No More Page 3 Campaign
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-07500, in the name of Jackie Baillie, on no more page 3. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I call Ms Baillie to open the debate.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes with concern reports regarding a connection between the portrayal of sexualised images of women in the media and attitudes that reinforce sexist attitudes, sexual harassment, abuse and violence toward women; believes that this has been demonstrated by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the UK Government-commissioned Sexualisation of young people review; welcomes the No More Page 3 campaign, which calls on The Sun to refrain from printing pictures of topless women; applauds the campaign for what it considers a successful first year in operation; recognises that a motion in support of the campaign was agreed by the National Assembly of Wales and that numerous organisations, including UNISON, the British Youth Council, UK Girlguiding, the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Head Teachers, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have also shown their support for the campaign, and notes calls in Dumbarton and across the country for The Sun in Scotland to stop printing pictures of topless women.
17:09
Who can forget the excitement of the Olympic games? Just last year, in homes throughout the country, we witnessed the dedication and achievement of our British athletes. We cheered them on, whether it was Andy Murray winning a gold medal for tennis, Sir Chris Hoy winning gold for cycling or Jessica Ennis winning gold in the heptathlon. What achievements! I remember, as others will, the wall-to-wall coverage in our broadcast and print media. It was one of our most successful games ever and we rightly celebrated.
In that context, 36-year-old Lucy-Anne Holmes, an actress and writer, noticed that the largest female picture in The Sun on the day was not of Jessica Ennis celebrating her gold-winning performance, but of a topless page 3 model. Lucy-Anne wrote to the editor of The Sun, calling on him to drop the feature, and her letter soon became an online petition that has garnered more than 122,000 signatures. I welcome supporters of the no more page 3 campaign to the gallery this evening.
The campaign’s slogan is, “Say no to the wrong things and the right things will happen.” Today, we are saying that there should be no more page 3 in Scotland. I hope that the editor of The Scottish Sun, Gordon Smart, will do the right thing. I strongly encourage him to take his newspaper into the 21st century by consigning page 3 to the dustbin of history.
Hear, hear!
I thank Annabel Goldie—I will take all supporters.
The Scottish Sun is one of the biggest-selling daily Scottish newspapers. It is read by hundreds of thousands of people every day, all of whom are subjected to a picture of a half-naked woman over their cornflakes, on the train or bus to work or in their workplace. The picture is not just on page 3, either, because the model is sometimes advertised on page 1, so there is no getting away from it. I am told that The Sun does not print pictures of half-naked women at the weekends out of consideration for children. Where on earth does it think those children are during the week?
Page 3 is a throwback to the 1970s. It is a relic of the male-dominated, smoke-filled press room that rightly belongs in the past. It belongs to a long-gone era, and it is well past its sell-by date. “Tired”, “demeaning”, “depressing”, “disrespectful” and “embarrassing” are just some of the terms that are used to describe page 3. Women are not objects, so I ask The Sun to stop treating us as though we are. Men are usually portrayed in the media as doing things, achieving things and conveying important information, and they do not do any of it half naked.
Page 3 not only objectifies women, but glorifies and celebrates the objectification of women. The Sun cannot style itself as a family newspaper and pretend that female nudity is just a bit of harmless fun. Objectification is all about power: the strong objectify, and the weak—or those who are perceived to be weak—are objectified. Page 3 perpetuates defunct and discredited gender stereotypes that portray women as the weaker sex, sweet and silent—although members will find that hard to believe about me.
When we stop and think, we see that page 3 feeds into the wider narrative of gender inequality. Yesterday, we rightly debated domestic abuse and identified that abuse, at its root, as an abuse of power. That abuse of power arises from inequality between the genders, and page 3 affords inequality mainstream legitimacy. Some of us are old enough to remember Clare Short trying to introduce legislation to ban page 3 in 1987. She was vilified. The Sun and others described her as—wait for it—“fat”, “ugly” and “jealous”. However they describe those of us who contribute to the debate this evening, we should make no mistake that there is a movement of men and women, young and old alike, who want to see an end to page 3.
I will give members an idea of the campaign’s supporters. The organisations include Girlguiding UK, the Girls Brigade, the British Youth Council, Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis, Unison, the National Association of Teachers, the National Association of Head Teachers—the list goes on and on.
The National Assembly of Wales has already backed unanimously a motion to demand an end to page 3. Rebecca Evans AM, said:
“Page Three normalises the trivial objectification of women, entrenches inequality and sexist attitudes, and, well, quite simply, half-naked women just aren’t news!”
I could not have put it better myself.
Let me be clear that support for the campaign is not only from politicians. Girlguiding UK said:
“The Sun is a family newspaper. Anyone can pick it up, turn to Page 3, and think that it is normal for young women to be treated as objects. This is just wrong.
It is impossible to nurture your ambitions if you are constantly told that you aren’t the same as your male equivalent. It is disrespectful and embarrassing. We need to get used to the idea that women are not for sale.”
Let me tell members about Terri Smith. She is a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament for Edinburgh North and Leith who lodged a motion calling for no more page 3. The motion was passed overwhelmingly and is now SYP policy. That is the next generation of newspaper readers making it abundantly clear that they do not support page 3.
