Anti-abortion campaigner, University of Adelaide academic and Harmers Workplace Lawyers consultant Joanna Howe and her husband James Howe recently published a podcast episode where they ridiculed consent.
Throughout the episode James, in particular, uses a raft of slurs against Chanel Contos.
Chanel is the young Australian consent advocate who is helping reframe and shape how Australian policy-makers approach teaching children and young people about how they can choices around their own bodies.
The Howes pulled were criticising an interview Chanel did with Australian politician Sarah Hanson-Young.
The Howes have taken the video off the Dr Jo YouTube page. They did this making repeated threats to sue anyone sharing it and questioning their views on consent.
They say media, social page owners and activists including myself took their words out of context (even in context their conversation is deeply problematic and feeds into rape culture).
The Howes have raised more than $120,000 to – and I quote – ‘bankrupt’ myself and anyone else talking about the video. They will do this via defamation proceedings they say.
I believe Chanel has a much stronger case for defamation than the Howes.
James calls Chanel ‘absolutely batshit crazy’, ‘a chick with stupid views’, ‘clueless feminist moron’ and ‘borderline child’.
he says ‘she has no idea what she’s talking about’, ‘this woman is such a freak, such a disgusting person’, ‘she’s a man-hating psycho’, a ‘crazy hobgoblin’ and ‘leftist moron’ and a ‘leftist dipshit’.
They both claim she has no qualification to speak about sexual assault.
They misrepresented what consent education looks like in schools and called it a ‘leftist brainwashing program’ and they laughed and made fun of research into sexual violence
James also threatened to hit anyone with a baseball bat should that person speaks about consent to his children whilst at school.
He also goes on to say: “Like, consent isn’t a thing for me. I just don’t do consent – we don’t do consent.”
When Joanna points out this comment sounds really bad, he says: “I don’t give a fuck!. We don’t do consent, we’re just married. I don’t need it. I just believe that sex is not a thing that you can consent to.”
Anyway, there’s a lot more disturbing material in the video which is why you should watch it yourself.
