Not sure about this you know:
In a keynote speech Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, condemns the so-called "lads magazines" for encouraging men to view women as mere sex objects.
"Our strategies for dealing with teenage pregnancy need to be focused more on young men and their responsibilities," he will say.
"That\’s why I believe we need to ask tough questions about the instant-hit hedonism celebrated by the modern men\’s magazines targeted at younger males.
"Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available."
We know that newspapers chase the prejudices of their readers rather than create them. It would seem therefore to be logically at least likely that magazines do the same. So it\’s not that these offerings cause lads to think of women in such terms, rather that they do and are willing to pay to have such prejudices pandered to.
All of which rather means that once again a politician has got confused between causes and effects.
Sigh.
You’ve been saying this a lot recently, and frankly it’s all far too simplistic (plus it undermines your cries that Polly etc. are menaces because they mislead people).
Of course in general people read the papers and magazines and blogs they tend to agree with, or have some sort of an attraction to, but that still leaves a lot of room for those organs to then influence their readers.
Think of the people you’re attracted to hanging around with — you tend to be friends with people who share your views, but those people can then greatly influence you to form certain opinions which you might not otherwise have held.
“Titles such as Nuts and Zoo paint a picture of women as permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available.”
Tobe fair, an increasing number of young women seem to be doing their level best to fulfil that prediction…
I’m sure all those young men of the 40s/50s/60s/70s/80s with posters of Jane Russell/Sophia Loren/Ursula Andress/Farah Fawcett/Kim Basinger on their walls were admiring their acting ability.
Incidentally, teenage pregnancies in the USA are down since the 1950s. Anyone like to suggest that the USA is less liberal about adult material than then?
It is teenage births that are down since the 50s. How this relates to pregnancies, given the very different social and legal status of abortion at the time is anybodies guess. Another thing is that many of these teenage births were to married women. It is a huge change in social attitudes in my lifetime that we now regard early marriage as worse than out of wedlock births.
I have never treated any woman as a mere sex object.
Tim adds; Aye, chance would be a fine thing.
Why should women’s desire to be sex objects be frustrated?