Should we back the No More Page 3 campaign? Please let us know what you think...

[JustineMumsnet]

Hello all,

As some of you will know, there have been a few on-board debates about the No More Page 3 nomorepage3.org/ campaign, and whether or not Mumsnet should 'officially' join up as a supporter.

Previous threads here here here and here have been on balance supportive but not of a sufficient consensus for us to feel comfortable putting our full weight behind the cause.

With our most recent blog post on the issue, however, support seemed a bit more clear cut and there were lots of calls for us to back the campaign.

So we thought we'd canvass support more officially and widely. Do please use this thread to let us know whether you think we should sign up.

Obviously this is by no means a precise science, but in order to try to get a representative Mumsnet view, we will be placing a bit less weight on the views of those who have signed up to Mumsnet very recently.

Of course you should support it! Page3 belittles women, and doesn't belong in today's society.

From a mother's point of view, having a sexualised picture of a woman in a newspaper every day makes it look like society agrees with the idea that women are there mainly for decoration. As a child you can't argue with what's in a newspaper because that represents the adult world to you. If no adult ever argues against it, the message is reinforced. Our children should see us arguing against it, so please support the campaign!

I would rather MN did not officially join the campaign.

But for rather a daft reason.

It's because I don't want there to ever be any reason for anyone to congratulate Rupert Murdoch for anything. 40 fucking years of tits for breakfast because he doesn't give a shit what he does to society provided he has more money than God, and there'll have to be some kind of big celebration when he or his sons or minions finally decide it costs less to screengrab Miley Cyrus off the interweb rather than pay a working class woman to undress for the day? That man, who despises the Royal Family because of the heredity principle but whose children have inherited his businesses? I would rather turn from him in total indifference. Let him publish his shit. Let him at least pay a small number of women some money for their images. Let him rot. I will not give him mental space and I don't want him infesting Mumsnet.

Yes, I want MN to back it. I'm not a prude by any means but context is everything.

As an aside:

As a young teenager I worked in a café and had a regular customer who would order breakfast every Saturday. On seeing me coming over to serve his breakfast I would see him hurriedly flipping through the Sun newspaper from whatever page he was reading to have page 3 open when I served him - along with a creepy smile knowing fine well what he was doing.

It makes me that the normalisation of sexualised images as appropriate everyday viewing for anyone of any age meant he could get away with it as opposed to him trying to show me a photo in a porn magazine which would have got him into a lot of trouble.

No please do t support this campaign in its current form. If we are going to do anything it should be the name and shame long lens beach shots slating women's appearances. That is far more harmful to our daughters than 1 pair of tits a day.
The sun has a daily circulation of less than 2.5million. The dailymail online reaches more than double that. I know which I find more harmful.

Awww c'mon MN and Sophie - let's do BOTH!

Sophie that's a different issue. Don't muddy the waters.

Please back the campaign; where the sun goes (voluntarily) others will follow - it is a first step on respecting women and their bodies.

Yes, please back it.

There's something very frustrating about these 'no because x is more important' posts. Often x is indeed just as or more important but the point is that successful campaigns tend to be ones with very specific aims and behind which there is already a head of steam, and the page 3 campaign is already big - MN isn't talking about starting up its own page 3 campaign, just putting its weight behind the existing one.

If posters were saying either 'no because page 3 is great!' or 'yes, sure, and while we're at it, have you thought about x as well?' it would make more sense, but hardly any of the anti posts on this thread are giving any reason not to do it other than that something else matters more. And MN putting its name to this isn't going to stop them looking at other things, so....

ImMarmite There are much more important campaigns out there... How about backing something like the bicycle helmet one, that one my actually save peoples lives!! Newspapers have had 'page 3's' for donkey's years & it's never done anyone any harm!!!

How much more irrelevant can you get? I have more reason than most to be heavily invested in cycle safety campaigns and so I am, even though I am not a cyclist myself (helmets is a whole 'nother thread).

This isn't a cycle safety campaign. You can care about more than one thing.

HTH.

My initial gut reaction was no but reading through the thread I've been swayed by some of the posts, especially eaurouge re context. So, yes, please back it.

