Tesco can be a dangerous place.....#losetheladsmags

A couple of weeks ago I wrote on Liberal Democrat Voice asking if it was time to lose the lads' mags in light of a new campaign set up by UK Feminista and Object. Even though my article was quite mild, and suggested no legislative change whatsoever, merely urging a think about the damage lads' mags and our hypersexualised culture does to women, it attracted some quite aggressive comments. Any time a woman speaks up about these things, there is a queue of mostly men waiting to shout her down and call her names, so it wasn't entirely unexpected. As you can imagine, I'm not one to be put off.

The Lose the Lads' Mags campaign aims to rid the magazine shelves of pictures of half naked women. If men want to read the stuff that's in them, then that's up to them, but do women really have to be subjected to images of scantily clad women on the front covers of these things? What does it tell kids about the world in which they are growing up? Today, they are taking the campaign a step further by asking Tesco to lose the lads' mags.

Simple trips to the supermarket can be quite damaging in that regard. Let's face it, you take your little girl to Tesco and the first thing she's likely to see is pouting, half naked women from the covers of the likes of Nuts and Zoo, not always from a high shelf either. Then you go to the toy bit and she finds herself being pigeonholed into pink and sparkly. Rather than just let kids choose for themselves what they want to play with, toys are segregated into frills and froth for girls and practical, interesting ones for boys. Some egregious examples, like the Early Learning Centre marketing doctors' outfits for boys and nurses' outfits for girls were withdrawn after pressure built on social media.

And if the message is damaging for girls, it's part of the mix that tells boys that the world is run by and for men, that women are second class citizens. When they then, and most of them do, access internet porn and see women being treated as mere receptacles rather than equal partners, they accept that and their expectations of how their own relationships will work are adjusted accordingly.

People have the right to buy whatever rubbish they like. I certainly do. The lure of a Nigel Slater recipe card or Les Miserables DVD have even on rare occasion persuaded me to buy the Dail Fail. What the Lose the Lads' Mags campaign is about is about the imagery that pervades the public space. Women in demeaning, half naked poses on the front pages of magazines where anyone can see them sends a message that women are second class citizens and that has to be wrong and contributes to a misogyny that is much more malevolent than anything I remember when I was growing up. Laura Bates of Everyday Sexism today writes at the Huffington Post about the sorts of things they hear from young girls. There are triggery elements for sexual assault in what follows:

One 13-year-old girl wrote to the Everyday Sexism Project in desperation, saying "I am so scared to have sex it makes me cry nearly every day... some of the boys at school keep sending us these videos of sex... and it looks so horrible and like it hurts... [it's] so scary and painful and the woman is crying and getting hurt." Without any other information to offset these messages, she believed that this was simply what sex was like.

Other young people spoke of boys in school discussions saying "rape is a compliment really" and "it's not rape if you enjoy it". One woman told me of her shock at seeing her 12-year old sister's social networking profiles, where boys in her year left messages saying "Give me a blow job you slag" and "you have no idea how hard I would fuck the living shit out of you". When she refused to send them explicit photographs of herself, they called her "a frigid little bitch". Boys, too, are in desperate need of clear support to overcome the misleading messages they may be receiving online at a young age about their role in sexual relationships and how they should treat partners.

Yes, you read that right. 12 year olds leaving sexually explicit, insulting and intimidating messages on girls' social media profiles.

Last year I wrote about how uncomfortable I felt when a man next to me on the plane was reading one of these lads' mags. Why, I said, do men think it's ok to get their nuts out in public?

If men (I could say people, but who are we trying to kid here?) want to look at this stuff, then there's very little I can do to stop them, but for heavens' sake, can they not do it in the privacy of their own homes? When men ostentatiously read stuff like this in public, it's like they're making a huge statement that they see women as simply being there as window dressing, as decoration, as pleasure enhancers rather than their equals. They clearly feel that they have a right to own all the public space. I felt it was so rude of him and it made me feel uncomfortable. Now, I don't have the right to be protected from being offended, and nor am I asking for it, but I think I have every right to express my displeasure at such insensitive and crude behaviour.

There is so much that needs to be done in terms of changing a culture that is deeply damaging towards women. A debate about the images we consider appropriate in the public space is only a small part of it. In the 70s, every workplace would have had a girly calendar and women just had to put up with it. Things have changed now, and such displays are no longer seen as acceptable. Lads' mags are a regressive step back and their publishers need to think about the images that they put on the covers. If retailers can put pressure of them in that regard, so much the better.

