David Cameron and the big, bad internet

David Cameron looks so earnest, doesn't he, as he furrows his brow, puts on his best "concerned parent" voice and tells us all how censoring the internet will be a marvellous thing for child protection. Except it won't do a damn thing to stop the creation of child pornography.

People who get off on such material do not enter terms such as "child pornography" or "kiddie sex" into Google and instantly access a world of abusive, exploitative horror. The dissemination and consumption of child pornography is insidious, secretive and encrypted. Has anyone ever seen someone in an internet cafe openly viewing images of kids being sexually abused? Of course not. The consumption of child pornography is furtive, dark and shameful.

But Cameron's simplistic attempt to stop the rot won't actually stop such images and videos being produced in the first place. The whole supply chain of child pornography is a hideous world of wrongness but to stop it happening at all, it is important to focus heavily at the production end. By the time it reaches the pitiful viewer, the children have already been abused.

It is already very difficult to just stumble upon child pornography when searching online. And the intellectually bankrupt censorship Cameron has in mind fails to understand the nuances of human sexuality.

Stuart Hazell, the murderer of 12-year-old Tia Sharp, had searched for "little girls in glasses" before sexually abusing and killing Tia, a young girl who wore glasses. If you put that innocuous term into Google, nothing exploitative comes up. The images are of girls, all fully clothed, all wearing glasses. If someone seriously gets off on underage girls in glasses, Cameron's porn ban won't stop such people seeing images of underage girls in glasses. Given the harmless nature of the images this particular search brings up, it is impossible to stop someone privately getting their jollies from pictures that would not be out of place in frames on mantelpieces. And blocking the "little girls in glasses" term would stop such legitimate searches as those regularly done by photo editors of parenting magazines, for example.

People get off on all manner of things. They don't need to add words such as "porn" or "sex" to find images that might float their boat but are still perfectly legal and should not be censored in a free society. There is no limit to the things that turn people on and there is no way every search engine term that might appeal to a paedophile can ever be identified and then banned.

In short, all Cameron's plan does is appease the assorted pearl-clutchers who are scared of the internet, who refuse to learn how the internet works, and who are easily satisfied by simplistic solutions to complex problems.

Is anyone labouring under the misapprehension that this government is at all serious about child protection? This is a government that has no qualms about letting G4S run children's homes. This would be the same G4S that promotes a guard who fatally restrained a 15-year-old boy to the position of Health and Safety Manager.

But in an era where puritanical voices are getting disproportionately loud, where people genuinely believe that violence against women will be reduced if lads' mags are taken off supermarket shelves, it is easy to see why people from the left and right are being fooled by David Cameron's latest ridiculous idea. 

Channel 4's Ramadan bonanza

As far as manufactured outrages go, this one was entirely predictable. Channel 4 announced plans to broadcast the call to prayer throughout Ramadan, the holy month of the Islamic calendar, which starts today. The plan is to have a three-minute broadcast around 3am when fasting begins and a 20-second broadcast for the other four calls to prayer throughout the day.

The usual suspects freaked right out. Here are some of their choice whines...

"RAMADAN IS BEING FORCED DOWN OUR THROATS!"

No, It's not. Watching Channel 4 is not compulsory. If you don't like it, nobody is compelling you to watch it.

"THE CALL TO PRAYER WILL BE INTRUSIVE!"

Really? You're planning on getting up at 3am every day during Ramadan to watch a three-minute call to prayer broadcast? And even if you did happen to be watching TV at the time, you can always change the channel if you're genuinely offended.

As for the other four broadcasts, they're 20 seconds long. Twenty seconds. Most TV commercials go on for longer than that and they are generally deeply annoying and stupid. Are you really so suggestible that a 20-second call-to-prayer broadcast is going to cause you to instantly embrace Islamic extremism? If there was a 20-second advert on instead of the call to prayer, would you feel compelled to rush out and buy whatever was being offered?

"I don't need a jasmine-scented electronic air freshener but that damn telly-box told me to buy one so I'm off to the shops!"

Frankly, if you are that suggestible, you have bigger problems than Channel 4.

"CHANNEL 4 IS JUST PANDERING TO A MINORITY!"

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realise every single thing on every single TV channel had to cater to the majority. On that basis, there has been so much pandering happening on our TV screens. Friday Night Dinner is a sitcom about an English-Jewish family - why no outcry? After all, Jews only make up 0.5% of the population in England and Wales. The multi-cultural Albert Square of EastEnders is broadcast twice five nights a week as well as a weekend omnibus. Surely that is political correctness gone mad, no? What about the contestants from Big Brother or The Apprentice who aren't white Brits? Are they there for the purposes of pandering too? Ah. I get it. You think they're pandering to a minority that you don't like. It's all clear now!