I ask Gordon to do the “Smart” thing and remove page 3. The Irish Sun has done so; The Scottish Sun can do likewise. Page 3 does not sell newspapers; news content sells newspapers. I hope that the minister will confirm the Government’s support for the campaign. Let us together consign page 3 to the dustbin of history, where it rightly belongs.
17:17
I am very pleased that Jackie Baillie has brought this issue to Parliament for me to make my first speech in a members’ business debate. I will look at the issue from a different point of view and agenda and as someone who was not born in this country—a fact that members may have heard before.
I am not a prude and neither am I easily shocked or embarrassed, but when I came to this country and saw my first page 3 I thought that I was in another time. I did not think that Scotland was a place where such photographs should be on display.
When I came to this country I worked in the haulage industry—I was even a lorry driver at one point, so I am very used to seeing those pictures. When I opened my first office in Glasgow, there was a large wall next to my room with lots of pictures of topless women on it. As I say, I was used to that and it did not shock or affect me. That was in the 1980s, when Clare Short suggested that legislation be introduced to ban page 3.
Something happened that changed my mind. I was waiting in my office for a visitor from the islands in the north. I realised that the visitor, who was the head of a salmon company, was a woman and it dawned on me to ask myself how I would feel as a man visiting a woman in another company who, on making his way to her office, saw a wall full of pictures of men with no clothes on. I would have thought it totally ridiculous, yet here I was, waiting for my visitor to come, with all those pictures on the wall.
Despite many protests from the workers, I told them that we must take the pictures down; from then on, we did not have such pictures on that wall. That measure made a lot of sense. Why should that be the case? It is because it makes business sense. I put that same message to the editors of British newspapers: having a page 3 is not a selling factor.
Page 3 is repellent; people do not want to see it. When I buy one of those newspapers, get on the train and turn the page, I feel embarrassed when I get to page 3, so I turn the page quickly to get to the next page. As a father of three daughters, what is on page 3 is not something that I want to see in today’s world. It is not the time or the place for it.
In Dundee in my region two weeks ago, as Jackie Baillie said, 160 MSYPs at the Scottish Youth Parliament voted in favour of a motion against such portrayals in the media. That is extremely important, because they are the customers of tomorrow for such publications. Editors should think about that; it is a question of doing business properly in this time and this place, not in the 1970s. Those MSYPs are the democratically elected voice of Scotland. The young people have spoken, and they should be listened to.
I have a proposal to make to the publication in question. We should use page 3 to celebrate the great achievements of women of today. When I looked at one of those papers again this week, I saw that, in 28 pages of sport, there was just a little report about and a little photo of a lady—Shelley Kerr from Broxburn, who has been shortlisted for FIFA world manager of the year in women’s football. The news was buried on page 24. What a missed opportunity in a 28-page sport supplement full of pictures of men. My proposal to the editor of The Sun is that I would like to live in a country in which journalists report the achievements of the young women of today on page 3, rather than burying them on page 24. Instead of being a page to inspire aversion and distaste, page 3 could be a page to inspire young girls and young people in general, whatever their gender, and to celebrate their many achievements.
17:22
I congratulate Jackie Baillie on lodging the motion, and I congratulate the great no more page 3 campaign, whose petition I believe has now garnered 122,000 signatures. I also congratulate all the groups that are mentioned in the motion and, of course, my constituent Terri Smith on her success in getting the Scottish Youth Parliament to oppose page 3. An increasing number of people now oppose page 3.
It was 43 years ago, in 1970, that a group of men—forgetting the half of the population who are women—decided that they would introduce page 3 for men. I hope that an increasing number of men are now challenging that and seeing that page 3 is negative not just for the rights and wellbeing of women—as it clearly is—but, ultimately, for the wellbeing of men as well, because it damages and poisons their relationships with women.
Of course, some men are fighting back against the campaign. Yesterday, I discovered a Twitter account—which I will not name—that had on it the message, “No to the few.” It was quite wrong about that, as I will show in a minute. It also said:
“No to those who despise the female form.”
How wrong it is. I hope that I speak for a large number of men who love and respect women in their totality, body included, but who oppose the sexual objectification of women, the subjugation and belittling of women, and the rampant sexism and inequality that are splashed across page 3 every day under the cover of press freedom. I am sure that we all support press freedom in principle, but I reject the freedom of men to exploit and oppress women, I reject the freedom of men to objectify and stereotype women, and I reject the freedom of men to deprive women of their rights, respect and equality.
The men who introduced page 3 in 1970 certainly did not think about how women would feel about being represented in such a way. I referred to the Twitter account that said that just a few people are opposed to page 3. An increasing number of men oppose it, and I am sure that the vast majority of women do. I do not know any women who are happy with page 3—except, of course, the few women who benefit financially from being photographed for it.
