A collective voice against the sexual exploitation of women and girls

Collective Shout is a grassroots movement founded fifteen years ago in response to the alarming prevalence of the sexual objectification of women and girls within modern media, advertising, and popular culture. 

The consequences of a sexually objectified representation of women and girls in media has led to evidenced harms. A global meta-analysis found objectifying women leads to a ‘diminished view of women's competence, morality and humanity’. A significant body of research also demonstrates how sexualising girls leads to significant mental health decline, self-harm, eating disorders, low self-esteem and poor academic performance. UNICEF (2021) draws parallels between the sexualisation of women and girls and the disproportionate likelihood of them being subject to violence, stating that ‘when girls are repeatedly objectified and their bodies hypersexualized, the media contributes to harmful gender stereotypes that often trivialize violence against them.’ 

Melinda Tankard Reist is an award-winning author, activist and co-founder and Movement Director of Collective Shout, which emerged in response to the reception towards her third book Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls, which brought together experts on the harms of reducing girls to the sum of their body parts. This book initiated a broader conversation around how people could get involved in calling-out companies who were profiting from the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls. 

When one of the book’s contributors, a young woman who had written about how a sexualised culture had caused her to hate her body, wrote to Melinda and described the book as a ‘collective shout against the pornification of culture’, that phrase resonated with Melinda and gave the movement its name. Other women who shared these concerns got involved, including mothers, teachers, aid and development workers, a web developer, youth worker and two eating disorder specialists. Together with Melinda, whose professional background was working as a journalist and political advisor, these women brought together their skillsets and experiences at their first meeting in late 2010, launching Collective Shout soon after. 

Five women, one goal: a world free of sexploitation

Collective Shout targets the corporations, advertisers, marketers and media who exploit the bodies of women and girls to sell their products and services for profit and gain. They campaign to challenge their behaviour and hold them accountable for this, giving them an opportunity to reflect, change, and demonstrate greater corporate social responsibility moving forwards. ‘More broadly,’ said Melinda, ‘we also engage in issues relating to other forms of sexploitation, including the interconnected industries of pornography, prostitution and trafficking as well as the growing market in the sale of children for Live Distant Child Abuse (LDCA), the sale of child sex abuse dolls and replica child body parts, as well as the emergence of AI-enabled Image Based Sexual Abuse (IBSA) and Deepfake Image Based Sexual Abuse (DIBSA). ’ Collective Shout, in partnership with parenting author and expert Maggie Dent, also published the ‘Sexual Harassment of Teachers’ report late last year, analysing data from a survey of 1000 teachers. The report found routine sexual harassment of female teachers and students in Australian schools. 

Most of Melinda’s work involves overseeing Collective Shout’s campaigns, submission writing and political lobbying, engaging with media, and other public-facing roles including public speaking and communicating with donors, ambassadors and stakeholders. When asked if her work for Collective Shout was a deviation from the career path she had envisaged for herself, Melinda responded: ‘I’ve been an activist for women and girls from my early teens, so this was no deviation! I believe I was meant to establish this movement to help advance a cause I care deeply about as a woman, journalist, author, activist and political advisor.’ Melinda’s involvement with Collective Shout aligned with her work as an ambassador to two major aid and development NGOs. Her prior pro-woman advocacy and practical support included helping establish a mother-baby charity which provided supported accommodation and outreach for isolated pregnant women. She was also appointed an ambassador for aid and development charities - World Vision Australia and Compassion - around the same time as launching Collective Shout.

The emerging threat of online abuse

The sexual exploitation and objectification of women and girls fuelled by profiteering, entitlement, and predominantly male pleasure and demand is not new, however what has changed is the proliferation and scale of this abuse that has expanded to include online platforms and social media, creating additional avenues of harm that are challenging to regulate and address. As Melinda highlighted, ‘An emerging danger is the rise of AI-enabled deepfake sexual abuse of women and girls. There are 127 undressing/nudifying and face-swap tech platforms which are being used to turn any woman or girl into porn, using images scraped from their social media accounts and even official school photographs. These easily accessible tools provide new weapons of terror against women and girls.’ This is a shifting landscape that creates new challenges that didn’t exist even as few as five years ago. 

Our Watch (2025) highlights how women and girls are more likely to be subject to physical and sexual violence by predominantly male perpetrators. Melinda describes violence against women as ‘a natural outworking of the dehumanisation and second-class treatment of women and girls’ and raises serious concern that ‘the world is still not a safe place for most women and girls.’ Whilst there is much work that remains to be done, Melinda notes some progress that has already been made, stating that the links between pornography and violence against women are now well-documented and understood. 