"CHANNEL 4 IS JUST DOING IT FOR THE PUBLICITY!"

Well, obviously, they want the publicity. No shit, Sherlock. The powers-that-be at Channel 4 want people to watch their programmes, to talk about their programmes (#averybritishramadan trended on Twitter for them last night) and for businesses to buy the advertising space between the programmes.

Channel 4 is a commercially funded business that has not-for-profit status so it reinvests revenue back into programme development. It is independent of government. Your taxes are not paying the salaries of whoever is producing the call to prayer broadcasts. As such, Channel 4 has no obligations to British taxpayers.

They obviously want to produce programmes that might make money and if lots of people watch programmes like A Very British Ramadan in between Channel 4's usual offerings of jaw-dropping documentaries, re-runs of Come Dine With Me, Sarah Beeny restoring houses in varying stages of pregnancy, and the pus-filled fun of Embarrassing Bodies then so be it. Who knows? You might even learn something.

"BUT WILL CHANNEL 4 DO THE SAME FOR CHRISTMAS? BRITAIN IS A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY!"

Seriously, if you turn on your TV any time from about mid-November onwards and you don't know Christmas is coming, I don't think I can help you. Go away.

Australia, post-Gillard...

I have not lived in Australia for almost eight years. Hell, why do I even care what goes on politically back home? But I do. Aside from the fact I still pay tax in Australia, I have friends and family there and I don't want them to suffer any government idiocy, regardless of who is in power.

And then Julia Gillard was deposed. In favour of Kevin Rudd. The man Gillard deposed before narrowly winning an election. Whatever you think of Gillard, it took some serious guts to call a leadership spill knowing it would almost certainly mean the end of her time in office. After much Murdoch press-led speculation, the time came to cut the shit and end the nonsense.

So Gillard's gone, Rudd is the Prime Minister again, the dust has settled, will anything change?

Probably. Kind of.

I get why Gillard was binned. The polls indicated electoral catastrophe for her against Tony Abbott, the leader of the Liberal party (which is actually Australia's conservative party and Abbott is the king of saying stupid things that are far from liberal, but I digress...). Kevin Rudd was polling way better than Gillard and it looks like he has a chance of, if not winning the next election, then at least ensuring the Labor party's representation isn't reduced to a few people and a dog.

And speaking of dogs, a company called Paddington Pups have released a Julia Gillard chew toy. See the picture at the top of this post. It's ever so clever. For $33.70, a little piece of Aussie sexism and cognitive dissonance can be yours.

Sigh.

We can argue until we're blue in the face as to whether Gillard was a victim of sexism. I don't think it was the only factor in her downfall but it certainly played a role. Why was she so unpopular in the polls in comparison to Rudd?

Growing up in a very politically minded household, I have been observing Australian politics for close to three decades. I was encouraged to take an interest in politics from a very early age (although, aged four, my summation of former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, as a "bum face" was possibly not my most nuanced moment).

In that time, I can safely say I have never seen the level of vitriol thrown at Gillard thrown at any other Prime Minister. And when I say vitriol, I mean personal attacks, stupid questions and irrelevant comments about everything from the size of her arse (yeah, well-played, Germaine Greer. Way to carry the torch for the sisterhood!) to her hair colour to her accent (Australian Prime Minister has Australian accent. SHOCK!) to the contents of her uterus or lack thereof. Endless rivers of venom spewed forth, most of which had precisely nothing to do with any policies.

The context of her famous misogyny rant at Tony Abbott was unfortunate (Google "Peter Slipper"...) but the content was spot-on. Abbott had no qualms about using the sexist hatred of Gillard for his own ends.

But it's OK, everyone. She has gone now. And in her wake are the usual "well, this will put off women running for office" comments. When Rudd was originally deposed, nobody said that'd put men off running for office. Nor did Paddington Pups launch a Kevin Rudd chew toy, complete with a stupid sales pitch that showed a lack of understanding about Australian politics.

Now we have Rudd back, and as a bonus, he has some some wishy-washy rhetoric on asylum seeker policy. Hell, when you can't be sexist, you can always try and pander to the racists, I guess. Although if Rudd was so offended by asylum seeker policy under Gillard and, especially while he was the Minister for Foreign Affairs, why didn't he speak out about it then? Or cross the floor with the carbon tax vote? Or do anything to dissent against Gillard on a policy level?

Congratulations, Australia. You can look forward to another Cyanide versus Arsenic election.

Nigella's business is now everyone's business...

The reaction to the Nigella Lawson-Charles Saatchi assault story reminds me of the armchair heroes who come out of the woodwork every time there is another horrific shooting in America. They are the people who claim with absolute certainty that if only they were on hand in Aurora/Sandy Hook/Santa Monica, they would have saved the day and shot the bad guy dead.