It is not surprising that women are negative about page 3, because they know a lot better than I do what a negative effect it can have. There is a great deal of evidence and research on the effect that page 3 has in terms of stereotyping women and the effect that it may have on the self-esteem of young women and girls, in particular. They know how page 3 is negative for them. If we look at the no more page 3 website, we see a large number of such testimonies, including from a vast range of bodies, such as Girlguiding UK, to which Jackie Baillie referred.
Of course, the other side of the coin is page 3’s effect on men, which is something that women experience throughout their lives in many different forms. They know—I certainly do not—what it feels like to be treated as a sexual commodity, to be sexually objectified and to be harassed partly because of the messages that are sent by page 3 and other such representations. Ultimately, of course, there is the sexual violence that is not unconnected—as research again shows—to many of the messages and influences that affect men in our society. It is therefore not at all surprising that the vast majority of women are opposed to page 3; I hope that an increasing number of men are, as well.
As I have only half a minute left, I have no time to talk about the flash mob at the Unison conference, which members might have read about. The point behind it was that although such images are illegal in the workplace under equality legislation they are, nevertheless, splashed across workplaces and public places every day.
I have two grand-daughters and do not want to have to explain to them why they are being treated differently from boys and men. I want them to grow up in a society where there is increasing gender equality and where they are not subjected to the misogyny of lad culture and all the other negative male attitudes that are fed by page 3, as well as by other features of society. No one is saying that getting rid of page 3 will in itself create gender equality, but it will be another step in that direction. Finally, as one woman on the no more page 3 website says, all women are asking for is to be treated, and represented, with respect—as men are.
17:26
I, too, thank Jackie Baillie for bringing this important issue to the chamber. In doing so, she underlines the vital role of a Parliament in finding common accord across party boundaries to highlight something that is wrong.
That is no trite moral judgment. This is not about prim ladies of propriety of a certain age, who might be of ample proportions, pursing their lips in disapproval at the antics of their juniors. This is about how we wish the image of Scotland and the United Kingdom in the 21st century to be represented, and particularly how we wish women in that society to be portrayed. I should also clarify that the views that I am expressing are my personal opinions.
To put this debate in context, I point out that women died that we might be given the vote; rent strikes were women fighting for their families and the justice of fair rents while their husbands were at war; women fought for our right to university education; and down the ages women have made sacrifices of all kinds for their families and their society that others might be given chances and opportunities. Given those heroic achievements, it is no surprise that women have risen to the highest levels of every activity imaginable. Their influence and success are as impressive as they are beyond dispute. In 2013, how do we celebrate that? With the consistent portrayal of topless women in a tabloid newspaper. That tasteless and demeaning portrayal of some women is actually a gross and offensive betrayal of all women. For example, when Jessica Ennis won an Olympic gold medal, which was a major achievement in sport, an occasion for national celebration, and a fantastic representation of female ability and signalled the creation of an excellent role model, The Sun recognised that triumph by giving greater pre-eminence to a photograph of a topless woman.
To me, Lucy-Anne Holmes, with her petition to stop this tacky and questionable practice, is a new heroine. She is right and I support her position, as do more than 120,000 others. However, she, I, Jackie Baillie and all the other signatories also recognise that there is a darker side to this practice, a sinister and disturbing element that is referred to in the motion. As has been confirmed by research, there is a known and proven link between the portrayal of sexualised images of women in the media and attitudes that reinforce sexism, sexual harassment, abuse and violence towards women. That alone should justify stopping the publication of photographs of topless women in newspapers; the practice is indefensible, as are the purported arguments advanced by those who support such activity.
We are told that freedom of the press must prevail. As a proposition, that does not bear even superficial scrutiny; it is more naked than the page 3 offerings. Publishing material in the public interest is not the same as, and can never be confused with, producing salacious material to satisfy the prurient interest. We are told that commercial freedom justifies that, and that, after all, no laws are being broken. If that proposition is intellectually robust, we should expect First ScotRail to employ topless ladies on the catering trollies, our supermarkets to have topless female staff stacking shelves, and topless women at the counters of our banks and building societies. Can members imagine that? That will not happen, because those businesses not only have to defer to public taste and acceptable conduct but they cannot afford to be associated with practices that induce and reinforce sexist attitudes, sexual harassment, abuse and violence towards women. It is a no-no. If it is a no-no for them, it should be a no-no for The Sun.
The Sun needs to act up to its name. It needs to reflect the light of its title on the darkness of the shadows that are cast by its topless feature on page 3. When groups as diverse as UK Girlguiding and the other organisations that are mentioned in the motion and that Jackie Baillie mentioned in her speech, not to mention the Scottish Parliament, raise the cudgels, The Sun needs to listen. As UK Girlguiding pointed out:
“The Sun is a family newspaper. Anyone can pick it up, turn to Page 3, and think that it is normal for young women to be treated as objects. This is just wrong.”
I agree with UK Girlguiding. In 2013, women deserve better from The Sun, and The Sun can and certainly should do better by women.
The motion is timely. In the Scottish Parliament, as in the National Assembly for Wales, we should build on the momentum that Jackie Baillie has generated.
Due to the number of members who wish to speak in the debate, I am minded to accept a motion, under rule 8.14.3, to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Jackie Baillie.]
