Should We Ban The Sun Because Of Page Three?

This week at Swansea Students' Union, the union put forward a motion to ban the distribution and selling of The Sun and The Daily Star in the on campus shop. Honestly, I've always thought it would come much sooner than this to follow up the banning of lads mags on campus some years ago. Following a student forum earlier this week, the motion to ban these newspapers failed, though we will support the 'No More Page 3 Campaign," which is really great. However, the whole debate got me thinking about this issue.

When we come across stories like this, we are reminded that nude modelling is still considered a very controversial subject, especially for women. We have come a long way in the feminist movement since its inception but, clearly, there is still some room for improvement. I do not like the fact that The Sun put topless women on page three, because it is outdated and pointless, but I think the outright banning of a publication is not the right way to tackle this issue.

I'm not an avid reader of The Sun or The Daily Star by any stretch of the imagination, so I suppose it would not be a massive detriment to the rest of my time at university if it were on the shelf or not. It is safe to say that The Sun was never (and never really will be) a particularly popular newspaper in any Students' Union across the country, but that doesn't mean it should be taken off the shelves.

The banning is an issue of censorship. By the union not selling the newspaper, they are making it more difficult to obtain and, in my opinion, this is pretty much the same as censoring the publication. Historically, one of Britain's most valued heritages is press freedom from censorship and, (though Students' Unions are on a smaller scale in comparison to Britain as a whole), we should be treasuring this heritage and remembering that the freedom to choose which newspaper we want to read and therefore, the news we want to consume, is one of our most important and basic human rights. For me, the proposed banning was more an attack on my liberties to choose my own newspaper than tackling the issue of the objectification of women.

I feel like my freedom to express myself through my choices would have been restricted, and frankly, I feel like it is being implied that I cannot make an informed decision in what I read. Don't Students' Unions exist to represent the best interests of its members as a whole? The motion didn't represent the student body (what about those students who do read The Sun?), it discriminated against students and it went against the diversity of its membership. I admit, there should be an effort to inform people of the harmful results of these pages but, at university, we are all adults who know our own minds and know what we want to read. No one should take that right away from us.

(Also, I'd just like to stress that the union allows the stocking and selling of magazines in which men feature naked, but I'll come back to this point later.)

As with anything in life, I find that if you ban something, the likelihood is that people are going to be more inclined to try to find it anyway. Removing The Sun in our Students' Union will not end the exploitation of women. Sadly, it is a misguided thought that banning the paper in the Students' Union will make a massive difference to the objectification of women on a global scale. In fact, as much as I'd like to think otherwise, it may even make things worse as people turn to other, less regulated locations to find exploitative imagery.

As I have already said, I am of the opinion that page three is an outdated part of the newspaper that should be eradicated. Times have changed and we need to move on from this kind of smut and get The Sun to produce some quality (albeit including a bit of pop culture) journalism. However, we are fortunate enough to live in an age in which a woman can choose what type of work she wants to do. If a woman did not want to undertake topless modelling, she wouldn't do it. It is her basic human right to do that and we should respect that.

We have come so far in the feminist movement. Over the course of the last 80 years, women have moved up the ranks and now, we are more equal than ever to our male counterparts. And yet, the movement that once liberated women and fought for our rights, is now restrictive, in this instance, I feel that it is effectively telling women who may want to be nude models that their ambitions are wrong.

I am a feminist. I am very proud to be a feminist. I want women to have equal rights, to be treated equally, and believe that any woman can do anything as well as any man could. But, I am increasingly seeing that there is a certain negative stigma attached to the word 'feminism' these days, which is a shame because it really is a very empowering and wonderful movement I hold very close to my heart. However, I'm starting to feel like the movement is telling me more about what I can't do, rather than what I can do. If I want to be a nude model, I have that right to be without anyone questioning it.

My main issue with modern day feminism, however, is that it is increasingly gender specific and gender focused. What the movement really needs is to fight for genuine equality between the sexes.

Men can be feminists. In fact, men make pretty damn good feminists. I find that feminists, in fact people in general, sometimes forget that men are also the brunt of sexist thinking some of the time. You think about our society and the ways in which men are expected to behave; the list of things they cannot do because of the way our society thinks is endless. Lad culture stresses that the only way men can enjoy themselves is by acting a certain way and this acceptance of the way 'blokes' should act makes it near enough to impossible for them to be otherwise. Men and women are both the brunt of sexist thinking in an equal measure these days, and it is something we need to remind ourselves of.

Reverting back to a point I made earlier, the union stocks and sells magazines in which men feature naked. If we're going to ban topless women being featured in our shops, then surely we must ban the magazines that promote naked men. If men and women are truly equal, (which, we know they are or at least they should be), and people are so against page three that they consider banning the stocking and selling of the publication that promotes the provocative images of women, then provocative images of men should go too.