Ever since the jarring pictures of the Lawson-Saatchi argument were released, there has been a similar spate of heroes-after-the-fact. People who were not at the restaurant are sticking their heads over the parapet to claim they would have done something to help Nigella. The claims of "doing something" have ranged from asking if she was OK to calling her a taxi to calling the police to embedding a shattered glass in Saatchi's skull.

Yet the reality is that for those of us who weren't there, we don't know what we would have done. We only know what we like to think we would have done.
 
And now that Nigella has apparently moved out of the marital home, she is being called upon by people who have never met her to speak out about domestic violence. In Australia, the improbably named Dee Dee Dunleavy, a radio DJ, wrote a particularly stupid blog post in which she concluded: "Nigella, like it or not, you're a beacon for women from all walks of life. If you want us to buy your books and watch your shows on how to run our kitchens, then we need you to make a stand on domestic violence."

I've written before on why the idea of celebrity role models is ridiculous and I maintain this is still the case.

Dunleavy hastily issued a ridiculous clarification and claimed she wasn't victim-blaming or calling for a Nigella boycott despite her chronically patronising last sentence. That'd be the sentence where she advocated not helping Lawson to earn a living until she "make[s] a stand on domestic violence". Uh, yeah, because encouraging the reduction of a woman's earning power is, er, so empowering, right?

But Dunleavy is not alone in telling Nigella what she must do now. Globally, she is being ordered to speak out against domestic violence, to press charges against her husband and to divorce him.

In the meantime, Saatchi has accepted a caution from the police telling the media: ""Although Nigella made no complaint I volunteered to go to Charing Cross station and take a police caution after a discussion with my lawyer because I thought it was better than the alternative, of this hanging over all of us for months."

Given the extensive photographic evidence as well as accounts from people who were at the restaurant at the time, it would not have been unexpected if the CPS decided to charge Saatchi, even if Lawson chose not to co-operate. The CPS can prosecute in domestic violence cases without the alleged victim pressing charges, although I have been told by a police officer that this usually only happens if the "injuries are worthy of Section 47 Assault or above" - or in other words, at least an assault under the legal definition of actual bodily harm, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

So what now? Whatever Lawson decides to do next is up to her.  That's the thing about choice - sometimes people will make choices that we might not find acceptable or would not make for ourselves, but that doesn't mean the choices are invalid. Nor does it mean that it is always easy for a woman, even one with all the advantages of Nigella Lawson, to simply leave an abusive man.

In the court of public opinion, an idiotic peanut gallery if ever there was one, she is damned no matter what.

If she speaks out against domestic violence, some will say she is pandering to the busybodies and that private lives should stay private, even if that life spills out onto a public street.

If she stays with Saatchi, she will be portrayed as an object of pity, a middle-class, apron-clad version of Rihanna who can't seem to break up with notorious abuser Chris Brown.

If she breaks up with Saatchi, the likes of Cristina Odone, who seemingly can't bear to see a marriage break up for any reason at all, will blame media pressure. While writing about the marriage in the media.

The media circus has now dragged on for days - Saatchi has been spotted at a restaurant without Lawson and sources are saying they hosted dinner parties after the awful incident and they seemed happy. There seems to be much consternation that Lawson has not confirmed via her spokesperson whether her move out of the marital home is permanent or not.

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. Nigella Lawson cannot be blamed for lying low for a while and she is under no obligation to tell the media anything about her private life. Can you imagine what it must be like to open pretty much any given newspaper and see photos of yourself as your husband grabs your neck or read opinion pieces by people who presume to know what is best for you and profess to know more about your relationship than you do?

Meanehile, the Evening Standard has run a series of pro-Saatchi pieces every day since the story broke - he is a columnist for the ES after all. Is this their bizarre way of telling the world it's all fine, he is a top bloke, it was just a "playful tiff" (ugh...), and he will continue to write for them.  Still, it's a change from their daily pro-Boris Johnson nonsense, I suppose.

It's one thing to raise awareness of domestic violence via the media, to use the Lawson-Saatchi story as an example of how domestic violence can happen to anyone - but it is quite another to use the media to tell a grown woman how to live her life. Nigella Lawson is an intelligent, successful woman - we can only hope and assume those closest to her are offering her all the support she needs at the moment. And we can only trust that she will make whatever choices are best for her without blaming her, patronising her, talking about her as if she is a stupid child, disapproving of her or judging her.

Instead of stalking Mayfair restaurants and getting columnists to dole out unsolicited marriage guidance counselling, it would behoove the newspapers of Britain to report on some other news. There's plenty of it about at the moment.


