UK Nutter News

Zoo, Nuts and Front have agreed to self censor their front covers as demanded by Tesco. The supermarket has been lobbied by anti-sex miserablists. The new censorship code will apply only to the magazines' covers.

Highly explicit front covers of lads' mags may be a thing of the past, Tesco said. Zoo, Nuts and Front have agreed to make their covers more modest , the retailer said, meaning no more nudity, with less salacious coverlines and a more conservative feel.

Latest Issue of Nuts

In addition to demanding toned-down covers, the store said Nuts, Zoo, Front and Bizarre would now be sold only to customers over 18, to reassure parents who do not want their children to be able to purchase these titles , and the magazines will be displayed at the back of sales racks, where their covers will be obscured by other magazines.

Of course the censorship campaigners dismissed the move as a half-measure that doesn't address the harm of these publications .

Kat Banyard, founder of UK Feminista, one of two groups behind the Lose the Lad Mags campaign , said that lobbying to have the titles removed from shelves altogether would continue, because they are deeply harmful. They fuel sexist behaviours which underpin violence against women.

Nuts, which is published by IPC Media, said it had introduced new covers ... which have a more conservative tone several weeks ago, adding: We are delighted with our readers' response and this week's issue is our biggest selling since February. While previous issues have shown women fully topless with their nipples covered by headlines or their hands or hair, and promising the boobiest shoot ever or big-boobed brunettes , recent editions of Nuts feature models in less highly sexualised poses, wearing slightly more modest lingerie.

A letter from Edie Lamort, feminist and sexual freedom activist, to the Co-operative Group about their latest censorship decision:

...As a woman I find the current trend towards more puritan values very disturbing. Lobby groups such as UK Feminista and Object represent the more extreme and fanatical end of this trend and I am very disappointed that the Co-op has buckled under pressure from them. With the proposed censoring of the Internet last week and the general moral panic at the moment about sexualisation this is another retrograde step. It is almost like we are experiencing a sexual counter-revolution.

I am worried about this overall message that demonises the female body and buys into centuries old patriarchal tradition that female flesh is sinful and corrupting. It is this mentality that spurred the Witch Trials of the 16th Century and in more recent times has cast a veil of silence over sexual abuse. It leads to an environment where people are made to feel shame about a perfectly natural urge leading to anger and frustration rather than self-awareness and understanding.

...Read the full letter

A new muesli called Sexcereal is about to be unleashed on Britain. The maker claims that Just three tablespoonfuls will increase your libido.

Ann Widdecome writes:

It is almost certainly nonsense as in the words of one nutritionist: There is no scientific evidence that any food or nutritional substance can have an impact on your sex drive. But that is not the issue. It is yet another example of the sexualisation of even the most innocent aspect of our lives

Whether this cereal lives up to its claims or not, it is yet another example of the sexualisation of even the most innocent aspect of our lives, of the use of sex in advertising even the most basic products and of the underlying assumption that sex is everybody's preoccupation every minute of the day even when flying out of the door to catch the bus for work or dropping the children off at the school gates.

Let it languish on the shelves. It is reported to have been a big hit in the United States so let Brits smile incredulously and pityingly and reach for the Weetabix.

Cleft palate support groups have hit out at Disney's new summer film The Lone Ranger , amid accusations that the villain was given a birth defect to make him look more evil .

Disney's promotional material for the film said of William Fichtner's character Butch Cavendish: Cavendish is a ruthless outlaw whose terribly scarred face is a perfect reflection of the bottomless pit that passes for his soul. Fichtner told entertainment reporters that his broken nose and cleft lip made it easier to slip into his role, and meant he didn't need to act any more evil because it was obvious from his face.

The Cleft Lip and Palate Association (CLAPA) issued a statement saying Disney was cashing in on prejudice , and urged its members to lodge complaints with the film's producers.

Even the official set of The Lone Ranger Lego toys features a small Butch Cavendish with a very prominent cleft lip. In an open letter to executives at Lego, a member of the US community website babycenter wrote: You make toys for children and these toys (often wonderfully) impact how they perceive or create the world.

CLAPA said Disney was sending out:

A deeply harmful message that will impact the 90,000 people that were born with a cleft in the UK as well as others worldwide. What message does this send to movie-goers about people with a cleft or anyone with a visible difference? What message does it send to those who have a cleft themselves about how they are seen by society?

