insideMAN

When it comes to depictions of men, Gutter Glossies and Ivory Tower Feminists are on the same page

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Would you rather people thought you were a dim-witted sex object, or a paedophile and a rapist? Well?

It’s a crass question, of course, but it’s nonetheless one that occurred to me recently as I browsed the more lurid end of Tesco’s magazine racks and compared the titles that were on display with the on-going campaigns against Lads Mags and Page 3.

For every Lads Mag targeted at men with a half-naked woman on the cover, there was a Gutter Glossietm targeted at women with a prurient headline about men who are killers and rapists; yet while the former are seen by many as deeply damaging to society’s attitudes towards women, the latter don’t seem to be considered a problem for how society sees men.

Here are last week’s lead stories from Love it!, Pick Me Up!, Real People and Take a Break: ‘Cannibal killer who ate his ex’; ‘Playground Paedo… Lured my poor girl’; ‘Love Rat! Faked cancer to wed us both’; ‘My girl, 10, was raped by her friends, but she got the blame’.

Bullies, killers and predators

Go to any newsagent this week and you’ll see the same stories, just with different headlines.

If, as anti-Lads Mags and Page 3 campaigners say, images of semi-naked models are damaging to men’s attitudes to women, what must be the impact on women’s attitudes to men of constant messages — absorbed unthinkingly on a daily basis over a cup of tea — that men are bullies, killers and sexual predators?

Over the past year, Ivory Tower Feminist TM groups (I’m having that one too) such as #EverydaySexism, No More Page 3 and the NUS, have waged high-profile campaigns against imagery and language they say demeans women and even normalises sexual assault.

They have succeeded in banning Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines from being played in student unions, in removing the Sun from university news agents and getting lads mags taken down from the shelves of Co-op.

Double standards

The campaigners say their censoriousness is justified to combat misogyny and to prevent sexual assault. But if you believe these magazines have that effect on young men (which I do not), then cogency demands they should also be worried about the impact that depictions of men as paedophiles and bullies will have on women’s attitudes to, say, male primary school teachers, or the importance they place on a father’s post-separation contact with his children.

But when it comes to this type of sexism, for some reason the anti-sexism campaigners don’t seem to be terribly bothered. Why are they outraged for children to be confronted by the breasts of Sarah, from Coventry, in their dad’s copy of the Sun; but perfectly happy for kids to see men presented as vile monsters in mum’s copy of Chat?

And with more and more children growing up in fatherless families, raised by single mums and taught by female teachers, isn’t it reasonable to suggest that children will have fewer real-world experiences of men than of women, to counterbalance toxic gendered portrayals in the media?

I mean, it’s almost as if it’s the gender of who’s being demeaned that’s most important, rather than the sexist nature of what’s on display. But then that seems kind of, well, sexist.

Enough to make an editor weep

And then there are the circulation figures. The sheer number of women reading these magazines quite simply dwarfs the number of young men who read lads mags. In the Second half 2013:

Take a Break: 696,507

Real People: 185,682

Pick me Up!: 183,210

Love It!: 112,695

Total: 1,178,094

FHM:  96,452

Zoo: 29,521

Nuts closed down due to poor circulation in April of this year.

Total: 125,973

It’s enough to make the (former) editor of Nuts weep.

Anti-lads mags campaigns consistently cite titles such as FHM and Zoo as evidence of widespread, societally-ingrained sexism and misogyny among young men. But if that’s the case, given the primary way in which magazines such as Love it! and Real People  are targeted at their audience and their vastly higher circulation figures, what does their success say about their female readers’ attitudes?

I’d like to think both the readers of lads mags and trashy women’s magazines are usually perfectly capable of separating fact from fantasy. But the anti-sexism campaigners aren’t even asking any of these questions, and I have a hunch why.

You see, when it comes to their attitudes towards men, both the Gutter Glossiestm   and the Ivory Tower Feministstm  seem to be on exactly the same page.

By Dan Bell

Do you think there should be as much concern over the messages about men in women’s magazines as there is for depictions of women in Lads Mags and on Page 3? Or do you think the imbalance in concern is justified because Lads Mags and Page 3 are damaging, while women’s magazines are not? Do you think these depictions of men and women have a real impact on people’s attitudes and behaviour towards the opposite sex? Lets us know in a comment or a tweet.

Also on insideMAN:

  • Tracy

    But feminism is concerned about these magazines. Child Eyes (which works closely with No More Page 3) calls them rape mags and is doing great work in this area.

    • Inside MAN

      Hi Tracy — that’s very interesting and good to hear that there is also concern about these magazines too. However, it seems fair to say the overwhelming tendency in the mainstream cultural conversation is to overlook negative portrayals of men in these kinds of magazines.

      Also, I’ve just had a quick look at the Child Eyes site, and it seems to be primarily focused on campaigning against demeaning and sexualised images of women and the impact these have on children — which of course is a laudable cause. But just as with the campaigns I refer to in the article, they don’t seem to be concerned with negative messages about men or the impact these have.

      If you can direct me to work that campaigns against messages that vilify men, I’d genuinely be really glad to see it and write about it.

