A study conducted by the University of Surrey and Middlesex University has revealed that many people can’t tell the difference between comments made by rapists and those made by ‘lads’ mags’. Participants were presented with a series of statements about women and sex both found in lads’ mags and made by rapists, then were asked to say which source they thought each statement came from and also to rate them in terms of how derogatory they were. Researchers found that most people couldn’t tell the difference between quotes from these two sources; in fact, those from lads’ mags tended to be rated as more derogatory.
Having never indulged in the latest copy of Loaded, I was intrigued to see the sort of thing they had to say about women. I won’t repeat many of the quotes here, but feel free to check out the link in the sources below and see for yourself. The quotes from the lads’ mags could be described as slightly nauseating at best, but I’ll admit I found myself giggling a bit at first. Which got me thinking…are those of us who laugh along equally to blame?
It’s hard to know where to draw the line between being overly sensitive and defending the years of blood, sweat and tears that eventually led to equal rights for women. There’s a lot to be said for a sense of humour, but underneath the ‘banterous’ culture that we live in (especially as students) there lies something more malignant. There’s little weight to any claim that it’s all right for the media to promote statements like ‘The possibility of murder does bring a certain frisson to the bedroom’. I’d be intrigued to meet the male who’d welcome the use a murder weapon next time he’s getting lucky. So as much as we could laugh at the general strangeness of the content these magazines print, we owe it to ourselves and future generations of women to argue back every now and again.
The fact that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between comments made in the media by ‘journalists’ and everyday men, and those made by convicted sex offenders tells us a lot about the way society thinks of women. It’s important to recognise that men aren’t the only guilty party in this debate. Last week, the editor of The Sun said that it was his female readers who insisted on the much contested Page 3 remaining in the tabloid newspaper. Regardless of your personal opinion on Page 3, it’s undeniably surprising that women are the main supporters of soft porn in the mainstream media.
So what does a topless photo of a woman alongside a quotation about her political and cultural views have to do with a lads’ mag saying that: ‘girls are like plasticine, if you warm them up you can do anything you want with them’? The long and short of it is that both objectify women in a very socially acceptable way. And when features like this become commonplace in society, it’s difficult to know where the next step up is in terms of acceptability. If we condone this use of language about women, we are allowing the media to project an idea in to the minds of their readers that it’s OK to refer to a female as a “wh*re” or “sl*t” in everyday life.
It wasn’t so long ago that women in Britain were oppressed, being forced to live as inferiors and considered property of their husbands. There are places in the world where women are oppressed, banned from driving or talking to men in public. In the UK we’ve come a long way, and women are not the second-class citizens that they have been in the past or still are in other countries. But we have got to this stage through some serious graft and if we want to maintain a society where we’re considered equal to men, and respected by them, we need to put a stop to the blasé attitude with which society accepts the objectification of women in the media.
Sources
http://jezebel.com/5866602/can-you-tell-the-difference-between-a-mens-magazine-and-a-rapist
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02629/Lads_Mags_2629505b.jpg
http://sohp.org/files/2013/10/1971BettyMarch.jpg
Edited by Luisa Parnell