LOS ANGELES—The Australian anti-pornography group Collective Shout is at it again, notes a blog from the group posted on Thursday.
According to the controversial anti-porn group, it was able to secure a so-called “flash win” in a campaign to pressure the Playboy-owned luxury lingerie retailer Honey Birdette to pull “porn-themed” advertising from a mall near the Western Australian city of Perth.
Collective Shout is an anti-pornography group co-founded by a self-described “pro-life feminist” named Melinda Tankard Reist. Collective Shout presents itself as the Australian equivalent of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, another anti-pornography group led by religious conservatives here in the United States.
Honey Birdette has been targeted by Collective Shout for many years, according to the anti-porn group’s own digital records.
For example, Collective Shout previously criticized Honey Birdette in August 2025 for advertising a range of lingerie products featuring familiar BDSM mainstays such as chains, collars, and leashes. The anti-pornography group sent a complaint to the advertising industry regulatory entity in Australia. Still, it closed the matter after Honey Birdette effectively resolved the concerns raised in the complaint. Dozens of other cases have been brought against Honey Birdette previously, as noted in Collective Shout’s campaigns.
“Playboy-owned sex shop Honey Birdette has been forced to remove two porn-style shop window ads following our reports to Ad Standards,” reads the recent post on the Collective Shout blog. “The ads promoting a range called ‘Sumi – Leopard’ featured objectifying portrayals of naked women.”
Here, the group is referring to how it reported Honey Birdette and its landlords at a particular shopping mall to the Ad Standards group. Ad Standards is a self-regulatory, non-governmental body funded by the country’s advertising and marketing industries that enforces advertising codes for various services and products.
The advertisement in question is an advert promoting a Honey Birdette lingerie and intimate wear line called “Sumi.” The company describes Sumi as a line “inspired by sheer bodysuits and bodystockings” that features prints in black and leopard print sheer, comprising complete lingerie sets, catsuits, headpieces, and other products.
Collective Shout called the advertising images in the Perth shopping mall pornographic and deriving from a so-called “porn-style” sexual boutique shop. The group said that the advertising was objectifying women and girls, including being problematic for children in the mall.
A pair of images posted along with the blog post features the actual Honey Birdette advertisement in one image, but then another image of a children’s stage show for families shopping at the mall, which Collective Shout paints as a “family shopping center.” The Sumi adverts were seen “meters” away from the stage show.
However, the number of “meters” and the actual distance between the advertisements and the exact stage show were not disclosed. This was noted to Ad Standards by Collective Shout. According to the group, Ad Standards responded promptly to its complaint, which Perth-area Collective Shout campaigners initiated.
“Less than 24 hours after lodging our reports, Ad Standards replied with a notice advising that Honey Birdette had confirmed the ads had been ‘modified or removed and the original advertisement will not be used again on this medium,'” said the post by Collective Shout.
Now, in the style of Collective Shout’s pressure campaign tactics, the group is asking its followers and activists to file further complaints with Ad Standards and petition the chief executive officer and senior executives of the parent company of the shopping mall where the advertisements appeared, requesting that they suspend Honey Birdette’s marketing campaigns in their shopping centers throughout Australia.
Honey Birdette was acquired by the NASDAQ-traded PLBY Group, the parent company of other brands such as Playboy, in the summer of 2021.
The luxury lingerie chain was established in Australia in 2006 and was later acquired by the publicly traded conglomerate to boost its global presence and e-commerce strategy. Honey Birdette has most of its brick-and-mortar locations across Australia, with additional stores in the United States and other countries worldwide.
PLBY Group did not respond to AVN’s inquiries for comment by the time of publication. AVN previously covered Collective Shout for its censorship campaigns against NSFW video games being removed and demonetized on digital marketplaces like Steam and Itch.io.
