It's a book that encourages readers to sexually exploit women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or harm them to obtain 'sexual arousal' – and now Target are stocking it and promoting it for your Xmas stocking.

This is '50 Shades of Grey'. This book means that after various sex acts, readers are given options to tie women up and by choking her unconscious, inflicting pain upon them, and harming them for sexual perversion.

Please Target – we appeal to you as male survivors of women who read these books, including some women (not judging sexual orientation) who experienced lovers who want to replicate such acts, to immediately withdraw '50 Shades of Grey' from sale.

This trailer on YouTube shows the sexually explicit violence against women for the sick perverse pleasure of a sadist. This smutty book literally glorifies whipping, beating and horrific violence against women. It also links sexual arousal and violence.

We have firsthand experience of this kind of sexual violence since our signifcant others read the book. It haunts us, and we've been trying to rebuild our lives ever since. Just knowing that women are being portrayed as deserving to be sexually used by men and potentially harmed for sport and pleasure – to see this violence that we lived through in the bedroom turned into a form of entertainments is sickening and causes us great pain and harm.

This book spreads the idea that certain women exist as toys for male violence. It shows deep-seeded hatred and contempt for women in the bedroom and puts them at greater risk. Women in the bedroom are 40 times more likely to be suffocated to death by a man trying to please their deviant desires during these sexual acts than any other group of women.

Books like this are grooming yet another generation of women to tolerate violence against themselves. It is fuelling the epidemic of violence experienced by so many girls and women in Australia - and globally.

Target, you pride yourself on being a family company, caring for local communities, and have a strong ethical sourcing policy. How can you do this while contributing to hostile and callous attitudes toward victims of violence and, more broadly, to all women?

We urge you to follow the example set by the New Zealand’s largest retailer, NZ Warehouse Group, in upholding Corporate Social Responsibility and ethical corporate leadership, by removing these books from sale.

This would also set an example to other stockists of '50 Shades of Grey'.

Please put ethics before profits and make a strong statement that you do not condone sexual violence, sexual exploitation or the abuse of women as ‘entertainment’.

Nick, Carl and Kano