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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

Page three

107 replies

clemetteattlee · 12/10/2012 22:05

So, I have signed the petition to lobby the Sun into finally getting rid of page 3 girls and posted a link to the petition on my Facebook page. Given that I post links to various different political and women's rights sites you'd think they wouldn't be surprised, but I have had someone accuse me of "being like the Taliban!"
For me this is a no-brainer and should be a small and obvious skirmish in the wider campaign for equality and respect yet I am amazed at how many people are keen to defend page three in the name of "freedom of speech."
Does anyone have any thoughts?

OP posts:
WidowWadman · 13/10/2012 19:26

Yeah, I'm with Xenia on that one. Abolitionism worries me.

AbigailAdams · 13/10/2012 19:34

FoodUnit you are on fire. Excellent post. It is amazing how many people support male privilege when there is a threat to it, however small.

I really would like to live in a world where page 3 didn't make sense.

FoodUnit · 13/10/2012 20:36

AbigailAdams thanks x

WidowWadman "Abolitionism worries me."
So is that all you are saying? No qualification for your sweeping statement about 'abolitionism'...

What, so abolition of anything worries you? Should we bring back slavery then, since that was abolished? Perhaps its better for some people to be able to forcibly keep a human being shackled in their shed so you don't have to be 'worried' by 'abolitionism'....

Weird!

SamuraiCindy · 13/10/2012 20:51

I don't get the problem with banning things that are hugely damaging to people.

I also don't think Page 3 is as innocent as people like to portray. It isn't just about putting women on display for men's dubious pleasure...I think it is a deliberate ploy by some to keep women 'in their place', and to make us feel uncomfortable and to remind us every day that to a whole load of people we have one purpose and that is to be objects for men's pleasure. I think a lot of people deep down know this and are happy about it. It truly sickens me.

Xenia · 13/10/2012 20:56

I think we are far too far apart to debate it.

"So say for instance the images the 'Camden Ripper' made of the dead women he murdered .. If someone took a copy of those and used them to masturbate to, is there no crime being committed in your eyes? Or any other images of violent sex crimes"

Yes, there should be no crime committed if a third party masturbates over that image. Why on earth should there be? If someone gets off on the pain of childbirth and borrows a medicla book to look at an episiotomy - so what - that's is how they are. If they want to masturbate over pictuers of sheep or piano legs, that's fine. If they want to do drawings of acts some people may not like to masturbate over - that's fine.

Anyway this is just about the worst environment on line to debate thought crime but do remember that first they ban X which X most people hate and then they ban what you might prefer. We don't want a consensus society of clones. We want England as it has always been a land of freedom as long as others are not hurt. There is no good research at all suggesting what we look at changes our conduct.

I want people to wear a T shirt saying they want police dead and not end up jailed.

I want someone to be able to joke about blowing up air ports and not be arrested. I want us to return to the freedoms we always had. i don't want comedians to live in fear of prosecution under a police type state just because the feelings of some poeple might be put out of joint because they cannot tolerate views of others which are not their views.

FoodUnit · 13/10/2012 21:10

"We want England as it has always been a land of freedom as long as others are not hurt."

Firstly 'hurt' is up for debate. Hurt can be psychological, hurt can be indirect.

Secondly - freedom is not equal. The strong and powerful have freedoms which restrict and oppress the powerless, in England as well as anywhere else and always have done. Limiting the freedoms of the strong (ie the murdoch empire) increases the freedoms of the weak (ie- women living and moving in a world with less fear because harassment isn't normalised and projected by the printed press).

Only the privileged enjoy all the freedoms this country has to offer.

SeveredEdMcDunnough · 13/10/2012 21:12

Has anypne already mentioned that there's an article in the weekend Guardian saying Nick Clegg is totally against a ban on page 3?

I despair of myself for thinking voting liberal was EVER a good idea Sad

What a thicko

WidowWadman · 13/10/2012 21:16

severed - not wanting to ban page 3 is entirely consistent with being liberal - wanting to ban it is illiberal. Not wanting to ban it doesn't mean approving of it either btw, but just that an authoritarian approach is the wrong way of trying to effect change.

SeveredEdMcDunnough · 13/10/2012 21:18

I suppose you're right in terms of liberalism, but I had never thought of it in that way - what about our freedom as women not to have our bodies (or other women's bodies, which is a similar thing) taken as sexual items and sold on the street corner for people to masturbate over.

