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That is what I meant! So to paraphrase my awkward response, I intended to say that there are other ways of viewing nudity where it needn't be adult, but AR has covered it better than I could!
I personally do think it's a bad thing as it fuels the gender disharmony we are generally talking about. But not everyone would agree with me.
Though, I would like to point out, who has ever had the discussion around gender without the sarcastic: "What are we like?! Back in your kitchens, please, ladies". Nobody here has told women to shut up.
So what to do? Do we ban the Sun? Do we censor page 3? Do we make it an adult only publication? Where do we draw the line?
My view as I have said is that pressure should be put on the Sun's owners to be forward thinking and realise that a lot of people do find page 3 backward, and contributing to the whole issues we are talking about.
I don't like it, but I don't think we can ban it (write new rules, the sun will skirt around that - nothing to stop them still including boobs but making it 'artsy' afterall is there?) and I don't think we should ban it (which presumably is part of what the 'No to page 3' campaign is about?).
Cosmo?
Cosmo doesn't have naked men in it as far as I know. It also caters to a specific audience and is placed appropriately in newsagents and such like, and people are highly unlikely to leave a magazine costing several £ on a train seat, unlike the 40p "news"paper that people will discard without thought.
I'm not saying this as a validation of Page 3. I just don't have the instinct to classify trashy women's magazines or teen pop magazines as pornography.
Cosmo is a very well known magazine, also referred to as Cosmopolitan. It is not unusual to find it in a stack of magazines in an office or left on display. It has very racy articles inside it and imagery with sexual overtones that could cause a lot of questions for children.
And is placed appropriately on shelves.
Nobody is objecting to the what. We're objecting to the where.
It's not the 'what' so much as the context it's framed in. Cosmo promotes itself as a womens mag, that focuses on the more adult/intimate side of things. Nuts/FHM promote themselves as lads mags. The Sun claims it's a newspaper.
Apologies, the meander of discussion over the last 9 pages led me to feel it bothered a lot of people.
Where should it go then? Should this be a legal requirement, (akin to 'top shelf' magazines)? Should it be a voluntary arrangement for retailers to put the Sun in less prominent positions?
As for Cosmo, my understanding is the only reason it's in the 'women's lifestyle' area is because that's how the retailer has chosen to merchandise their store. They believe they get the best sales / best customer experience doing it like that. There is no limitation as far as I'm aware for anything below a certain 'Adult only' threshold.
A very good point; as long as the argument focusses so narrowly (and I do accept that this is a very narrow way to look at the issue) then we're missing that bigger picture.
I think as with all things it would be better not to legislate, but to have a more soft-touch approach whereby (ideally!) the Sun stops publishing topless women in their 'newspaper' or the retailers agree not to store the Sun with the newspapers. I dunno.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22987051
The end is worth reading, about 'research' into wether porn affects/chnages peoples attitudes.
'In other words, it is unlikely that researchers will ever be able to prove that pornography is causing behaviour change.'
I'm going to tread a fairly risky line here, but:
There is a difference between Cosmo/Heat/Women's Lifestyle magazines (which I object to for the same kind of reasons that CCH has pointed out - although that's a different debate), and things like Nuts and Zoo. CCH pointed out the "Torso of the week", which is probably about the best comparison out there, but even then the...porno-qualities differ. If they were showing men with hard-ons in their tighty-whiteys, I would agree. But the male torso is not sexualised in the same way that a woman's breasts are. I'm aware that this is down to physiology and that in that case, there is never going to be a way to compare the two equally, but it's still the case.
Besides which, like I said, the argument is about context. You expect women's magazines to be fawning over Henry Cavill and Daniel Craig in the same way you expect there to be glamour models in Lad's Mags. You don't (or, shouldn't) expect the same glamour models to also be appearing in a 40p newspaper that's been left on someone's tube seat. It's inappropriate for the format.
There's people who find feet sexual, and many among them would find them more sexual than breasts. Feet aren't any more or less sexual than breasts; it's only that certain people view them so. The only difference is that in the case of breasts they're many more people.
Where exactly is the line that defines how many people (or what percentage) has to view something as sexual before it's considered to be porn?
I'd suggest though that Page 3 sits pretty firmly the on the 'intended to cause arousal' side of the line - and would be surprised if there are many who would argue with that.
Yes, it's a issue of societal perception - this whole discussion pretty much centres on societal perception, so I'm not sure how that really stands as an argument for keeping Page 3 as is. And if there was a full page polished photo of feet, put there with the intention of causing arousal then the arguments against that feature would be the same as against the current images.
It comes down to not normalising gawping at images of women that are solely being featured for the purposes of arousal.
Mine remains the same for the moment: As long as the content itself isn't inherently sexual, the intention is irrelevant.
As for the police, if it's not illegal they can't stop you. I read that in New York the headquarters had to send a reminder to all stations because they were getting sued by women who got wrongly arrested.
The point is, legality (which you tried to invoke) isn't an issue. Then you said about how most people would react, which I already addressed and was replied to.
Yes maybe society need to change it's attitude, but until it does, the current arrangement just supports the gawping = ok.
Generally, in public, topless women are considered inappropriate. There are some circumstances when not, but in general, is currently the case. Same judgement should apply to the sun.
I'm also not sure I draw such the location of Page 3 in a newspaper holds as much weight as seems to be given to it. The argument for not condemning Nuts or Heat seems to be that people expect to find it in there. That to me just argues - if you're inclined to believe such a thing, I'm not sure I am, yet - that we've created objectification ghettos and the Page 3 is bad because there's a place for objectification and that's the ghettos we've created.
Pg 3 isn't the only thing wrong, but it is a good place to start.