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.

I would very much like to see Mumsnet backing this campaign. Page 3 is completely unacceptable in today's world.

ecmwill74 - the petition itself doesn't state it wants a debate. But any petition gaining over 100,000 signatures on change.org can be allotted time for parliament discussion. So by opening an e-petition that is generally the underlying aim....

I have signed the petition. I would like MN to back the campaign.

As a long time lurker on MN, am de-lurking to say a definitive Yes, please back the campaign. I signed the campaign last year and am surprised it has taken MN this long to consider it fully.

Don'tCallMe they are not guaranteed it and the campaign does not ask for this nor call for a legal ban. Page 3 is undoubtedly a symptom of a wider problem, but every day it perpetuates the problem, so it is a cause as well. If being labeled a bra-burning hippy is a consequence of speaking out against inequality, well that just confirms how far we still have to go.

Agreed we have a long way to go.

So when they ask what we did about it, we'll tell them we asked nicely for a couple of "newspapers" to stop printing naked women. On page 3. The women of the UK chose this to be our cause.

And so what if they do stop printing a girl on page 3? They're still going to print the centrefolds of the latest TOWIE girl in her underwear giving her interview about how her boyfriend cheated on her. We just won't see her nipples.

And my guess is without some form of government intervention or regulation, we won't get them to stop printing page 3 anyway. Because the people who filled in the petition don't buy the paper, we've already told them we don't buy the paper. So they don't care what we think.

This campaign just embarrasses me. I find it toe curling that all of us have chosen to put our flag in the sand for this. And all the while I see nothing at all about the root of the issue. And hideous things are happening all over the world to women, and we, mumsnet, our press just keep talking about tits.

No we didn't 'choose this to be our cause', we chose (or at least, the vast majority of posters in the thread have demonstrated so far) to agree with the underlying belief that women are not simply decorative objects for men to get a hard-on to when the news all gets a bit hard work. We also believe in and support many other causes, some of which will be run, at the same time, out of MN. It is not a binary situation.

And for what it's worth, if the Sun did simply cover up the page 3 model's tits with a bikini and carry on as before I wouldn't be happy either. But at least it's a start. You do know it is widely reported that the Sun management are embarrassed by page 3 and want it gone don't you? They know it is outdated and sexist.

Give us some links to your activism on all these other far more important issues, Dontcallmedaughter, and I'm sure you'll find a lot of willing supporters on this thread.

Seriously, DontCallMe? MNHQ runs or joins a bunch of campaigns, including We Believe You and This Is My Child.

Let's campaign to have breastfeeding information and advice on page 3. Maybe also breast cancer information and advice.
And a campaign from the Sun about how it wants to use page 3 to celebrate, respect and care for the Breasts of Britain.

I've already posted, just c&ping my post as I think its relevant to what emc is saying :)

Yes, I think mn should back the campagn, so long as they make it clear exactly what it is that the campaign is about. I dont want nipples 'banned' on page three, and then the women to still be there in barely there bikinis - the point is that the whole idea of having a woman sexually slathered all over the page of a NEWSpaper is just plain weird.

It reinforces the idea that even if the wider family do read it, news and current affairs are primarily for men. Also don't forget, it dumbs down the men, to suggest they are only interested in the news if if comes with a side order of tits.

I would also want it to be very clear to the s*n (possibly only using one sylable words...) that it is not about the nipples! I am an extended bfer and topless sunbather - i have no issue with nipples!! I wouldn't want them to not include for eg, pictures of how to check for breast lumps, because "we cant show nipples anymore".

I think there are many layers to this campaign. It's not just "let's stop having tits on page 3 and then we'll pat ourselves on the back, job done". This is us saying "no, it's not OK to objectify women", not just getting rid of one picture in one newspaper. Hopefully it'll get more people thinking about it. Hell, there's already been a couple of people on this thread that say they've changed their minds about it. I see this as the start of a tide change, not a petty campaign by bra-burning hippies.

Well put Beyond, it isn't about a body part, it is about how women are served up for men's consumption, and what this says about how women are valued, or not, by society.

I think page 3 is one of many contributors to the notion that a woman's value is primarily decorative, so yes, please support this campaign.

All of this is why I want to still make page 3 about women, and specifically women's breasts...but in a respectful and informative way.
I would phase this out completely after a few weeks and turn page 3 into something about, you know, NEWS or at least public interest

Yes, I'd love to see MN back this campaign. We're not living in the 70s.

Hehe I think I better step out of this. I know I'm in the minority and I'm not hoping to change anyone's mind. Merely to state my opinion.

I don't feel the need to justify the work I do in the real world for women's rights. It would totally out me.

The page 3 campaign has been going on for several years and so I hope it gets closed out soon one way or another and we can all focus our energies in a more productive fashion.

Don'tcallme i think you are so so so wrong about people only being involved in one campaign and thinking this one is trivial. If you look at the people at the head of the campaign let alone everyone else that has simply signed the petition, you will see people that are passionate about making the world a better place for women and children and are involved heavily in all sorts of major campaigns worldwide let alone just in Britain, attacking the problem on many fronts at once. If you want one simple example look up Yas Necati (she won't be on here as she is only 17). The campaign has been MASSIVELY successful in consciousness raising about the issue full stop, people that have up till now just let all this crap pass them by on the 'doesn't affect me as I don't buy it' excuse (I include myself n this category) have well and truly had their eyes opened from being educated by this campaign and its sister projects like the EverydaySexismProject and those already backed by MNHQ.

YES, please support this campaign, MNHQ. It is so important to stop the objectification of women in such a widely read "news"paper. emcwill74's and K8Middleton's (and others') posts upthread are brilliant and eloquent explanations as to why.

Also, if anyone is interested in the wider issues of sexism in the media, and sexually objectifying representations of women, Object have been doing some great work on this - see here - their report on sexism in the media is sobering reading, and they led an anti Page 3 protest outside News International.

Hi, just posting again as a member of the NMP3 team to clear up some misunderstandings about the campaign.
It's not an e-petition aimed at the government, it's a petition on change.org aimed at the public. We are not asking for new legislation, we hope to raise awareness and galvanise public opinion to the extent that the Sun will have to listen. The campaign has been going for not yet 18 months and has already had huge impact (with public support from the Guides, teaching unions, Girls Brigade, British Youth Council as well as organisations like Rape Crisis and EVAW).
The issue is not about breasts, it's about using women as wank fodder in a national newspaper (sorry to be crude but we all know that's what it is) and whether we think that's ok in our society.
Page 3 conditions young men, so it's a cause of sexism as well as a symptom, and it affects Sun readers and non Sun readers - young boys are able to view it daily on their way home from school.
We get hundreds of messages from schoolgirls about the harmful impact of Page 3 in their lives and we hear the same from teachers and professionals working with young people. It is not a trivial issue, it really impacts on young peoples' lives. We increasingly get letters from men angry that they had such easy access to soft porn when children, telling us how it made them view women as objects and how difficult it is to undo the damage.
Those working with abused women understand completely the link between seeing women as objects and abuse of women and that to tackle this issue you have to look at the factors which create a society conducive to violence against women. The campaign is tackling the most blatent, famous and public example of making the objectification of women a mainstream accepted part of our society.

Yes, I would like mumsnet to back this campaign.