If I were ever tempted to think feminism had done its job, a cursory glance at the Daily Mail online would be enough to convince me how much further there is to go. How else can you explain the news outlet's choice to publish a lengthy forensic dissection of Sunrise host Samantha Armytage's love life, headlined by her scandalous, grotesque decision to leave the house wearing full brief underwear and no makeup?

Armytage was the target of a series of creep shots over the weekend as part of the Daily Mail's latest despicable display of misogyny dressed up as celebrity news. And I use the term "creep shots" deliberately, because it's time this form of media abuse was called out. Following a woman to her car to capture images of her visible panty line on film isn't photojournalism - it's a sleazy act of harassment.

In fact, in the blanket mist of harassment that women like Armytage are subjected to on a daily basis, it isn't an exaggeration to call this kind of behaviour stalking. After all, she's being followed, spied on, photographed without her knowledge and then exposed when she least expects it to an audience of millions. Worse, she's told (along with the rest of us) that there's nothing she can do about it. This is the price of fame. This comes with the territory. You just have to ignore it.

But how to ignore something so toxic and orchestrated? And more to the point, how to ignore an organisation that seemingly has so much power precisely because it's so decidedly lacking in ethics? When news broke that the Daily Mail was launching an Australian branch, the collective feminist shudder that followed could be felt around the nation. This is a newspaper so intent on indulging its hatred for women (and the belief that this hatred is gleefully shared by those same women) that its lady-specific pages (noxiously titled 'Femail') are little more than a celebration of slut shaming, fat shaming, skinny shaming, age shaming and life shaming. Women exist only to be picked on and laughed at, fodder for wanking over and wanking on.