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Here is a rare articulate piece of writing on the whole sorry story: http://sarahpinborough.com/2013/06/19/i-dont-know-where-to-put-my-feet/



Image courtesy of Brian Minkoff - London Pixels

Quetta: Why nobody should be surprised by the bus bombing

Quetta is a troubled city. It is located on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Over the weekend, a bus transporting students from the all-woman Sardur Bahadur Khan University was bombed and 14 women were killed.

Fourteen women who were hoping to improve their lives, as Malala is here in Britain, have lost the chance to reach their full potential.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an extremist Sunni group, has claimed responsibility for the attack and says a female suicide bomber carried out this horrific act. According to police, a severed female head has been found at the site but they are still investigating.

In 2009, I interviewed a man who had been to Quetta. His name is Ayob Yusuf Vawda and he ended up there on an epic road trip from his home in South Africa. Ayob and his friend, Abdool Samath Samath, were attempting to drive to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to perform their Hajj pilgrimage, a religious obligation for all Muslims.

I was writing the story of their incredible road trip - which ended in Abu Dhabi, where I was living and working at the time - for the motoring section of a newspaper. He didn't get as far as Mecca because of visa bureaucracy with Saudi Arabia, a not-uncommon occurrence. Ayob and I sat down with a map of the world where he had diligently recorded his journey with a highlighter pen.

When our fingers traced the trip to Quetta, he told me about the markets of Quetta. These weren't your usual quaint tourist-trap markets. This was not a place to buy exotic Pakistani souvenirs. This is a place where US Army surplus is sold. I was shown photographs of weapons, night vision goggles, all manner of stuff that would certainly be of interest to a group like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

I was a little bit amazed that my story went to press without the bit about the US army surplus being censored by the paranoid editor-in-chief. After all, The National tried to tread a very fine line between never offending Muslims and supporting the United Arab Emirates' stance as an ally of the US. It was probably because it was a feature for the back page of the motoring section and not a story for the foreign news pages that allowed me to fly under the radar and expose something fairly appalling.

But if groups such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi are getting away with acts of terror in a town where they can easily arm themselves with deadly equipment, the latest attack, a clear crime against women's education should come as no surprise at all. This is a group that has been around since the 1980s, has been deemed a terrorist organisation by the US and has links to, surprise, surprise, the Taliban. Oh, and the assassination of Benazhir Bhutto...

The bombing of a bus full of educated women should come as no surprise in the context of the Quetta marketplace. And on a bigger, grimmer level, it should come as no surprise that the Taliban has not been stopped and won't be stopped any time soon.   




Image courtesy of Ajmalahmedkhan at Wikipedia

Privacy? Who needs it?

So Edward Snowden is hiding out somewhere in Hong Kong - or maybe by now, he's not. Who knows? Whatever the case, there is no middle ground narrative for him. He is either a noble and faultless hero or he is a reckless, dangerous man who, to top it all off, has pretty much orchestrated the world's most jaw-dropping break-up. Hell, he has made text-dumpers look positively saintly.

But his personal life is not really the point. Well, unless you're writing for New York magazine, in which case it is perfectly appropriate to name and run pictures of a woman believed to be Snowden's abandoned partner. And not just any old pictures either. New York magazine saw fit to publish pictures of her in pole dancing attire along with excerpts from her blog and her YouTube channel. And, quelle surprise, the Daily Mail has also decided pictures of a woman who is most likely feeling vulnerable and confused are newsworthy.  

What's the problem, you might ask. She put those pictures online for all to see so surely she has given up her right to privacy, no? No. As far as we are aware, she did not know what her partner was up to and was as stunned as his employers were to discover he had left the US after leaking his story to the Guardian. She has almost certainly been questioned, or will be questioned, but at the time of writing, she has not been charged with any crime or been found guilty of any crime.

It is likely that she wanted to attract the attention of people looking for pictures, videos and blog posts on pole dancing. Such people could have found her blog and interacted with her without knowing the details of her personal life. That is nobody's business.

She had occasionally alluded to a boyfriend known only as "E" on her blog, and yesterday she wrote a vague blog post about heartbreak and goodbyes - without naming her now world-famous boyfriend - but has since, understandably, deleted the whole website. Except it all lives on in Google cache. 

Ironically, in a lame attempt to smear someone who has potentially exposed a massive threat to privacy in multiple nations, New York magazine has not respected Snowden's partner's right to privacy. And they have demonstrated just how easy it is for your online presence to become everyone's business without the intervention of big government.

She did not ask to be an international public figure. She has a right to privacy and she has a right to make a new life for herself elsewhere, something that will now become more difficult as she is splashed all over the internet and no doubt in tomorrow's newspapers.

