UK Nutter News

The chairman of Tesco said Britain's biggest supermarket chain will consider taking lads' mags off its shelves, after revealing that reading one had left him startled . Richard Broadbent said:

I bought one of these lads mags recently. I was startled at what I saw. But I think we should be thoughtful in our response. I don't immediately know what the answer should be. But I am willing to look at changes.

The chairman of the country's largest retailer was responding to a female shareholder at its annual meeting. She asked for the titles to be removed from stores because they were offensive to women.

The annual general meeting saw a small demonstration from organisations wanting to ban lads' mags. UK Feminsta and Object are coordinating the miserable campaign under the banner: Lose the Lad's Mags.

Green MP Caroline Lucas has written to the House of Commons authorities asking for The Sun newspaper to be banned from the palace of Westminster. Lucas demanded that it be removed from shops in parliament until it bins its Page Three section which features half naked women:

I do not think that a newspaper that persists in carrying images which are degrading to women should be widely available across the parliamentary estate

I am sure you will be aware that there is a strong link between the portrayal of women as sexual objects with attitudes that underpin violence and discrimination against women and girls.

Page Three should be consigned to the rubbish bin where it belongs.

Update: Early Day Motion

23rd June 2013. See  EDM from  parliament.uk

In fact Caroline Lucas went on to table an Early Day Motion:

EDM 253: No More Page 3 Campaign

That this House is concerned about the strong link between the portrayal of women as sexual objects and attitudes that underpin violence and discrimination against women and girls;

• notes that this has been demonstrated by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and in a Government-commissioned Sexualisation of Young People Review;
• applauds the work of the No More Page 3 campaign;observes that The Sun newspaper is available across the parliamentary estate in at least eight locations;
• further notes that if someone is looking at page 3 of The Sun others can be subjected to it whether they like it or not; and
• calls on the House of Commons Administration Committee to take the necessary steps to prevent the House stocking The Sun newspaper until it removes the Page 3 feature.

The motion has received 13 signatures so far

Name	Party	Constituency
Campbell, Ronnie	Labour Party	Blyth Valley
Caton, Martin	Labour Party	Gower
Champion, Sarah	Labour Party	Rotherham
Clark, Katy	Labour Party	North Ayrshire and Arran
Corbyn, Jeremy	Labour Party	Islington North
Dobbin, Jim	Labour Party	Heywood and Middleton
Flynn, Paul	Labour Party	Newport West
Lucas, Caroline	Green Party	Brighton Pavilion
McDonnell, John	Labour Party	Hayes and Harlington
Meale, Alan	Labour Party	Mansfield
Riordan, Linda	Labour Party	Halifax
Sanders, Adrian	Liberal Democrats	Torbay
Vaz, Valerie	Labour Party	Walsall South

A High Court challenge to a decision that has allowed lap dancing at a Leamington nightclub has been dropped.

The Hindu Religious Association of Leamington and Warwick was due to be heard at a hearing at High Court in its challenge of Warwick District Council's granting of a sexual entertainment licence to Shades in High Street.

The council has agreed to contribute towards the cost of the claim.

It seems that the decision was related to funding and the high risk that they would lose their case and their money. Yash Pal Tara of the association said:

Companies such as Shades can afford specialist legal advice and representation which is beyond the reach of local people. We feel vindicated that we were granted permission for a judicial review, but on balance, there are better ways to oppose Shades and significant taxpayers' money would be spent on this case. We did not want that.

Cllr Michael Coker, responsible for policy on community protection, said:

It is appropriate that the parties should share the costs to prevent considerable amounts of public time and money being spent on a hearing in the High Court.

Miserablist campaigners from Alcohol Concern claim that alcohol advertising should be banned at music and sports events.

Alcohol Concern said that many young people recognised more alcohol brands than those of ice cream or cake products. It is calling for new rules on what alcohol adverts can mention and it also wants them banned in film trailers rated 15 or lower.

Alcohol Concern's report was based on research by its Youth Alcohol Advertising Council (YAAC) - a group of young people in England and Wales who review alcohol advertising and who whinge to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) when they discover content they deem to be irresponsible.

The report urged the ASA to operate in a more proactive way , instead of depending on complaints from the public before looking into advertising code breaches. The ASA should be able to levy meaningful sanctions including fines for serious non-compliance, it added.

In a statement, the ASA said:

It was not unheard of for an anti-alcohol lobby group to call for further restrictions on advertising. The ASA will continue to take a proportionate approach, regulating effectively alcohol ads across media, including online, against strict rules that are designed to protect young people.

