Melinda Tankard Reist
Melinda Tankard Reist (www.melindatankardreist.com) is an author, speaker, media commentator, blogger and advocate for young people. 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 six previous books including Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls (Spinifex Press, 2009), Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry (Spinifex Press, 2011, co-edited with Dr Abigail Bray) and Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade (Spinifex Press, 2016 co-edited with Caroline Norma). Melinda is co-founder and Movement Director of the grassroots campaigning movement, Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation, exposing corporations, advertisers and marketers who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. An Ambassador for World Vision Australia, Compassion Australia, HagarNZ and the youth mentoring body the Raise Foundation, Melinda is also Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Culture and Ethics, Notre Dame University, Sydney.
The women in this book may be among the last to have babies without the medical stamp of approval.
Today's society demands physical perfection from all and regards medical and scientific technologies as saviours to be embraced whatever the cost. To have a child who has been diagnosed with a disability is deemed not just unnecessary, but careless and even immoral.
Defiant Birth tells the courageous stories of women who continued their pregnancies despite intense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations. These women were told they shouldn't have their babies because of a perceived imperfection in the child, or because their own disabilities do not fit within the parameters of what a mother should be. In the face of silent disapproval and open hostility, they have confronted the stigma of disability and had their children anyway.
Some of the writers tell of grave misdiagnosis, others of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life.
Melinda Tankard Reist dares to expose how eugenics is practised today, and how it is condoned, even expected, by mainstream society. More than ever before, doctors are diagnosing babies in the womb as less than perfect. But what if the 'cure' they offer will end the child's life?
An invaluable book.
—Nat Hentoff, columnist for United Media Newspaper Syndicate, the Village Voice and the Washington Times.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581911 | Paperback | 216 x 140 mm | 360 pp
Renate Klein (eds.)
Celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and their sweet new baby Chicago. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black and their cute little baby Robert. And thousands of other couples and single people around the world who obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby.
But who are the faceless, nameless women who nurture and give birth to these babies? These women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? Surrogacy-dealing companies call them ‘special angels’ who ‘make miracles possible’, giving ‘an extraordinary gift’. IVF clinics call them ‘gestational surrogates’. The intended parents have promised them healthcare, full reimbursement, and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the children who are born. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that watertight legal contracts and counselling can fix this.
In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their true stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion.
It becomes clear that it is not the occasional dysfunctional relationship or unreasonable surrogate causing problems in the surrogacy industry. Rather, it is the very nature of surrogacy as well as the surrogacy industry to use and abuse and discard. This book throws down a challenge to Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or suitcases, babies are not products. Love is not to be bought.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581553 | Paperback | 215 x 137 mm | 142 pp
THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY & THE STOP SURROGACY NOW COLLECTION
Caroline Norma , Melinda Tankard Reist (eds)
For too long the global sex industry and its vested interests have dominated the prostitution debate repeating the same old line that sex work is just like any job. In large sections of the media, academia, public policy, Government and the law, the sex industry has had its way. Little is said of the damage, violation, suffering, and torment of prostitution on the body and the mind, nor of the deaths, suicides and murders that are routine in the sex industry.
Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade refutes the lies and debunks the myths spread by the industry through the lived experiences of women who have survived prostitution. These disturbing stories give voice to formerly prostituted women who explain why they entered the sex trade. They bravely and courageously recount their intimate experiences of harm and humiliation at the hands of sex buyers, pimps and traffickers and reveal their escape and emergence as survivors.
Edited by Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard Reist, Prostitution Narratives documents the reality of prostitution revealing the cost to the lives of women and girls.
Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade will strengthen and support the global campaign to abolish prostitution, provide solidarity and solace to those who bear its scars and hopefully help women and girls exit this dehumanising industry.
2016 | ISBN 9781742199863 | Paperback | 140 x 220mm | 246 pages
It is now widely acknowledged that the unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.
With contributions from leading world experts and activists, Big Porn Inc offers a cutting edge exposé of the hidden realities of a multi-billion dollar global industry that promotes itself as a fashionable life-style choice.
Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography forever.
Contributors include: (Australia) Maggie Hamilton, Nina Funnell, Christopher Kendall, Susan Hawthorne, Sheila Jeffreys, Caroline Taylor, Meagan Tyler, Robi Sonderegger, Caroline Norma, Renate Klein, Helen Pringle, Betty McLellan, Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray, Melinda Liszewski.
