Collective Shout

Collective Shout is an Australian activist group founded in 2009 by Melinda Tankard Reist. It describes itself as "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture."^[5] Some news and advocacy organizations consider their agenda to be anti-porn.^[6]

Collective Shout have protested the release of films, books, and music within Australia they claim sexualize women, as well as sales of child sex dolls. The group rose to prominence in 2025 after lobbying for the digital distribution platforms Steam and Itch.io to remove hundreds of video games that they said featured themes such as rape, incest, and sexual violence.^[6] Collective Shout's campaigning against violent adult games, in collaboration with payment processors, has raised concerns about financial censorship,^[7] potential future censorship of non-sexual LGBTQ+ topics,^[6] and creative freedom.^[8] Some non-violent content was affected and deindexed from Itch.io.^[7]

Collective Shout was founded in 2009 by Melinda Tankard Reist, a pro-life feminist and anti-pornography activist.^[9][10]

According to Collective Shout, its foundation was in response to growing concern about the sexualisation of children.^[2] The organizations name comes from a letter Tania Andrusiak sent to Melinda Tankard Reist, saying about Reist's book Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls "This book is a collective shout against the pornification of culture".^[2]

Collective Shout has been described as an anti-porn lobbying group by The Guardian, Le Monde and other news outlets,^{[6][11][12][13]} as well as specialized gaming and LGBTQ+ media.^{[14][15][16][17]} The group's campaigns manager, Caitlin Roper, said Collective Shout is only "'anti-porn' in the sense that we recognize mainstream porn overwhelmingly depicts men's violence and abuse of women." She says they are "not looking to ban any instances of explicit or adult content … Violence and dehumanization of women should not be acceptable outcomes of free speech. We also have to consider whose voices are being heard, and whose are being silenced."^[7]

Melinda Tankard Reist is the "movement director" for Collective Shout in addition to being a founder of the organisation.^[4] She has written columns for ABC, Australia's public news service. Her ABC biography states her past affiliations with feminist publisher Spinifex Press, conservative think tank Women's Forum Australia, Christian NGO World Vision, and with Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine.^[18]

Collective Shout says that the following are partner organisations: the Australian Childhood Foundation, Adopt Nordic WA, the Australian Summit Against Sexual Exploitation, Be Slavery Free, the Campaign Against Sex Robots, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA), City Women Toowoomba, Compassion International, Bodies Endangered, Girls Rising, the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation, Micah, the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, Not Buying It, the Resilient Kids Conference, Cyber Safety Solutions, The Rite Journey, Women's Voices, Bravehearts, the Raise Foundation, and Read To My Child.^[19]

On 14 September 2011, Collective Shout appealed the R18+ rating of the controversial A Serbian Film (2010), which depicts child sexual assault as an allegory for post-war violence, before the Australian Classification Review Board after reading film reviews and accounts of the film's content.^[20][21][22] Collective Shout described scenes of the movie to the review board,^[20][21] resulting in the film's rating being changed to refused classification.^[20][21][23] RealTime responded to the rating change, saying "There is something unnerving about the contemporary discourses on film being dictated by politicians, conservative religious commentators, special interest groups and unelected bureaucrats."^[20]

In 2013, Collective Shout protested Seven Network's broadcasting of the Lingerie Football League, writing it was "sexist and demeaning to all women. It is not a sport, its purpose is to objectify women".^[24]

In 2017, Reist wrote in ABC's Religion & Ethics column to criticize the adult erotica series Fifty Shades.^[25] Collective Shout stated: "This is not entertainment. This is not sexy. This results in serious harm to women and in the worst case scenario, murder."^[25] The same year, the group protested an application for a Geraldton hotel to employ "skimpy barmaids". According to the Geraldton Guardian, "Roper said the treatment of women as sexual entertainment was linked to violence against women."^[26]

Collective Shout have campaigned against certain advertisements placed in Australia, such as Honey Birdette lingerie ads in 2017.^[27] Reist wrote in her Religion & Ethics column that year that Australia should implement advertising standards similar to those in France.^[28] In 2020, fast food restaurant KFC apologised after Collective Shout criticised their television advertisement as containing "sexist grooming" and a "regression to tired and archaic stereotypes where young women are sexually objectified for male pleasure."^[29][30] However, that ad was not ruled in violation by Australia's Ad Standards bureau.^[30]

Collective Shout brought media attention to and campaigned against the sale of child sex abuse dolls (sex dolls designed as children) in Australia. “Child sex abuse dolls are designed to facilitate users’ fantasies of raping a child,” a Collective Shout staff member said. “This is not a victimless crime – these lifelike dolls normalise and legitimise the sexual use and abuse of children.”^[31]

In 2013, the group attempted to have Tyler, the Creator's Australian visa revoked and his shows cancelled, in which they were supported by MP Alex Hawke. One member of Collective Shout reported Tyler, the Creator to the police "on grounds of verbal abuse".^[32] Tyler stated he believed he had been barred from entering Australia, even as his touring company stated that, while the government had "raised issues" with his visa application, they had not refused it.^[33] His tours to Australia were, however, reportedly cancelled in 2015 due to conflicts with Collective Shout.^[34]