The Department of Health's own figures show, encouragingly, that fewer young people are drinking.

The Bath Fringe Festival has made a grovelling apology over an art installation which featured film of a man masturbating.

The film was shown as part of a public exhibition at The Officers Club in Stall Street. The film has now been pulled.

  Ian Dore, who visited the gallery at the weekend with his 17-year-old niece, whinged that the hardcore pornographic film was absolutely shocking :

Anybody could have walked in and seen it and there were children there. It was absolutely shocking.

My niece was appalled and clearly upset, I can't speak for the others in the gallery as they had walked out.

Simon Whitby, a spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police, said officers had visited the art gallery after receiving a complaint:

We concluded that there was no offence being committed, and spoke to the gallery curator about the possibility of installing signs and perhaps a barrier so that members of the public would know about the DVD content before they viewed it.

We understand that the DVD exhibit was removed.

The video exhibit was created by four artists who curated clips from the internet which was played on a loop.

The Lose the Lads' Mags campaign by UK Feminista and Object is calling on high-street retailers to immediately withdraw lads' mags and papers featuring pornographic front covers from their stores. Each one of these stores is a workplace. Displaying these publications in workplaces, and/or requiring staff to handle them in the course of their jobs, may amount to sex discrimination and sexual harassment contrary to the Equality Act 2010. Similarly, exposing customers to these publications in the process of displaying them is capable of giving rise to breaches of the Equality Act.

High-street retailers are exposing staff and, in some cases, customers to publications whose handling and display may breach equality legislation. Displaying lads' mags and pornographic papers in mainstream shops results in the involuntary exposure of staff and, in some cases, customers to pornographic images.

Every mainstream retailer which stocks lads' mags is vulnerable to legal action by staff and, where those publications are visibly on display, by customers. There are, in particular, examples of staff successfully suing employers in respect of exposure to pornographic material at work. Such exposure is actionable where it violates the dignity of individual employees or customers, or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. We therefore call on such retailers to urgently heed the call to Lose the Lads' Mags.

Aileen McColgan Matrix Chambers, Sarah Ricca Deighton Pierce Glynn Solicitors, Anna Mazzola Bindmans, Mike Schwarz Bindmans, Harriet Wistrich Birnberg Peirce & Partners, Helen Mountfield Matrix Chambers, Elizabeth Prochaska Matrix Chambers, Tamsin Allen Bindmans, Gwendolen Morgan Bindmans, Salima Budhani Bindmans, Nathalie Lieven QC Landmark Chambers

Gender extremists seem to be targeting an extension the Dangerous Pictures Act to include images of simulated rape (as per the Scottish version). Interesting when discussing the concept of 'educating' children about pornography it is taken as read that the 'education' will be moralising propaganda against porn. It never seems to be discussed what such 'education' should entail.

Responding to the publication of a new report by the Office of the Children's Commissioner on young people and pornography, Holly Dustin, Director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition & Fiona Elvines of Rape Crisis South London said:

There should be concern at the highest levels of government that boys are accessing violent and sadistic pornography, and that it is influencing their behaviour and attitudes. Sexual violence towards women and girls is rarely out of the headlines and we know from our own research that sexual harassment and unwanted sexual touching is commonplace amongst young people. This does not happen in a vacuum, rather our sexist culture and media provides a conducive context for abuse to occur.

This report provides further strong evidence of the need for schools to be required to teach young people about sexual consent, and how to deal with pornographic and violent imagery they see online, in music videos, adverts or elsewhere.

Furthermore, we believe that the government must look at legislation on extreme pornography and close a loophole that allows the lawful possession of simulated images of rape pornography, similar to that viewed by Stuart Hazell.

We, the undersigned, are writing to demand swift, comprehensive and effective action addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook. Specifically, we call on you, Facebook, to take three actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.

2. Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.

3. Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site.

Specifically, we are referring to groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about. Pages currently appearing on Facebook include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus, Kicking your Girlfriend in the Fanny because she won't make you a Sandwich, Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs, Raping your Girlfriend and many, many more. Images appearing on Facebook include photographs of women beaten, bruised, tied up, drugged, and bleeding, with captions such as This bitch didn't know when to shut up and Next time don't get pregnant.

These pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women's bodies. In addition, women's political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content - prohibited by your own guidelines - remains. It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women's bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women's nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse. Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

The latest global estimate from the United Nations Say No UNITE campaign is that the percentage of women and girls who have experienced violence in their lifetimes is now up to an unbearable 70 percent. In a world in which this many girls and women will be raped or beaten in their lifetimes, allowing content about raping and beating women to be shared, boasted and joked about contributes to the normalisation of domestic and sexual violence, creates an atmosphere in which perpetrators are more likely to believe they will go unpunished, and communicates to victims that they will not be taken seriously if they report.

According to a UK Home Office Survey, one in five people think it is acceptable in some circumstances for a man to hit or slap his wife or girlfriend in response to her being dressed in sexy or revealing clothes in public. And 36 percent think a woman should be held fully or partly responsible if she is sexually assaulted or raped whilst drunk. Such attitudes are shaped in part by enormously influential social platforms like Facebook, and contribute to victim blaming and the normalisation of violence against women.

Although Facebook claims, not to be involved in challenging norms or censoring people's speech, you have in place procedures, terms and community guidelines that you interpret and enforce. Facebook prohibits hate speech and your moderators deal with content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic every day. Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against us. Facebook is an enormous social network with more than a billion users around the world, making your site extremely influential in shaping social and cultural norms and behaviors.

Facebook's response to the many thousands of complaints and calls to address these issues has been inadequate. You have failed to make a public statement addressing the issue, respond to concerned users, or implement policies that would improve the situation. You have also acted inconsistently with regards to your policy on banning images, in many cases refusing to remove offensive rape and domestic violence pictures when reported by members of the public, but deleting them as soon as journalists mention them in articles, which sends the strong message that you are more concerned with acting on a case-by-case basis to protect your reputation than effecting systemic change and taking a clear public stance against the dangerous tolerance of rape and domestic violence.

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence. We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue, to bring your policy on rape and domestic violence into line with your own moderation goals and guidelines.

Sincerely, Laura Bates, The Everyday Sexism Project Soraya Chemaly, Writer and Activist Jaclyn Friedman, Women, Action & the Media (WAM!) Angel Band Project Anne Munch Consulting, Inc. Association for Progressive Communications Women's Rights Programme Black Feminists The Body is Not An Apology Breakthrough Catharsis Productions Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation Collective Action for Safe Spaces Collective Administrators of Rapebook CounterQuo End Violence Against Women Coalition The EQUALS Coalition Fem 2.0 Feminist Peace Network The Feminist Wire FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World Hollaback! Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault Jackson Katz, PhD., Co-Founder and Director, Mentors in Violence Prevention Lauren Wolfe, Director of WMC's Women Under Siege Media Equity Collaborative MissRepresentation.org No More Page 3 Object The Pixel Project Rape Victim Advocates Social Media Week SPARK Movement Stop Street Harassment Take Back the Tech! Tech LadyMafia Time To Tell The Uprising of Women in the Arab World V-Day The Voices and Faces Project The Women's Media Center Women's Networking Hub The Women's Room.

Women from the No More Page 3 campaign have staged a 1970s inspired flash mob outside The Sun headquarters in an attempt to get the tabloid to remove images of topless women from its Page 3.

The protesters danced and sang in front of the Wapping office block to the 1970s tune Y.M.C.A --- using their own lyrics and choreography.

They sang:

Page 3 puts porn on the bottom shelf.
It's not 1970 anymore, there's no place for this sexism today.
We're here to say we want No More Page 3!

Saturday's demonstration was organised by the No More Page 3 campaign, which was kicked off by writer and actress Lucy Holmes during last summer's London Olympics. The campaign has grown into a full-time operation staffed by a team of 12 volunteers.

Farmer Alan Graham got noticed by the tabloid press when he turfed Rihanna off his land for being sexy in a music video. The final edit of Rihanna's video for We Found Love featured sexy images and references to drug use and violence.

Graham and his wife were inspired to start a campaign against sexy music videos. He lives in a dream world where musicians are successful for their musical talent, and points to Adele as an example of someone who has achieved success without the kind of raunchy images and semi-nudity. Graham claims the culture of raunchy music videos points to a lack of respect for women . Graham spouted:

It certainly wasn't appropriate for children. I don't believe that it's good for anybody to watch from my point of view, but this stuff is readily available to children.

You would think there was a competition between the performers to see who could be the most raunchy.

Anybody can attract attention by taking their clothes off. Ideally a performance of any sort should be something that a man and his wife and children can go to together and not feel embarrassed.

