages devotes to grooming and relationships - even with older men. In advertising catalogues children are dressed up, made-up and posed in the same way that adults are - suggesting children are interested in and perhaps open to, approaches for sex.

Girls are exposed to sexually brutal music videos which suggest that the highest goal for a woman in life is to receive anal sex from multiple men.

We haven’t come a long way baby at all.

And we are seeing the results in the bodies of girls. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report on health of young people aged 12-24 shows that eating disorders and mental health problems are among the leading causes of burden of disease in young women. Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne recorded a surge in number of children under 14 with anorexia - some as young as 8.

Fortunately some are speaking out. Last October, the Australian Institute issued a report titled Corporate Paedophilia: Sexualising Children by Advertising and Marketing.

The American Psychological Association just published “The Sexualization of Girls” which concluded that an entire generation of young women is being psychologically damaged by a culture which prematurely sexualises them. The result is anxiety, low self image, self harm, eating disorders, depression and lower academic performance.

Initial research by Women’s Forum Australia back these findings. Our report Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women’s Magazines, will be released in July.
 
We must oppose the pornographising of culture. Why aren’t we as worried about creating an environment destructive of the physical and mental health of girls as we are about greenhouse gasses? We need a new global movement prepared to stand up against corporations, advertisers, the sex industry, the makers of violent video games and demeaning music clips and Internet sites. We need the same momentum as we’ve seen drive recent movements against global warming and world poverty propel a new movement for fighting this toxic cultural environment.

What we are witnessing is not liberation but oppression. It is not liberating for young women to be told everyday that their only power is in their sexual currency. It is not liberating to convey to women that their freedom lies in participating in their own exploitation. To portray young women as only sexual is to oppress them.

On International Women’s Day, it’s time to take back our daughters and empower and equip them to resist - and fight back against - a culture that tells them they’re no more the sum of their sexual parts. Let’s make this day a rallying cry for genuine - not false - liberation. Then we might have something to celebrate.