Sun Drops Page 3

[PoppyAmex]

Very quietly, it would appear.

More here

[glenthebattleostrich]

Well they are hardly going to announce it, can't have those nagging wimmin thinking they've got their own way!

Good news and a great start

[NaiveMaverick]

Wow! Brilliant news.

I can't believe it.

[Birdo83]

I hope you lot are happy to see all those women out of a job.

[BugBugBug]

Good news!

[RoyallyFuckedOff]

Yes, I am birdo. Better now while they are young and can get an education to support in middle age and not in 20 years time when they've made no money and they're cv is a bunch of tit pics.

Am I cynical in wondering if theyve chosen this timing for the "anti censorship" stories that in wake of recent events are sure to follow? Then a triumphant return to 'show the terrorists they can't win'?

[Cherrypi]

I wonder if sales figures will go down?

[tribpot]

Great start, with a long way still to go.

They haven't replaced page 3 with a page of what passes for news in the Sun, just pictures of women in underwear. And the online version will still publish topless pictures. So I don't think there'll be a queue of glamour models outside the Job Centre this morning somehow.

[Birdo83]

^^ That's good. It would be a shame for middle class women to see working class women who aren't so smart out of a job, just so they can take away a bit of fun for men in the morning. This whole campaign was misguided when women's magazines and all their obsession with weight loss, cellulite etc do FAR more damage to women.

[Birdo83]

Magazines like Heat shaming people for not being perfect are the real problem that should be swept away.

[PetulaGordino]

"Magazines like Heat shaming people for not being perfect are the real problem that should be swept away."

why not start a campaign for that then? i'm sure you would have plenty of support from feminists

i actually thought your first comment about women who model on page three being out of a job was a joke, but it seems not

[ChunkyPickle]

I totally agree that the other magazines are very damaging - but it wasn't boys huddling round a copy of Cosmopolitan pointing, laughing, making lewd remarks and grabbing at my boobs as I walked by at 14 was it.

Nope, it was the Sun (or the Sport if they were really lucky)

Luckily we can campaign and care about both.

[Birdo83]

Chunky, there's many countries without Page 3 that have FAR worse rates of sexual assault than we do. It won't make any difference to that.

[PetulaGordino]

i am all in favour of getting rid of anything that encourages the objectification of women on a daily basis, however big or small. the fact that women are subjected to worse things in the UK and elsewhere does not take away from the fact that page three contributed to a world where men have a "right" to their daily dose of objectification of women. it won't end that, but it is nothing but a positive step

[ChunkyPickle]

But it would have made a difference to 14 year old me, to not have a couple of daily newspapers legitimise their bullying of me, just because I have boobs.

Again, it was common for them to be huddled around a copy of the newspaper, giggling, they would rip out the picture and chase me (and other girls obviously), or leave them lying around. If there is no page 3, then they can't do that. A porn mag would have been instantly confiscated, but The Sun is a newspaper, it's educational isn't it (!)

I don't get this argument that some people have it worse, so I shouldn't try to make my life better.

[PetulaGordino]

i know chunky, like we should be grateful for this type of sexism, because it's not as bad as other types of sexism

[rosabud]

Interesting bit about this story on Radio 4's Today programme this morning. Stella Creasy MP saying it was a victory for the No More Page Three campaign and that it had opened up an important platform for debate about how women are sexualised in the media and men are not etc. Steve Hewlett's reply was very much to play it down, saying that it had been "well-flagged" that Murdoch himself was going to drop it and that it was impossible to tell whether it had been the result of the various campaigns or the simply the fact that "the world has changed."

Well, duh, why does he think the world has changed? Perhaps because people campaigned for that change?

It's so annoying. When other campaigns result in victory, such as changes to road safety or NHS policy or almost anything else I could think of, then the campaigners are generally acknowledged but when a feminist campaign is successful then the response is, "Oh we were going to change it anyway and it's just because the world has changed generally" !

[ifyourehoppyandyouknowit]

While I appreciate life is going to be very difficult for you now Birdo; not being able to ogle an 18 year old's naked breasts over your morning brew is a hardship I'm afraid you must just learn to cope with.

And your point about working class women not being as smart as middle class women and as such having to sell their bodies so that working class men can letch over is a tiny bit classist.

[scallopsrgreat]

"It would be a shame for middle class women to see working class women who aren't so smart out of a job, just so they can take away a bit of fun for men in the morning." There is so much wrong with that s4entence I'm not quite sure where to start! But I'll give it a go .

I think you've managed to insult the majority of women in the world with that sentence. Insulting middle class women and working class all in one sweep of the typewriter. And yet the second part of the sentence is the real clincher "just so they can take away a bit of fun for men in the morning." Men do not have the right to fun at the expense of women. You have nailed it though. This is all about the men. Their behaviour. The way they view women.

"I hope you lot are happy to see all those women out of a job." I just don't know how men survive what with not being objectified in a national newspaper and all. Oh wait... don't they get other jobs? Better paid in the main too. Or are you suggesting that the only option open for some women is be objectified? That's all they are good enough for? Because that is what those two statements I've quoted from you add up to.

[emcwill74]

Birdo, Page 3 isn't a job. None of the 'girls' are employed by the Sun, and therefore none will now be unemployed. It doesn't pay at all well (a couple of hundred per photo, if that) and the models are only appearing every few days. So this is just one contract out of their portfolio gone. If they want to carry on in the 'glamour' industry, then they certainly can by posing for other publications.

[MsPoodleLover]

Birdo - I supported the no more page 3 campaign and I am a feminist (have been for years and years). I am a secretary and my husband is a joiner. I cant wait to get home to let him know we are middle class because we are against the objectification of women in a way men do not have to put up with. Don't believe everything you read in the press - not all activists are middle class

[Birdo83]

I wonder how many people who support the "no more page 3" campaign also support Free The Nipple campaign?