South Burnett advocacy group Sistas in Sync and renowned speaker Melinda Tankard Reist are taking on the fight to remove access to pornography from children and teenagers.
Melinda and her co-presenter Daniel Principe will be returning to the South Burnett for more school visits and a presentation open to the community later this month.
After a successful program in 2021, the pair will be welcomed back to talk through body positivity and ‘navigating a sexed-up world’ from 23 to 25 May 2022. The project is sponsored by Sistas in Sync.
The community session which is open to parents, teachers and community members will be held at the St John’s Lutheran School hall on Tuesday, 24 May at 7pm. It will be a free event and books and resources will be available for purchase.
Here is Ruth Dukes’ Letter to the Editor about how prevalent this issue is:
The Time to Do Battle is Now!
While our national focus might be on the battle for power in our halls of government, or even the devastating war in Ukraine, there is an equally imperative battle that is taking place right now in our families, businesses, schools, churches and organisations.
I refer to the battle for the minds, hearts and futures of our children and youth being raged very successfully by producers and distributors of pornography. Parents might be surprised to know platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram and Snapchat have for years facilitated pathways for children to view porn material. While some platforms are trying to introduce policies to manage access, the reality is that in Australia legislation is still very weak in requiring porn sites to take responsibility for ensuring their target audience is adult only.
As parents we take measures to ensure our children’s safety on the roads, with strangers, against drugs, or against school bullying as examples, but the reality is that the most dangerous place for our children is in their own homes, their own bedrooms, and only a tap away via the internet.
Technology and the internet have inveigled themselves into our lives so successfully and without censure or accountability, with the porn industry now generating global wealth of over $100 billion.
Sadly, the cultural perspective on pornography is shockingly positive. 90 per cent of teens and 96 per cent of young adults are either encouraging, accepting, or neutral when they talk about porn with their friends. Just 55 per cent of adults 25 and older believe porn is wrong. Teens and young adults 13-24 believe not recycling is worse than viewing pornography. Only 43 per cent of teens believe porn is bad for society, compared to 31 per cent of young adults 18-24, 51 per cent of Millennials, 44 per cent Gen-Xers, and 59 per cent of Boomers. (www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats)
We simply don’t see it as a problem. As a community we seem blinded to the reality of the immense life-long injury pornography is doing to the mental health of our young people, by corrupting their healthy sense of identity and purpose, and robbing them of the ability to enjoy healthy intimate relationships in adulthood. Porn is well documented as a significant contributing factoring in increasing child on child sexual assault, sexual bullying and harassment, suicide, domestic violence and family breakdown.
Perhaps the most destructive aim of porn is the complete commodification and objectification of women and children for the enjoyment of males, which has for decades been softly promoted by a cultural perspective that places female value only in the female body and its appeal to males.
It’s time to do battle! Turning off porn is tantamount to turning back the tide but we can take powerful steps in our own families, homes, schools, organisations, and local community to say NO to porn.
The power is in our hands to protect our young children from any exposure to any sexually explicit media and materials, controlling and supervising smart phone and computer access.
We can prepare our older children about the dangers of porn and engender in them self-respect and protective behaviours. There are so many resources available in this area.
We can introduce older children and youth to the good of healthy sexuality, relationships and life-long partnerships that are based on mutual respect, honesty and caring, so they can identify the fraudulent messages of porn.
While we continue to demand governments actively pursue measures to protect children from accessing porn materials, the battle is here and now in our community.
South Burnett residents now have access to a great book “How to Talk to Your Kids About Porn” a free resource for parents sponsored by Sistas in Sync Inc. See us on Facebook. It’s a very good place to start the battle for your kid’s future.
-Ruth Dukes, Kingaroy.