(International) Gail Dines, Catharine A MacKinnon, Melissa Farley, Diana Russell, Robert Jensen, Jeffrey Masson, Chyng Sun, Julia Long, Diane L Rosenfeld, Linda Thompson, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Anne Mayne, Ruchira Gupta, Asja Armanda, Natalie Nenadic, Anna van Heeswijk, Matt McCormack Evans.
2011 | ISBN 9781876756895 | Paperback | 225 x 150 mm | 343 pages
Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a 'thin, hot, sexy' norm. Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
2009 | ISBN 9781876756758 | Paperback | 215 x 140 mm | 224 pages
It is now widely acknowledged that the unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.
With contributions from leading world experts and activists, Big Porn Inc offers a cutting edge exposé of the hidden realities of a multi-billion dollar global industry that promotes itself as a fashionable life-style choice.
Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography forever.
Contributors include: (Australia) Maggie Hamilton, Nina Funnell, Christopher Kendall, Susan Hawthorne, Sheila Jeffreys, Caroline Taylor, Meagan Tyler, Robi Sonderegger, Caroline Norma, Renate Klein, Helen Pringle, Betty McLellan, Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray, Melinda Liszewski.
(International) Gail Dines, Catharine A MacKinnon, Melissa Farley, Diana Russell, Robert Jensen, Jeffrey Masson, Chyng Sun, Julia Long, Diane L Rosenfeld, Linda Thompson, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Anne Mayne, Ruchira Gupta, Asja Armanda, Natalie Nenadic, Anna van Heeswijk, Matt McCormack Evans.
It is now widely acknowledged that the unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.
With contributions from leading world experts and activists, Big Porn Inc offers a cutting edge exposé of the hidden realities of a multi-billion dollar global industry that promotes itself as a fashionable life-style choice.
Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography forever.
Contributors include: (Australia) Maggie Hamilton, Nina Funnell, Christopher Kendall, Susan Hawthorne, Sheila Jeffreys, Caroline Taylor, Meagan Tyler, Robi Sonderegger, Caroline Norma, Renate Klein, Helen Pringle, Betty McLellan, Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray, Melinda Liszewski.
(International) Gail Dines, Catharine A MacKinnon, Melissa Farley, Diana Russell, Robert Jensen, Jeffrey Masson, Chyng Sun, Julia Long, Diane L Rosenfeld, Linda Thompson, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Anne Mayne, Ruchira Gupta, Asja Armanda, Natalie Nenadic, Anna van Heeswijk, Matt McCormack Evans.
Renate Klein (eds.)
Celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and their sweet new baby Chicago. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black and their cute little baby Robert. And thousands of other couples and single people around the world who obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby.
But who are the faceless, nameless women who nurture and give birth to these babies? These women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? Surrogacy-dealing companies call them ‘special angels’ who ‘make miracles possible’, giving ‘an extraordinary gift’. IVF clinics call them ‘gestational surrogates’. The intended parents have promised them healthcare, full reimbursement, and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the children who are born. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that watertight legal contracts and counselling can fix this.
In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their true stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion.
It becomes clear that it is not the occasional dysfunctional relationship or unreasonable surrogate causing problems in the surrogacy industry. Rather, it is the very nature of surrogacy as well as the surrogacy industry to use and abuse and discard. This book throws down a challenge to Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or suitcases, babies are not products. Love is not to be bought.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581584 | Paperback | 215 x 137 mm | 142 pp
Renate Klein (eds.)
Celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and their sweet new baby Chicago. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black and their cute little baby Robert. And thousands of other couples and single people around the world who obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby.
But who are the faceless, nameless women who nurture and give birth to these babies? These women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? Surrogacy-dealing companies call them ‘special angels’ who ‘make miracles possible’, giving ‘an extraordinary gift’. IVF clinics call them ‘gestational surrogates’. The intended parents have promised them healthcare, full reimbursement, and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the children who are born. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that watertight legal contracts and counselling can fix this.
In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their true stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion.
It becomes clear that it is not the occasional dysfunctional relationship or unreasonable surrogate causing problems in the surrogacy industry. Rather, it is the very nature of surrogacy as well as the surrogacy industry to use and abuse and discard. This book throws down a challenge to Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or suitcases, babies are not products. Love is not to be bought.