Collective Shout has made significant strides in calling-out a sexualised culture that is damaging to women and girls. The movement has led successful national and international campaigns, seeing a record number of wins in 2024, including against multi-billion and in one case even multi-trillion-dollar corporations. In Australia, Collective Shout spearheaded the campaign to secure an age verification trial to serve as one obstacle against children’s access and exposure to pornography. They were also significantly involved in securing Australian laws to raise the age of access to social media. 

Collective Shout has pioneered global campaigns to ban child sex abuse dolls and replica child body parts as well as AI-enabled nudifying and undressing platforms. ‘This year, we have seen 22 wins so far including removing the misogynist, Andrew Tate's pimping courses from Spotify and Soundcloud and removing the 'No Mercy' rape and incest game from the Steam gaming platform. ‘We are recognised in Australia and internationally as a thought leader in the space,’ said Melinda. Last year Melinda was the recipient of the 'Global Impact Award' presented at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation Summit in Washington DC, USA which she describes as ‘a credit to our movement.’

The work is not without its challenges, with Collective Shout’s adversaries including powerful vested interests such as the global pornography and sex industries and their well-funded lobbies, in addition to prominent figures in popular culture, such as Tate, who have the loyal backing of their supporters. Many people who are concerned by sexual exploitation may be inadequately informed and feel powerless to challenge and stand against powerful figures and industries, or unsure of where to start. Melinda highlighted that a significant demand of their work is recognising just how much needs to be done by a small team of only five women with limited resources working in the face of not only legal threats but serious personal threats - including rape and death threats - as well as online stalking, doxxing and impersonation. Despite these challenges, Melinda and her team are resilient and will not be silenced. ‘If we weren't having an impact, they wouldn't bother harassing us,’ she said. ‘We take heart in that.’

Uniting to make a difference

Collective Shout’s ultimate hope is to move towards ‘a world free of sexploitation.’ ‘Every victory is special,’ said Melinda, recalling their successes so far. ‘Right up there was bringing down Zoo Weekly and Picture and People magazine within a 6-week Twitter campaign, the latter of which had successfully published in Australia for 80 years. Some of our wins were achieved in a decade, others within hours!’ On a more intimate and personal level, Melinda shared how she once had a young woman confide in her that she had intended to take her life, but after hearing Melinda speak, she realised it was culture that was the problem, and she wanted to challenge that culture rather than allow it to destroy her.

For Melinda, there is reward in knowing that boys and girls are responding to their message. ‘We have girls saying, “We weren't born for porn!", "We deserve better!”, “We deserve to be loved!"’ and boys saying they ceased using after hearing her speak on the subject. These speaking engagements have led girls to recognise that the extent of their worth is far broader than is often portrayed in media, advertising and popular culture, and boys to recognise that by consuming pornography they become patrons of the global sex industry, with every download contributing to the trafficking of women and girls into the industry. Both leave with greater capacity to view such material not only from a more critical and broader lens, but with increased humanity. ‘Boys are choosing to become upstanders rather than by-standers,’ said Melinda. This is essential in an era in which scenes of aggression and violence towards women in mainstream porn are commonplace and increasingly viewed by a younger audience forming part of their early understanding of sex (Respect Victoria, 2023). 

To date, Collective Shout have empowered thousands of people to recognise they are capable of making a difference - that they have a right and a duty to speak out and effect social change and cultural transformation. “Women write to us saying: "You help me be brave!"’ said Melinda.

While there is still much to be done in this space, Melinda’s view is to ‘get on and do it anyway - don’t let anyone stop you.’ She quotes former Prime Minister, Paul Keating who said, ‘The dogs may bark but the caravan rolls on’. Collective Shout’s community of supporters is growing, as is their Australian and global partners and allies. Melinda reflected, ‘I get to work with some of the best people in the world. I have deep soul connections with a small group of women I have the pleasure of sharing this work with - some I've never even met face to face!’ 

What the work of Collective Shout demonstrates really effectively is how together, with courage and tenacity, smaller voices can overcome powerful forces. 

To find out more, visit Collective Shout here. You can show your support by liking their social media pages, joining and sharing their current campaigns, and signing up to receive their e-news to remain informed of future campaigns and successes.