"Lads Mags" to be covered in modesty bags in national UK store - discussion about censorship

[EvilRoy]

It starts off with little things like this and blocking pornography because people like you see it as acceptable. It then moves onto "extremist content" which they will use buzzwords like terrorism but all it will do is block sites which the government sees as a threat. They dont immediately start off by censoring everything its a slow process. Hitler actually used a lot of propaganda to appeal to core family values

Here's a tip: If you're comparing putting a plastic bag over a pornographic magazine to the rise of Hitler, your priorities are probably a bit out of whack. Teenagers easily obtaining masturbation material is not the last defense we have against tyranny.

It's the fact that for X amount of years porn mags and lads mags weren't causing any harm, people knew they existed but they were left alone ... now they are degrading women and harming our children and all other kinds of messed up shit. Why now? Why "clamp down" on something that has just been accepted for ages but still allow shit gossip mags (which feature almost exactly the same images) to be left alone.

This kind of trash does degrade women and it does influence the way children interact with and view sex. People are "clamping down" on these things because we're slowly learning that an industry based on exploiting and objectifying women is disgusting and, while legal, should not be allowed to present itself to every passerby who might, shockingly, not be interested in seeing a woman degraded for money. And gossip mags are gross and shameful too, but at least they don't actively present female bodies as tools for male pleasure quite as directly.

Actually, apparently the same internet ban for porn is also going to apply to 'occult' websites for the same reasons. I think concerns about slippery slopes may be justified considering the ill defined terms, and considerably wider net that initially advertised. Then again I'm not British, so maybe this is just the kind of culture they have.

Although I gotta disagree on the skin mags degrading women more directly than gossip mags. Wank material is just pictures, nobody actually reads the articles. Cosmo, on the other hand, advertises all the new sex positions and weight loss tips to drive him wild found within right on the cover. Now I have to ask, what's worse? A racey pic of a woman on a magazine cover being seen by a teen, or a teen going to the grocers every week and noticing that this newest edition has yet further advice on how best to please your man through sex and diet.

Edit: sorry about that, it took like three friggin tries to get my quotes to work. Not a phone friendly website I'm finding.

 

[Hagi]

I'd say it's stupid and harmful.

And yes, harmful. What do you think all these magazines are going to get covered up in? What do you think's going to happen to that cover the second someone gets home?

As if we weren't putting enough senseless packaging to be discarded the second we get home around freaking everything. Just put them on a freaking high shelf with a large edge so you can't even see the tops if you're not tall enough to ride the roller-coaster.

And yes, chances are half these magazines already have plastic coverings anyway. That doesn't turn requiring it into a good thing, it just makes it even harder to get rid of this useless packaging that serves absolutely no purpose that can match up to the cost.

 

[omega 616]

It starts off with little things like this and blocking pornography because people like you see it as acceptable. It then moves onto "extremist content" which they will use buzzwords like terrorism but all it will do is block sites which the government sees as a threat. They dont immediately start off by censoring everything its a slow process. Hitler actually used a lot of propaganda to appeal to core family values

Here's a tip: If you're comparing putting a plastic bag over a pornographic magazine to the rise of Hitler, your priorities are probably a bit out of whack. Teenagers easily obtaining masturbation material is not the last defense we have against tyranny.

It's the fact that for X amount of years porn mags and lads mags weren't causing any harm, people knew they existed but they were left alone ... now they are degrading women and harming our children and all other kinds of messed up shit. Why now? Why "clamp down" on something that has just been accepted for ages but still allow shit gossip mags (which feature almost exactly the same images) to be left alone.

This kind of trash does degrade women and it does influence the way children interact with and view sex. People are "clamping down" on these things because we're slowly learning that an industry based on exploiting and objectifying women is disgusting and, while legal, should not be allowed to present itself to every passerby who might, shockingly, not be interested in seeing a woman degraded for money. And gossip mags are gross and shameful too, but at least they don't actively present female bodies as tools for male pleasure quite as directly.

"you can't be a topless model any more 'cos some people don't like you being a topless model" is it degrading to women or empowering? With just a quick google search I found that none famous topless models get around £300 for 1 shoot and a shoot is say 4 hours?

That sounds pretty respectable for just getting your top off, you could do a full time job and get that in 1 week.

