Porn Mag Ban

Shops could face legal action over 'lads' mags'

from the BBC Website

Retailers are being warned they could face legal action if they continue to sell magazines showing naked and semi-naked images of women.

Pressure groups and lawyers say displaying the magazines or requiring staff to handle them could amount to sexual harassment or discrimination.

Campaigners say shops could be in breach of the Equality Act 2010.

The British Retail Consortium said its members do not sell anything illegal and have long followed industry rules.

Gender equality groups UK Feminista and Object have joined forces with 11 lawyers to launch the Lose the Lads' Mags campaign.

They have written an open letter to launch their national campaign, which was published in the Guardian newspaper on Monday.

"High-street retailers are exposing staff and, in some cases, customers to publications whose handling and display may breach equality legislation," the letter said.

"Displaying lads' mags and pornographic papers in 'mainstream' shops results in the involuntary exposure of staff and, in some cases, customers to pornographic images."

The letter says there are examples of staff successfully suing employers in respect of exposure to pornographic material at work.

Sexual harassment can be defined as unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment.

'Real harm'

UK Feminista director Kat Banyard said so-called lads' mags fuelled sexist attitudes and behaviour by portraying women as "sex objects".
She told the BBC the images caused "real harm".

"They promote sexist attitudes and behaviours - attitudes which underpin violence against women," she said.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said: "Major retailers understand their responsibilities to staff and customers.

"BRC members don't sell anything it isn't legal to sell and they have long followed joint industry guidelines, as well as taking their own independent voluntary action, to make sure that front covers which may concern some people are displayed discreetly.

"Our members regard their stores as family-friendly environments which is why conversations with staff and customers about what they believe is appropriate will continue."

Shane Brennan, from Association of Convenience Stores, urged customers to tell shopkeepers how they felt about this issue as the retailers cannot be the arbiter of what should appear in a magazine.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live about the possibility of legal action, he said issuing threats was "not particularly helpful".

Piers Hernu, who has written for Loaded and FHM and used to be editor of Front magazine, said no "right-minded individual" would consider the content of these magazines pornographic.

"What we have here is a very deeply sinister and disturbing attempt by a group of fundamentalist, fanatical feminists trying to rope in some lawyers in order to bully the supermarkets into removing lads mags' from the shelves by alerting both staff and customers that they may be able to win a court case," he told the BBC.

Firstly and purely from a workers point of view. I used to work for a paper shop and it was our managers policy not to sell those magazines as he really didn't want them type of customers as he put it coming into our shop.

A few years later this shop was bought over by a big corporation and all of a sudden pornographic magazines started to appear for this first time. Now once again and I must stress that this is purely from a workers point of view.

You'd be standing at the counter ready to serve the next customer and you just so noticed somebody was in the shop and browsing the mags. I used to always hope, please don't..............selling them to a customer had a certain degree of awkwardness about it all, you knew exactly why they were buying the mag and for what purpose

Early night tonight sir is it for you some of the females used to say when it was them that had to serve the particular customer

In many ways without supporting this move I can somehow understand it as I'm able to emphasise having been in the same shoes myself. The worse thing I hated most about the magazines was having to put them out, I'd always make sure I had a peoples friend magazine in front of it so as to not shock the customers and spare my own blushes too in the process.

Also it's worth pointing out too that you don't have to be over 18 in order to sell the magazine to a customer. I always thought it was wrong for say a 14 year old girl to be put in this very akward situation.

What I am in favour of however is that customers are still able to purchase them such as discreet mailing, I mean shops can still buy them in but they can do 2 things.

1 - Put the mag in a brown bag and under the counter.
2 - Mail the mag out to the customer.

I hope commonsense is used by all at the government and that they find a way that both suits the clients and the customers.

When will they start banning the Playgirl mags????

Equality right?

You know what Dont really care about Porn mags and lads mags being in the shops if they could be bought online. I already Get Nuts via Zinio and Loaded Via Pocketmags although i do have to leaf thru Zoo and Mayfair for any babeshow babes in them.