Motion agreed to.
17:32
I, too, welcome the debate and congratulate Jackie Baillie on securing it.
I commend the recent motion from the Scottish Youth Parliament, which was, I understand, the result of a debate in which concerns were expressed about the portrayal of people as sex objects in the mass media. Page 3 of The Sun was highlighted as a prime example of the kind of portrayal that there was concern about.
As colleagues have said, the debate is not new; as Clare Short would testify, it has gone on for years. There have been concerns about the portrayal of women in the media for years, but there is now a body of research that explores the impact of sexualised images in the media that we have a duty to reflect.
I want to reflect in particular on the research that the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust has pulled together, because it is concerning and we need to listen to it. One issue that it has highlighted is that, in response to a recent campaign by Mumsnet about retailers, a survey by The Guardian found an array of items available in major chain stores, from a T-shirt for a three-year-old that bore the slogan “Future WAG” to a top for a toddler with a pink bikini appliquéd on the front, and that New Look sells a range of high heels that start at size 1, which is the shoe size of an average eight-year-old, and a pair of £16 dark-blue platforms with 3.5 inch heels, pointed toes and four straps. That is not necessarily a good role image for young women, and girls in particular.
Zero Tolerance has highlighted the concerns about the impact of gender stereotyping and suggested that girls are overly concerned with their body image; that there is bullying of girls who do not conform to gender stereotyping ideals; and that girls who do not conform to those stereotypes experience negative feelings about themselves. We are quite rightly focusing on page 3, but we need to take a wider look at sexualisation in our society, whether in retailing or in other media.
Does the member recall that our Equal Opportunities Committee conducted an inquiry into sexualised goods that are aimed at children?
That was a good inquiry for our Equal Opportunities Committee. We need to look at a range of issues, but I will briefly highlight social media and technological change, which have led to a host of new pressures, particularly for young people.
One study quoted by Zero Tolerance suggested that girls as young as 12 had experienced pressure to send topless pictures of themselves by text and instant messaging. We should be really concerned about situations such as that, which are adding more and more pressure to young people as they are growing up. Increasingly, there are websites and online magazines that encourage user-generated content that people can rate and comment on.
This debate is timely, because we should be considering the impact of the sexualisation of our culture, which should concern us all. A survey of 15 to 19-year-old girls found that 63 per cent considered being a glamour model as their ideal profession and a quarter thought that lap dancing would be their ideal profession, but only 4 per cent chose teaching as their ideal profession. That is deeply worrying. We need to focus on the negative impact of sexualisation on not just young women but young men, too. Malcolm Chisholm was absolutely right to focus on the fact that the issue concerns us all, not just women.
Research shows that sexualisation limits young people’s aspirations and affects how they think. It impacts on their physical and mental health and on what should be their healthy sexual development. It is an issue for not just one small group in society or the majority of women; it is an issue that should concern us all. All of us in the Parliament should come together and say that page 3 has been there for a long time; it has been criticised for a long time; it is time for it to go.
17:36
I thank Jackie Baillie for securing this important debate.
Pictures of naked or half-naked women do not upset me in the slightest, nor do they upset any of the men or women whom I have met who share Lucy-Anne Holmes’s view that it is time that a popular national newspaper stopped printing pictures of half-naked young women on page 3. What upsets us is that those images condition readers to view women as objects; what is wrong with page 3 is the context. As campaigners have said, we would not expect to see a picture of a half-naked young woman appear during a national television news bulletin, accompanied by some sickly sweet description. There would be an outcry if that happened. I thank Lucy-Anne Holmes, whose no more page 3 campaign, which began last year, has galvanised this long overdue outcry.
The debate is about what sort of society we want to be. How often does the Government minister in Westminster who naively suggests that it is for adults to choose what they read sitting in a busy bus or train where The Sun and the daily drip-fed visual diet of women in passive and sexualised poses are increasingly hard to avoid? Why does that matter? Do those women not have a right to choose to do that? Of course they do, but we also have a right not to be exposed constantly by the mainstream media to a presented ideal of a topless young woman who is usually white, always very slim and frequently sharing print space with important-looking men who, it has to be said, are mostly wearing clothes. I went to the newspaper section of the Scottish Parliament information centre today hoping to disprove that theory but, frankly, I was very disappointed indeed.
As colleagues have underlined, there is evidence linking the portrayal of women as sexual objects with attitudes that underpin discrimination and violence against women and girls. That has been demonstrated in the United Kingdom Government’s “Sexualisation of Young People Review” and by CEDAW: the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.
On days when I catch the bus, I read a free newspaper in which I am far more likely, as Christian Allard has alluded to, to find a picture of a scantily dressed woman in the news and gossip pages than to find a woman in the sports pages. Indeed, I could not find one picture of a woman in the sports pages of The Sun or the Daily Star today. If we look at the average magazine shelf in an average supermarket, we would be forgiven for assuming that most women have massive breasts and are more than likely, despite the fact that we live in the northern hemisphere, to find it unnecessary to wear any clothes. Those are the supermarkets where we shop with our impressionable young sons and daughters. Those images were not at eye level when I was a child, but the blurring of the lines and the insidious objectification of women is relentless.
