Glasgow University Student Television

GUST News Debate: Lads Mags on campus

Features, News, February 20, 2012

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GUST News Debate: Lads Mags on campus

Features, News, February 20, 2012

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Deborah presents an in-studio debate on the subject of Lads Mags on campus. The Queen Margaret Union recently decided to no longer sell the publications in their shop, after a petition from the Feminist Society.

Panel Members:

Amy Westwell, Glasgow University Feminist Society
Liam Hainey, Honorary Secretary, Queen Margaret Unioin
Imogen Dewar, GUU Debating Society
Chris Sibbald, President, Glasgow University Union

Got an opinion on this subject? Leave your comments below or join the debate on the GUST Facebook page.

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GUST News Debate: Lads Mags on campus

Features, News, February 20, 2012

Panel Members:

Amy Westwell, Glasgow University Feminist Society
Liam Hainey, Honorary Secretary, Queen Margaret Union
Imogen Dewar, GUU Debating Society
Chris Sibbald, President, Glasgow University Union

Got an opinion on this subject? Leave your comments below or join the debate on the GUST Facebook page.

Guest
9/10 rapes are committed by men.
MFW women in LAW, cannot commit the offence rape.

Guest
You maybe want to brush up on your knowledge of the
Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 before you start citing the LAW.

Guest
No, YOU may want to brush up on the law, you odious little git.
Even the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 states that rape occurs when “A” penetrates with “A”‘s PENIS.
How many women do you know who have penises, NONE, I thought so.
So how about YOU check the statues before you go waiving your second rate knowledge about.

tarredwithabrush
particularly disappointing that you have now dragged lads mags and rape into the same string. let’s ban chemists from selling vaseline. I mean surely vaseline is a dangeros substance and assists a rapist? even a catalyst as this argment suggests lads mags are! where do we stop? Pornography is so easily accessed for free on the internet, that I am unsre as to the validity of the argument to ban.
what I do know is that the 99.9% of men who are law abiding citizens get tarred with the rapist issue in this sort of thing, and the real fix certainly does not lie in the banning of mags in shops, and if this is your argument, then you are stirring things up unnecessarily. better ban the sun newspaper. and following a different tack, the points made about female magazines and their contents render your assumptions (and that is all they are.) completely irrelevant.
i expect a particularly defensive rant back from yo on this, or perhaps your shallow mind has already moved on to todays BIG news!!!!

Guest
You’ve just made unbelievable assumptions about my viewpoint.
I think banning men’s magazines is a complete joke, obviously the feminist society was running out of ideas. There are much better feminist causes they could have put their minds to. Banning these magazines or any similar publications is tantamount to removing free choice.
If you were the person who commented on my original claim that women cannot commit rape, I was trying to point out the inherent sexism in the act. But you decided to reference it without knowing its contents.
I wholeheartedly agree that banning things simply because they might, for a tiny minority, encourage these acts is ludicrous.

http://www.facebook.com/IncestTheMusical Callum Mcleod
Some very passive-aggressive pen action here.
Whistleofent
Found it odd that the feminist society rep didn’t even have a rough idea of how many signatures on the petition. The survey saying that rapists share the same views as those on lad’s sounds ridiculous – does anyone have a link to the source or how many signatures they got on the petition?
Man.
When Imogen moves her hands it looks like she’s playing with her boobs.
Anonymous
Oh my god. How can they possibly argue that lads mags are not sexist? And how is Amy Westwell remaining so calm?!?
Guest
It’s a pity that the
feminist society doesn’t favour equality of opportunities, but would much
rather impose an opinion of a minority, resulting in a very radical behaviour.
If the society in question wanted women to have equal rights (because as
President Sibbald said, safety cannot be an issue here, given the fact that
anyone can buy the same mag at shops fairly close to the union), it should have
promoted mags with naked hot guys flashing abs, while also giving cheeky advice
on how can the dorky nice girl get that relatively-unintelligent-player-sex
machine. Oh wait, almost all female mags do it (Cosmo, anyone?). They
completely objectify men, portray them as stupid, blunt animals, who rarely
think about anything else except sex. They continuously convey the fact that
any man can be manipulated as apparently he is unable to think. They may not
employ the same vulgarity as a LADs mag, but they sure use the same strategy -
sex sells. If you want to ban a mag just because it infringes the
dignity of a gender, you should ban products for both sexes.
Or,
don’t ban anything.
I
am a proud heterosexual woman. I like sex and seeing some random girl on the
cover, being PAYED to flash a fantastic body, doesn’t bother me even one bit! I
don’t feel objectified, I don’t feel threatened. After all a rapist will start
raping other members of the society not because of some vague advice given in a
Lads mag, but because of his/her own mentality and the aftermath of being
abused as a child, being sexually frustrated or loving the feeling of
empowerment. I would like to think that if I wanted to buy a Lads mag I would
be FREE to buy it from my union and not be seen as a potential rapist.

Guest
Minority? What minority? Think you’re mistakenly thinking that the majority support the sale of lads mags

Guest
From a commercial point of view, if they are not selling there shouldn’t be any problem in removing them. Retail stores will actively remove items that don’t sell from their shelves. By the sounds of it this action may have been prompted by the society for reasons valid to them. How do people find the time to read magazines when there are plenty of course related texts they could be spending their time reading.
Yasmin_bridget
Alot of unfounded claims about “women”. What women? Who? Where?
Yasmin_bridget
Also, terrible arguments. ” it doesn’t say women are bad or inferior to men.” Well no…not explicitly. Absolutely no recognition if the distinction between he images of women on the front of the magazines.
Dr Kenny McKay
The girl presenting this should have tarted herself up a bit. COME ON LASS YOURE ON TV FOR F*CKSAKE.
Smithy101
I find femanists offensive, can we ban them from the GUU?
ksmythe
I’m going straight to the GUU to buy all the lads’ mags I can find.
David
I think Liam Hainey is fantastic here. He cuts to the whole centre of the issue by saying these magazines don’t normailse sexuality and the female models, they commercialise them. The Feminists undoubtedly won this debate for me. Eventhough Amy Westwell may come across rather timid, it doesn’t make her points any less valid (apart from the racial point, which was kind of off-topic). It is completely valid to say that the unions should be taking a stance for the members of them that are troubled/made to feel inferior by their presence.
Sibbald is very polished, but in a slimy kind of way. I admire his attempt to defend the GUU’s position, but to claim Lad’s Mags are empowering is patently ridiculous. They try to claim that it’s not too big an issue, and that because Amy didn’t know the amount of signatories, her point wasn’t valid. If their claim that even the GUU barely sells any, then i’m certain there were far more signatories to the petition than people who want to buy them.
Lauren Martin
Chris Sibbald putting forward the idea that lads mags “do not promote pornography” is laughable.
http://www.facebook.com/andrewdjones Kenny Thrinklebaum
The man who turned up in a suit wins the debate for dressing appropriately.
Cam
Was certainly interesting to see. i think Sibbald was probably the who carried this for me. One group not liking something is not enough of a reason to ban it for the rest. If the GU had a similar situation to the QMU and no one was buying them it wouldn’t be an issue, but they have to provide for all of their members. The Daily Mail was a good example, i don’t like it – i won’t read it, but i shouldn’t be able to ban other people from reading it – certainly not on ideological grounds if i want to retain a position of political impartiality.