Across the Atlantic, the Toronto Star reported Rachel Mancuso, who runs the website cleftsmile.org, as saying she had received around 1,000 emails a day from people complaining about the film. She told the Star: As a parent and educator, I'm having a hard time understanding why they had to create a bad guy and slap on the number one birth defect.

The Guardian introduces an article from Zoe Williams:

The pornification of Britain's high streets: why enough is enough

Magazines with naked women on the cover sit next to kids' comics in newsagents. Scantily clad models are draped across the nation's billboards. We asked readers to send photos showing how sexual images have invaded the high street

Of course the reality is that the advert censor has been banning anything remotely sexy on billboards and the Guardian gender extremists have scoured the country for probably one example that has escaped the clutches of the censors is in a shop window rather than a billboard anyway.

And then of course there is the fundamental issue that society seems to be surviving pretty well with crime generally on the decrease. Definitely infinitely better than any society that lets bullies and moralists censor the very existence of sexuality from society.

Comment: When Right-Wing Conservatives Approve Of Something In The Guardian You Know There's Something Wrong

See comment from mediasnoops2.wordpress.com

This is yet more evidence of how The Guardian is turning into the Daily Mail when it comes to sexual imagery. This type of moral panic about porn being everywhere on our high street is the type of thing regularly seen in the Mail yet it's in a liberal newspaper.

...read the full comment

The issue of the Sun's Page 3 has been debated in the Welsh Assembly.

Labour member Rebecca Evans bizarrely claimed during the debate that The Sun is one of the only places left where soft pornography is accepted. She said that she supports the anti Page 3 campaign and called upon the Sun newspaper to drop the feature and emphasised that half naked women just aren't news.

Labour member Joyce Watson said that being opposed to page three is a no-brainer . She added that women are seen as desirable or maternal and still judged by appearances instead of achievements.

Plaid Cymru member Lindsay Whittle asked menacingly : is page three suitable for families to see in their own homes?

However Janet Finch-Saunders of the Conservative party said that there must be a demand for page three as it still exists and some women feel proud to show their bodies.

Dear Tesco,

Tomorrow you are going to sit down and meet with Lose The Lads Mags who want you to stop selling lads magazines because they find them sexist, degrading and offensive.

The arguments they put forward as to why you should stop selling these magazines is that they objectify women and cause sexual harassment to female customers and to your staff who do not wish to see magazines which show women as sex objects .

They deny they are calling for lads mags to be banned but if you stop selling these magazines based on their objections you will be banning them.

The justifications for you banning these magazines is based on the argument that there are people who do not wish to see these magazines whilst they are doing their shopping and that your female staff members do not wish to have to handle these magazines or sell them to customers.

Essentially what Lose The Lads Mags are saying is that because some customers do not like lads mags and do not wish to see them in your store other customers should be stopped from buying them.

And these magazines can be covered up and put on the top shelf so those customers who are offended by them do not have to see them. But what Lose The Lads Mags are calling for is for them to withdrawn from sale completely.

As for the arguments over staff not wishing to handle or sell lads mags to customers the question should be asked as to since when supermarket employees have ever had the right to veto what the customers of the store they work in should and should not be allowed to purchase.

And if we are going to ban lads mags from supermarkets because some members of staff object to them what's to stop other staff members objecting to the sale of other products they find objectionable such as meat, alcohol, cigarettes or lottery ticket. Maybe we should ban those things too?

The arguments that these magazines are harmful because they make men see women as nothing more than sex objects and therefore cause men to act sexually violently towards women are spurious at best. It suggests that men are brainless drones who mindlessly lap up whatever they see and will be turned into crazed violent sex beasts by seeing pictures of women with little or no clothing on.

Lose The Lads Mags, Object and UK Feminista believe that the very sight of a woman's naked body on the front of a magazine causes men to turn into salivating sex monsters who will defile the first woman they come into contact with.

I urge you to seriously ask yourself whether the objections of a minority of self appointed moral puritans who masquerade as feminists should dictate what you sell and what your customers can and cannot purchase in your stores.

You seriously need to consider whether you are going to stand up for consumer choice or whether you are going to remove the choice of consumers based on the protests and objections of a group of puritans who represent very few people.

Update: Not much reported about the meeting

14th July 2013. From feminista at facebook.com

Feminista just reported that they spoke to Tesco about their campaign and that a decision would be made about Lads' Mags in Tesco in a few weeks.