So are men getting ripped off with "you can see my boobs for £300" or are women being degraded by being seen as nothing more than sex objects? I'd say it was the first one, not 'cos I am trying to defend my gender (most of the time "locker room" talk makes my skin crawl) but women walk around in very revealing clothing anyway, take leggings for example ... women know you can see there underwear through them but they still wear them, cocktail dresses, mini skirts, push up bra's with low cut tops.

I've also read/watched many things about women getting confidence from feeling sexy ("how to look good naked" springs to mind), now I'm not saying that 'cos I think women should be treated like just sexual objects but well Dave Chappelle says it better than me ...


Take away the stronger words and phrases (like whore) and he has a point, women have a right to feel sexy and confident and whatever but they aren't sexual objects.

Given that, lets go back to your point. Some women need to go further to get there confidence, one woman might be confident walking round in a business suit but another might only get the same effect from being in front of a camera topless and everything in between. I know a girl who has just become a model (not topless) and she says it has made her "feel more feminine and confident", I know a topless model through a friend but only said a couple of words to her.

BUT! Even if all of that wasn't true, do you really think sticking it in a bag will make a blind bit of fucking difference? Will all man kind have a total epiphany and start respecting the shit out of women? Of course not, just means we have just put another hand gun round into the idea of recycling by putting more waste material, that takes thousands of years to disintegrate, around a magazine.

 

[DSK-]

They'd better modesty bag the Sun then. Though it never did me any harm when I saw Page 3 girls -_-

 

[Hagi]

On another note however I would like to suggest an alternate solution to the pornography problem you Brits are apparently having.

It doesn't cost anything and it requires no sacrifice in freedom whatsoever. All it takes is a few minutes of every parent's time.

Here's what you do:

Once your child turns around 14 or 15 you take them and sit them down at your computer. You open your browser and you navigate to a porn-site, make sure it's a real porn-site, none of that amateur stuff, we want all the fake boobs and fake moaning we can get.

Once you've found your site together you can pick out a suitable looking hardcore video, make sure it's a nasty one. Once it's running make sure the volume's on full and spend several seconds watching each shown position so your child can get a good view. Once you've seen it you should skip ahead in the video to the next shown position. When you've fully viewed around half a dozen or so positions, they should go through several in most video's, you want to turn the volume down. Don't turn it down all the way, just enough so it's only a faint background noise.

At this point you want to carefully and slowly explain to your child that this is not how real sex works. This does not represent actual men and women. This has basically nothing at all to do with real sex. This is fake and just for show.

Now you can walk away safely from your child without any worries. Because no matter the amounts of pornography, no matter how obscene, nothing will ever leave a more lasting impression on him than his mom giving him a speech on porn whilst in the background a gal is getting done by three guys.

 

[Saxnot]

I imagine the daily mail sees a profit here. If people can't look at porn sites anymore they might go to their sleazy, creepy, misogynist, 'look, X has her tits out' articles. If there was ever a den of hypocritical rats, it's the daily mail.

I swear to god this is an honest question, I like to keep up to date with these things.

Are articles written in the 'Femail' segment, written largely by women, targetted at women, with a huge female demographic, in a very popular bit known throughout the UK as the 'Sidebar of Shame', being called 'creepy and misogynist' these days?

Right. They're awful from both perspectives. for women, it's a place for shaming whatever celebrity the mail decided was showing too much skin this week. for men, it's just an opportunity to look at tits while also reading about how awful it is this woman is showing so much of them and oh my good just look at how shameless these women are being.

the problem isn't that the mail has pictures of half-naked women in it, it's that they simultaneously decry porn as being immoral and slut-shame whoever they managed to get pictures of this week. It's hypocritical and promotes a really twisted view on sexuality where you should be sexy but not too sexy or you're a whore.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Exactly. But the stores choose to stock them and display the covers. Apparently it offends some people so much they think it shouldn't be the store's or the magazine's choice.

Are we no longer discussing the article? Because the events in question ARE the choice of the store:

The Co-operative has given so-called lads' mags six weeks to cover up their front pages with sealed "modesty bags" or be taken off sale in its stores.

(Emphasis actually not mine for once)

Nobody's being forced to cover their magazines if they don't want to, so I don't really see the problem.

Oh. Well that's my fault for not reading thoroughly enough.

But then it begs the question, why are stores selling them in the first place if they don't agree with the covers? If they're going to sell a product it should be displayed in the same manner as other products of its kind.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yet.

These comments are talking about current events, so saying it hasn't happened "yet" doesn't mean much to me. I'm merely commenting on the current state of events.

