UK Nutter News

'Hadley Freeman writes in an article from the Guardian

How much does the Daily Mail hate women? It obviously hates female celebrities, despite featuring them so heavily. The paper and, to a larger extent, the website is pretty much built upon a foundation of articles -- though that word does seem a stretch -- about female celebrities who all fall into the dichotomy of being either thigh-rubbingly salacious ( Look at this sexy young woman in minimal clothes! Look! Look at her! ) or eye-poppingly repulsed ( Look at this woman who is older than 30, and over nine stone! Ew! Look! Look at her! ) Sometimes the two genres are combined.

...

The paper uses its female writers as Trojan horses to voice its most misogynistic attitudes, whether its having them embody the worst kind of female stereotypes (Liz Jones as the label-obsessed bitter single woman, Amanda Platell as the high-flying but lonely single woman, Jan Moir as Glenda Slagg, etc etc) through their confessional journalism.

...

It is easy to condemn the women themselves for writing for that paper at all, but times are tough for freelancers, and one can hardly blame a writer for going to a publication that commissions so much from women writers, even if it does then change what they've written.

Perhaps this last paragraph also applies to the Daily Mail itself. I don't suppose for one moment that the Daily Mail has a particular misogynist agenda, the whole paper is just there to make a buck. Times are tough for newspapers too...and outrage sells. Why not generate it rather than just report it?

...Read the full article

Meanwhile the Exeter University student newspaper was also impressed by the Hadley Freeman piece. See  article from  xmedia.ex.ac.uk

Meg Lawrence of Exepos é writes of a Samantha Brick article :

Who is Samantha Brick, you may ask. For those of you blissfully unaccustomed to the utter drivel this freelance journalist espouses, she basically made headlines in The Daily Mail recently for agreeing with actress Joan Collins that that any woman who wants to stay beautiful needs to diet every day of her life.

I wouldn't seek to censor Brick -- after all, we live in a society where freedom of speech and a free press are valuable commodities. However, I'd be heartened if the backlash was a little more prominent, fervent or passionate. I can accept Joan Collins' old-fashioned ideals. She found fame at a time when women were often valued purely on looks. I don't like what she says but I expect it. But the same cannot be said for Brick. And The Daily Mail cannot use the argument of airing a debate as a reason to continue peddling this downright stupid tat.

Exeter student Cara Delaney has decided to take action with her recent petition entitled The Daily Mail: Stop Publishing Articles by Samantha Brick. Along with the 327 other supporters who have already signed the petition, Delaney has pledged to boycott The Mail until they show some responsibility for the articles they are publishing.

The Mail thrives on publishing stories that will provoke, and they enjoy the attention this creates. However, when the articles they produce could adversely affect the lives of their readers, something must be done to stop them. At the very least they should be challenged on their reasons for publishing such rubbish when real issues that genuinely affect women's lives -- poverty, human rights, childcare, careers, health, education, equality -- go unmentioned.

...Read the full article article

See also Cara Delaney's petition: The Daily Mail: Stop publishing articles by Samantha Brick. .

Update: And if you believed the Daily Mail followed what its anti-sex columnists spout

3rd May 2013.  See  Mila Kunis voted no. 1 on FHM's 100 Sexiest Women In The World list from  dailymail.co.uk . Thanks to Dan

House of Commons, Questions re Culture, Media and Sport, 16th May 2012.

Keith Vaz (Leicester East, Labour)

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport whether his Department has any plans to place further restrictions on the content of video games following the testimony of Anders Breivik.

Edward Vaizey (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Culture, Communications and Creative Industries), Business, Innovation and Skills; Wantage, Conservative)

The Government is currently moving towards strengthening the laws in respect of video game regulation. We have recently announced our intention to designate officers of the Video Standards Council as the authorities responsible for the classification of video games. When that process is complete, it will for the first time be a legal requirement for all video games suitable for those aged 12 or over to be classified. It will be an offence to supply a video game in breach of its classification. In addition, there is one extra safeguard in the UK that is not part of the general Pan European Games Information scheme that we will be using: in the UK, there will be the option of refusing classification where a video game cannot fit within the published PEGI criteria. If a game that |s not exempt has no classification, it will be an offence to supply it to anyone.

Keith Vaz:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport how many representations his Department has received from the Pan European Game Information Service in relation to newly-published video games.

