Mary Whitehouse - a reappraisal

[KimikosNightmare]

I've thought for some time now that much of what she said was , indeed, right.

Her views on homosexuality are obviously problematic but she was spot on about pornography.

BBC News - Was moral campaigner Mary Whitehouse ahead of her time?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-60556060

I've looked to find copies of her work/things written in her own words on the interweb and I can't find any. I do recall reading something she wrote (and it was pretty awful). MW was certainly no feminist!

I just put Mary Whitehouse quotes into Google. Remarkably thin on the ground.

There are various snippets in articles, from wikipedia to various newspapers, discussions about her suing Gay News etc. I had started reading through some of when @KimikosNightmare posted the BBC piece. I thought is remarkably pleasant, given they were the focus of her ire for so long!

I think the problem with the 'agree the sky is blue' analogy is that it is too simplistic. perhaps we could extend it to say that conservatives might argue it is one shade (cornflower) whereas radicals might argue it is azure.

I'd be keen to re-read Whitehouse because although I think we probably agreed that elements of porn were bad that she saw it as about destroying women's reputations, or ungodliness or destroying the sanctity of marriage - whereas I am all up for destroying marriage :). The context is all important and we don't have the context.

It certainly is simplistic. However, it's marginally less so than what we all see on social media, which is on the lines of 'OMG X said Y, X is a bigot' and henceforth any mention of X is met with 'I can't believe you support X, X is a hateful person who wants people like me dead, I've reported X for hate crimes' etc etc when in fact X has said nothing of the kind.

Aren't you as ancient as I am @YetAnotherSpartacus

I had a look at Amazon, see what her book reviews were like! This has some of her letters viewable... The response from David Attenborough, then at the Beeb is worth a read and the dad's letter about Crackerjack and Gary Glitter is

www.amazon.co.uk/Mary-Whitehouse/e/B001KIHT8C%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Samphire - I'm pretty old and I am much enjoying the Amazon link! Thank you!

Gasp0de - I'm not sure that pointing out somebody else's simplistic responses is really relevant? They are pretty bad so I can be bad too? Or 'we are as bad as they are?'

The issue I have - happy to be corrected if wrong - is that Whitehouse seemed to put homosexuality in the same bracket as pornography/paedophilia. That is, she wasn't separately condemning different things for what might be valid reasons, it was all categorised as ungodly, corrupting and so forth. It raises the question of how valid it might be to condemn the 'right' thing (e.g. paedophilia) for the 'wrong' reason.

So was sex outside of marriage - and particularly for women.

At the time she missed much of the point about PIE. She complained it was funded by public money (which it wasn't) but didn't seem to grasp what it actually was.

Many detractors at the time said she often missed the wood for the trees.

I might actually get the book I linked to, it seems like a great read and a proper debate. Less politely hagiographic than the BBC piece.

Yes - I very much agree with your point about context, YetAnother.