This presentation was given at the 2018 Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Global Summit hosted by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. (EndExploitationSummit.com)
MELINDA TANKARD REIST
Writer, Speaker, and Advocate
We are in the midst of renewed global debate on the scourge of violence against women. This debate is to be welcomed. However what has not been adequately acknowledged is the role of pornography as a driver of this violence. Melinda Tankard Reist will explore what the research tells us about how pornography eroticizes and legitimizes violence against women and relate young women’s experiences of sexual assault, physical and psychological injury from porn-inspired sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, demands for sexual ’selfies’, and other out-workings of harmful porn inspired behaviors. She will call for pornography to be included in any policies aiming to address violence against women.
Melinda Tankard Reist is an author, speaker, media commentator, blogger and advocate for women and girls. She is best known for her work addressing sexualisation, objectification, harms of pornography, sexual exploitation, trafficking and violence against women.
Melinda is author/editor of five books including Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (Spinifex Press, 2009), now in its 9th printing, Big Porn Inc: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry (Spinifex Press, 2011, co-edited with Dr Abigail Bray) and her new release Prostitution Narratives: Stories of survival in the sex trade. (Spinifex Press, 2016, co-edited with Dr. Caroline Norma)
An opinion writer, Melinda is also a regular on morning television and has appeared on ABC’s Q&A and The Gruen Sessions as well as many other TV and radio programs.
Melinda is co-founder of the grassroots campaigning movement, Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation, exposing corporations, advertisers and marketers who objectify women and sexualize girls to sell products and services. An ambassador for World Vision Australia, Compassion Australia and the Raise Foundation, Melinda is named in the Who’s Who of Australian Women and the World Who’s Who of Women.