In a documentary, Rihanna's Farmer , aired on BBC One Northern Ireland on Monday, he whinged to figures from across the pop music industry, hoping for support for his unrealistic views.

A group of young people from Liverpool visited the Ofcom headquarters in London to deliver 10,000 postcards from people calling for a ban on TV smoking.

SmokeOff, promoted by D-MYST, is a campaign which targets Ofcom asking them to ban smoking on television.

Ofcom rules already state:

Smoking must not be condoned, encouraged or glamourised in programmes likely to be widely seen or heard by under-18s unless there is editorial justification.

Yet many programmes like Coronation Street and Eastenders regularly contain smoking scenes, at times when young people are watching.

D-MYST spokesperson Lilly Mae Paulucci, 15, said:

When programmes like The Simpsons and Friends show people smoking, it encourages young people to start. We believe the media should stop showing tobacco images in TV programmes viewed by under-18s before the watershed.

We want to make sure that all future pre-watershed programmes are smokefree and we're really pleased with the support we've received so far.

Themed university parties and pub crawls with titles such as geeks and sluts or rappers and slappers could soon be banned if PC gender extremists get their way.

At next week's National Union of Students annual conference, a motion will target the lads' culture particularly the behaviour of university sports teams. Un PC fun seekers should face disciplinary action, claim union members, who will be meeting in Sheffield to debate the horrific normalisation of sexist attitudes and sexual pressure on female students.

The motion, reported by The Times, also calls for the promotional companies which organise the events to be vetted so they comply with rules that ensure a safe space for women. Although the vote if carried will not be binding on student unions, it is expected to pressurise them into falling into line.

The move follows a report by NUS PC campaigners claiming widespread sexist behaviour by heavy-drinking male students who indulge in a pack culture.

Offsite Article: Prudes, Objects and Lads

7th April 2013. See  article from  blogs.telegraph.co.uk by Jack Rivlin

The prudes of the National Union of Students hate boozy, popular lads. So what do they do? Smear them as rapists

Offsite Comment: The NUS's prissy war on lad culture

13th April 2013. See  article from  spiked-online.com

Not content with trying to control what students say, the NUS wants to police how they play, too.

...Read the full article

SIR -- We want to see an immediate end to all advertising aimed at children of primary school age and younger. We have sleepwalked into a situation where the advertising industry, worth £12 billion a year in Britain alone, is allowed to turn techniques designed to manipulate adult emotions and desires on to children as young as two or three. This is wrong.

Almost all children under 11 depend on their parents for money. So advertising makes heavy use of "pester power", as it is more effective than targeting parents directly. Yet a civilised society should require advertisers to sell to parents, not to children. When children are learning about the cost of material things, and about managing small quantities of money, they should be free to do so without the pressures put on them by advertising.

As things stand, we are in danger of turning out young consumers rather than young citizens -- people who define themselves more by what they buy than by what they can contribute to society. Children should be free to channel their energies into forming friendships, discovering their talents and unleashing their imaginations; things that cost little but whose value is immeasurable.

Bans on advertising aimed at young children are already working in places such as Sweden, Quebec and Greece. It's time for a similar ban here.

• Jonathan Kent, Co-founder, Leave Our Kids Alone
• Rupert Read, Co-Founder, Leave Our Kids Alone
• Bel Mooney, Writer
• George Monbiot, Author, journalist and campaigner
  Natalie Bennett, Leader, Green Party of England and Wales
• Caroline Lucas, Green MP
• Sue Palmer, Author, 'Toxic Childhood'
• Claude Knights FRSA, Director of Kidscape
• Pippa Smith, Co Chairman, Safermedia
• Miranda Suit , Co Chairman, Safermedia

And many others

Comment: I Have No Time For Fucking Self Serving Middle Class Authoritarians Posing As Liberals

17th April 2013. See  article from  mediasnoops2.wordpress.com

Kirsty Hopley, 'sickened' by children seeing internet porn and other sexual images in public, has launched a Child Eyes campaign and a petition to keep such imagery out of public places.

Since launching an online petition she has achieved about 6000 signatures.

Hopley wants the Government to make it illegal to display pornography and sexualised images in public places where children are allowed. She also wants ministers to provide support for parents to protect their children from hardcore internet porn and violent games. She said:

You can't just go into a shop and ask for something to be moved, they look at you like you're crazy. The main thing is for people to sign the petition but also for local retailers to have a look around their shops and see if there is anything a child can see and then move it. I'm not saying people shouldn't buy but not for children to be exposed to it every time you go for milk.