2019 | ISBN 9781925581584 | Paperback | 215 x 137 mm | 142 pp
The women in this book may be among the last to have babies without the medical stamp of approval.
Today's society demands physical perfection from all and regards medical and scientific technologies as saviours to be embraced whatever the cost. To have a child who has been diagnosed with a disability is deemed not just unnecessary, but careless and even immoral.
Defiant Birth tells the courageous stories of women who continued their pregnancies despite intense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations. These women were told they shouldn't have their babies because of a perceived imperfection in the child, or because their own disabilities do not fit within the parameters of what a mother should be. In the face of silent disapproval and open hostility, they have confronted the stigma of disability and had their children anyway.
Some of the writers tell of grave misdiagnosis, others of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life.
Melinda Tankard Reist dares to expose how eugenics is practised today, and how it is condoned, even expected, by mainstream society. More than ever before, doctors are diagnosing babies in the womb as less than perfect. But what if the 'cure' they offer will end the child's life?
An invaluable book.
—Nat Hentoff, columnist for United Media Newspaper Syndicate, the Village Voice and the Washington Times.
2019 | 360 pp
The women in this book may be among the last to have babies without the medical stamp of approval.
Today's society demands physical perfection from all and regards medical and scientific technologies as saviours to be embraced whatever the cost. To have a child who has been diagnosed with a disability is deemed not just unnecessary, but careless and even immoral.
Defiant Birth tells the courageous stories of women who continued their pregnancies despite intense pressure from doctors, family members and social expectations. These women were told they shouldn't have their babies because of a perceived imperfection in the child, or because their own disabilities do not fit within the parameters of what a mother should be. In the face of silent disapproval and open hostility, they have confronted the stigma of disability and had their children anyway.
Some of the writers tell of grave misdiagnosis, others of life-changing experiences, discovering the joy and love in children considered unworthy of life.
Melinda Tankard Reist dares to expose how eugenics is practised today, and how it is condoned, even expected, by mainstream society. More than ever before, doctors are diagnosing babies in the womb as less than perfect. But what if the 'cure' they offer will end the child's life?
An invaluable book.
—Nat Hentoff, columnist for United Media Newspaper Syndicate, the Village Voice and the Washington Times.
2019 | 360 pp
Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a 'thin, hot, sexy' norm. Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Girls are portrayed as sexual at younger ages, pressured to conform to a 'thin, hot, sexy' norm. Clothing, music, magazines, toys and games send girls the message that they are merely the sum of their body parts. The effects of prematurely sexualising girls are borne out in their bodies and minds, with a rise in self-destructive behaviours such as eating disorders and self-harm, along with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in “He Chose Porn over Me” reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners – men who were supposed to care for them.
This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography’s destructive impact – about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result.
The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn’t care if they lost everything including their partners.
In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women.
The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women – don’t date men who use porn …
He chose porn over me. Porn killed my marriage. It killed my trust. It destroyed my sense of self and understanding of true intimacy.
—Courtney
As long as pornography exists, we don’t stand a chance of creating a fair and equal world.
—Carla
I was being groomed to become a porn star in the bedroom.
—Maggie
He used me like a blow-up doll.
—Florence
AUGUST 2022 | 200 pp
Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in “He Chose Porn over Me” reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners – men who were supposed to care for them.
This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography’s destructive impact – about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result.
The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn’t care if they lost everything including their partners.
In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women.
The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women – don’t date men who use porn …
He chose porn over me. Porn killed my marriage. It killed my trust. It destroyed my sense of self and understanding of true intimacy.
—Courtney
As long as pornography exists, we don’t stand a chance of creating a fair and equal world.
—Carla
I was being groomed to become a porn star in the bedroom.
—Maggie
He used me like a blow-up doll.
—Florence
AUGUST 2022 | 200 pp
Melinda Tankard Reist (ed)
Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in “He Chose Porn over Me” reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners – men who were supposed to care for them.
This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography’s destructive impact – about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result.
The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner’s insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn’t care if they lost everything including their partners.
In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women.
The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women – don’t date men who use porn …
AUGUST 2022 | 9781925950588 | Paperback | 208 pages | 216 x 140 mm