Page Three is in a newspaper called The Sun. The newspaper itself is completely useless, not fit for anything except perhaps lining the bottom of a birdcage or perhaps a rabbit hutch or soaking up an oil spill from your driveway from that leak in the sump of that piece of shit car you have to drive, due to the fact that you don't have any money left from your pay packet because your wife spends any additional money on makeup and clothes. More on this later...
On Page Three is a picture of a bare breasted young lady from somewhere in the UK.
It must be said at this point that I don't read newspapers in general but never The Sun. I really couldn't care one way or the other if Page Three exists or not. It won't impact on my life whatsoever. Or will it?
Although not quite in the same league as the horse meat scandal there is an uproar that Page Three should be canned (pun intended).
There is a petition; how very British.
The argument against it is so wide ranging it's hard for me to fathom how all the threads tie together.
The main crux of the argument is that it sexualises women which apparently leads to rape, human trafficking for prostitution and as far as I can see every ill that has ever befallen women across the entire face of the planet.
While I want to say "what a fucken pile of shit" I can surely engage in an adult debate without name calling; maybe.
Surely there is some correlation in the crime statistics to show these links? Not that I can see. If you look back over the last 40 years that this has been printed in the paper then you would expect to see something, anything that stood out. Nope. Perhaps I'm just reading it wrong? Maybe. What the hell do I know about crime statistics anyway.
The argument apparently is not that a pretty young lady who chose to appear and got paid for it, is semi naked, that's not the issue. Well they say it's not the issue.
No, the issue I'm told is that page three "sexualises" women; that in turn leads to rape and all of the above. What the fuck? How the hell do they fit together?
Now you have to understand that during this debate I was called a muppet and was told that I was wrong, naive and that I was being "educated" by people much more knowledgeable than myself.
I don't claim to be a brainiac, in fact my I.Q is roughly my shoe size (but I wear big shoes) but being educated about something by people that have got their information from what is obviously an unreliable source offended me.
If you take the lazy option, and I did, ask Wikipedia, it gives an explanation of sexualisation and it clearly states, with references to research done on the subject, that the supposed links to trafficking and prostitution are sketchy at best; downright wrong at worst.
I'm a man so I'm probably a little biased because I want to see naked and semi naked women and really, why the hell wouldn't I? I love the female form. They are beautiful. If women weren't sexual why the fuck would we want anything to do with them? It's natural that we men are sexually attracted to women. If we weren't the the species would come to a grinding halt.
As a man I can honestly say that women drive me batshit crazy. Christ if it wasn't for the sex I probably wouldn't want anything to do with them.
This led me other things. I'm not really a cultural guy, you may be able to tell by the way I dress or perhaps the way I express myself; in fact a tub of yoghurt has roughly the same amount of culture as me, perhaps a little more. Now I've tried to remedy this by visiting London's many art gallery's, well they are free, and have visited the London portrait gallery many times. I was led to believe that this sexualisation was a recent problem and was getting increasingly worse in the last couple of years. As I've walked around in the art galleries of London I've seen a LOT of naked women. Naked. In a free museum. That children can visit.
I mention this because I was told that this National newspaper that you have to pay for was sexualising women to children because they can look at a semi naked woman, and I quote, "While they eat their cornflakes."
Surely it is a parents responsibility to decide what is appropriate for their children. After all what are parents for if not to raise morally aware and upright citizens? Letting your child read The Sun, to me, represents child neglect if not outright abuse.
So if children can visit a FREE art gallery with painted pictures of NAKED women but you have to PAY to buy a newspaper with SEMI NAKED women I think that part of the argument is sorted. Maybe I'm wrong because that's culture.
Next on the agenda is women themselves. Surely if anyone is sexualising women it's women themselves?
The women appearing in this newspaper and indeed any other publication where they bare their bodies for cash are as guilty of sexualising women if not more than the publications themselves. They know us men, and I'm sure quite a few women, want to see them naked, taking full advantage of that and getting paid very well for it, thanks very much.