Edward Snowden's revelations are not necessarily shocking. Nor is the potential for the British government to be involved, despite the denials of William Hague. We voluntarily hand over information to the government all the time. In the last two weeks, I have handed over information about myself and my husband to the UK Border Agency so that I can have indefinite leave to remain in Britain. Yesterday, I made a complaint about my local bus service and included my Oyster card number to make it easier to track down the offending drivers. I have to trust that they won't use the information about my travels around London against me.

And they probably won't. Who cares where little ol' me goes in my boring daily business? But that's not really the point.

As a white, 37-year-old Australian woman of English and Scottish Christian heritage, I don't fit any of the usual stereotypes and I am probably not on any watchlists. Or am I? I regularly communicate online with Arab friends who I met in my time living in the Middle East. I am currently involved in a campaign to save my local hospital which has an online presence. I have written on this very blog in defence of the mosque in my neighbourhood. I am not a royalist or a fan of the current government. Who knows if some combination of words, phrases or contacts in my online life has alerted GCHQ? I am pretty sure I have the freedom in Britain to say what I say online without fear or maybe I am being naive?

But surely we need all this surveillance to keep us all safe? Here's the thing about terrorism - the reason why  it is so effective at creating mass fear is the element of surprise. Nobody who went to work at the World Trade Center on that awful day expected the day to end quite so badly. Nobody who went about their usual London commute on 7/7 thought their bus or train might end up a burning wreck. Drummer Lee Rigby did not expect to be attacked and killed in broad daylight.

The two suspects in Drummer Rigby's murder trial were known to MI5 but the attack still happened. All that was required to carry out such a vile act was a conversation between a couple of seriously unwell people and the acquisition of a meat cleaver. The conversation might not have even taken place online or by telephone. It was all pretty low-tech.

What we do need is time to properly digest the information already available to us from Edward Snowden's story. There will no doubt be more revelations in the coming months. We need to rationally assess the full extent of our collective privacy invasion and determine if we think such intrusions are worthwhile, necessary or even effective at stopping terrorism.

But even today, #PRISM and #NSA are dropping back in on Twitter because of #PS4 and #iOS7. An entire Twitter account, @_nothingtohide is devoted to the retweeting of lame remarks along the lines of "I don't care if the government spies on me! My life is so boring! LOL!".

Why do we need to give a damn about whether or not Edward Snowden has uncovered a massive infringement on liberty on an international scale? After all, there's a new console we simply must own and there are pictures of his pretty girlfriend in her underwear to leer over. 

100 years on from Emily Davison...

So, it has been 100 years since Emily Davison died after invading the track at Epsom's Derby Day. She has become a feminist icon, a symbol of supreme sacrifice for the suffragettes' cause. But while she was probably pretty fatalistic about whether she lived or died when she tried to put a suffragette scarf on the King's horse, it is most likely she didn't intend to kill herself.

In short, she became a tragic reminder of why it's better to live humbly for a cause rather than die heroically for one. Davison died in 1913. Women in Britain didn't get the vote for another 15 years. The advent of World War I probably did more to help women achieve equality at the ballot box than any number of militant acts by the suffragettes.

But that was 100 years ago, Emily Davison is being looked on with rose-tinted glasses and, while Britain is one of the best places in the world to be a woman, idiocy still abounds.

A century on and the following is happening in Britain:

• The loudest voice in Britain for reducing abortion rights and sending sex education back to the 1950s is a woman. Nadine Dorries. She bases her views on religion and an experience she had while working briefly as a nurse decades ago. She does this in between swanning off to Australia to appear on a reality show when she should be doing her job as an MP or likening her problems with hair loss to a mastectomy - and then wonders why people think she is a shameless publicity seeker.

• Anna Soubry, the Health Minister, also turned the clock back to the 1950s when she said that the large number of women studying medicine is placing a burden on the NHS because they will "marry and have children" and then want to work part-time. She used the word "ladies" without irony in her tired tirade. She then back-pedalled like crazy, claimed the government is increasing the number of GPs (because it is so easy to just pluck oven-ready trained doctors out of thin air) and that she supports flexible working practices. No mention of the crisis in childcare though or male doctors who might want to work part-time for a better work-life balance.

• Kate Winslet has the temerity to get married for a third time and become pregnant for a third time with her third husband - and according to the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, this is the worst thing ever. Two female journalists, Alison Boshoff and Judith Woods, turned on the bile hoses on with a powerful gush of judgemental, slut-shaming crap. Well played, sisters! Clearly you both know everything about Kate Winslet's personal relationships... I trust you will write something similarly vitriolic about Rod Stewart with his eight kids by five different women. Hell, he didn't even bother to marry them all.

• G4S, the company that fucked up security for the Olympics so badly that the army had to be called in to save the day, has now been contracted by the government to run sexual assault referral centres. Because that's what's required when women are at their most vulnerable - to be looked after by an incompetent company motivated by profit.