I take this opportunity to thank Object and UK Feminista for their work to challenge the sale of so-called lads mags, and the everyday sexism project’s Twitter feed is well worth a read today, commenting as it does on Ryanair’s latest advertising campaign, which relies on two bikini-clad women to promote its flights. It really does belong in 1973.
I add that ordinary people can challenge these issues in supermarkets, often very effectively. I have done it myself.
Indeed. Object and UK Feminista have made it quite clear that there is the possibility of legal challenge.
I do not have a great deal of time left, but—
You can have more time if you want.
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
The magazines that I am talking about are often found next to sport magazines, because sport is still seen by the media as something that women are not interested in. Many organisations are challenging that, including the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation. The titles in the women’s interest section of a magazine display might include articles on how to lose a stone in four weeks or how to never have a bad hair day again. We get the picture. The no more page 3 campaign is battling away, but it is difficult and we have a lot of issues to overcome.
Let us look at the BBC. Who decides who is worthy of a place on a BBC panel show? I mean not just political panels, which have had more scrutiny lately than previously, but shows that discuss music, satirical shows, current affairs shows, shows such as “Mock the Week” and “QI”. A colleague in my office suggested that it should be called “QIB”—quite interesting blokes. Why are those programmes so entirely unrepresentative of the population? It seems far more difficult for women to entertain, never mind sustain, a career in television, sports journalism or many of the most public-facing media from which we get our news and views.
We want our daughters, nieces and granddaughters to grow up in a world where there really are equal opportunities. It is time for women to be equally represented in the boardroom, on the sports pages and leading our schools and higher education institutes. However, while the blatant sexism that is page 3 is part of society, it is clear that we have a long way to go. If The Sun will not remove page 3, I say that we call for the removal of The Sun wherever and whenever we can.
17:42
I do not often get the opportunity to speak in debates, which might explain my keenness to intervene on members.
I thank Jackie Baillie for bringing the matter to the chamber for debate and I congratulate the campaigners, but it is sad that we are still debating page 3 in 21st century Scotland. It is not always easy to raise such issues due to the backlash from the industry. I know that well, having served on the Equal Opportunities Committee for 12 years, trying to tackle pornography as part of the spectrum of violence against women and children.
Pornography, prostitution and other forms of commercial sexism are all parts of an industry that makes millions of pounds out of human misery, and the industry is predicated on female subordination and objectification, as we have already heard this evening. Some people argue that women choose to participate in the industry. We need to be clear that pornography exists not because of women’s choices but because men use it for sexual gratification at the expense of women. It causes harm to those who are involved, it affects respectful sexual relations and it underpins women’s inequality. Page 3 is undoubtedly a part of that industry.
Although research on the effects of pornography has been somewhat limited, a report in the early 1990s that was published by the Home Office acknowledged that women find pornography distressing and that women who suffer domestic violence frequently have partners who use it heavily. I refer to that report in this evening’s debate because it stated:
“it might be that sexually violent pornography is the most dangerous but that newspaper nudity is still to a small degree harmful and because newspapers are more everyday than extreme pornography their aggregate effects might be greater.”
As we heard, in the late 1980s, Clare Short introduced a bill to try to ban page 3, and she received thousands of letters supporting her. Some of the letter writers told personal stories of rape, others told of the damage and insult that they felt when their partners used pornography, and some even spoke of the humiliation of watching their partners looking at topless women in newspapers when they had lost a breast to cancer. Men, too, said that they had changed their views when they had children and started to think about the world in which their children would grow up. Members talked about that.
Clare Short described pornography in everyday newspapers as depicting
“women in poses which really say take me, use me, throw me away.”
Pornography, whether we are talking about page 3 or Playboy or soft or hard core, says the same thing: women for sale.
As Jackie Baillie said, Clare Short suffered at the hands of the newspapers for bringing forward her bill. Busloads of page 3 girls parked outside her house and she was harassed and vilified. I know about that and about the examples that she used because I used them when I was preparing for a speech at the University of Durham debating society in 2007. At that debate, I argued, along with Frances Curran, that
“This house believes that pornography is degrading to women.”
We were debating with a student and a certain Martin Daubney, who was editor of Loaded magazine at the time. We were narrowly defeated, but that was not surprising. In fact, the result was better than I expected, because pornography was becoming ever more mainstream, creeping into everyday media and becoming more normalised and more extreme.
Although we were defeated in the debate, we might have had a lasting effect on Martin Daubney, who now campaigns against pornography. He said of Loaded:
“With its frequent nudity and lewd photo spreads, I’d long been accused of being a soft pornographer, and after leaving Loaded I agonised that my magazine may have switched a generation onto more explicit online porn.”
Martin Daubney’s conversion came about while he was making a documentary and listening to a talk about sex with a group of young people aged 13 to 14. He said:
“In the past I’d even defended pornography in university debates, on TV and on radio. I claimed it was our freedom of choice to watch it and said it could actually help add to adult relationships. But what I saw during the making of the film changed my opinion of pornography forever.”
