- Conference
- 2008 National Women's Conference
- Date
- 25 October 2007
- Decision
- Carried
Conference is concerned about the explicit imagery of naked and barely clothed young women portrayed on the internet, and in so called “Lad’s mags”.
These magazines are sold, at pocket money prices, in our local newsagents, department stores and supermarkets. They are not age restricted i.e. “top shelf” material, are clearly displayed and available for viewing.
Typically, such magazines contain many pages of advertisements for “hard core” porn, including illegal ones promoting, glorifying and emphasising anal and deep throat oral sex. There are also mobile phone porn logos, mobile phone porn ring tones and sex chat line ads.
Prizes of £250 are offered for boys to send in photos of their girlfriends and one magazine recently published a topless, and non-consensual, picture of a girl aged 14.
There are websites, aimed at girls only just out of primary school, which encourage them to upload photos of themselves and post highly critical ratings of their own and other’s bodies. Competitions to judge sensual, sexually posed photographs of girlfriends, bum quests, breast quests, and dumbest girlfriend quest are endless and add to the denigration of women. Lad’s mags have become skilled in sending out messages that real women are to be judged, scored and rated, in comparison to the “fantasy model”.
What does this teach young men and boys about women?
Conference calls on the National Women’s Committee to:
1)Affiliate to the “Object” campaign
2)Liaise with Labour Link to lobby MP’s and Parliamentary Groups for improved media regulation