In recent months, an Australian Radical Feminist organization has been making international waves in the world of financial censorship, and MAPs are feeling the heat more than most, it would seem.

Collective Shout would on the face of things, appear to be a legitimate charity - a crusading force for women and girls, fighting unfair "pornified" stereotyping and sexual objectification. Those doing the shouting have sought to target the hucksters behind what they see as pure brain-rot, i.e. platforms and online stores that sell access to independently developed games.

Their rationale is time-honoured; today's cottage industries in gaming content are ultimately poorly regulated and "harmful to minors". They are the video-nasties of the modern age.

A reactionary wolf in sheep's clothing

Headed up by Melinda Tankard-Reist, a Conservative-Christian busybody whose name and persona could easily have come right out of a politically incorrect 1990s slapstick comedy, Collective Shout has been around in some form or another since almost that most "vulgar" of eras.

But only now, in the modern arena of fast-moving clickbait-disinformation and culture wars, is the shrill caterwauling emanating from their corner being heard loud and clear. Tankard-Reist presents herself as the consummate professional away from her charity work, gaining access to classrooms and boasting of her ability as a Sexual Preducator of sorts. She is particularly proud of her ability to convert young girls to her sex-negative, porn-hating ideology, and wears these achievements as a badge of honour. Yet her group's recent rise to prominence is not really down to her exhaustive schedule, nor did it happen by mere coincidence, but it has everything to do with the emergence of "Big Morality".

Welcome to the age of Big Morality

While the ascendant alt-right and MAGA movement had credible libertarian aspects, once being home to numerous anti-authoritarian voices, this tendency has now been almost completely neutralized by what can only be described as a new "moral majority". While mainstream media has co-opted and commodified once-dissident narrative from the 10s, the lure of power has unleashed a renewed fervour for authoritarian law-making among the hard political right. A new wave of initiatives with "bipartisan" support is targeting "degenerate" (to the right) and "harmful" (to liberals) online content with ever tightening age-verification and surveillance technology. We are evidently now at the beginning of a new age of "Big Morality", where modern moral-entrepreneurs, much like their 1980s predecessors (Anita Bryant, Mary Whitehouse, Judith Reisman, Andrea Dworkin) are energized by powerful political agendas, flexing their muscle in the world of business and payment processing.

It is in this very specific environment, that Collective Shout has emerged as a force to be reckoned with, waging a frustrated war against what they describe as "pornsick gamers". But at the same time, the sheer breadth of their efforts are threatening to unite disparate groups against them, building new alliances online. Right-leaning Japanese Otakus, for example, are threatened by the same morality-policing actions that have convinced queer-progressive sexual "deviants" and even self-identified MAPs, that Collective Shout's actions are disproportionately targeting sexual minorities. Libertarian-leaning gamers are finding out that increasingly obscure and unlikely content really does fall under the purview of Big Morality, and are becoming more politically engaged as a result. Critiques in the media have come from all corners, as technology and gaming journalism converge with traditional civil libertarians, closing ranks against what they all see as intolerable censorship.

Toxic Feminism: Erasing dissenting female voices

In the frenzied cacophony of this overreach, Collective Shout lays its true agenda bare for all to see.

The list of things that Collective Shout and their founders are known to be violently opposed to, is considerably longer than the list of things they are definitively in favour of. The "bad" list extends to:

• Porn (of course)
• Snoop Dogg and American rap-culture
• "Suggestive" children's clothing
• "Fifty Shades" type lit erotica
• "Kidfluencers" on Instagram
• "Racy" lingerie adverts
• Youth-like sex robots
• Simulated violence
• Videogames
• Sex workers
• Anime/lolis
• Lads mags
• Incest

Only Tankard-Reist and her followers will know just how far that list really goes on for. Or take pleasure in knowing.

So, while both first wave and liberatory, sex-positive feminism have done much to advance the general fortunes of women, and boast of a rich history of opposition to authority and censorship, Collective Shout's actions are instead indicative of what some might now term "Toxic Feminism", the intellectually dishonest precursor and counterpart to "Carceral Feminism":

1. Promoting Victimhood

Toxic feminism often emphasizes the narrative that women are perpetual victims of a patriarchal system, risking creating a mindset where women feel incapable of overcoming obstacles without external intervention.

2. Alienating Allies

One of the hallmarks of toxic feminism is its tendency to vilify men.

3. Shaming Women’s Choices

Ironically, toxic feminism often undermines the very freedom it claims to advocate for. A narrow definition of empowerment, excludes women who don’t conform to the modern feminist ideal.

4. Perpetuating Cancel Culture

Social media has turned feminist discussions into battlegrounds. A single misstep or differing opinion can lead to public shaming, silencing voices that might otherwise contribute to meaningful conversations. This culture of fear stifles dialogue and discourages genuine understanding.

5. Fostering Division Among Women

Toxic feminism has created divisions among women themselves. Some feel pressured to conform to rigid feminist ideals, while others feel excluded or judged for not subscribing to these beliefs.

The ideology of Collective Shout and their founder, would appear to fit the above criteria. It can basically be described as "everything I hate happens because of everything I hate". Their vision is not one of progress, nor empowerment of young people, but rather more backdoor surveillance and mindless censorship in the name of "online harms", whoever is holding the reins of power. And perhaps more importantly for its proponents, the spread of this ideology raises the possibility that we may retrace some of our footsteps from the 1980s. In that era, those old enough to remember will recall that somewhere amid the noise, a now-universal "fact" - namely the idea that sexual content harms minors was ultimately born. How long these assumed truths can continue to benefit from bipartisan support, will be determined over the coming decades.

The role of MAPs in our bold, new era of censorship

So what awaits for the MAPs in the era of Collective Shouting? While some have pointed to the organization's allegedly shady finances, details are hard to come by, let alone confirm. Social media accounts have also occasionally been locked down, reinforcing an existing perception of the organization as hypersensitive and vulnerable to even short periods of criticism.

While simply attacking the messenger might be viscerally appealing to some, MAPs are far more likely to benefit from long-term alliance building, taking advantage of both shared suffering and shared resistance, as Big Morality reaches out its tentacles in this new era of censorship.

Major online MAP personalities, who were conveniently into anime and gaming, have sadly left frontline activism over the last few years due to depression or disability. We will therefore need fresh blood ready to play the adjacency game and make our identity group more relevant, visible and vocal in this developing culture war.

But if our adversaries are putting on a clown show like Collective Shout are right now, who are we to stop them in their tracks?

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