He went on to say:
“The moment I knew internet pornography had cast its dark shadow over the lives of millions of ordinary British teenagers will live with me for ever.”
It is good that Martin Daubney had a conversion on the issue. His voice is undoubtedly that of a high-profile man who was previously involved in the industry, so it is powerful.
It is important that we support the campaign. Page 3 helps to normalise pornography, and eradicating it would be a good start to eradicating pornography from our society and lifting the dark shadow from future generations of teenagers. It would at least start to take pornography out of the main stream.
I will finish by asking this: what kind of society is it where images of bare breasts that objectify women are accepted as everyday images, while breastfeeding is expected to be discreet? It does not make sense. I congratulate Jackie Baillie on bringing this debate to the Parliament.
17:47
I congratulate Jackie Baillie on securing the debate. Given that yesterday’s members’ business debate was on my motion on Glasgow Women’s Aid—the member spoke most eloquently in that debate—the Parliament seems to be very successful on such issues this week. It makes me want to mention—I will not sing it, because I cannot sing—the great song that Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin sang, “Sisters are doin’ it for themselves”. Perhaps that should be the title of debates this week.
I should thank the gentlemen who are here for coming along, too.
I fully support the motion and congratulate everyone who is involved in the campaign—members have mentioned various universities and so on. I do not want to repeat what other members have said and lots of things that I wanted to say have already been said. From the speeches, from the work that has been done in the background and from the evidence on the subject, there is no doubt whatever that sexualised images of women—whether we are talking about pictures of topless women on page 3 and in lads mags or indeed lap dancing and the general portrayal of women and young girls—objectify women.
We have talked about Women’s Aid and the objectification of women and I absolutely take on board what Sarah Boyack said about the problem going far, far deeper than we are led to believe. When I was on holiday I saw the T-shirts that she described on wee kids who were two or three years old, and there are stores on the high street—I will not say that they are upmarket stores—that sell bras for kids as young as six or seven. There is something pretty wrong with society if not just women but young girls think that the only way in which they can be successful is by looking like a page 3 model.
Christian Allard suggested that we should celebrate the activities and achievements of women. Sarah Boyack talked about teaching. Many women here are lawyers and so on. Why can we not celebrate those things in newspapers and magazines and give young women a positive image to look to? The issue lies not just in page 3 but in education. We must educate young women that women are better than that. They are not an object, a body to be looked at by men.
When I am on the train, subway or bus, and I am sitting next to a man—or sometimes a woman—who happens to be reading The Sun, if they turn to page 3 I feel not just embarrassed but angry, because someone might be there with kids, who are also looking at it. What does it say about our society that it is A-okay for somebody to read a newspaper, which is supposed to educate people, in which there is a picture of a topless woman? It says that women are objects. I think that it was Alison Johnstone who said that the women on page 3 tend to be young and white with nice figures. That says to young women that that is the only way in which they can be successful.
I make a plea to The Sun. It has a real opportunity here: it could be one of the first newspapers in the country to say, “No more page 3. We’ve moved beyond that. We’re in the 21st century and we’re going to dedicate a page to women’s achievements.” That would say something not just to young girls but to women. It would also say to the media industry that we can celebrate women for what they are and what they have achieved and not because they have breasts, can appear on page 3 of a newspaper and look what they might call sexy.
I would say to the editor of The Scottish Sun, as Jackie Baillie has done, that if he is smart and wants to do something, he should be the first to move things on and take page 3 away. He should celebrate the fact that page 3 is no longer needed and say, “Here we are, celebrating the achievements of real women. We will give a positive message to young women in this country that they do not have to be topless models to get on in the world.”
I congratulate Jackie Baillie once again on securing the debate.
17:52
I thank Jackie Baillie for bringing this important issue to the chamber. The opportunity to discuss the issue must give many parents relief that someone cares. I give special thanks to Jackie for securing the debate.
There has been a lot of debate recently regarding our young having easy access to inappropriate materials. In September, a leading retail chain banned lads mags from its shelves after the publisher refused to put them in sensitive, modest bags. Last month, Channel 4 aired its thought-provoking documentary “Porn on the Brain”, which looked at the effect that the availability of pornography is having on our teenagers. In Westminster, the idea of pre-set internet filters to protect our children has been debated. It is a very live debate and is happening all over the place.
However, what we are not achieving is the goal, particularly in relation to The Sun. I worry that the casual acceptance of what is essentially porn in family newspapers is harming our children. When a young boy sees his father reading The Sun—I use The Sun as an example, but I hasten to add that it is not the only one—it normalises the idea that one of the main purposes of women is as sex objects. Looking at naked women and commenting on them becomes a normal activity, which is okay because dad does it. That in itself speaks volumes.
Even more disturbingly, young girls see that it is okay to pose naked for pictures because it is in the paper at home. They see it regularly and they do not feel intimidated. How can that not twist the minds of our children? How can it not make them confused about what is and is not appropriate? Why are steps being taken to eliminate searching by children for inappropriate materials when they can find such materials at home? One of the questions that I take on board—Christian Allard alluded to it briefly—is: how do we feel about our family members’ pictures ending up in the newspaper?
