The problem with No More Page 3: Right on authoritarianism is still authoritarianism

As much as I dislike lots of the things the Sun newspaper does in the name of journalism, and as much as I generally like Caroline Lucas, something about Ms Lucas wearing a 'No More Page 3' t-shirt in the House of Commons yesterday irked me.

As much as I dislike lots of the things the Sun newspaper does in the name of journalism, and as much as I generally like Caroline Lucas, something about Ms Lucas wearing a ‘No More Page 3’ t-shirt in the House of Commons yesterday irked me.

Not the wearing of the T-shirt as such, but rather what she said afterwards when she was rebuked for breaching House of Commons dress regulations.

Lucas referred to the ‘irony’ of being told her No More Page 3 t-shirt was offensive considering, presumably, that Page 3 is pretty offensive to some women.

Ok, fine so far, she has every right to feel ‘offended’ by what she reads in the press.

But she then called on the government to take action if the Sun’s editors do not stop publishing daily pictures of topless women on page three by the end of the year.

As a liberal, it’s here that I find I have a problem. Do I think Page 3 is silly and out of place in a newspaper that purports to be just that – a ‘news’ paper? Yes, absolutely.

Do I want the government to intervene in the editorial decisions of our papers based on what may or may not be ‘offensive’? No, I most certainly do not.

The argument that Lucas and others have started to use in proposing government regulation of the press over Page 3 is also strikingly similar to the old arguments used by social conservatives when they said that societal violence was a consequence of violence on television.

“A government-commissioned sexualisation of young people review found there is evidence that suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, a tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm,” Lucas said.

In other words, we should censor the media because people may thoughtlessly act out what they see in the newspaper.

There is plenty of evidence that this just isn’t true. The widespread decline in violence in the West despite the boom in violent action films for one thing. Also, after over sixty years of research, the fact that evidence of the direct effect of the media on behaviour has not been clearly identified should at the very least act as a warning against state intervention in the press on that basis.

As David Gauntlett has pointed out, this approach to the media is a bit like

“…arguing that the solution to the number of road traffic accidents in Britain would be to lock away one famously poor driver from Cornwall; that is, a blinkered approach which tackles a real problem from the wrong end, involves cosmetic rather than relevant changes, and fails to look in any way at the ‘bigger picture'”.

A problem with the No More Page 3 campaign is the very premise it appears to be based on – that pornography is inherently sexist. In a sense this represents the triumph of authoritarian elitist feminism over its sex-positive counterpart.

It’s also surely about interpretation: who says a person looking at a picture of a half naked woman (or a man – remember page 7 which, tellingly, was dropped because it wasn’t very popular?) is ‘objectifying’ that person? If looking at a half naked woman does constitute objectification, does this mean that any man who finds a woman attractive based purely on what she looks like is a raging sexist?

Sorry, but I don’t buy it (in both senses of the word). And neither should you, if you don’t like the Sun newspaper that is. Don’t buy it. It’s really that simple.

32 Responses to “The problem with No More Page 3: Right on authoritarianism is still authoritarianism”

  1. LB

    More laws. Lots more laws. Solves every problem known to man. More taxes likewise.

    From Scrofula, to syphilis to the king’s itch, more laws and more taxes solve everything.

  2. Kathryn

    Well you still end up having to see it if others are ‘reading’ the paper in public. Which makes me feel pretty uncomfortable, and has been a threatening experience in the past.

    I basically agree with you though. There’s no evidence of links between exposure to pornography and sexual violence, so it’s difficult to find a reason why this shouldn’t be allowed, or what positive outcome we were hoping for in banning or controlling topless images.

  3. 3arn0wl

    I would’ve basically blogged the same words.

    I guess the Sun thinks that page 3 brings in some revenue – though I don’t know whether there’s any evidence of that. Would circulation go down if they dropped page 3? The only way to know is for them to try it, I guess.

    In a liberal, tolerant society, I guess it’s down to the newspaper-buying public to put their pound where their morality is. I just don’t understand why they persist in bank-rolling Rupert Murdoch.

  4. Richard

    The House, and I mean all three political parties, united to sanction the so called ‘freedom of the press’ some months ago in the wake of phone hacking scandal. The Daily Mail was restricted to reporting a story about an affair that could ‘bring’ down the government by saying they knew about events but couldn’t report names. Don’t tell me we have a free press now! What we do have are women represented as sexualised objects. If we had ‘Page 3’ type pages in alternative mainstream tabloids that featured men represented in this way then it would seem to me a little more fair (whether I agree with that or not). But how can we move forward, in terms of gender equality, when one of the UK’s most popular newspapers is representing women as objects of desire as one of its main features. This is 2013 Murdoch, sort it out!

  5. Liz Young

    This is all about context. Is it sexist for you to find a woman attractive purely based on her looks- no. Is it a problem if you stare at porn in a newspaper/magazine in a public place- yes. This campaign started when when Lucy Holmes noticed that the picture of Jessica Ennis- with all her Olympic achievements- was dwarfed by the much larger photo of a topless page 3 model. I’m not sure you have any idea what it is like for women growing up surrounded by these images and constantly being reduced to your body parts. It feeds into a wider culture where women are marginalised and diminished in society. There is a place for sexy naked photos of men and women but this isn’t it. I am so disappointed by some men on left’s blindness to how this affects both women and men.

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