Are they being exploited? Hell no! If anyone is being exploited its us simple minded males who make most of our decisions with the wrong head.
Correct me if I'm wrong but surely women want to be seen as sexy? Why would they wear makeup? Nice clothes? Sexy underwear?
All of these things are on show, every day, on every street and in every nightclub every week.
Makeup for one has been around for centuries. I don't know a single woman who would wear makeup if they didn't feel the need to wear it, but then there will probably be some tool saying that women are oppressed by us men and feel forced to wear it. Bullshit! They force themselves to put that shit on their face to look better, for men to look at them. To reinforce that point it's important to note that I said to my wife that I think she is beautiful without it. She hasn't worn any for some years now.
After the abuse I suffered at the hands of those educating me I thought perhaps I didn't understand the question? The words. Being the great unwashed, uneducated pleb that I obvious am I went out to understand the WORDS better.
First point of call was, as I've mentioned sexualisation. Ok understood. Also in the explanation of sexualisation the word pornification was mentioned.
I think that with the advent of the Internet, porn has become more mainstream. That's not to say that it wasn't a massive industry before but it made it so much easier to access. You didn't have to frequent a seedy back alley store with sticky carpet, peep shows and all manor of implements available for all kinds of weird fetish shit.
When I was a kid this stuff was around in magazines and videos. There is more now because people realise there is money to be made from their own home or bedroom. It's a massive multi-billion dollar industry.
It's more easily accessible to children but again that should rest with parents and those responsible for those children. If you don't want your children exposed to it it's up to you. It's been said that children are being sexualised, well yes they are. They are being treated like complete fucken idiots by us adults who forgot what it's like to be a child. How curious and how quickly they soaked up information and how incredibly intelligent these children are.
Education is key and we are failing. Children need to be educated that porn isn't the norm; that it's not real, well apart from a few one night stands and maybe early in relationships, experimental college years and certainly before marriage and kids.
If we don't talk to them and let them find out for themselves then they'll grow up thinking that is normal and it could ruin their relationships and their expectation from their partners. Let's be realistic, there is already so much expectation on sex anyway, especially from us men without the added pressure to live up to a professional porn star. Some of us aren't built for that. I'm not including myself in that because I'm fucken awesome in bed; all thirty seconds of that sweet, sweet lovin.
It just grates on me when conservative fucktards try to tell me what's good for me and the rest of the population. Like the health and safety assboys. My god. Who the hell does that job? They are the bastard children of unscrupulous lawyers and complete morons. Prime example, printing "To prevent suffocation, do not place this plastic bag over your head."
Surely anyone that could read that wouldn't be stupid enough to actually pull a plastic bag over their head? No? Is it aimed at young children? Who have no clue what suffocation means? Perhaps a picture of someone with a plastic bag over their head with a cross through it?
For my mind anyone that doesn't know that if you pull plastic bags over your head it could kill you then let them; they're falling victim to Darwin's theory of evolution.
But I detract. This argument is about sexualisation after all.
Since when is nudity a bad thing? I personally love being nude and when I'm at home I usually I am. I have children so does that make me a pervert? I think not. I'm not embarrassed of my naked form and I don't want my children to be either. I guide my children to good moral choices, my morals, not some outdated religious based nonsense. That I feel is my role as a parent. To teach them what is acceptable and what is not. It's not about right or wrong because that is subjective.
When I say it won't matter to me one way or the other if page three is banned I mean I won't miss it as I've never looked but it should matter to us all. The reason being that if these fundamentalists get their way then what's next? Tattoos? It's an infringement on our right to CHOOSE. You can choose to look or look away.
If you don't like it you have the right to be offended but that doesn't mean it should be banned any more than, say, people wanting to adorn their flesh with tattoos.
I'm offended by people who consider me a moron or an idiot but my offence shouldn't be made law.
If these people get their way, my writing, which is also offensive to some, I'm sure, could be next and we really don't want that now, do we?
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