Object's Charter on Women and the Media: email your parliamentary candidates!

[Molesworth]

As it's election time here I thought I'd alert y'all to Object's letter-writing campaign to parliamentary candidates asking them to sign up to Object's Charter on Women and the Media.

"This calls on all MPs to:

1. Recognise the need for a socially responsible media with respect to the sexual objectification of women and girls.
2. Support a mechanism (such as an All Party Parliamentary Group) to review current media portrayal of women and recommend a process for change to achieve a socially responsible media.
3. Ensure that codes on the sale and display of lads? mags and The Sport are made mandatory so that these publications are covered and placed on the top shelf and are either regulated in the same manner as Teen Girl magazines or age-restricted.
4. Seek an end to the advertising of sexual services in newspapers and other mainstream media.
5. Call for an end to the advertising of sex industry jobs in Government job centres. "

Full details here

Anyone want to join me in sending emails to their parliamentary candidates to ask for their support?

good idea.
all my candidates, or just the one who is going to win?

' regulated in the same manner as Teen Girl magazines'

teen girl magazines are regulated? what is that about?

done my main 3
now emailing/Facebooking friends to try to get them to join in.
thanks for suggestion Molesworth

Yes, I thought "WTF?" about the teen girl magazines as well but forgot to look up the details

Have emailed my tory, labour, lib dem and green candidates. I don't think I'll bother with UKIP!

I wonder re UKIP etc.
Maybe it might actually be easier to get one of them to sign up for it because they are more desperate?
And if we did, would that a. make it look loony by association or b. help to force it onto the agenda?

Yeah, I have to say I'm reluctant to court the support of right wing nutters

Although they might well support the aims of the campaign ... but for all the wrong reasons!

I got election leaflets from our UKIP and BNP candidates today and decided I didn't want to be in email contact with either of them, ever

By the way, have you noticed that the list of non-MP people who have signed includes Dr Brooke Magnanti (ie Belle de Jour)? Assuming that is authentic and not some joker posing as her, I think it is rather telling if even the poster-girl for the 'buying sex is fine' brigade agrees with these aims.

someone else do this!
someone I have written to, please actually reply!

No replies here either

Bah!

meh!

Hey Moley - our first hit!
My brother's MP has agreed to sign after he tweeted him. (Maybe that is where I'm going wrong, using email ).

he's Labour btw.

WOOHOO! Well done SethStarkaddersUncle!

Good idea to use Twitter - I deleted my account a while ago (social media overload) but have just re-registered (MolesworthMN, if you're on there )

Nope. Not in a million years. Badly thought out pro-censorship anti-sex crap that will be piss-easy to hijack by rightwing misogynist nutters.

Ah well, you needn't worry SGB - with the forces of capitalism and patriarchy on your pro-objectification side, our piffling efforts are unlikely to effect much in the way of change.

which bit exactly is anti-sex then SGB?
and please explain more about the right-wing nutters and what they are going to do and how it is going to make the media portrayal of women any worse than it is at the moment.

SSM are you reading Female Chauvinist Pigs for the bookclub?

There's a very good chapter in there about the so-called "sex-positive" and anti-porn split in the women's movement in the 70s. Apparently Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon put forward a bill (can't remember which state) seeking a ban on porn on the grounds that it is a violation of women's rights. With support from some ultra conservative republicans the bill was passed (not sure if I'm using the right legal terminology here, but you get the gist), although it was overturned later. According to Levy, many activists found this "pact with the devil" hard to take. I imagine this is what SGB is referring to: that two entirely different political groups might oppose porn for entirely different reasons and underpinned by entirely different values. I don't think it's fair or valid to tar feminists with the 'anti-sex' brush just because a bunch of right wing nutters happen to share one aim for completely different reasons: reasons that feminists would never agree with.

Another interesting fact from Levy's book is that Hugh Hefner supported the campaign for abortion rights and saw himself as a feminist

I have it but am finishing the new Natasha Walter atm. Looking forward to re-reading it in the light of the other stuff - when I read it it was without connecting it with the wider resurgence of feminism.

I knew about MacKinnon & Dworkin making common cause with the religion right re a ban on porn but the Object charter is such a mild set of demands that I think it is a bit of a leap fearing it might damage free speech.
No-one is talking about banning lads' mags, for instance, only either regulating or age-restricting and getting them away from the reach of preschoolers looking for CBeebies Magazine.
It's as if there is no possibility of a middle ground between complete freedom to produce anything you like and put it anywhere, and complete ban of anything not religiously approved. In fact the Object charter seems to me to be very much heading for a middle ground, and to be about initiating processes rather than a fait accomplis. Hence I genuinely don't understand SGB's concerns here.

Ah I see (sorry for stating obvious in previous post - I hadn't been aware of the Dworkin/Mackinnon thing ) - I completely agree with you SSM, there's nothing 'extremist' about this charter so SGB's comment baffled me as well

you weren't stating the obvious at all and I hadn't thought about how it split the feminist movement - interesting.
reading Levy now.

SSM, I never got any replies on this from my candidates ... but I sent another one asking for their position on abortion rights, and got two replies the same day

One from the labour candidate and another the "alliance for green socialism"

Molesworth if I recall correctly, (trivia moment) the alliance between the religious right and some feminists to ban porn was an influence on Margaret Atwood when she was dreaming up the dystopia of Gilead and the rest of the plot of "A Handmaid's Tale." She thought "How could this come about?" and that was one of the things that inspired her.

Shudderly stuff, A Handmaid's Tale. I need to re-read it, I think living in America for 5 years will make it EVEN more terrifying to me.

now that's another book I've recently re-read and 'got' more second time round. I read Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about Iran, Persepolis, recently, which gives you more insights into the Iranian stuff that underlies the book as well.