      Thanks, Dan

  • CitymanMichael

    Don’t worry, Dan, Feminism which we all know is about equality will soon start campaigning to have the Gutter Glossies removed from the shelves

  • http://redpilluk.co.uk/ William Collins

    The point made by the article is entirely convincing in exposing the double standards and hypocrisy inherent in our society. Personally I’ve always thought that page 3 demeans men far more than it demeans women. And the relentless denigration of men has tangible results – including discouraging men from becoming primary school teachers, and hence disadvantaging the entire rising generation. In contrast, the claim that page somehow promotes rape has no basis in fact (if it did, slut walks would hardly be sensible, would they?).

  • Lee Williams

    Child Eyes and No more page 3 are fans of Mary Whitehouse. They try and make out they are against censorship, but with a bit of investigation on their Facebook pages reveals this is not the case at all. Theses people have Victorian attitudes towards sex and nudity and I find their ‘zero tolerance’ approach to any sexy imagery to be regressive and damaging. https://www.facebook.com/ChildEyes/photos/a.146814778807417.32549.146813545474207/380121488810077/?type=1&theater

  • Nigel

    I have always been rather perplexed by the sheer avalanche of naked flesh in women’s glossier and fashion press. I’m pretty sure a Martian would come to the conclusion that the main consumers of pictures of almost naked females are women, certainly in the printed media. Possibly because male mags are full of men in football gear or Cars.

  • Nicholas Smithers

    This is a peach of an article Dan.

    I was at a Gender Based Violence conference last year and during a panel discussion about Lads Mags someone in the audience brought up the issue of the magazines you describe above. Obviously, as with Tracy, she was concerned by the negative impact on women rather than men however she raised a salient point being that the gender stereotypes in the magazine had been shown to have a negative impact on female reader’s self esteem and were potentially more problematic than Lads Mags (all be it only in terms of impact on women). The co-ordinator of Zero Tolerance (an Edinburgh based VAW campaigning organisation) thought for a moment then suggested that the questioner ‘follow the money’ then explained that the boards of these magazines were run by men thus they dictated the content.

    It’s a conspiracy!

    • Tracy

      Nicholas, for the record, I absolutely agree that we should be concerned about the impact of content like Page 3 and these women’s magazines on both women and men. I never said otherwise.

  • Nicholas Smithers

    Apologies Tracy, thanks for clarification. My experience at the GBV conference led me to make assumptions about your position.

  • Inside MAN

    Thanks very much Nick, really glad the article resonated with you. And thanks Tracy for being open to seeing the harm that’s done to both genders by these toxic stereotypes. Dan

  • Inside MAN

    Nick — as a further response to your comment and the point made at the GBV conference, yes, I’ve heard that argument made too. The fallacy of that argument probably doesn’t really need spelling out, but to do it anyway, the day-to-day editorial decisions about which headlines to run and what will appeal to their female readership, will be made by the primarily female staff and editors of these magazines, not by the boards. (Who may, or may not, in fact all be men.)

  • Nigel

    I do think it a complete nonsense to make assumptions about the sex of people running or working in an industry being some defining factor. Much more pertinent will be the notions they have (which may well have a hefty dollop of assumptions of gender). Of course in particular their assumptions of what will sell well. Hence it seems to me that rather than the sex of the editor/s etc. more pertinent is their thinking, and more usefully their thinking about how their consumers will behave (and of course how they actually behave). It seems bizarre for feminists in particular to directly link biology to thought, as one founding tenet is that gender is a social construct!

  • Steve Rusch

    Excellent article, and excellent website, Sir! I find myself here with an increasing frequency.

    You have a very good point here. Really, only the most brain-dead blockhead (guy) is going to be ‘trained” into the objectification of real women from seeing pictures of better-than-average looking women, given that real women — who respond to communications and originate some of their own, amazingly enough! ? — aren’t really very much at all like objects. Reality takes over quickly, once the mag is closed.

    This other stuff — “gutter glossies”?— perhaps not so common, here in the States? — strikes me as distinctly deleterious, for the simple reason that the stories are presented rather more like news, and they tend to characterize, rather than merely picture.

    This, at it’s worst, could easily be far worse in its consequences than the consequences of objectification, at it’s worst. And this all reminds me of something I heard Erin Pizzey say recently in a conversation with Dean Esmay and DV researcher Don Dutton. Erin, wherever she keeps herself these days, lives in a decent neighborhood, but even there, she has a woman friend of approximately the same age who is perpetually, neurotically afraid of the possibility that she might be raped. Where could such a sad outlook have come from?

    And how many young women — say, on campuses, e.g.? — are effectively operating off of the same mind-set?

    Bad. Very, very bad, indeed. There is that extent to which feminism, in action and in aggregate, in all its manifestations, functions like a huge, indiscriminate false accusation leveled at a certain half of the human race.

    • Inside MAN

      Hi Steve, thanks, very glad that you liked the article and are drawn back to the site! Please keep coming — and tell your friends… ?

      I think you make a really interesting point re how the Gutter Glossies don’t just show pictures, they present poisonous stereotypes as news, character assassination as a kind of fact — which does seem to be potentially far more harmful.

      Cheers, Dan