We have aspirations around equality, dignity and nationhood. Such pictures in our newspapers do us little credit. If the newspaper editors are not prepared to listen to reason, we need to take positive steps by boycotting newspapers such as The Sun.
It is shameful for a newspaper when its editor is told by our young that enough is enough. That is fantastic. I am really proud of our young people who took the initiative, and I am proud that they took the initiative before we did. I genuinely wish them every success in what they are trying to achieve. I am sure that the Scottish Parliament will do everything to assist them and that it will be one of the first organisations to take steps to cancel that newspaper if it continues to produce such photographs.
17:56
As other members have done, I thank Jackie Baillie for bringing the motion before Parliament. It is pretty rare to sit in the chamber of the Scottish Parliament for nearly an hour and to hear so little to disagree with. I thank members very much for that.
Other members have acknowledged that page 3 of The Sun is by no means the only example of a trend and tendency that we are identifying in the media and wider culture. In its written submission to the Leveson inquiry, the organisation Object provided examples of sexualisation or demeaning articles about women from The Sun, The Daily Star and the Daily Sport from a single week in November 2011. Leveson concluded:
“all three titles contained what can only be described as objectifying material. All three included numerous articles with no other purpose except to show an image of a scantily clad or topless woman … all three included articles which appeared to eroticise violence against women.”
Page 3 of The Sun is by no means the only example of the issue, but Sarah Boyack, I think, described it as the prime example. There is something about the context of it—it is not only about the content. It is a form of expression that seems to expect men who look at it to respond with a blandness in sexuality. In reality, many men respond—as I always have—with a frisson of discomfort. It is important that, as part of a campaign to persuade The Sun to drop page 3, many men express that discomfort and state why they feel it.
Later on in his report, Lord Leveson addresses the issues that Jackie Baillie and others mentioned around Clare Short and others having campaigned against page 3:
“she was described by The Sun as ‘fat’, ‘ugly’ and ‘jealous of beautiful women’. When the Rt Hon Harriet Harman proposed legislation … in 2010, she was described as a ‘harridan’ and a ‘feminist fanatic’ on a ‘furious rant’.”
When Lynne Featherstone raised the same issues,
“she was described as a ‘battleaxe’.”
Leveson concludes that paragraph by saying that
“Describing the female critics of Page 3 as fat, ugly, jealous, feminist fanatics, harridans, and battleaxes goes some way to proving their point.”
That is very well put.
When reading some of the online comments that are critical of the no more page 3 campaign, it is easy to find the same tired old arguments that we have seen over many years: “It’s just a bit of harmless fun”, or “You’re only jealous.” Many members have demonstrated—through evidence of a connection to serious acts of sexual violence, or of the driving of attitudes that inform a countless myriad of thousands upon thousands of smaller examples of everyday sexism, whose cumulative impact is just as important in our society—that it is not harmless fun.
Other arguments focus on the idea that critics are anti-sex. People say, “What’s wrong with seeing naked bodies?” and “It’s celebrating beauty.” As others, including Alison Johnstone, have said, page 3 highlights and promotes only one fixed, narrow, rigid and quite unusual form of body; it celebrates only a narrow concept of what constitutes beauty.
As someone who would hate to be described as anti-sex, I want to live in a society that is comfortable and confident in expressing a range of attitudes about sex, sexuality and—yes—eroticism, as part of human nature. However, I want to live in a society that does that with honesty and which recognises the diversity of real sexuality and real human beings in all our forms of beauty. Page 3 undermines that idea.
Page 3 of The Sun and other expressions like it in our media try to narrow, confine and police sexuality to an unusual and unnatural form. That is one reason why we should unite—I am glad that we have done so—in trying to persuade The Sun to drop the tradition and to consign it to the dustbin of history, as Jackie Baillie said.
18:01
I thank Jackie Baillie for bringing to the chamber the important issue of the sexual objectification of women. As members have said, it has been a week of important members’ business debates that have brought us together.
I thank all members for their positive, insightful and constructive speeches. Although the issue is serious, the contributions have also often been humorous. Sometimes, using humour is a good way to make a point.
I was struck by Annabel Goldie’s description of how ridiculous it would be for women in other jobs to be portrayed in such a way; that made the point well. I particularly liked Christian Allard’s suggestion of replacing page 3 with a page that promotes positive stories about women. I also liked Alison Johnstone’s reminder about the lack of women on the sports pages. Our national women’s football team is having a hugely successful world cup campaign, and I want more to be written about that in the back pages of our newspapers.
The Scottish Government believes that achieving gender equality is one of the key building blocks that are required if we want to create a more successful Scotland. The routine reduction of women to their appearance—or a particular appearance—or to a combination of body parts is a barrier to achieving that aim.
As members have said, it can be easy for people to laugh off page 3 as a harmless bit of fun, to tell people not to buy the paper or to argue that, at the click of a mouse or the touch of a screen, people can access a huge amount of more explicit and violent images on the internet. However, such views ignore the fact that page 3 forms part of everyday sexist behaviour, which affects the lives of women in Scotland daily.