You could maybe say (though I'm thick too, so this might be very facile thing to say) that people should have the freedom to assault, or to steal, or something...there needs to be a line drawn somewhere.

PlentyOfPubeGardens · 13/10/2012 21:20

so wherever there are newspapers, there is page 3- in cafe's, in the street, on the bus.....and this affects people who don't buy it too... By printing it in a the most popular daily tabloid, this throwaway image of an objectified woman is everywhere.

^^This.

Nothing else quite normalises the objectification of women like p3 does.

FoodUnit · 13/10/2012 21:27

"an authoritarian approach is the wrong way of trying to effect change"

Erm how else do you restrain the powerful? Pretend that we are all equal and if left to our own devices we'll all behave nicely and do the right thing? Pretend the powerful get their power by being fair and nice? What human species are you thinking of, because it can't be the one I see?

WidowWadman · 13/10/2012 21:28

foodunit - that strawman is so huge it's really not worth engaging with it

FoodUnit · 13/10/2012 21:33

"strawman is so huge it's really not worth engaging with it"

Okay, so what approach do you take with a powerful narcissist like Rupert Murdoch?

kim147 · 13/10/2012 21:38

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

WidowWadman · 13/10/2012 21:48

kim - the German Bild newspaper did it on page 1 until earlier this year- they've now put the norks page onto one of the inner pages. And I'm pretty sure there's plenty of equivalents in other countries, too

I'm not a big fan of page 3 and suchlike, but I'd just rather see them disappear because society changed in such a way that they don't have a market anymore instead of a ban.

SamuraiCindy · 13/10/2012 22:00

I'd love to see a ban. I'd love to see SOMEONE stand up for women and say that normalising the objectification of women and the belittling of women has to stop. It is just so insidious.

Xenia · 13/10/2012 22:01

The day men don't find breasts attractive will be a very dull day and our species will probably die out.

WidowWadman · 13/10/2012 22:09

Xenia - a man can find breasts attractive and still find page 3 a bit meh at least.

I found Martin Robbins's take on it in the New Statesman quite well argued:

sausagerolemodel · 13/10/2012 22:18

Oh Xenia. Missed. The. Point.

jellybeans · 13/10/2012 22:22

I'm strongly against it. Strip clubs too. Shocking that they still allow it. It sends a very bad signal to young girls and women as well as to young boys and men. It needs banning asap.

jellybeans · 13/10/2012 22:24

Breasts are not sexualised in every culture. In some women laugh when told men are obsessed with the breasts and compare them to babies. Points to social construction to me.

FoodUnit · 13/10/2012 23:02

"The day men don't find breasts attractive will be a very dull day and our species will probably die out."

What is this statement? Another sweeping non-argument trying to pass as an opinion.

Attraction between the sexes does not equal one man making himself very rich by choosing to sexually exploit young, female and usually working class women in his publication in such a way that actually goes against the grain of respectful interaction.

Sexual attraction occurred a long time before page 3 and people will not stop fancying each other if page 3 is abolished.

ConsiderCasey · 13/10/2012 23:13

"The day men don't find breasts attractive will be a very dull day and our species will probably die out."

Yes Xenia, that is exactly what the anti-page 3ers are saying: men shouldn't fancy women!!

On a bit of a tangent, just had to repost totally awesome reply from Pavlova in the comments of the New Statesman article WW linked to; to one guy dumbly asking "What do women really want?", her response: "The world they thought they were getting before they hit puberty and realised it had all been a lie."

Love it.

AbigailAdams · 14/10/2012 08:22

Breasts have only been sexualized recently in western history. It isn't innate, it is a social construct. One that has lead to a reduction in breastfeeding to the point where laws have had to be created to allow women to bf in public. Absolutely ludicrous. Page 3 plays a very definite part in perpetuating this fetishism.

Xenia · 14/10/2012 09:07

If people think most men read page 3 and newspapers are not on their way out they are wrong. Most people, male and female, look at sexual things on line so page 3 is a bit of a non issue. This is a matter of freedom. Of course I hope women are mostly appreciated for their business skills, or their skills as a surgeon or business leader or whatever they choose to do as their profession but I don't see any point in banning breasts in newspapers.