Saturday 11 July 2020

Frequently Asked Questions

Women's Chat Mags - Frequently Asked Questions

"I'LL TORTURE YOUR NAN UNTIL SHE BEGS TO DIE"  from women's chat magazine "Love It!"
"I'LL TORTURE YOUR NAN UNTIL SHE BEGS TO DIE"
Front page headline from women's chat magazine, "Love It!"

"Don't they portray men as evil because men really do commit these crimes?"

"DADDY RAPED ME"
  • If a weekly magazine only selected and published stories of violent crimes where all the killers were black and all the victims were white, we would call it racist and get them removed from the shelves.  Yet magazines like these have treated males this way for 30 years. It's hard not to call it misandrist.
  • These magazines are not newspapers.  Their headline stories have been chosen exactly because the criminals are male and the victims are female or children.
  • Their front page horror stories are chosen specifically to support their viewpoint that men are merciless killers, paedophiles and rapists.   
  • Many of the stories are historical but are presented on the front page as though they are current events. 


"Surely, these magazines are just a bit of harmless fun?"

"TORTURED to DEATH 
by DADDY"
  • They have the capacity to damage our society in the same way that the lads mags did.
  • They trivialise subjects like child abuse, rape and sexual domestic violence, reducing them to casual entertainment for women.
  • They are on display with front page headlines for the children to see and to read. They provide a relentless stream of stories that are selected only to portray the cruelty that men can inflict on women and children.  
  • Children growing up with these magazines scattered around their home or displayed on the bottom shelves of supermarkets and stores will come to believe that this is how our society works. They see men being constantly portrayed as cruel rapists, killers, abusers and pedophiles and they quickly learn that they need to be wary and afraid of their male relatives - uncles, cousins, brothers, fathers...
  • These magazines turn all men into figures of hate because they only seek out and publish those stories that support this viewpoint.
  • Exposing your children to this material is to normalise it and risk having them see the world through a distorted lens.

"So you want to ban them, even though there is no law against them?"

"KILLED BY HER DADDY"
  • No one is saying they should be banned. But these magazines are adult in nature and need to be treated as such.  They should be moved to the top shelves and placed in bags to hide the lurid headlines from children and others who don't want to be offended them.   
  • This is how we are supposed to treat magazines with adult content.  But for some reason, possibly because they are aimed at a female readership, these type of magazines are allowed to publish adult material without any restraint.
  • The lads mags were classified as adult because of their content and they were moved up to the top shelves in sealed bags.  There's no sensible argument against treating these type of adult magazines in the same way. 


"But don't children see these mags anyway, when women take them home and leave them lying around?"

"KILLED BY DADDY"
  • Yes, they do.  So, don't be one of those women.  
  • These magazines become just part of a child's everyday background.
  • If a partner brought some pornographic magazines home and left them lying casually around the house for the kids to find, it wouldn't be regarded as acceptable, so why is this any different?
  • ..and if you DO hide them from the children, why is it OK to have them displayed on the supermarket shelves at a child's eye level?
  • These magazines are aimed at the casual browser in the supermarket and are for sale on every shelf of every newsagents in the country. They're also aggressively priced at only a few pence - children are even allowed to buy them for themselves if they wanted to.   
  • These magazines are very adult in nature with their descriptions of graphic sexual assaults and brutal, gory violence, yet we seem to think that because they are aimed at a female audience, the material is somehow not regarded as adult. 


"These type of chat magazines have been around for a long time with no effect on our society. "

"DAD RAPED ME THEN 
MURDERED MUM"
  • We don't know that.  This argument was used unsuccessfully as a defence for the lads mags.  No one ever suggested that the campaigns should be stopped because we couldn't see what damage those publications may be causing to society.  
  • We really don't know what damage has been done to our children and our society having all these women's chat magazines peddling this sick material for over 30 years and they continue unabated. 
  • These ubiquitous magazines, perpetuating their "true" horror stories, have become part of children's everyday life and occupy their domestic background landscape. 
  • The material contained in the lad's mags were deemed capable of changing society's perceptions of how we view women and they were condemned for it.   These chat magazines are having the same effect on how we view men and we still don't know the extent of the damage they've caused. 


"There's no evidence to show that these magazines have a detrimental influence on a child's development".

"TORTURED BLINDED 
MUTILATED"
  • If you really think they are harmless, you can carry out this simple test.  Buy one or two of the latest women's chat magazines - it doesn't really matter which ones.  Then go to any local junior school or daycare centre and start reading the headlines from the magazines out aloud to the children.  Do you think the children might be affected by the words they're hearing?  Do you think their parents would want you to read them out?
  • Content like this should be seen as adult material for a very good reason - it's for adults, not children. 
  • If it's wrong to read the words out to children, why is it OK to display them to children?  

"Why shouldn't women read these types of magazines if they want to?"

"TORTURED & 
MUTILATED"
  • They can indulge themselves in this sick stuff if they want to.  No one is stopping them. But vulnerable young people and impressionable children are being exposed and normalised to this misandric adult material on a daily basis and we have a duty to protect them.  
  • Children form their ideas of the world around them from reading and seeing stories like this and grow up thinking that all males are murderers and rapists.  It may not be obvious to a child that the stories the magazines have published have been chosen for that very reason.  
  • These magazines use the juxtaposition of sexually violent horror stories of rape and torture with familiar domestic surroundings and stories about kittens and cakes, making it harder for a child to judge the prejudice in the stories.

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