The commodification of women and children is increasing. Some of the industries that profit from the sale of bodies such as pornography and prostitution are considered controversial, even if they are not outright condemned; the sex slave trade is vehemently decried. However, a more inconspicuous industry that objectifies and commodifies women and children with far broader social acceptance is the surrogacy industry.

If there’s one person who knows first hand the horrors of finding themselves on the wrong side of the Taliban regime, it’s Malala Yousafzai.

After almost taking her own life on finding out that a video of her was uploaded to Pornhub without her knowledge, a Chinese woman is fighting back with an app to help survivors of non-consensual pornography.

A group of 34 brave women from several countries around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Thailand, have filed a lawsuit against Montreal-based company MindGeek, the adult entertainment empire that runs Pornhub. The women claim that the company has knowingly profited from material that depicts rape, sexual exploitation, including of minors, and trafficking and other non-consensual sexual content.

The flood of responses from young women to the call by former Kambala student Chanel Contos to share their experiences of sexual assault and treatment at the hands of teenage boys has opened a window into the world that young women are navigating in this country when it comes to boys and sex.  The responses from thousands of girls have chronicled story after story of their damaging sexual experiences, abuse, unwanted sex and feelings of regret and being uncomfortable at the expectations of boys when it comes to sex.

There must come a point when we as a nation say “enough is enough” when it comes to stories of intimate partner violence being perpetrated against women and children by their partners, ex-partners and fathers.  In the past two weeks alone, the horrific story of Gold Coast woman Kelly Wilkinson, who was set alight in her own home, allegedly by her estranged husband, and that of Henry Shepherdson, who strapped his infant daughter to himself and jumped over a reservoir at a tourist attraction in South Australia, are but a couple of the incredibly distressing stories that continue to make news and bring to our collective consciousness just how lethal domestic violence can become.  

The incredibly heart-breaking story of the murder of siblings Jack and Jennifer Edwards at the hands of their father in Sydney in 2018, highlighted again how precarious and fatal domestic violence situations can become, particularly when the police and other authorities fail in the exercise of their duties.  

It was recently revealed that a group of men aged 18-41 used social media to groom around 140 young girls in order to "ultimately engage in sexual contact with them".