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Lad's mags
Excerpt: Although one might think that they have more important things to be worrying about, it seems that the New Labour instincts are still functioning: if in doubt, start passing some new laws!
Although one might think that they have more important things to be worrying about, it seems that the New Labour instincts are still functioning: if in doubt, start passing some new laws!
The latest target for the legislative scattergun is the "lad's mag", which Labour MP Claire Curtis-Thomas (click the link and take a look at that voting record) has decided must be banished to the top shelf by force of law. Never mind that there is already a voluntary code regulating this matter, and that Trading Standards officers have the power to reprimand newsagents who disobey it; in the world of Labour MPs, there are no grey areas. If something is bad (in some people's views) then there must be a law against it.
Let's just stop and think about this for a moment. There's already a voluntary agreement, several major retailers have shown a willingness to tackle material which offends their customers and many already place such magazines on the top shelf. Yes, it's a voluntary agreement that lacks the formality of law, but there's a process one can go through if one finds a newsagent placing such magazines inappropriately. Most important, a degree of common sense can be exercised by all concerned; retailers are generally wary of upsetting their customers and would listen to a genuine complaint, while spurious complaints (for example, by people with extreme moral views) can be ignored.
What good would a new law do? It would remove the possibility for discretion, for individuals to exercise common sense and judgement; it would be a license for every moral crusader to claim that they have the law on their side in their quest to banish anything they find objectionable to the top shelf. This will do little harm to genuinely pornographic magazines, whose clientele will think nothing of reaching up to the top shelf. But magazines which are not pornographic in nature will suffer from the stigma of top-shelf status.
Might I be over-reacting here? I don't think I am. Consider how such a law would be framed; under the present common sense system, we know what type of magazine we're concerned about and can use our own reason and faculties to decide on a case-by-case basis. A law would have to set down strict criteria about what constitutes a top-shelf magazine. Would exposed breasts be judged immoral? That's The Sun gone to the top shelf then (hang on, maybe there's something to this idea...). How about explicit descriptions of sexual acts? Don't some women's magazines contain these too though? Under such a law, all it would take is for a complaint to be made against any of these and the retailer would be required to do something about it. And in today's risk-averse society, that probably means caving in and moving the magazine to the top shelf.
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She's a nutter - I am a regular Today Programme listener and found myself shouting at the radio this morning. What is she on about?
I’m sure I heard her say that magazines such as Nuts, Zoo and FHM are indistinguishable from the top-row magazines like Club, Penthouse and Readers’ Wives. I’m afraid I have to conclude that she either
• Has trouble understanding pictures or certain vocabulary; or
• Has not actually read both types of magazine; or
• Was deliberately trying to make friends with Daily Mail-reading hypocrites by aiming to capture perceived moral high ground and make a political issue from something that is actually not worth the time and effort.
The idea of regulation of ‘lads’ mags’ as a specific category is a ridiculous waste of everyone’s time and energy, and I’m shocked that if got so much air-time. By letting Mrs Curtis-Thomas conflate pornography and tasteless but harmless fun, the Today Programme may well have given dangerous momentum to her campaign to impose her own whimsical views on the rest of us, increase legislation and curtail freedom of the press.
I don’t care what’s in those magazines, but I do care about moral posturing and nannying behaviour from people who ought to know better, MPs or not.
What is pornography though? Debased, demeaning and highly sexualised images of women or men whether they show genitalia or not might be considered to be pornography from a certain perspective. Whatever shelf the Lad's Mags happen to be on is rather irrelevent. What is not irrelevant is their content which, like it or not, rather panders to base instincts and retarded adolescent sexuality: three in a bed lesbian "action", anal sex, strippers, stag-nights and the restorative effects of lager. It's all rather sad and pathetic really. I'm not for banning pornography, but men should really begin to question whether using it enhances their lives or those of women.
That's a subjective opinion though; I personally agree that taking the content of lad's mags seriously would give a person a somewhat distorted view of things, but I don't think they're meant to be taken seriously, nor do I think that most people lack the intelligence to realise this.