Edward Vaizey:

The Pan European Games Information system is the mechanism by which video games are rated. The bodies that implement the scheme are independent of Government and have not made any representations about newly-published video games

Labour MP Keith Vaz has worked tirelessly in recent years to demonstrate the link between violent video games and historic acts of violence, tracing the correlation right back to the tragic consequences that Rome: Total War inflicted on the Gauls. As far back as 2004, he was attempting to link the murder of Stefan Pakeerah to Manhunter, undeterred by the minor point that his killer didn't have the game. By 2010 he was using an Early Day Motion to tie Counter-Strike to pretty much every newsworthy use of a gun that year.

In recent weeks the tireless MP has used the 2011 Norway attacks to put Call of Duty in his sights. In a new EDM he asks the House of Commons to note that in his submission of evidence to the court [Anders] Breivik describes how he trained for the attacks using the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare; and to declare that he is disturbed that Breivik used the game to help hone his 'target acquisition' and the suggestion that the simulation prepared him for the attacks.

Dealing with Vaz's various claims it's tempting to take him out to a pub, get him extremely drunk, and have correlation does not equal causation! tattooed on his forehead while he sleeps. Before that, though, it's worth putting all this in context. Let's start by recounting a brief history of video games and violent crime, told through game releases and British Crime Survey figures. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin:

...Read the full article

TV viewers have got their knickers in a twist over the sight of cartoon women dancing in bikinis and a large woman flashing her underwear in an advert.

The 30-second TV ad for insurance company confused.com has resulted in 37 nutter complaints from 'outraged' members of the public who ludicrously claim it is too overly sexual.

Cartoon characters with large breasts in skimpy bikinis are shown jumping up and down in slow motion to the Village People's YMCA song - while another woman's short dress rides up to expose her pink knickers.

The ASA has investigated the firm's ad and has found the complaints to be bollox.

A spokesman for the authority said the organisation had received a number of complaints on a range of issues including that the ads were misleading in the representation of the value of nectar points. Other complaints were logged because the advert was overly sexual and inappropriate for children to see, and that it is offensive in stereotyping on religious and race grounds. The spokesman said: We have decided, following an ASA Council decision, that there were no grounds to take any action on these issues.

The Mothers' Union today slammed the advert for increasing the creeping sexualisation of television. A spokesprat said:

This advert increases our major concern about the drip-drip affect of sexualisation of everyone on television. It is having an impact on everyone - including children - and we need to protect them from this wallpapering of sexualisation.

It is high time something is done about this. We need to become aware of what is going on before the drip-drip becomes a torrent.

Object is a nutter campaign group that rant about more or less any form of sex entertainment that is enjoyed by men. The group is amongst the most prominent of those campaigning for a miserable life.

OBJECT's founder and CEO Sasha Rakoff is now retiring citing the need for rest and time with her family.

Anna van Heeswijk has been appointed as the new CEO of Object.

She came to the attention of the press after she gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry about the supposedly sexist portrayal of women in the press. Armed with a catalogue of images published by the Sun, the Sport and the Star, she claimed to be exposing how frequently women are portrayed as sex objects through features like Page Three.

She has said re Page 3:

Our argument and solutions are simple. This type of sexually objectifying material would be restricted on television because of the recognised harms associated with these stereotyped portrayals of women and it would be considered sexual harassment if it was in the workplace. Why is it, then, that they should be printed in mainstream newspapers which are not age-restricted and are sold and displayed at child's eye level?

On lap dancing;

Lap-dancing clubs are often sites of exploitation. They create no-go zones for women who fear walking past them at night and they promote sexist stereotypes of women as sex objects,

And as for prostitution, Van Heeswijk describes this as the;

Ultimate form of objectification.

A billboard which links death with eating meat has been criticised by the National Obesity Forum (NOF).

The advert from animal rights campaigners, Peta, shows a coffin-shaped pie and asks the question Not ready to meat your maker? . It also recommends veganism in the fight against obesity.

Tam Fry, from the NOF, said the advert was laughable and an attempt to make a point out of others' misfortune. He said it was ridiculous that Gloucester had been targeted because the city was one of the less obese areas in the country:

We want to do all we can to lessen obesity but I do not think it appropriate at all to draw attention to it in this manner.

Yvonne Taylor, from Peta, said the billboard was deigned to highlight a link between meat pies and pasties and obesity and other ailments:

The best thing that coffin dodgers can do for their health and to help animals is to go vegan.