Police have arrested a man who allegedly threatened author Yumi Stynes, the co-author of an educational book aimed at helping teenagers understand sex and sexuality that was recently removed from shelves at Big W after staff members were abused.
Stynes – co-author of Welcome to Sex: Your No-silly Questions Guide to Sexuality, Pleasure and Figuring it Out – has reported receiving death threats and violent, graphic, racist abuse from critics of her book.
Stynes posted screenshots to Instagram of the attacks she has received online. Much of it was anonymous, or pseudonymous, but other posts – including death threats, and violent, graphic abuse – were made under apparently genuine personal accounts.
On Friday, a 23-year-old man was arrested at Balmain police station and charged with one count of use carriage service to menace/harass/offend.
“Officers from Leichhardt police area command commenced an investigation over alleged online threats to a 48-year-old woman,” a spokesperson for New South Wales police said.
“Following inquiries, a 23-year-old man was arrested at Balmain police station. He was then taken to Newtown police station, where he was charged with one count of use carriage service to menace/harass/offend.”
The man was granted strict conditional bail and is due to appear at Downing Centre local court on 11 August.
Stynes co-authored Welcome to Sex with former “Dolly Doctor” Melissa Kang. The book is aimed at 12 to 15-year-olds and discusses subjects such as masturbation, safe sex, consent, gender identity and sexual positions.
It has attracted criticism from conservative campaigners who argue its content is too graphic and unsuitable for children.
Rachael Wong, chief executive of Women’s Forum Australia, said “the problem with the book” was that it was teaching sex to children. Others have accused the book of “grooming” children.
Stynes has defended the book, and the research behind it, arguing that education and information would help protect teenagers as they learned about sex.
“Many of the discussions around consent, the putrid effects of porn on real-world sex, and keeping us all safe in moments of intimacy come back to teaching about sex and consent and starting that teaching young,” Stynes said when the book was released two months ago.
After critics of the book abused staff at Big W and Target, the book was pulled from shelves at those stores. It then reached no 1 on Amazon’s online sales charts.
