Why we should be outraged but not surprised

In the past week, there have been many passionate, decent people expressing outrage via social media, online petitions and the blogosphere regarding porn-themed stationery being stocked in stationery store Typo. The most notorious of the products is a notebook with a naked woman on the cover, with the word "Dirty" printed along with her. And it's pretty clear that this hasn't just been a bad week for Typo or its parent company CottonOn. Their website displays a wide range of products featuring women in provocative poses, slogans like "Let's Get It On", "Do Bad Things To Me" (a Valentine's Day card, apparently) or, perhaps most appallingly, "Believe in Pole Dancing", with an accompanying image as subtle as the slogan.

But, lest the sexual side of things become the sole focus, there's enough here apart from that to be concerned about, including a notebook with the slogan "Keep Calm and Drink Tequila". All of this begs the question: just who is Typo's demographic? I'm fairly sure that primary school kids shop there, but even if they were only aiming at teenagers, it isn't ok. I know I wouldn't accept a student handing in work in a notebook with any of these slogans on the cover. At the very least, there'd be a phone call home asking if the parents were aware of what kind of stationery their child was bringing to school.

It's fairly torrid stuff and a good thing, therefore, that there's enough public outrage over it that, at the very least, CottonOn and Typo will be forced to hear criticism even if they don't respond to it. And thank God for people like Melinda Tankard-Reist and her organisation Collective Shout. We need more people willing to stand up against things like this.

But should we be surprised? Granted, the sexualisation of girls is becoming an increasing public issue, in the sense that the bounds of public decency are being blurred more and more, in a way that many find quite shocking. But public decency often has a way of disguising the real issue. We have agreed standards for what we do or proclaim in the public arena, and in the past pornography has been politely pushed into the margins. Now it's bursting out, and that outward burst is what shocks us, not the revelation that it exists or that the age for people to be included or targeted in it is frighteningly flexible.

We should oppose it, with all that we've got, but there's something perhaps more uncomfortable that we need to admit - that in our own way we are as perverse as any product that CottonOn or Typo stock, that we have secrets locked away inside ourselves that we would hate to see paraded in shopfront windows. The fact is, sexism, exploitation and pornography will exist so long as human sin exists. And, if we know anything about the depths of human sin, nothing that big businesses or advertising executives can come up with should shock us. We shouldn't accept it, not for a moment, but we shouldn't be surprised either.

I think of Jesus' words to His disciples when He sent them out into the world to preach the Gospel:

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

In other words, we should be wise to sin and its impact on the world but refuse to be corrupted by it. We should speak out against it, and never for a moment accept the excuses that people will make to say that it's okay, "just a bit of fun", that we should all "lighten up" and stop being "wowsers". Those kinds of excuses never cut it. But we should, I think, be willing to look just as regularly at our own hearts and at the skeletons that we have trapped in our own closets, because the problem is broader than Typo, and broader than CottonOn and Kmart. The problem is us, and that includes - to borrow the name of a recent film - me, and you, and everyone we know.

The fight against pornography starts with the fight against sin. And that fight should start with each of us on our knees, praying for forgiveness.