On Tuesday evening I was part of the opposition on a panel debate entitled, “This House would ban Page 3″.
Since then, I have received a few requests to publish my speech on the matter. I copy it for you below. I hope you find it interesting.
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I want to make clear from the outset here that the motion we are debating is, “This House Would Ban Page 3”.
Not, “This House Dislikes Page 3”.
Not, “This House finds Page 3 archaic”
Not, “This House’s opinion on Page 3 differs to The Sun’s 3 million a day readership”
If any of those were the motion, I might be sitting on the other side of this debate.
No, this debate is about a ban. Prohibition – which we’ve see work SO well with alcohol and drugs this past century. A chunk off the notion of freedom of speech and the entire debasement of the idea of consumer choice.
Down the memory hole with it.
And this debate is about more than a ban. It’s about the forces of freedom versus the forces of authority. Those who would moralise at you, wagging their fingers sententiously at the white van man, or the office bod, proclaiming “we know best!”
It takes the worst of the self-righteous Left, and the worst of the moralizing Right, and it combines them behind a punchy slogan, “Boobs aren’t news!” in a classic attempt to strawman its way through the debate. No. Boobs aren’t news. We all agree on that. But nowhere is Page 3 claiming to be delivering hard-hitting news. Nowhere.
It’s a deceptive slogan – a very deceptive one – used in an attempt to mask the severe authoritarian nature of the campaign.
This is, in effect, a matter of liberalism versus conservatism.
And for those of you who know me or know of me, you’ll know it is rare that I am the liberal in the room. On this issue, the liberals, the left, even many self-described libertarians have lost their way.
Today, I am with you. The overwhelming majority of young people in the United Kingdom who a recent British Attitudes Survey found were far more socially liberal than their parents or their grandparents generation.
The other side, well they’re the arch, social conservatives now. Which is bemusing to me to say the least. If we must ask ourselves who would have campaigned for a ban of Page 3 over the course of the past 100 years the answer would have been quite evident: people of a socially conservative disposition.
Indeed, it upsets me, that a week after the World Economic Forum released its 2013 Gender Equality Report, we are sitting here effectively dictating to women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. That is the eventuality of that ban that is being proposed tonight. With the intermediate steps of course being an Orwellian diktat against Page 3, or The Sun itself, and I imagine every other newspaper and magazine that shows too much flesh.
(Consequently I’m perplexed as to why it seems to be the nipple that is the most offensive part of the breast, and why those few millimeters cause so much distress. There is something inherently Freudian about this whole thing, but that’s a discussion for another time).
Across the world, as I mentioned, women aren’t fairing so well. In Pakistan and India, rape is tacitly approved of by the male-dominated environment. In Saudi Arabia, women are scrapping and risking their freedom and lives just for the right to drive. And here? Well we’re telling women, “No. You can’t voluntarily pose for a newspaper. No. You must cover up. Those nipples are far too alluring. Men will go crazy and rape everything in sight.”
Well that is not only demonstrably untrue, it is offensive to just about everyone.
The suggestion that the glorification of a tit somehow leads me and my gender compatriots to fits of rage and throbbing cocks is offensive. You demean us. And you demean every one of your male family members if you think that is the case.
In fact, quite the opposite is true. Whether it is the blue balls theory of terrorism, or in fact the provable and scientifically demonstrated link between the prevalence of the nude female form and a reduction in rape – the argument for proscribing Page 3 just simply doesn’t stack up.
This isn’t pornography. This isn’t even all that sexual. It’s a topless woman, the likes of which you can see in many galleries,12-rated films, or basically see in music videos, or on MTV award shows. In fact, there’s a lot more sexual and inappropriate about Miley Cyrus gyrating on Robin Thicke’s crotch than there is about Samantha from Luton. Would this house ban that, too?
I’m not arguing by the way, that The Sun thinks its doing humanity any favours, in stopping rape, or allowing women the choice over what they want to do with their bodies. But whether you, or they, or I like or not – it is an eventuality.
I mentioned the situation around the world. But I haven’t yet mentioned Femen.
Femen is a women’s rights group, which started in Ukraine, and is now based out of France. Femen activists use their bodies as canvasses by which to promote women’s rights causes, and highlight inequality around the world. Femen rails against the social conservative establishment, and does so bare breasted, often risking imprisonment or life in their pursuit of equality.
The women in The Sun are obviously not protesting anything though, right? So no parallels can be drawn. Actually, it is quite evident to even those with a fleeting interest in this subject matter than Page 3 isn’t a “relic” of a bygone era – it is in fact a product of womens’ hard fought for freedoms.
It didn’t start in the 20s, or prior to women’s suffrage. It started the 1970s. After the swinging sixties. After women’s lib. Well after universal suffrage.
It is not a product of an establishment that seeks to objectify women. It is the product of women fighting to be able to do what they want with their bodies, and obtaining and exercising that right.
They are exercising hard-fought for rights, even if they don’t think about it that way, while the likes of Femen are still fighting for them abroad.
To use government force, or student union force, or any kind of proscriptive or prohibitive measures to outlaw Page 3 is to spit in the face of the women who choose to exercise their rights are free human beings.
It spits in the face of women who in the past century in Britain were told they couldn’t wear two-piece bathing suits. And it spits in the face of classical liberal values that have protected both the freedom of the press, and the freedom of the individual.
Yes, I agree, it’s not nice to have one’s daughter or loved one pose as a Page 3 girl. It is also not great that kids should open The Sun and see Page 3. But this isn’t Saudi Arabia. And if individual shop-owners, supermarkets and libraries want to voluntarily remove Page 3 then so be it. I’m all for that. That’s what liberalism is all about.
But when it comes to a point where we’re talking about banning something, simply because the demos, the people, like it – or won’t stop buying it – well this is where I part ways with the conservatives who think in authoritarian terms.
This is what the Vladimir Putins of the world are doing to Pussy Riot. This is what the Iranian president just this week has done, by banning a reformist newspaper.
When considering your vote today. Consider the motion very carefully.
Do you want to BAN Page 3, or do you simply want to discourage its prevalence, discourage its existence?
The two are not the same.
And for that reason, you should vote with me, in disagreement with the principle, but in defence of the freedom.
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