Maybe the UK mandates this. Maybe they legislate the proper breast size that can be demonstrated in public. Maybe they require women to wear burqas and men to wear those fetishistic penile cages. I can't really comment on any of that. Well, I can call it all hypothetically stupid, but it's not real and it's not a given.

But then it begs the question, why are stores selling them in the first place if they don't agree with the covers? If they're going to sell a product it should be displayed in the same manner as other products of its kind.

What constitutes its "kind," though? Not being British, I haven't actually shopped for these magazines, but the content seems to definitely veer into the "adult" region. I've found topless pictures from both "Front" (labeled the funniest, sexist magazine on earth, BTW) and "Loaded" that show breasts bare enough to show nipples and bare bottoms. A couple of these images appeared to be covers.

Without any other context, they seem to be more akin to skin mags than anything. And even with context, they don't seem that off from the format of skin mags: here's some lifestyle content, here's some humour, here's some titties. Maybe some of the British folk here can add more context to the content, but I'm going on what I can actually observe and read.

I'm not sure the US has a fair equivalent to these specific mags, though we have our own host of "lad's mags," so maybe we do and I just don't pay enough attention[footnote]generally, when I want to look at scantily clad or naked women, I look at porn, so I've never really had a particular reason to pick up this kind of magazine. I'm not trying to pretend I'm too highbrow for it or something.[/footnote]. I do know we periodically cover covers (and then there's places like Wal-Mart) when they get to that level of "risqué," and we have a ton of magazines that make the practice seem hypocritical.

Maybe they shouldn't stock them, but fair play to a company that wants to stock adult content and doesn't want to titillate--if you will pardon the pun--kids. I don't know, it doesn't seem that strange to me.

I think, considering all the places you can see boobs in the world, it's probably stupid, but it's a fairly minor deal, far as I can tell. Although I sort of wonder if it's like America, where you can see shoppers in see-through tops and covers with models wearing more bagged for "modesty." It's like certain parts of America live in constant denial of the world around them, and I suspect that's true of the UK as well.

Anyway, I digress. I used a lot of words on a subject I'm apathetic about. The "modesty" thing, not boobs. I like boobs.

The "porn filter" is kind of a big deal. This? Not so much. Unless it actually does become state doctrine. Then it's censorship and the UK should be ashamed. But as long as adults can still buy their T&A mags freely, I'm not sure there's really a problem.

 

[karloss01]

As long as newspapers like the sun and daily sport also get modesty bagged I'm pretty much fine with it. And anyway no one buys lads mags except for barbers and 13 year olds who haven't worked out that the internet has naked women on it too. So I wouldn't call it a great loss.

nope, there's another campaign going on calling for them to be removed entirely.

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2012/sep/11/campaign-stop-page-3-succeed


I work at my local Co-Op and we stock both Nuts and Zoo (they are on the highest shelf behind these opaque screens) but it doesn't stop teenagers from opening them up and putting them in the kids section, which is frankly a pain in the arse to monitor when you have a shop to maintain. and the guys who buy them are always 40-50 year old builders;we get about 4 mags each per delivery so they are not a good seller and neither is the Sport(Midweek, weeekend or sunday sport).

 

[Mr F.]

These comments are talking about current events, so saying it hasn't happened "yet" doesn't mean much to me. I'm merely commenting on the current state of events.

Maybe the UK mandates this. Maybe they legislate the proper breast size that can be demonstrated in public. Maybe they require women to wear burqas and men to wear those fetishistic penile cages. I can't really comment on any of that. Well, I can call it all hypothetically stupid, but it's not real and it's not a given.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/27/lose-lads-mags-risk-legal-action

So real attempts at selective control and censorship don't matter until they actually occur? Looking at things like patterns and history is irrelevant until what's being discussed actually takes place?

Come on sir, surely you aren't honestly saying something as daft as 'all speculation is created equal'? Equating what I'm saying, which is essentially 'Feminist ministers and lobby groups are applying serious political pressure and they tend to get what they want', with, 'Maybe they also require women to wear burqas?' is a classic reductio ad absurdum.

Forcing someone to consume pornographic material counts as sexual assault (Go read the mental health act. I got bored and spent a lot of time talking to a lawyer/reading up the various acts because I was interested in the myriad of laws surrounding rape in this country.). So, forcing someone to handle it could count as limiting their freedoms. Therefore, there is nothing that insane about the legal action. Would you be angry if Muslims began to take stores to court for forcing them to handle pork?