But, hey, everything will be OK as long as lads' magazines are banned. The pearl-clutching moralising of the Lose The Lads' Mags campaign might have been supported by the likes of suffragette Christabel Pankurst, who managed to find time to campaign for better sexuality morality to prevent the spread of venereal disease or "the great scourge" as she called it. This is despite her publications on women's suffrage facing censorship as heavy-handed as that being proposed by the Lose The Lads' Mags advocates. Still, who wants to actually learn from history when you can simply make shit up about the good old days, eh?

It looks as if the new wave of hyper-conservative feminists may have chosen accurate role models after all. 
   

Mumsplaining, matronising and mammaries...

I had a feeling this might happen after putting my views on the Lose The Lads' Mags campaign out there for all to see. Some people would respectfully disagree (and kudos to everyone who can disagree without resorting to personal attacks), some would applaud my words and some would simply fail my Zero Tolerance of Idiocy policy.

Such as a woman I encountered on, of all places, Facebook. Despite claiming to be a libertarian and an anarchist, she exhibited zero understanding of how a free market economy works or what it actually means to be an anarchist when she came out in support of taking magazines such as Nuts, Zoo and FHM off supermarket shelves and out of high street newsagents. Heavy-handed regulation, treating adults like children and censorship are not libertarian or anarchist ideals.

I tried to reason with her when I pointed out the lack of evidence linking the existence of lads' mags in high street shops to sexual violence or harassment but she simply told me she didn't need evidence. All she needs are anecdotes and experience. Because she is a mother. And I am not.

Which is fine. I completely understand (and hope) that your life changes when you bring a little person into it - it'd be weird if such a huge event didn't transform your world. I asked her if she was implying that because I was not a mother, I had no right to an opinion on lads' magazines. Astoundingly, she told me she was not implying, she was telling me my views were invalid.

Wow. Nothing like being told that despite having worked on a lads' magazine, despite still working as a journalist, despite being a grown woman with an eduation and an ability to empathise and form opinions, anything I had to say on the matter was invalid because I don't have any kids.

Once my head stopped connecting with my desk at her matronising mumsplaining, I took a look at the wider world around me. In particular, I went looking for lads' mags. Everywhere I looked, they were already placed on high shelves and the covers were usually wrapped so there was a hint at what mischief might lurk inside. The visible images showed no more flesh than most women's magazines. At the newsagent at my local tube station, the kids'-eye-level high counter where you pay for your purchases was rammed with weekly gossip magazines. Without exception, they all showed loads of female flesh and reduced celebrities to their weight loss, weight gain, cellulite, breasts and pregnancies.

But these magazines should not be shunted off shop shelves any more than lads' mags should or any of the daily newspapers. Let's talk about the presence of lads' mags as a form of harassment, shall we? If I worked in a shop in the week Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered, I'd be more distressed by spending my workday surrounded by those grim front pages, all of which ran a poster-sized picture of one of the suspects brandishing a bloodied cleaver.

But I would not call for the newspapers to be removed from sale because that flies in the face of a free press.

There is a world of difference between lads' mags sitting quietly on high shelves waiting for buyers and a workplace where an idiot boss or colleague waves such mags around, forces staff members to look at the mags any more than they'd have to in their day-to-day employment or makes loud comments and comparisons between the models' bodies and those of employees. Indeed, because there is still an air of embarrassment surrounding nudity and sexual imagery, such mags are usually purchased furtively.

The worst behaviour you'll probably see is the occasional giggling schoolboy sneaking a peek at Nuts. Good luck with trying to regulate hormonal schoolboys out of existence...

And then I put the idea out there that I lived for five years in the UAE, a place where lads' magazines are not sold and the mens' mags have to keep things fairly tame when it comes to flashing flesh. While the UAE is not quite as backwards when it comes to women's rights as some might think, there are still problems with harassment, sexual assault and, in particular, the under-reporting of sexual assault. And these things happens here too, where lads' mags are sold. To simply take them off high street shelves is to trivialise the issue and oversimplify the deeper causes.

In the meantime, news came out of lads' mag-free Saudi Arabia about a novelist claiming that women will be harassed if they are allowed to work in certain jobs alongside men. The sad part is that might just happen if more jobs are open to Saudi women and there are no lads' mags to blame there.

Then the Middlesex University study into commonalities in lads' mag language and the language of convicted rapists has been flagged up in the midst of this latest debate as "proof" that lads' mags cause rape. Except that a bunch of quotes taken out of context don't really prove anything much. It just creates the warped circular logic that all lads' magazine readers are rapists and all rapists read lads' magazines. Again, this trivialises the real issues and treats every rape case as identical. With every convicted rapist, there is a set of circumstances that absolutely do not excuse rape but might explain how he formed his attitudes towards women. And the academic in charge of the study didn't actually conclude that censorship is the answer and, sensibly, he suggests education instead.

