NCOSE’s annual Dirty Dozen List admonishes 12 mainstream targets who facilitate sexual exploitation. Because of your voices, this campaign has led to major changes at many targets over the years including Google, Snapchat, Comcast, Hilton Hotels, the Department of Defense, and more. It’s time now for our mid-year push to keep up the pressure on these cultural influencers who think they can sneak under the radar despite their bad policies. For 12 days, help us concentrate our advocacy efforts on a few key targets from the list that we think will be driven to really change their exploitative policies if motivated by a sudden burst in grassroots action.
Some of the corporations on this year’s Dirty Dozen List, like Steam and Amazon, are repeat offenders. They’ve been listening to the opposition and choose to continue their sexually exploitive policies. Newcomers on the list, such as United Airlines and Massage Envy, have heard and ignored the heartbreaking stories of countless customers who have been sexually assaulted and harassed on their watch. The biggest thing these corporations have in common is that they have all chosen to bury the voices of reason and hope under a pile of weak excuses, refusing to take responsibility for their contributions to and facilitation of sexual exploitation.
Will you commit to helping us?
The 12 Days of Action campaign is a key opportunity to make your voice heard as we stand together and let these corporations know that we demand better from them. We’ve seen so many great victories happen when a big group of individual supporters like you takes action together! This is your invitation to join us from July 20-31, 2019 as we raise our voices in a collective call to action for these corporations to take a stand against sexual exploitation.
All of these actions can be done in minutes and from home! Here’s the plan:
July 20-22: United Airlines
Over and over we have seen and heard stories of United Airline’s air crews being chronically unprepared to deal with incidents of sexual assault and harassment. This failure to adequately train their crews is particularly disturbing given the increasing number of reports the FBI has been receiving in recent years of inflight sexual assault and harassment. Please join us July 20-22 as we ask United Airlines to take initiative and be a leader that says #TimesUp for sexual exploitation in the airlines industry!
Quick Actions:
- Reach out to United Airlines executives directly by clicking here to email them
- Copy and paste these pre-made messages into Twitter to tweet to United so that their team can’t ignore this issue anymore
- @united your aircrews deserve to be trained on how to deal with #sexualassault and #sexualharassment! Please step up as leaders in this movement and say #TimesUp for sexual exploitation in the airlines industry! #EndExploitation
- @united your passengers and crews have enough to be stressed about when travelling- being sexually harassed or assaulted on your flights shouldn’t be on that list of stressors! Please teach your crews how to effectively address these incidents! #EndExploitation
- @united inflight sexual assault and harassment makes the #FriendlySkies become not-so-friendly. Please take a stand and make your flights safer by training crews on how to deal with and prevent these issues. #EndExploitation
- @united Please teach your flight attendants on what to do when confronted with passengers watching porn. Your crews need to know what to do with this growing problem! #EndExploitation
- If you have a personal story you feel comfortable sharing about encountering pornography, sexual assault and/or harassment on a flight (any airline), share your experience with us at public@ncose.com
July 23-25: Amazon
Amazon continues to sell sexually exploitive products such as sex dolls, sex trafficking how-to books, and eroticized child nudity books. In addition, some of Amazon Prime Video’s productions depict unnecessarily gratuitous nudity, making softcore pornography available to a general audience, without strong warnings and often sharing screen space with children’s content. A sample survey of third-party reviews of Amazon Studios original content showed that 66% of it contains nudity and 36% contains simulated sex. Allowing such materials to be sold or produced in the age of #MeToo is socially irresponsible and utterly unacceptable.
Quick Actions:
- Email Amazon executives to demand they stop selling sex dolls, incest-themed erotica, and sexually exploitive books
- Send these prewritten tweets to Amazon to let them and your followers know that Amazon is facilitating sexual exploitation
- @amazon, please stop selling sex trafficking how-to books! Endsexualexploitation.org/amazon. #NotMyAmazon #EndExploitation
- @amazon needs to stop selling erotic child nudity books! Follow Walmart’s example and remove them. #NotMyAmazon #EndExploitation
- Send this email to Amazon Studios executives telling them you do not support their original shows–66% of which contain nudity!
July 26-28: Massage Envy
Hundreds of customers have experienced sexual assault and/or harassment at the hands of Massage Envy massage therapists. Massage Envy has enabled this behavior through poor policies and has dismissed or downplayed the seriousness of these allegations by shirking responsibility and refusing transparency. Even more shocking is that Massage Envy has actively stood in the way of justice being done in these situations by forcing many of their clients to give up their rights to “assert or bring any claim, demand, or legal action” against them by sneaking a clause into their customer agreement. In addition, they have urged their employees to avoid filing reports to the proper authorities, thus allowing the perpetrators to go on sexually assaulting other clients. Not only is this irresponsible, it is an outright obstruction of justice!
Quick Actions:
- Email Massage Envy executives to tell them to improve their policies regarding sexual exploitation
- Leave reviews on Massage Envy’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Consumer Reports, in your local Yelp, etc., to let their followers know what they’ve been up to
- Send one of these prewritten tweets to raise awareness and increase the pressure for change
- @massageenvy has facilitated sexual exploitation in their businesses for far too long! Time for them to stop doing damage control and start taking steps towards real corporate responsibility. #TimesUp #EndExploitation
- @massageenvy your massage therapists have sexually harassed and assaulted REAL PEOPLE, and you are letting them get away with it. #NoMore! It’s time to stand up and take responsibility for the damage your employees and policies have caused. #EndExploitation
- @massageenvy must commit to stop forcing customers to wave their right to bring forward claims against Massage Envy for #sexualassault. Bullying assault victims who were once your clients by denying #justice is not #sexualassaultprevention. #EndExploitation
- If you’ve had an experience with sexual assault or harassment at the hands of a Massage Envy employee and would like to share your story with us, you can email us at public@ncose.com or fill out this form
July 29-31: Steam
Last year, after receiving lots of feedback from supporters like you, Steam asked some creators of video games that depicted sexual violence to remove those inappropriate materials. They threatened to pull the games from their platform if the game creators did not comply. However, after getting fierce backlash from the opposition within the gaming community, Steam reversed its call and created a new “allow everything” rule. Now, games that depict rape, sexual violence, and exhibitionism are promoted and available to more than 35 million minors who use Steam. We’ve seen how Steam crumbles under pressure, so we’re asking you to help us put the pressure on Steam!
Quick Actions:
- Put the pressure on Steam through social media by sending out these pre-written tweets
- @steam_games please protect the millions of young gamers who use your platform. Create an opt-in 18+ category, so they’re not automatically exposed to sexually graphic games. #parentingtips #onlinesafety #EndExploitation
- @steam_games why are you promoting games that depict rape, sexual violence, & more to the 35 MILLION+ minors using your platform?! You are contributing to rape culture in a world where women, children, and LGBTQ+ persons are sexually assaulted every day! #TimesUp #EndExploitation
- @steam_games appears to think it’s okay to promote games depicting rape, sexual violence, and more to millions of minors. If you disagree with them and want your voice to be heard, click the following link to email Steam execs: https://oneclickpolitics.global.ssl.fastly.net/messages/edit?promo_id=3829
- Reach out to Steam executives directly via email to let them know you want automatic protective measures in place for minors who use their platform.
- If your child or a child you know uses Steam, click here to learn more about parental controls in Steam and make sure to have a conversation now about the dangers of these kinds of games and safe gaming practices
With your help, we believe that these corporations can change! We hope you will join in on the action July 20-31, 2019 as we take concrete steps toward seeing a world free from sexual exploitation!