Yes, please support the campaign. Page three has annoyed me for years... in fact for decades! Yes there are many other things about these papers and the media generally that we could argue about, but this campaign has a clear objective and could (hopefully) make people think about related issues too.

I said no way back,then I got caught up in work and didn't explain further. I said no, partly because I don't think a campaign to ban it will be effective. It's the paper with the highest readership in the uk, so unless people boycott it, a campaign will have no impact. A better move would be to target its advertisers, although, they're unlikely to pull out with such a large readership.

Secondly - and this is my main reason - I think magazines aimed at girls/women with "body shaming" covers are more damaging. I don't mean lads mags, I mean "fat" celebs and overbotoxed people. They're everywhere, and on full view.

100% MN should support it. It is an anachronistic, out of date, sexist 'institution' that makes women feel inadequate. I dread the day when I have to explain why there is a grinning semi-naked girl in a newspaper to my children.

Absolutely, support it!

Yes!!!

A yes from me to.

AgentP - a few points in answer to yours.....

1. millions of us have been boycotting it for the last forty years and they have still printed p3 every day.
2. The campaign does not ask for a ban, it requires no legislation, its just asking them to print some news on that page instead.
3. The magazines you talk about are damaging too. A big broad campaign aimed at all sexism against women is going to get nowhere. This is a sharp pointy stick of a campaign to get rid of one very well known every day offender. Doesn't stop anyone campaigning to change the others now does it?

At the moment the women's mags and the papers which show long-lens shots of slebs etc can hide behind the blatancy of P3. Its a first step.

Yes, please let's support it.

Yes please mumsnet, you know you need to back this one. Absolutely.

I don't think mumsnet should support this campaign.

I think it makes women look trivial, that we're choosing this to be an issue for us to get up in arms about. We are undermining our own power.

The "print news on that page" request is meaningless because The Sun doesn't really print news anyway, it prints opinion. And that opinion is rarely very nice, what news it does report is biased and sensational. It prints horrible stories about fat famous women exercising on the beach. And who is shagging who on some reality tv program.

I would rather my daughter look at a pair of tits on page 3 than read the "news" on page 4. In fact I hope the tits put her off buying the paper and instead encourage her to spend the money on something a little more worthwhile.

I think this campaign makes women look hypocritical. We aren't including Heat for instance, with it's torso of the week page.

But mainly this campaign annoys me because it won't achieve anything worthwhile. The men in charge will just roll their eyes and accuse us all of being bra burning hippies. Page 3 is not a serious issue, it's a symptom of a much wider problem, do we really really want our politicians debating a pair of boobs in parliament?! Is that really the best use of their time (the petition is on Change.org with the goal if raising enough signatures to spark a Commons debate)??!

I'd be embarrassed to see that reported on a global network - the British wasted their government's time talking about tits.

Which is where the argument about there being other more important things to focus on. Because the "you can campaign about more than one thing at a time" argument doesn't hold weight. Because that's not how it works... People and organisations have limited resources and tend to focus their attention on a limited number of things at any one time. If parliament are debating breasts, they aren't talking about Syria, or FGM or selective termination of girls.

If mumsnet are talking about breasts, we aren't spending that time, those resources, those column inches on genuinely life changing, serious issues.

AgentP I just don't understand this 'no because there are worse things' argument. There are always worse things, if we always said that, or if every politician did then nothing would ever get done! Imagine if you went to a chemist with a cold and the pharmacist refused to sell you Lemsip because people are dying of cancer. But the box is already on the shelf, all you want is for him to sell it to you, not divert a team of top scientists from the lab where they are developing new drugs to fight tumours. It's the same here: all MN would be doing is saying they agree with a campaign that, as Justine says, is already being effectively run. It would take no cost or resources from any other potential campaigns. Yes we have a long way to go in how the media treats women, and in media aimed at women too, but why does that make page 3 not worth standing up to?

No 'Don'tCallMe' the petition asks the Sun editor to stop page 3. It does not ask politicians to debate it in parliament. You should read what the campaign is about before saying no to what it isn't about.