....to want to ban page 3???

[DianaVreeland]

I remember seeing a page 3 girl for the first time when I was about 6 as my neighbour bought the Sun. I cringed inwardly, and haven't stopped feeling the same since. I have 5 nieces 3 nephews and my own 2 sons.....I hope they could grow up without seeing images of women objectified like this. Clearly I am not showing this to them but at some point I know they will. Does anyone else feel the same?

RuleBrittania Not ladies? Do you know any?

How rude.

Ghostship - you will never acknowledge that page 3 is anything but harmless fun because you are too personally invested in it having previously done it. Your views are fixed and it is pointless discussing it with you

GreenD - I do agree that they've kept it on as a relic and sanitised it to the point where it appears utterly banal. Hence some women on here denying there's any sexual intent behind it. I agree that to take it out would make their penises feel very small.

It's offensive IMO and shouldn't be in a daily newspaper.

Personally I am finding the attitudes about these girls from all the 'moral upstanding' people on here far worse than the those of the people who view the pictures.

Referring to morality is to suggest our distaste at page 3 comes from prudishness: it doesn't (in my case anyway), it comes from a desire for sexual equality, which page 3 hinders.

I didn't refer to anyone as prudish at all.

Why does sexual equality only mean banning these pictures? Why doesn't it mean the right for these girls to have their pictures in the paper if they choose to?

IMO, because their right to earn money in this way impinges on other women

missymoomoomee: for all the reasons I have already set out in my posts and many many more. When our sex is the unclothed being stared at by the clothed for entertainment/titillation and variously mocked, ridiculed, slagged off, assumed to be thick and treated like a piece of vacant meat whose chief preoccupations are her appearance and what men of that, we can never be equal. It seems so depressingly obvious.

yes

GhostShip

Do you have private ......... no, I won't ask.

Personally I feel campaigns like these effect me in a far greater way than a picture in a newspaper. Men now assume that I am going to take offence at every tiny thing and think they are sexist and some walk on eggshells so as not to offend women instead of just being normal. Does that mean that because I feel you are negatively impacting on my life you are going to stop? I doubt it.

You aren't asking for it to be stopped entirely, you are asking for these pictures to be put in more 'specialised' magazines, or online. Do you think that encouraging people to buy more explicit magazines or to go online you are going to stop women being objectified? Or do you think encouraging people to look at more graphic images you are going to make matters worse?

If people want porn (to whatever degree of soft/hard) they'll access it. I doubt very much that most people buy the Sun for the tits (most people seem to claim it's for the sports reporting). So no, I actually don't believe the removal of the page 3 girl will cause people to access more graphic imagery at all.

Of course it will, a young lad who is curious about the female body would be far more likely to look at an innocent picture of a pair of boobs in a newspaper than anything else. If your petition works (highly unlikely, but still....) then instead of having a quick look in the paper they will have to either buy a magazine full of far more graphic pictures or go online and encounter goodness knows what.

I absolutely disagree! A young lad curious about the female body is FARRRRRRRRRR more likely to stick 'boobs' in google!! You said yourself you don't think children read newspapers...

Surely a 'curious young lad' today would be more likely to spend 10 seconds finding something to look at on Google image search than go to buy a newspaper!

snap

i do not know any men that worry about what they can and cannot say to me, they are intelligent and aware enought to know what is offensive and what is not. friends often have banter between them (which i do) that i would not have with people i do not know, its because we know each other we can be like that we know it is a joke

i have also worked with men who did not give a shit and like to be offensive it made them feel more powerful, hr often put them right though sadly not enough thankfully things are changing

Ach, you beat me

Children don't read papers, but a young teen might.

If page 3 gets banned then there won't really be a choice in the matter will there?

Their curiosity would be satisfied with a quick look at their parents paper, instead you want them to go online and view far more explicit images. It doesn't make sense that you don't want a pair of boobs to be shown in a paper as it degrades women, but you are quite happy for someone who would be quite happy looking at an innocent picture to go online and start viewing pornograhic images instead, is that going to improve their perception of women?

no but it seperates porn (or soft porn) from daily news (or so called news is of that day printed in the sun)

Well, I, female, at 68 like the fact that they show natural shaped women of all different shapes and sizes, even small breasts like mine, as I dislike the enhanced look with a stupid circular ridge at the top, and the celebrities who are stick thin with oversized breasts. Beauty is about being in proportion. and it should make men realise what natural breasts are supposed to look like. If people find it offensive for any reason, they don't need to buy the newspaper. I only buy it as is the easiest for doing the word workout and crossword in the morning. As a child or teenager we never were interested in reading a newspaper.

A picture of a pair of boobs isn't porn, if you type 'boobs' or whatever other term you use for breasts into google the images that would come up would be pornographic.

And I don't think it degrades women at all. They are young and proud of their bodies. In this country we have a very victorian attitude to nudity that other countries don't have, but we have the most unwed teenage mothers.

I didn't say I was happy with them going online for pornography, I said that if they were curious and determined to see photos of naked women then I doubt they would be buying the Sun as their first thought of where to go looking.