Media is Complicit in Sexual Assault Perpetrators Going Invisible in Society

Thank you to Hon Lorna Harper for bringing forward this excellent motion and repeatedly speaking out for women in this chamber. One of the comments made by Hon Lorna Harper was about how perpetrators remain invisible in our society. The media contributes to this greatly. We see statements like: “Woman raped in Kings Park”, versus, “Man raped woman, again in Kings Park”. That happens all the time. Even when we talk about groups of perpetrators, as seen in paedophilia rings recently, the headline will read, “A group of people were arrested”. When we look at the sex of that group of people, it is men. When a woman gets arrested for a crime, it is often clearly mentioned in the headline that a woman was the perpetrator. It is interesting to see how the media is complicit in making perpetrators invisible.

The other factor that I have spoken about quite a lot in this chamber is porn, which contributes to the ongoing violence against women and children. The early of exposure of boys to porn, which sits at about eight to nine years of age—girls are now being affected by that, too—creates a range of unhealthy sexual behaviours. That is when choking comes in, as mentioned by the honourable member. Consent is confused—when we look at consent in porn, often a woman might say, “No, no, no”, but the man will continue. That means that saying “No” was simply irrelevant. Porn actresses get paid to make themselves look desirable and make it look like they are enjoying what is happening to them; therefore, it becomes more difficult for boys to see and read pain in women’s faces. This is an interesting factor that is often overlooked.

Porn has also been implicated in child-sex abuse and grooming brains into enjoying paedophilia. The porn industry understands that certain types of sexual violence keep people engaged—by people I mean it is still mostly men who watch porn. They have different categories for different brains. Every time a person watches porn and orgasms, they get a massive dopamine hit. That rewires people’s brains. To maintain getting those dopamine hits, viewers need material that is more and more extreme. We see that women in porn are starting to look younger and younger, and the acts committed against them become more extreme as well. It grooms both boys and girls into thinking that that is normal sexual behaviour.

The pornification of our society is obvious in our advertising, and we see this in outfits available for little girls. Just recently I saw an item I was particularly horrified by. It was taken off a company website called Shein. It had advertised fishnet stockings for baby girls, with little ribbons at the top. It was removed. Child sex dolls keep popping up on different websites as well, but they are slowly being removed. Imagine the horror of a mother finding her daughter’s face on one of those dolls, and that has happened several times. Increasingly, we are seeing more violent depictions and sexual objectification of women on clothing. Recently, a bunch of babies’ onesies were removed from a website, and I am not allowed to say these words in this chamber, but, basically, on romper suits, it reads “I have sex on the first date” and other sayings like that. I find that horrifying. In reducing male violence against women, pornography definitely needs to be addressed as well, and I would like to see more done about that