But in a way I dont want any Group like this to Win because it will mean it will embolden them to go after what we would all miss and thats the babechannels. cos we all know what the argument will be if its banned from being sold in public places then surley should be banned on TV.

To be Honest cant wait for the day when everything is online

Load of tripe!

The problem with this kind of thing is where does it stop. They are talking about the Lad's mags, well they only contain topless images, and concealed nudity, no full frontal. So if that is the target, does it also include the red-top newspapers with their page3's?
What about things like the tattoo mags, which often include semi-nudity in order to display the tats?
What about holiday brochures which have scantily clad, and maybe even topless, females on beaches?
I haven't bought a sunday broadsheet in a while, but they used to contain sales magazines, including clothing mags, which sometimes featured women's underwear, complete with images. This was classy underwear from the finest makers of course, but a lass in her scanties nonetheless.

And what about the covers of dvd/blu-ray movies, which are often somewhat risque in order to attract attention, not to mention the cd covers including half naked pop stars! Remove them from sale?

Last time I brought some underpants, there was a handy photo on the pack of a fit young chap wearing the pants, sporting a most prominent bulge. Would that be allowed anymore?

You can't just target 'Lad's mags' without clearly defining what they are, and then the mags can change slightly to avoid the definition, so it has to be a broader catch-all, which then becomes somewhat meaningless.


A couple days slightly warmer weather and people start barking nonsense

I agree with what you are saying munch. I think censoring harmless lads magazines such as nuts and zoo is just going a bit too far. My reference was only in relation to proper top shelf magazines.

On reflection the majority of the retailers has them in discreet packaging anyway these days now. And yes where do we draw the line here. We are living in such a PC world these days that none of the politicians involved actually know the mean of the word commonsense.

Banning the babe channels is something which a select amount of women's groups have tried in the past which has turned out to be unsuccessful such as websites like mums net and also not forgetting the all too recent proposal at the European Court which had exactly the same motives that is involved in this latest target with regards to the magazines.

They also claimed that all pornography should be banned on the grounds on sexual discrimination. As I've always said the government would be so much better focused targeting the more important and pressing issues of the day.

No need to ban any such mags, like I said if it would help then fair enough put them all in discreet packaging, there you go problem solved but in saying that all the 900+ channels are easily blocked but as we all know ofcom still seem to have a problem with them

what is this country coming to when the sight of the female body is classed as offensive are all the ministers gay or what

think this is a classic case of b******t, double standards and hypocrisy from these "feminists" because there are just as many mags out there with pics of topless men on the cover and insideand yet they don't complain about those. also there is a clothing chain (think it's Abercrombie & fitch) where the carrier bags have a shirtless men on them. also of course david beckam in his underpants too, no outrage there

then there is tv ads like the diet coke one where a man takes his shirt off after women got his t-shirt ruined with a can of coke that they had shook up. and moonpig where a man gets his shirt off as well

and as has been said where would the line be drawn as lots of magazines not just the lads mags have women in bikinis, topless or in lingerie in them like munch has said (celeb gossip mags, holiday brochures, catalogues etc) and even would have to ban women in bikinis or swimwear for the same reason

also the solution is already there as most newsagents and supermarkets put the lads mags behind a screen where nothing can be seen.

cant see anything happening myself and like all previous attempts to ban lads mags and page 3 will soon fizzle out

(27-05-2013 16:59 )mrmann Wrote:  When will they start banning the Playgirl mags????

Equality right?

Quite. Nuts, Loaded, etc might be drivel, but Cosmopolitan, More, etc are just the same, and are never bracketed by the media as offensive or dangerous. And what about Teen mags, aimed at sexualising under-age girls?

End of the day the shopper chooses whether or not to buy the mags, it's not like they have a employee personally come up to the shopper and say "hey baby fancy looking at some tits and ass"?

It's quite pathetic that they are considering a ban