Collective Shout

The Australian nutters of Collective Shout! are getting well wound up by Lingerie Football League.

This is an outlandish bit of American razzmatazz being brought to Australia. Exhibition matches feature two American teams of female footballers playing in bras and knickers.

Unsurprisingly the extremist feminists of Collective Shout are unimpressed  and are trying to get the matches banned from the netball venue that more usually hosts the Queensland Firebirds in Brisbane.

All-Star exhibition games between the LFL's Eastern and Western conferences - the second is scheduled for Sydney next Saturday - are virtual dress rehearsals, test events to gauge whether franchises should be set up in Australia's four main cities next year.

That scenario appals Collective Shout representative Melinda Liszewski, who is spearheading the drive to banish the LFL said:

We have female athletes and female sporting groups in this country working hard to promote the equality of women in sport and to see women valued for their athletic ability and their skill -- not how they look or how sexually appealing they are to men.

The Lingerie Football League undermines that message by saying sure we'll let you play football but get your gear off.

It sends a really nasty message to girls: if they want to be recognised in their sporting field then they need to be exposing their bodies, posing for Playboy, running around in their lingerie.

Federal Minister for Sport Kate Lundy was also not among the LFL's reputed 65 million fans worldwide, labelling it a cheap, degrading perv .

Lingerie Football isn't just a distraction; it's an assault on sport. We can do so much better than LFL. And most importantly, our daughters deserve more.

Founder and chairman Mitch Mortaza launched the LFL in 2009. Contracts stipulate players will be fined $500 if they wear anything under their lingerie; they must also accept accidental nudity was an occupational hazard. Mortaza explained:

The athletes do it of their own free will - thousands of them line up in the States every year, he said.

They are all former collegiate athletes, remarkable women that want to be given an opportunity to play a sport and have it receive the recognition of major men's sports.

Telstra is not the boring government-owned phone utility it once was, the company now offers Telstra Babes softcore pornography over video-capable mobile phones.

We have a range of web pages offering different content for the many niche interest groups that make up our customer base, a Telstra spokeswoman said.

Campaigner Melinda Tankard-Reist of the nutter group Collective Shout said Telstra's attitude was disappointing and raised serious questions.

This is a mainstream communications company. When did they make a decision to go down this path? Was it at a corporate level?

The material is produced by Playboy and Girls Gone Wild. The telco said warnings were displayed and that the content was relatively tame. The spokeswoman said:

We have stringent guidelines pertaining to all content across our sites and in particular, the 'glamour' pages, which are among the mildest in the category among industry providers.

Tankard-Reist rejected that defence and ludicrously claimed that the companies supplying content to Telstra had disturbing associations:

Playboy isn't just your father's magazine under the bed any more, she said. Playboy hosts a range of hardcore, explicit, triple-X content across a range of cable television channels. You couldn't even print the names of the titles they show.

The Girls Gone Wild genre is harmful to women and girls and there have been allegations that girls have been made drunk to coerce them into filming sex acts or simulated sex acts for the camera.

Shareholders would be surprised to know the company is hosting and distributing pornographic content. It's a significant issue for its reputation.