Yes, page three should go. It is outdated, it is pointless and it has no place in newspapers. It is demeaning, not just for the women on the page, but for the men, women, boys and girls who have to see it. It should go. But banning the publication and taking away basic human rights to a free press for one bad page isn't the way forward. When you start to ban newspapers because you don't like their content, you remove the power of the people, and take away their abilities to make a conscious effort to stand up and say that they don't want to buy publications which spread sexist and derogatory messages. Should the union put internet blocks on their computers to ban access to certain websites? Should books in the library be banned for spreading a bad message? The answer is no. Banning the newspaper in my students' union will not make a massive impact on sale figures to bring about a real change, (as has been seen in many others across the UK) but a real and a sustained campaign could. We should also bear in mind that, while we have a right to a free press, we also have a right to do what we want to do, and if a woman or a man wants to undertake nude modelling, then that is their right. We should not challenge what people wish to do with their own bodies. While we wait for page three to be banned (because it will be one day), we should teach our children and remind ourselves that these women and men who feature in these provocative images, and people in general, are much more than sex objects and that this derogatory mindset has no place in our individual thoughts.

Only Yes means Yes

While it is clear to many of us that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, the difficulties in communication between the sexes is a subject that has never really been understood. Both men and women, in fact humans in general, often find difficulty in understanding that, sometimes, when someone says no, that they really mean no.

The subject is explored in a recent blog post by Vincent Vinturi, titled, "When Her No Means Yes." You can imagine the kind of ludicrous bullshit that is going to be spewed out during this article from the offset. The article has infuriated me since I read it at the beginning of this week, so I'm now going to take some time to respond to it with my own thoughts.

Women say "no" to me in one way or another on a regular basis, e.g. "no, you can't have my number", "no I should go home", "no I'm not coming into your apartment", and of course, the classic, "no, we're not having sex."

Yet somehow, when it's all said and done, that woman is invariably happy that I didn't listen to a single word of protest she uttered; that I barrelled through her resistance nonchalantly and drove the ball to the basket. Women RESPECT this sexual insistence, even if they aren't acutely aware of it. 

Personally, I thought that society had somewhat moved on from these backward views. A woman is well within her rights to tell you no at any stage of the evening, be that at the bar, in the taxi home, her front porch or even her bedroom. From my point of view, I would have nothing but contempt for a man who tried to manipulate me and convince me that I hadn't really changed my mind, and would continue to force himself on me. I would definitely not respect him for throwing about his weight and convincing me to change my mind when it was already made it. It is nothing short of coercion and any man who believes that this is a good way to attract a woman is deluded.

The consent crowd, however, would like for men to believe that anything short of a written statement, notarized and signed by the soon to be fornicated party, is rape.

The only way to know that sex is consensual is if there's a freely and clearly given "yes," which, to answer Vinturi's distasteful joke, isn't that difficult to get out of a woman. Either she wants to have sex with you, or she doesn't. Ensuring consent only requires the most basic respect that we all owe to our partners from the offset: paying attention to how they feel, how comfortable they are and asking them if we can't tell.

It's really not that difficult. But, even if it were, it's the only way to ensure a genuinely equal world in which, not just women, but men's bodies aren't presumed to be available to their potential partners until otherwise stated.

Women want to monopolize power in the sexual marketplace so that they can control access to sex and manipulate this most primal, most productive of urges to their benefit. Ultimately, it isn't to their benefit at all but that's another story. Perhaps it's not different from Western men who go to a country where their sexual value is much higher and pussy seems to fall from the sky. We're all looking out for number one and doing whatever we can to pass on those selfish genes.

Ask any guy who's banged a lot of girls and has had a lot of same-night lays, and he will surely regale you with tales of seemingly insurmountable resistance, conquered and slain by his resolve and unwavering horniness. It's the nature of beautiful women to resist, test, protest, sabotage and make your job of ******* them difficult. 

It baffles me how Vinturi has any of his own stories to regale. The way he talks about women is demeaning, especially in the last two paragraphs. Women are not objects that are made to be 'conquered and slain by resolve'. This kind of logic just doesn't fly in real life sexual interactions. Are all women really to be considered willing sexual participants unless otherwise stated? If we flirt with someone, or even kiss them, does that give them permission to do whatever else they want to our bodies until we strenuously object? It doesn't, by the way, and I don't want to be in a world where not just women, but sex, is viewed in this kind of way.

With rape laws the way they are in countries like the US and Canada, it's downright scary to be a man and act with natural disinhibition in the company of beautiful women in these countries. We're at a dangerous cultural crossroads, where a woman's need for validation is at an all time high, and the repercussions for accusing men of rape are non-existent.

In the modern context, rape is essentially the act of ultimate validation and a rape accusation is the ultimate act of attention whoring. I'm not supporting it of course, don't be silly. But think about it. If a man finds a woman SO incredibly desirable that he would throw his freedom, reputation, his whole life away to **** her, that shows the woman is on the highest echelon of desirability. And in fact, women have begun to routinely accuse men of rape purely for the ego validation that the onslaught of attention brings them. Even though the night before, they gleefully received the gent's ravishment.