Phew! At last we're getting somewhere. Some nuanced discussion into what causes sexual assault and sexual harassment is urgently required. Alarmingly, the single-minded drive for the puritans of Object and Feminista UK to shunt lads' mags off shelves lest the "Page 3-style front cover images" cause sexual violence is the same mindset that leads to victim-blaming. It's no better than saying short skirts, low necklines, tight dresses or alcohol consumption are to blame for sexual assault.

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Further reading from the blogosphere...

http://plasticdollheads.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/lads-mags-and-rape/

http://fortyshadesofgrey.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/shocking-news-rapists-live-in-same.html

http://moronwatch.net/2013/05/conservative-feminism-and-the-right-to-offend.html

http://darrennewman.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/are-shops-breaching-discrimination-law-by-selling-lads-mags/

http://www.xojane.com/sex/why-i-wince-through-hollywood-sex-scenes-and-not-porn

http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/from-morocco-to-denmark-rape-survivors-around-the-world-are-forced-to-marry

Losing lads' mags and the slippery slope of censorship

The hashtag popped up on Twitter over an otherwise quiet bank holiday weekend. Suddenly my Twitter feed erupted with #losetheladsmags - as an unrepentent former employee of a lads' mag, I was curious so I took a peek at the Lose The Lads' Mags website.

UK Feminista and Object are on the warpath and they want high street shops to take lads' mags (the likes of Nuts, Zoo and FHM) off the shelves or risk legal action. Without any hard data linking such magazines to sexual assault or domestic violence, the website asserts that lads' mags "promote sexist attitudes and behaviours" and "normalise the idea that's acceptable to treat women like sex objects."

It's as if men looking at women's bodies is something new...

Just as well then that UK Feminista and Object are on the case to stop customers and shop employees from being exposed to such filth. That'd be the customers who can choose not to buy magazines they find offensive and employees who have accepted jobs in shops where they know such magazines are sold.

Seriously, where might this ban-hammering end? Or is this an attempt at selective censorship on the part of UK Feminista and Object?

Would UK Feminista and Object be up for defending the sensibilities of customers and employees who did not want to be exposed to gay magazines because they find homosexuality offensive? What if someone's religious views were offended by the opinions put forward in, say, The Jewish Chronicle or The Muslim News? What if an anti-birth control Roman Catholic wanted to work in Boots but not process any transactions for condoms?

UK Feminista and Object have "obtained brand new legal advice showing that displaying and selling lads' mags and papers with Page 3-style front cover images can constitute sexual harassment or sex discrimination under the Equality Act 2010." In short, if shops sell magazines that have been approved for unrestricted sale in a free society with a free press, staff and customers could have a claim, according to UK Feminista and Object.

Excellent! More work for lawyers! And even better, the people who are employed by such magazines might find themselves out of work! Yeah, what a great result in the current economy!

In the midst of the rush to sign petitions and be offended, UK Feminista and Object are not listening to the women who choose to work in men's magazines, whether they are writers, photographers, graphic designers, stylists, sales and marketing staff or indeed the models themselves. Do they not want to ask these women how they feel about it all? Do they think the models are bimbos who don't know what they're doing and are unable to speak out if they feel oppressed? Why are two groups claiming to know what is best for women who work out of choice on such magazines?

If women want to pose for lads' mags or work for them, that's their choice. Nobody held a gun to my head and forced me to work for the now-defunct Australian edition of FHM. I did not feel oppressed or feel I was oppressing people by writing headlines and captions, interviewing the women who appeared in the magazine, writing features which generally told men where they were going wrong, or compiling and styling the sex pages (which gave women another opportunity to tell men where they were going wrong...).

Much of the humour of FHM was about men being self-deprecating - more often than not, the joke was on them. We never made jokes about rape or paedophilia on my watch. And in an excellent example of self-regulation and learning from mistakes, an outcry concerning the Hillsborough tragedy, led FHM to quit using comedy captions on serious stories about issues such as terrorism, war veterans or prisons.

But it's far easier to clutch pearls, get outraged and call for bans in a free market economy.

Indeed, why are the generally healthier body sizes of women in lads' mags a target for censorship but not the unhealthy body sizes of fashion magazines? A perusal of the boobs on the Nuts magazine website is an interesting exercise in mammary variety - there are big breasts, small breasts, some are real, some have been surgically enhanced, some nipples are big, some are small, some are the national average cup size, some boobs sit high while other hang low. If a woman is at all worried that her breasts are in some way abnormal, the Nuts website is a good place to seek reassurance.

And if you don't want to look at such websites or buy such magazines, you don't have to do so.