I've always believed that advocates of free speech must avoid being judgemental about what others do with that free speech. I might not like a particular publication, but if I don't buy it then it's really not my problem. There are lots of publications out there which promote views of society that I disagree with, or which I think are unhealthy, but I don't think I'd get very far with a campaign to ban religious publications. Yet this is entirely right - I should not be able to impose my tastes on others, and nor should Labour MPs.
I'm intrigued by your argument Rob. In the "no platform" debates of the 1990s (re the BNP or the IRA) I always argued that it was best to hear people under the banner of free speech so that they could be judged and attacked on the basis of their argument. If you follow the logic of what you are arguing, the publication of material that engaged in holocaust denial, for example (and only for example - I don't want to get into a debate about the Holocaust) would be immune from attack ("advocates of free speech must avoid being judgemental"). I'm not for "imposing my tastes on other" but I think that advocates of free speech have an obligation to take on erroneous arguments and perspectives. The dictum attributed to Voltaire "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" seems to me to best sum up the requirement to defend freedom of speech while disagreeing with the content.
In these situations, I always ask myself 'is this something that I would like to have the option of reading, were I to so desire?' and the answer is rarely 'no'. That doesn't mean that I actively want to read it, but I would feel aggrieved at being told, by an authority, that I cannot do so. So, yes, I'm against almost all restrictions of free speech. And yes, that does create a moral obligation on me to argue against those things which I think are untrue or immoral.
I don't think that's enough to make a judgement in this case though. It's not a pure free speech issue, it's also an issue of law vs. voluntary agreement. We start from the presumption that anyone can publish anything that is not defamatory, libellous or otherwise so beyond the Pale as to be illegal. From that point, retailers have a choice about what they wish to stock. Certainly there are some magazines and books (hardcore pornography, for example) that some retailers will refuse to stock, as is their right. They will make a judgement about what is likely to offend their customers, and will weigh the damage of losing the custom of those offended against the damage of losing the custom of people likely to buy the items in question. The more extreme the material, the more people are likely to be offended and so the less likely retailers will stock it.
Should enough people be offended by something that they mount a campaign or otherwise signal to the retailer that they are offended, the retailer may withdraw the publication. If no such offence is signalled, or is signalled only occasionally by a handful of people, it can be safely ignored; their views are obviously not mainstream and should not affect the majority of customers. Only when a critical mass of complainants is reached will the retailer consider withdrawal. Otherwise, the wishes of the silent majority are taken to be that the material be left on sale.
The problem with a law is that it removes any need for there to be more than one complainant. With a law, only a single person need be offended for a complaint to be made, with the full force of law behind it. Whereas in the past the retailer's primary concern would have been with the view of its customers, in the future that concern would be primarily focussed on the law. Instead of a sliding scale between things which are seriously offensive (causing much complaint) and things which are mildly offensive (causing only occasional complaint), retailers would have the binary choice of 'offensive' (to some) which means withdrawal to the top shelf, or 'inoffensive' which does not.
I do not have any difficulty accepting Rob Knight's argument that freedom of speech should be more or less unlimited (with the exceptions that Rob lists). The point I was making was not a legal one nor was it addressing the limitatations of rights. I was making the argument that "Lad's Mags", far from being harmless fun, promote a view of women, and of male and female sexuality, that is puerile and problematical. Whether they are taken seriously or not is irrelvant to the mood music that they strike in shaping young men's attitudes to both sex and women. A similar note has been struck by Ariel Levy about so called "raunch culture" and its effect on women.
Plastic images of sex, the normalisation of orgiastic tendencies, the pandering to an idealised promiscuity (with no negative emotional consequences), the rendering of sex as a commodity (a cheap commodity), and the myth of perfection - in bodies, in physical experience, in quality of orgasm -and so on reflect an immature approach to sex - hardly more sophisticated than the "phrooah!" culture of the Carry On films. If more young men saw themselves as sad wankers (literally) rather than making a commodified "lifestyle choice" they might have a much more accurate self-image - and might want to so something about it.