No More Page 3!

[Whoreandpeace]

No big announcement but apparently The Sun featured its last 'bare breasted beauty' on Page 3 last Friday. If so, well done to the No More Page 3 Campaign, which I signed when MNHQ first made me aware of it.

The cynic in me tells me that this 'surrender' will just be a test. If sales go down then those babes will be back in all their pouty nakedness, I'm sure.

But for now I am celebrating, even though those naked images will most likely be replaced by young women in underwear and swimwear, because fully clothed women are still not doing anything newsworthy enough for The Sun.

MoanCollins, do you not see in what happened this week that page 3 is extremely difficult to confront?

What exactly are women who oppose page 3 up against, do you suppose?

Can you think of the reasons (besides money) why page 3 has now been restored and why it has endured since 1970, and the reasons it was introduced back then?

What does the existence of page 3 say about men?

Hahahaha. Ridiculous. Comparing women's lives in the UK to the segregation system in the US is wildly inaccurate and actually quite offensive.

So you enjoy true equality with everyone else in the UK, you don't get paid less than anyone else, and you weren't let go from a job purely because you're a mother, MoanCollins?

And no male colleague is ever going to look at you while you're making a presentation and wonder what shape and size your tits are and how they compare to the page 3 model of the day. This is never going to happen because British men do not grow up in a Benny Hill-esque culture that is fed by the constant diet of daily toplessness (the Sun), slebs 'flaunting their assets' (DM) and all the rest of the misogynistic dreck that forms society's wallpaper.

Do you honestly think if a man was going to look at a woman's tits while she was doing a presentation banning page 3 would stop him? Honestly, that's just laughable.

If our society wasn't so awash in a sea of soft porn, with tits and bums on sale everywhere you turn, men might not be so quick to see women as merely the sum of their erogenous zones.

methinks moancollins is a page 3 girl or has aspirations for her DD(s) to be one.......

I can't fathom how a woman can see nothing wrong with the spectacle of the body of another woman being sold in order to capture the 18-34 male readership.

I'm sure they can see the wrong in it, but it's easier to pretend it's harmless as that gets their conscience off the hook. If they really didn't care they wouldn't bother arguing about it. Because very few women would argue 'for' page 3.

"mathanxiety Thu 22-Jan-15 19:34:37
If our society wasn't so awash in a sea of soft porn, with tits and bums on sale everywhere you turn, men might not be so quick to see women as merely the sum of their erogenous zones."

Agreed

"mathanxiety Thu 22-Jan-15 19:34:37
If our society wasn't so awash in a sea of soft porn, with tits and bums on sale everywhere you turn, men might not be so quick to see women as merely the sum of their erogenous zones."

Lol! You need to get a grip. Wait until the Green Party legalises brothels. I'll bet the increased number of girls that will be traffiked to meet the demands of that appalling trade will wish they were page 3 models.

I don't think that's funny.

Well you would say that, wouldn't you because you wrote the statement that I was laughing at.

I cannot condone the idea of a group of women telling another group of women what they can or cannot do.

I find it rally depressing that the energy devoted to banning page 3 cannot be directed to wards more 'difficult' issues.

And I am also concerned about the Green Party's very liberal views on sex work as this legitimisation and deregulation will undoubetedly increase the real danger that young girls will be exposed, which cannot be equated to having their breasts oggled in a newspaper.

You don't think that your ideas on what constitutes acceptable 'work' for women on page 3 are related at all to the 'liberal' ideas of the Greens?

You seem to think there is a clear distinction between selling a nude photo in a newspaper so that men may use it whatever way they wish and selling availability of one's body in a brothel so that men may use it whatever way they wish.

It's more like a sliding scale than a clear distinction, with Page 3 being at one end and prostitution being further along.

Re Page 3 coming back today, so it was a publicity stunt after all, and the boys/men have been reminded of what they might stand to lose, so buying will immediately go up. Win-win for the Sun .

You seem to think there is a clear distinction between selling a nude photo in a newspaper so that men may use it whatever way they wish and selling availability of one's body in a brothel so that men may use it whatever way they wish.

Of course there is a very clear distinction between the two and I cannot understand someone who would give equal weight to both.

The Page 3 girl is very unliley to be beaten up or contract an STD from displaying her breasts to a female photographer (yes - the photographers are also female) .

You are doing the real victims of sexual oppression a huge disservice by focusing on this trivial page 3 nonsense, which would probably have died a quiet death anyway had misguided people decided to raise its profile.

Only on MN could Page 3 = Prostitution.

The Sun had a very famous photographer called Beverley something. This was a man. (Not sure whether he is still there or not). But the gender of the photographer is surely irrelevant.

Miranda

This whole debate is irrelevant

The whole issue is irrelevant

Carry on campaigning!

Lol at 'displaying her breasts to a female photographer'.
You do understand that the young women are displaying their breasts to everyone with the price of a paper in their pocket?

Women known only by their first names and whose bodies are available to men in this society, whether prostitutes in a brothel or on page 3, are in the same position as the slaves and skivvies of centuries past.

Even if some women here are too blind to see it, you can bet that the men who push against efforts to get rid of this national shame are not oblivious to it and have a huge interest in keeping women in that inferior place. It is no accident that page 3 first appeared in 1970, right after women's lib had started carving out real freedom for women and advocating proper representation and real power for us. Page 3 is all about power and portraying women without it suits the agenda of Murdoch and men like him.

Well I have spoken to someone who works in the press and have been told this: this is part of the Sun's push to encourage people to pay to go past their pay wall rather than having a free website. And it's also given a lot of free publicity to that decision and hence made them some more money. Well done. Your irrelevant debate has done fuck all to improve the rights of women but has helped earn Rupert Murdoch more money.

An expert in the press has been consulted and the silly wimin of Mumsnet are being told off...

By that 'reasoning' any discussion whatsoever of any of Rupert Murdoch's 'journalism' only adds to the size of his bank account so best to pretend none of it is happening. Also by that reckoning, talking about prostitution only advertises the fact that it exists. Nobody should say a thing about Rebekah Brooks or question the editorial values.

If the debate makes even one man think a bit about what he is doing to women when he buys page 3 then that is a good thing. The bottom line is that men in Britain don't seem to see much wrong with a daily portrayal of young women who are relatively powerless compared to them. that is something women and men who support us need to talk about.

sigh. Yes it was a publicity stunt. I'm not involved with this campaign either, but it is not irrelevant or useless. You'd have to rtft. It's about the background normalisation of women as sexual objects. Been said in various intelligent ways already.