http://simwisesucks.tumblr.com/post/31925597775/why-we-should-keep-page-3

I have a problem with self-identifying feminists who use the feminist platform as a free pass to attack other women. To establish boundaries of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good women’ and ‘bad women’, ‘feminist’ and ‘unfeminist’… it all seems a bit juvenile and misogynistic and sends a message of “love all women, except those – those women are bad: they let themselves be objectified.” Surely, from a feminist viewpoint, we should all be equal? There shouldn’t be this backwards hierarchy perpetuated by women themselves, where we are all judged according to who is better at being a ‘proper’ woman. You see, women are perfectly capable of being misogynistic. In fact, these days it is more common to find women being misogynistic than men, which is a sad state of affairs.

This recent uproar against Page 3 is a classic example of women using feminism as an excuse for enforcing their own personal morals on everyone, by taking offence at something small and trying to give it a wider significance: “Page 3 is damaging to all women”. Quite clearly, it isn’t (it would be awfully hard for anything to be damaging to ‘ALL’ women), it just makes some women feel uncomfortable, which is causing a vocal few to throw their toys out the pram in an attempt to ban it.

Page 3 as a societal being is a symptom, not a cause. Our current state of over-sexualisation was not caused by a bit of chip shop paper, it was caused by the sexual revolution in the 1960s. The Kinsey report, the birth control pill, various changes in legislation, hippies, the Rolling Stones… I won’t give you a history lesson, suffice to say that this particular floodgate was opened a long time ago and has been drip fed into many of us since birth. It infiltrates everything: advertising, news, and the whole of the entertainment industry. Declaring a tiny part of it morally bankrupt and trying to cut it out won’t change anything. One mole does not a cancer make. What really needs to change is people’s perceptions of others, and this petition’s judgmental banter is not doing anyone – male or female – any favours in that respect.

But why all this furore? Tits are just tits, bits of skin, lumps of fat, sexual objects that also have a useful evolutionary function. Some are nice to look at, some aren’t, but so what? We should embrace ALL their uses. Why must we make these things that are natural and normal out to be so wrong and taboo and corruptive? Why must a topless picture always be paired (in ‘intelligent’ society) with the word ‘demeaning’, when it’s not? One person’s demeaning is another person’s empowering. One person might look down on cleaning as a demeaning job, yet for someone else it is a job that can empower and provide for their family. Take away Page 3 and you take away a lot of girls’ jobs… now, is that pro-women? Oh sorry, I forget, these girls ‘should’ be employed in ‘better’ jobs.

In a recession. Right…