Taking those images out of the public space will give the vital work that comes through education, to promoting understanding, as Laura Bates says, of what a healthy relationship should be, more chance of success.  Is it really too much to ask that women are treated as equal citizens in the media? Caroline Lucas has a Westminster Hall debate on media sexism tomorrow and as I'm in London, I hope to be able to see it. I'll tell you all about it when I do.

If you want to tell Tesco to lose the lads' mags, then you can do so via Facebook, Twitter and Email here.

Is it time for retailers to lose the lads' mags?

Every time you go into a supermarket or newsagent to buy a magazine, you are likely to be confronted with the following:

• A women's section, which contains magazines on, mainly, celebrity froth, sewing, cooking and child-rearing;
• Everything remotely interesting,like current affairs, photography, fishing, sport, computers and science fiction being displayed elsewhere;
• Magazines with pictures of half naked women prominently displayed in a way that you can't miss.

What does this tell children about the world in which they are growing up? The message seems to be that women are there to keep everyone else fed (while keeping themselves unrealistically thin, of course), that they aren't or shouldn't be interested in the issues of the day, and they are there to be men's sexual playthings if they are pretty enough.  If they ever watch the news, they will see that it's mostly middle aged white men in suits who are making most of the decisions that affect our lives. Of course, they will also see good stuff from ministers like Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson, but there should be more women at higher levels of industry, politics, and the legal profession.

This unequal treatment of women is surely inconsistent with our vision of a liberal society in which "none shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance and conformity." The range of things which need to be done to redress that balance is wide, and no single campaign alone will achieve it. The shared parental leave arrangements championed by Nick Clegg and Jo Swinson will help alleviate discrimination against women of childbearing age in the workplace. The Body Confidence campaign is already showing results - what would have been acceptable in terms of airbrushing 2 years ago is now not so.

A new campaign launches today aimed at getting supermarkets to remove lads' mags which have on their front covers pictures of scantily clad women. Lose the Lads' Mags, run by UK Feminista and Object Update, warns retailers that by displaying these images, they could be in breach of the Equality Act by failing to protect their employees from sexual harassment. A group of lawyers have written to the Guardian arguing that:

Every mainstream retailer which stocks lads' mags is vulnerable to legal action by staff and, where those publications are visibly on display, by customers. There are, in particular, examples of staff successfully suing employers in respect of exposure to pornographic material at work. Such exposure is actionable where it violates the dignity of individual employees or customers, or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them. We therefore call on such retailers to urgently heed the call to Lose the Lads' Mags.

I wrote a post last year asking why men thought it appropriate to get their Nuts out in public, after a flight where the man next to me was reading one of these magazines saying:

When men ostentatiously read stuff like this in public, it's like they're making a huge statement that they see women as simply being there as window dressing, as decoration, as pleasure enhancers rather than their equals. They clearly feel that they have a right to own all the public space. I felt it was so rude of him and it made me feel uncomfortable. Now, I don't have the right to be protected from being offended, and nor am I asking for it, but I think I have every right to express my displeasure at such insensitive and crude behaviour.

We need to look no further than the Government's own Sexualisation of young people review to see that this stuff causes actual harm:

The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, a tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm. Both the images we consume and the way we consume them are lending credence to the idea that women are there to be used and that men are there to use them.

I doubt that we are going to see a flood of female employees on the minimum wage sue supermarket giants under the Equality Act. However, if this campaign convinces those retailers that they could be vulnerable to legal action, they in turn might convince the publishers to ensure that the front covers of these magazines do not portray women in a demeaning way. At the very least, it will spark a discussion about the effect on society of the way women are so routinely portrayed and reassure women that, actually, the law is on their side.

The prevalence of these magazines is a symptom of a culture that treats women unfairly. We need to tackle the attitudes which enable such a culture to operate. But, if I have recurrent headaches, I don't wait for the outcome of tests to determine and treat the cause before I take a painkiller. In the same way, there is a place for tackling symptoms of sexism, one at a time, whether that's toy retailers selling doctors' sets for boys and nurses' outfits for girls or Disney turning Merida from Brave from active girl to glamorous, curvy, groomed model. These campaigns have been successful. We can but hope that over time we can lose the demeaning images from lads' mags too.