The group also unsuccessfully lobbied for American rapper Snoop Dogg's visa to be revoked.^[35] They stated, "Snoop Dogg's lyrics glorify violence against women which puts all women in danger. His behaviour also contradicts our National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women."^[36] They later campaigned for Eminem to be banned from Australia.^[35]

According to Rock Paper Shotgun, "Collective Shout have long called for the banning or delisting of games they regard as violently sexist, exploitative and abusive, as part of a wider campaign against the sexualisation and objectification of women in media. Much of their campaign is based on the argument that there is a causal relationship between such representations and real-life abuse."^[1]

In 2014,^[37] Collective Shout protested the video game Grand Theft Auto V ("GTA V").^{[38]: 141–142} They described GTA V as a "video game that encourages players to brutally murder women for entertainment".^[1] The game was banned from Target and Kmart retail chains in Australia that year,^[39] for which the group claimed responsibility.^[40] In response to this campaign, an anonymous Internet troll posting on 4chan^[a] claimed responsibility for impersonating one of the group's leaders online.^{[38]: 141–142}

In 2018, Collective Shout promoted a petition to ban the sale of Detroit: Become Human in Australia, a game which they said contained themes of "child abuse and violence against women".^[14][1]

Collective Shout petitioned to ban the rape and incest simulation game No Mercy from Steam, which refused to do so, according to Reist. However, the game's developer was pressured by both government agencies from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia which had banned the game, and other groups like Collective Shout to subsequently remove it from gaming platforms.^[42][14][43]

In the wake of discovering No Mercy, Collective Shout identified hundreds of games on Steam that appeared in searches for the term "rape", or otherwise contained themes of incest, sexual violence, and/or child abuse.^{[1][43][b][44]} By July 2025, Collective Shout launched an open letter campaign "demanding credit card companies and PayPal block payments" for games on Steam and Itch.io.^[43][1] Collective Shout said they lobbied payment processors after receiving no reply to 3,000 emails sent to Steam's parent company, Valve Corporation.^[13] The campaign was co-signed by other groups and individuals, including those from the US-based National Centre on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE, formerly "Morality in Media"), Exodus Cry (US), FiLiA (UK), and Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATW).^[43][45][46] After this, hundreds of games were reportedly removed from Steam citing pressure from payment processors to remove the content,^[47][48] while Itch.io deindexed all adult not-safe-for-work games, stating the need to comply with payment processors immediately to stay viable, while planning to reinstate compliant projects back to the service in time.^[49] It was reported that over 20,000 games were delisted by Itch.io before the platform began to conditionally reinstate them.^[50]

Collective Shout's 2025 campaign against games containing themes of sexual violence led to significant controversy, with the organization saying that they received misogynistic abuse and threats online as a result.^[1] Rock Paper Shotgun said there was "outcry from developers of erotic games and journalists who see this as continuing a pattern of financial institutions using their control of transactions to silence 'taboo' expressions of sex".^[1] Several non-pornographic games were affected by itch.io's removals, including Last Call, an award-nominated autobiographical game which explores domestic abuse and recovery through poems and features no explicit images.^[7][51]

Consume Me, a game with themes of eating disorders, was initially reported as having been affected. Itch.io's founder Leaf Corocan later clarified that Consume Me was not affected by the delisting of adult games, but had in fact never been indexed to begin with as it had not met the site's indexing requirements.^[51]

Following the Steam game removals, Vice.com reporter Ana Valens wrote about the group's claim for responsibility, saying the group had retweeted trans-exclusionary feminist Meghan Murphy and that it was doubtful that there were any child abuse games on Steam.^[52] Valens also accused the group of "targeting popular video games that depict children in scenarios where they face distress or harm — even if these depictions are intended to encourage concern and care in the player." She cited Collective Shout's campaign against the 2018 game Detroit: Become Human, which the group targeted due to its depiction of "child abuse and violence against women", however, Valens argued that the depiction was "intended to encourage empathy for the abused woman and child."^[46] Both articles were subsequently pulled by Vice.com's operator Savage Ventures. Valens claimed this was due to "concerns about the controversial subject matter". Valens and two coworkers resigned over the removals.^[14][53]

Counter-campaigns emerged to protest the campaign to delist Steam and Itch.io games, including in the form of petitions, phone calls, and emails.^[13][54]

• Feminist sex wars
• Hot Coffee (minigame)

• Reist, Melinda Tankard; Lahl, Jennifer (2019), Broken bonds: surrogate mothers speak out, North Geelong: Spinifex, ISBN 978-1-925581-55-3
• Reist, Melinda Tankard (2011). Big Porn Inc: exposing the harms of the global pornography industry. North Melbourne, Victoria: Spinifex Press. ISBN 978-1-876756-89-5.