Again, this is not censorship. Now, its important to state that I am not behind the whole pornblock thing, because that is insidious and wrong (Despite the fact that I do not consume porn.). I point that out because people seem to be thinking the two are aligned. This is the co-op making moves to prevent people from accidentally being confronted by boobs. This is not censorship. This has little to do with feminism (Since I have yet to see news coverage stating that this was caused by a feminist lobby within the Co-op, you must remember the co-op is OWNED by its consumers, blah blah blah.).

Private companies can make their own choices.

If you want boobs, go find it online. For those of us that don't want boobs, we don't like boobs being everywhere. I go back to my earlier analogy. Complaining about this would be like complaining that the escapist does not run porn adds. Because that is what the covers are, Porn adds. I don't want porn adds on this site, I don't want them on Facebook and its reasonable to ask to not have them everywhere.

 

[Mr F.]

Forcing someone to consume pornographic material counts as sexual assault (Go read the mental health act. I got bored and spent a lot of time talking to a lawyer/reading up the various acts because I was interested in the myriad of laws surrounding rape in this country.). So, forcing someone to handle it could count as limiting their freedoms. Therefore, there is nothing that insane about the legal action. Would you be angry if Muslims began to take stores to court for forcing them to handle pork?

Again, this is not censorship. Now, its important to state that I am not behind the whole pornblock thing, because that is insidious and wrong (Despite the fact that I do not consume porn.). I point that out because people seem to be thinking the two are aligned. This is the co-op making moves to prevent people from accidentally being confronted by boobs. This is not censorship. This has little to do with feminism (Since I have yet to see news coverage stating that this was caused by a feminist lobby within the Co-op, you must remember the co-op is OWNED by its consumers, blah blah blah.).

Private companies can make their own choices.

If you want boobs, go find it online. For those of us that don't want boobs, we don't like boobs being everywhere. I go back to my earlier analogy. Complaining about this would be like complaining that the escapist does not run porn adds. Because that is what the covers are, Porn adds. I don't want porn adds on this site, I don't want them on Facebook and its reasonable to ask to not have them everywhere.

What irks me is it always lad stuff getting targetting by this shit. Games targetting men with boobs, change that sick filth. Mags targetting men with boobs, cover up that sick filth(and attempt to ban, but fail, so then the attempt gets ignored by people like yourself like it didn't exist). Movies targetting men with boobs? Sick objectifying filth.

So when I walk down a street and am "forced to consume pornographic material" in shop windows along the lines of this:

That's what? My bad for walking down the wrong street? How about if this is outside my house, or place of work, then what?

Or do you think I should sue someone for sexual harassment and breaching my human rights to not have images of men plastered in what is heavily suggested to be massive loads of creamy white shit shoved down my throat? Where are the attempts to not accidentally confront people with gay fetish iconography, or S&M play, or big fake cocks? I think it's fair to say that bukkake and S&M rate higher on the list of weird shit than the naked female chest.

Double standards. That's my real beef here. And the sealed up old dears of co-op can do whatever they please I suppose, but that doesn't make them and anyone that says this isn't ok but the other stuff is not stunning hypocrites.

You know, I need to get better on uploading images to the webs and all because there is a snap of a LUFEMS poster that I think you would appreciate.

"I am not a feminist, I am just for the equality of both sexes."
"Congratulations! You're a feminist."

At what point did I say that its ok that you get bombarded with all of that? (Although I have not seen any of those add campaigns in either the place I live, which will remain unnamed, or in Manchester. Some adds which are pretty... raunchy, but none of those. Considering the top one doesn't have a slogan or a link to anything makes me think it is not, infact, an advert.)

See, the mistake you are making here is that you think I am totally and utterly cool with all the sexy shit that gets thrown at me on a regular basis. There are some adds which are pretty... Over the top, which does irritate me. Hell, its one of the things I have always disliked about France, if it exists they will advertise it using sex.

The thing is, there isn't an equivalent here. There isn't a "Chicks" mag that is all "Look, we covered the penis with a well-placed word/hand". So... Double standards. Lets try and look for them.

Issue:
- People do not like having soft-core porn mags on display due to not liking softcore porn everywhere.

Solution:
- Modesty bag so the soft core porn is no longer in-your-face as you shop.