And why not? If a woman can have her cake and eat it, too, she will.

False rape accusations are not to be taken lightly. I will admit that it does happen and that when it does happen, it is very wrong and very dangerous for all involved. But to infer that rape accusation, be it genuine or not, is an act of attention whoring is completely wrong. The very assumption that women say no, not because we don't want to have sex, but so that we can humiliate and have control over any man who approaches us is, frankly, arrogant on the part of the man being rejected. Vinturi is essentially saying that women's objections are a challenge to a man's masculinity that should be overcome.

Secondly, I personally wouldn't feel very flattered in knowing that a man found me so desirable that he would throw his freedom to have sex with me. I can't even believe I have to clarify that.

But I have to issue a serious warning: ploughing through a woman's objections with bemused persistence isn't for newcomers to the game. Especially not in the US. You need to be FLUENT in reading female body language. You need to know exactly what you're doing. The thing to understand is that telling a man "no" is a way to weed out the weaklings from the men who know what they want (her).

Yet again, woman are being dehumanised. Women's wants, desires, boundaries and reasoning's are being totally dismissed. Vinturi sugar coats it; women's objections are a game and that, when it's all over, the woman will thank the man for forcing through her wants and boundaries. According to Vinturi, having sex with a woman isn't about connection, communication or even desire. It's about closing the deal, getting what he wants, regardless of objections, resistance or rejection.

I can't stress strongly enough how dangerous and backwards this way of thinking is. Though Vinturi states later on in his post that he is against rape and that his post is merely about how to persuade a woman, he is effectively buying into rape culture by writing all this nonsense down. What Vinturi fails to understand is the no actually does mean no. It signifies the end of the discussion and is absolutely not an invitation to push harder. Only a clear and direct "yes" can really mean "yes".

Merthyr Tydfil Is Not a 'Crap Town'

For Christmas, my parents gave my boyfriend a book entitled "Crap towns returns", which I'm sure most people have heard of. They gave it to him because they found it hilarious that our own home town, Merthyr Tydfil, featured in it, as it has done many times before because, according to the masses, it's a crap place to live.

Following that, a discussion on Facebook about the benefits system prompted some to make some distasteful comments about Merthyr as a whole, which was completely wrong and naturally infuriating.

While it is pretty funny and it's all well and good for me to joke about the unemployment rates, the famous Gurnos estate, and the fact that the average life expectancy there is 58.8 years, it doesn't change that fact that it is not ok when someone is criticising it without ever having visited. The fact is, despite its flaws, I have a very deep love for the place. It is fantastically beautiful and there are lots of hidden gems that only us locals will be able to find. The problem is that many people are unable to see past the statistics.

I'm not here to deny the statistics. They are very much true - Merthyr is in the depth of high unemployment, many people are claiming benefits and we have a surplus of people and not enough places to cater jobs for them all. The rumours surrounding Merthyr are very rarely positive due to a few areas of the town being a bit rough around the edges and a general sense of being forgotten by the Welsh government. But, what I am here to remind you of is that there are places like Merthyr across Britain, where a bad reputation outshines the place beneath. I could list a whole range of towns I think are crap because of their bad reputation, but I won't because you should never judge a book by its cover.

Despite the fact that parts of Merthyr are a bit ropey like many other places in the UK, it is a beautiful place to live in and visit. There isn't much going on there, granted, but it has a rare quality I have yet to find anywhere else and that is a strong sense of community and togetherness. In fact, I challenge anyone to walk the streets of any dozen or so towns or cities of their choice in the UK and then take a walk in Merthyr. The friendliest people will be in Merthyr. The people who value being able to smile at passersby, say hello and generally make an effort to acknowledge others on the street will be in Merthyr. The people of Merthyr, they are truly wonderful. There isn't much going on in Merthyr, but there are many places that are worse and much more run down.

Frankly, I am beyond proud to say that I was born in Merthyr. Even though I have since moved on and have now lived in Swansea for nearing three years, I miss the place every single day. It's such a beautiful place to see, with rolling countryside and such rich and cultured heritage. The novelty of always driving towards a mountain will always be one that I treasure.

The crap towns list clearly did not focus on the surrounding countryside, nor did they speak to the good - natured, warm people or consider anything other than the economic viability of the place. Merthyr is by no means beyond the help it needs to rejuvenate itself. Realistically speaking, the crap towns list serves no real purpose other than to give the general public an opportunity to make jokes at the expense of town with reputations that surpass them, and others that don't deserve to be on there at all. We should remember that Merthyr is not the only place in the UK with a bad reputation and that people should give it a chance to showcase the good qualities before judging it on the bad ones. After all, every single town and city has parts of it that are rough around the edges.