I hope you guys are having a good Bank Holiday so far. I am at Headingley watching the Test Match and massively enjoyed the privilege of watching the sublime Alastair Cook get his Hundred this morning! It's now Lunch so I am posting this from my iPad. Following on from the great thread by CT regarding censorship, I heard on the news this morning that a group of lawyers want to ban 'lads' mags such as Zoo and Nuts from the shelves! As there is a broad cross section of ages and opinions on here I just thought it would be interesting to get your opinions on whether this is a step too far? My own view is that as long as the young women who pose for these magazines do so without being exploited there is no reason for banning lads mags. Have we finally reached the stage where things will get banned because some interest group or other is offended? If this is the case then god (un pc to use that word sorry) help us! Who decides what should be deemed acceptable material for publication? The government? the lawyers? Or the public ?
The Government and the public are to decide, personally it doesn't bother me and I find it absolutely pathetic that someone has gone to an effort and time to draft a letter about it. Perhaps these lawyers should spend their time more productively and look at the British justice system itself because there are plenty of things which wind the public up more light sentences, how to cut reoffending rates, victims rights, prison overcrowding, right the way down to divorce law in which I have seen friends of mine get absolutely rinsed.
I'm with you Warky however, when I posted a pic of the gorgeous Kelly Brook I was lambasted by one of my fellow Canary not606ers. Now she had obviously posed for this picture and many others of her own free will and was happy to do so. In fact she's made a bloody fortune doing so. What about these women who ogle men at hen nights and more for that matter !! What's the difference ? Bloody thought police will be telling us next that we must have a male as well as female partner so as to be politically correct. Does my fecking head in Come the revolution
I think it's ridiculous that this appears to be the work of feminist groups, and the case hasn't been made by anyone coming forward feeling harassed by them. If a woman (or man) had come forward and said that they felt sexually harassed every time they were asked to put these magazines on display, then I could (kind of) understand it. But this to me looks like the work of a group of feminists who've ran out of better things to campaign for. Their argument that "They promote sexist attitudes and behaviours - attitudes which underpin violence against women" appears to be baseless, and if that's your worry then there's far more disturbing pornography online that should be their first target. It just looks like an attempt to grab publicity for the feminist groups. The magazines themselves employ not only the models (who are as previously stated, paid handsomely), but also editors, photographers, journalists, reporters, etc, etc, and if you take away the magazines out of mainstream shops, they'll lose an awful lot of sales and you risk the jobs of hundreds, if not thousands of people. There also appears to be no attempt to curtail the sale of magazines targeted at women, which often objectify men. If this is a serious concern to anyone living in the real world (which I seriously doubt), then my student's union appears to have a ready-made solution. The magazines in question are on a shelf behind a opaque plastic wall, so only the titles are visible. Alternatively, just ask the magazines to use opaque plastic to make the bags magazines often come in. And if you're worried about women having to stock them, I can't think of many shops ran by only women, so if anyone felt "harassed", a male colleague could do it, so long as a female employee restocked Cosmo, etc. TL;DR: The whole thing is ridiculous and stinks of feminist groups trying to garner attention when they've not got anything decent to campaign for.
My personal opinion is that the content of these so called 'lads mags' is certainly not worse (and by that I mean that the influences on attitudes to women/men and body image) then anything that appears in women's mags.
Sexual politics is a minefield.I am a bit surprised that these mags still have a market though.Presumably they are not cheap and the internet provides every kind of sex you can think of,plus a few more that you can't,free,gratis and for nothing.Storm in a D cup.
In time we won't be allowed to do anything at all. I was generally in favour of banning fox hunting but realsied quite soon that this was the thin end of the wedge and rather than being an end in itself the focus then changed to other things. Live and let live is what I say and provided nobody gets hurt or exploited then it is O.K.
These mags are treated largely as 'top shelf'? Unlike the Sun which can be picked up and looked at by kids of all ages - the Sun's page 3 content is more or less the same as Nuts, Zoo, etc. Start by banning page 3, gratuitous breasts purely for the sake of it
Sorry Cruyff, I was coming from the infringement of civil liberties point of view and overlooked the fox's perspective. Good point.
This will set a dangerous precedent surely? So what next? Animal Rights campaigners buoyed on by this ban will go for banning all Fishing and Angling magazines! I have already heard that there are some on the loony fringes who are preparing to try and get fishing magazines banned! You couldn't make it up!
Yep, that was what I was alluding to JWM. Also, humour is dying in this country as you canot 'rib' anyone in case it upsets a certain group - FFS!
In this day and age it is laughable that these 'right on' zealots think that they will achieve a major victory for feminism by getting these mags banned! The genie has already been let out of the bottle with the advent of internet porn (or so I've heard! )
Take it from me JWM,as you probably confine yourselves to medieval Middle English Scripts up there in Cambridge,it is well and truly out of yon bottle.