But what about the children? Er, don't buy lads' mags for your kids. If you don't want your children seeing such mags, don't have them in the house. If your child spots such a magazine and asks why the lady has no clothes on, there are any number of non-hysterical responses you could make depending on how old the kid is. Because it was a hot day, because she is happy with her body, because it's her job...

There is room for school sex education programmes to discuss the images in such magazines, to explain to students who are old enough to understand (and have probably seen far more flesh online anyway...) about how images are PhotoShopped, about how women's bodies come in all shapes and sizes, about how there really is no such thing as one normal body type, how pubic hair is a reality even though stray hairs are routinely airbrushed out of such magazines and so on.

But teenagers should be taught to critically read all media, not just lads' mags. Given people routinely spout their newspaper of choice as gospel, this is a skill plenty of adults could use too.

So where will it end for UK Feminista and Object as they behave like the modern equivalent of Victorians covering table legs?

Will shops have to stop selling short skirts or tight dresses or low-cut tops lest women are seen walking around in them, objectifying themselves? After all, if women who pose for lads' mags have no control over their behaviour, surely women who willingly show their legs or cleavage are similarly powerless?

What about women's magazines dedicating pages to the care and feeding of the male orgasm? Or advertisements and features in women's magazines for lingerie or swimwear? Why is The Sun's page three girl offensive but not the Daily Mail's constant insistence that famous women's bodies are news? What about weekly gossip magazines speculating on pregnancies, weight loss, weight gain or cosmetic surgery? Should they be taken off sale too so women don't have to look at all that harassing female flesh and men aren't driven to sexual assault?

And there's the elephant in the room - the Daily Mail, magazines such as Cosmopolitan and the weekly gossip mags are very popular with women. Will UK Feminista and Object condemn women for consuming such publications? After all, if women are mindlessly posing for lads' mags, surely they are mindlessly consuming media too and they need other people to tell them what they can and cannot read.

Then again, market forces might do the work of UK Feminista and Object for them. The men's magazine segment is on the decline and Zoo and Nuts are two of the biggest losers in this slide. People just aren't buying magazines like they used to, largely thanks to the internet. Calling for magazines to be taken off shop shelves is, frankly, a bit retro in this online age. And trying to stop stuff you don't like from appearing on the web is like trying to stop a tsunami with a tampon.




Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Free speech, extremism and kneejerk reactions

There is nothing wrong with questioning British foreign policy in relation to Afghanistan. Expressing the sentiment that the current government does not care about us is not an outrageous point of view either. Anyone in Britain who holds either of these opinions should be free to express them peacefully.

Of course, if anyone expresses such views and brutally murders someone in broad daylight while doing so, they should be arrested, tried and, if found guilty, punished accordingly.

As Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale lie in hospital and await being declared medically fit to face questioning in relation to the death last week of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, plenty of people are exercising their right to free speech to speculate, comment and generally attempt to put the world to rights. In the midst of this noise, there have been calls to ban religious extremists from being interviewed on TV. Yes, because such measures were so effective in stopping the IRA during the 1980s...

And who are we defining as religious extremists anyway? Is this definition only limited to Muslims in Theresa May's utopia? What about conservative Roman Catholics who believe all abortion is murder? Are they extremists too? Or Westboro Baptist Church, whose members routinely declare that "God hates fags"? Should their views be banned from broadcast?

Kirsty Wark's panel discussion on Newsnight last week, in which she grilled Anjem Choudary on whether he condemned the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby has been roundly condemned for giving him a platform to air his views. But all Choudary did was talk in circles and show a politician-like talent for not giving a straight answer to any question. Just as every time EDL members open their mouths, they remove any doubt that they are simplistic, hateful racists with no real answers to any problems facing modern Britain, Choudary similarly condemned himself with his own absurd words.

Choudary looked ridiculous and, in contrast, the comments from Julie Siddiqi, executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain, and Shams Ad-Duha Muhammad, director of Ebrahim College, were measured and intelligent. Muhammad was not afraid to say that it is perfectly reasonable to oppose British foreign policy and condemn the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

And then my Twitter feed filled with comments from America questioning why we're not all armed here. These people are free to criticise from afar just as I am free to respond to their claims and assertions. There were the usual armchair heroes who declared they would have shot him dead or wished the woman who bravely took the time to reason with the suspects shot them instead. It's too easy to ignore the simple fact that because nobody was packing a semi-automatic or automatic weapon, we did not end up with a mass shooting in Woolwich last week.

Given the horrific events took place right near a school, this is one of the few good things to come out of such an awful tragedy. The only shots fired came from armed police who incapacitated both suspects rather than killing them outright. As a result, the potential to glean further information about their motives and activities has not died with them. More arrests have been made in relation to Drummer Rigby's murder, and a fair trial can take place, which is a better outcome than summary executions in the streets of London.




Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com