What you seem to think it is
Issue:
- Everything is tits and boobs and S&M and nekkid guys and stuff!

Solution:
- Status Quo.

See, I do not like the status quo. Apparently, you do not like the status quo. People like me are happy that the Co-op is taking its first tentative step in dealing with the status quo. Personally, I would say the same should be done to "Mens Health" and a few other things that use the male/female form as the sole purpose of advertising because it is all part of a much wider problem which is causing ever greater amounts of blokes into plastic surgery and eating disorders.

Or do you think I should sue someone for sexual harassment and breaching my human rights to not have images of men plastered in what is heavily suggested to be massive loads of creamy white shit shoved down my throat?

Yes. You should. If those adverts are in the highstreet, you should complain. Because complaints are how things eventually get changed. Just because you are unwilling to do anything, yet very willing to ***** about it, doesn't mean that the people who are getting things done deserve to be ridiculed or told to stop because of double standards

Do you know what the double standard is here? You.

You expect to do nothing and do not want anything to change, yet are willing to complain. Yet when others are trying to get things changed for mostly the same reasons you want things to change, you are getting all angry. You are calling it ridiculous.

Why?

Because you simply cannot get your head round why people do not want this shit. You see no issue with tits on the front of soft-core porn mags. You are claiming that its not an issue, that it is nowhere, then saying that it is everywhere and it is a massive issue, all the while accusing feminists of some double standard when there is none. You are, quite simply, confused. And very, very confusing to talk to.

We agree. We both want things to change.

You are just getting angry because its changing slowly. Because we are tearing down one issue at a time. Getting rid of the softcore porn adds in groceries is a good thing. The fact that we have not yet torn down every single over-sexualised and utterly damaging advert in the country simultaneously is not a reason to hate this.

Please, explain to me what your issue is. Without mentioning feminism or a double standard. Just say, in calm words, why it is wrong that soft-core porn is being covered up in a modesty bag or will no longer be sold by one particular brand of stores. Explain why that is an issue. Then explain your link between that and all these other adverts you are apparently bombarded with and why its wrong for one to change before the rest.

 

[Something Amyss]

These comments are talking about current events, so saying it hasn't happened "yet" doesn't mean much to me. I'm merely commenting on the current state of events.

Maybe the UK mandates this. Maybe they legislate the proper breast size that can be demonstrated in public. Maybe they require women to wear burqas and men to wear those fetishistic penile cages. I can't really comment on any of that. Well, I can call it all hypothetically stupid, but it's not real and it's not a given.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/may/27/lose-lads-mags-risk-legal-action

So real attempts at selective control and censorship don't matter until they actually occur? Looking at things like patterns and history is irrelevant until what's being discussed actually takes place?

Come on sir, surely you aren't honestly saying something as daft as 'all speculation is created equal'? Equating what I'm saying, which is essentially 'Feminist ministers and lobby groups are applying serious political pressure and they tend to get what they want', with, 'Maybe they also require women to wear burqas?' is a classic reductio ad absurdum.

If you want to actually have a discussion, drop the strawman arguments. If not, I will tip my hat to you and bid you good day, as my participation in such an argument is clearly unnecessary.

 

[Something Amyss]

nope, there's another campaign going on calling for them to be removed entirely.

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2012/sep/11/campaign-stop-page-3-succeed

Which is neither the first nor last time it'll happen, I'm sure. However, the two aren't really equivalent, are they?

Private companies can make their own choices.

Which is the crux of the matter. We are, of course, free to disagree with the choices. However, as you have said, this is not censorship.

 

[Realitycrash]

I only have one question: If this goes through, will they remove the 'Page-9 girl' (or is it Page 6?) from the daily newspapers?

 

[Mr F.]

nope, there's another campaign going on calling for them to be removed entirely.

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2012/sep/11/campaign-stop-page-3-succeed

Which is neither the first nor last time it'll happen, I'm sure. However, the two aren't really equivalent, are they?

Private companies can make their own choices.

Which is the crux of the matter. We are, of course, free to disagree with the choices. However, as you have said, this is not censorship.

See, thats what it all comes down to.

"Is this censorship?"
"No."
"Move along please."

I am... vaguely concerned that this has sparked nearly 4 pages of discussion. Sure, its not "Mass Effect 3 had an awesome ending" bad, but still... disconcerting that people care this much about something so small.

Says the person who has posted on this very thread about 4 or 5 times now.