Pornographic magazines like 'Nuts', 'Zoo' and 'Loaded', as well as 'newspapers' like the Daily Sport, are available to anyone in Britain and are often at the eye-level of children in shops. One of these magazines (They are fairly interchangeable) encourages men to send in topless pictures of their girlfriends. Because they don't check with the women for their consent, they got in trouble for printing a photo of a 14 year-old girl in one issue. However, the magazine didn't go out of print. The Daily Sport is filled with adverts for prostitutes, and once ran a story about a woman raped and murdered on the same page as more than 100 of these adverts. Anyone can buy these, they are not age-regulated, but that might all change according to the British newspaper, the Independent.
Now, in my opinion, we should ban these misogynistic rags altogether, or at the very least put them only in sex shops. But age-regulations are a good start. What is interesting is the study quoted in the Independent article:
"The Top Shelf Report surveyed a sample of sixth-form students and found that 100 per cent of girls who looked at the Daily Sport, Zoo and Nuts reported being angry, offended or upset by the images they contained. Only 11 per cent of male students reported feeling the same, but one-fifth admitted that looking at this material encouraged them to see women as sex objects."
I am pretty pleased that the girls in this study didn't pretend they weren't offended just to please the boys. The organisation Object is also quoted in the article, and I encourage everybody to go and read Object's expose of them on their website (under 'lad's mags' in the middle).
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I don't believe in banning magazines just because I disagree with them. That's fascism, and you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting it. Your right to free speech goes hand-in-hand with the KKK's right to free speech and it's dangerous to forget that.
That said, the examples you held up are pretty bad. In the US they're really careful about making sure the girls are over 18, but I guess it's different there. I think it's awful that they publish topless photos of women without their consent, and that should definitely be illegal. If the magazine hasn't changed its policy after the scandal with the fourteen year old, they need to.
Porn is not inherently misogynistic. I've said this many times before, but sexy does not equal sexism. There is a difference between real misogyny and I-like-tits "misogyny." If the models are being treated well I really don't care.
Censorship is not the answer here; it's better to be able to point out the sexism and bullshit if it's out in the open.
However, this is just another example of how sexual commodification hurts all women when you don't have true equality.
Whether it's the continued trend of privacy violations and unethical business practices trickling down to the everyday woman (nonconsensual photos being published or distributed) or the fact that young girls will inevitably get their hands on a very narrow vision of what represents sexuality, it's definitely troubling.
Porn is only as egalitarian as the society that produces it.
I was going to say the same thing as nattles and spike. Stopping the flow of communication is always a terrible thing. What we need to do is get out there and change society so that these kinds of mags are seen as the trash that they are. When people find the mags intolerable, they'll stop buying the publications and they'll fade away. Easier said then done, I know. >.>
I read the "Lads Mags Exposed" doc on the Object website and ... oh my god! I had no idea quite how offensive those magazines were. I am beyond shocked: how to coerce your girlfriend into being clingfilm wrapped for sex, finding britain's dumbest girlfriend, the win a breast enlargement competition ... I can't even believe they print this stuff!
I think the comment the report made about how unacceptable this material would be if it was a race issue was especially pertinent. "find britain's dumbest black!" That would be illegal and incitement to racial hatred.