Like all the members who are here, I applaud the work of the no more page 3 campaign. In just over a year, it has managed to encourage thousands of women and men to take a stand against negative, demeaning and limiting portrayals of women.
Our commitment to tackling gender discrimination and all forms of violence against women has been demonstrated in a number of ways, although there is always more work to do. One of the key strands of the approach that we have taken is to address negative portrayals of women in the media.
We know that one of the principles enshrined in the new framework of press regulation is that it remains for newspapers themselves to determine their content. That framework has received cross-party support.
The decision of the Privy Council to approve the royal charter on press regulation is an extremely welcome one and, following the Scottish Parliament’s unanimous decision to support the charter earlier this year, we have secured amendments that ensure that it properly reflects Scottish circumstances.
I am sure that everyone here would agree that getting the framework right for establishing an effective system of independent self-regulation of the press, including cultures and practices, is an important step forward. In my view, getting a framework that can properly respond to concerns about the portrayals of women in the press is the most important priority. Of course, Fiona Hyslop continues to take forward that work.
Those measures are essential because we do not want our young people—as many have said during the debate—exposed to a culture that repeatedly tells young women that they are sexual objects and that tells young men that it is completely acceptable to perceive young women in that way. As a mother of a young daughter, I want her to grow up in a society that does not portray women in that way. Many others have spoken similarly about the impact of having daughters; it is a powerful tool in changing many men’s attitudes as well.
I was very impressed by the porcupine campaign. It is an innovative project that is supported by the women’s support project and the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust. It is run by a group of young people who aim to give real, honest advice to their peers about the porn industry.
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting two young people from the campaign who have been involved in some peer research into young people’s experiences of and exposure to pornography. It is a significant piece of work because young people are increasingly being bombarded by pornography—largely online. That includes extreme pornography, which can have a negative impact on young people, their perception of sex and what a healthy relationship is. Sarah Boyack touched on that point as well.
The findings of that research are currently being written up. I very much look forward to seeing those findings and, more importantly, to discussing with the campaign what more we can do.
As a Government, we take the protection of children and young people extremely seriously. It is an offence to publish indecent material and to possess material that depicts acts of extreme violence of a sexual nature. Although regulation of the internet is a reserved matter, we have established a group on child internet safety—with representation from a wide range of sectors—to discuss issues that relate to online safety, and we continue to work to increase understanding among parents and children about the risks of internet use.
I want to put this evening’s debate into a wider context that includes our debate on domestic violence last night. As I am sure that members will be aware, the Scottish Government is currently developing a strategy in partnership with others for Scotland to tackle violence against women. It will be the first such document in Scotland, and it will shape the way in which we tackle violence against women in the years ahead.
We will continue to recognise the need and demand for intervention services that provide support for women and children who are experiencing men’s violence, and to work with men who use violence. However, our strategy will emphasise the need for an increased focus on prevention and early intervention, and it will reinforce the links between all forms of violence against women—from domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault to honour-based violence—and commercial sexual exploitation.
We know that women experience a spectrum of violence and that many women experience many forms over their lifetimes. In Scotland, we are exceptionally lucky to have a wide range of active and engaged individuals and organisations that are working to further the protection of children and young people and to ensure that tackling violence against women remains at the top of the public agenda.
Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, Scottish Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland will, in collaboration with the National Union of Journalists, be hosting the inaugural write to end violence against women awards in the Parliament next week, which is another step forward. The awards aim to raise the standard of media reporting of violence against women and gender inequality in a bid to lower public tolerance of both, and they are well timed to follow this debate.
That is a positive development, because we need to make connections with those in the media who also believe in positive portrayals of women and to make common cause with them. I know that there are many who want to change the media reporting that perpetrates damaging stereotypes of women and myths about violence against women, and we need to highlight high-quality reporting too.
We also need more women in the media. The fact that there are so few women in the front line in the media is very visible, particularly in this place, and that needs to change.
Does the minister agree that it is somewhat astonishing that the media—in popular soap operas, for example—cannot show women’s beautiful breasts feeding babies if the nipple is on show, and yet we can have all those breasts everywhere else?
That point is well made. The situation that Elaine Smith describes is part of the bizarre nature of a morality that is uncomfortable with women’s bodies feeding babies but has no difficulty with page 3. We are continuing to fight to overcome those issues.
Dealing with such issues requires a cultural shift. We must work towards that together, as the Scottish Government cannot change things on its own, despite—as I have outlined—all the work that we are doing. We need members on all sides of the Parliament to come together and join with the women and men out there in progressive Scotland who want to make those changes.
It is good that, not only in this debate but in last night’s debate, women and men across the political spectrum have said essentially the same thing. It shows that we are in a good place in Scotland in that respect and that we can display leadership among all parties in making the cultural changes that will mean that we will look back on page 3 in years to come as pretty old-fashioned and of its time as we move forward to a different, progressive Scotland.
Meeting closed at 18:12.