Shops could face legal action over 'lads' mags'

[JimC]

In Oz, mainstream shops and newsagents can sell mags of almost any sort, but if the front cover involves full nudity there has to be some sort of opaque cover...

[macdoc]

What is with the PG men's magazines the UK produces? Why would you want breasts and panties in a magazine you paid money for? Who is the audience? They throw in cars and consumer gadgets, I forget what all was in there.

ever been to an electronics trade show....hot chicks in teeny clothes is the norm

[Xamonas Chegwé]

You are charged with three counts of Razzle, two of Melons Monthly and one of Shaven Ravers. How do you plead?

[rainbow]

In Oz, mainstream shops and newsagents can sell mags of almost any sort, but if the front cover involves full nudity there has to be some sort of opaque cover...

Why should there be?

I believe prudery is harmful to children.

[JimC]

In Oz, mainstream shops and newsagents can sell mags of almost any sort, but if the front cover involves full nudity there has to be some sort of opaque cover...

Why should there be?

I believe prudery is harmful to children.

Don't ask me, I just live here...

[redunderthebed]

Whats the world coming to if a shop can't sell fapping material.

That would mean i'd have to go to two seperate shops to buy my smokes and my porn.

[Pappa]

In Oz, mainstream shops and newsagents can sell mags of almost any sort, but if the front cover involves full nudity there has to be some sort of opaque cover...

Same here, though lads' mags and newspapers get around that by covering nipples with stars or similar.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What is with the PG men's magazines the UK produces? Why would you want breasts and panties in a magazine you paid money for? Who is the audience? They throw in cars and consumer gadgets, I forget what all was in there.

ever been to an electronics trade show....hot chicks in teeny clothes is the norm

They would be naked if the promoters could get away with it. There used to be a nude horoscope show every day on Italian TV back in the '70s.

[Brian Peacock]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22674928

Shops could face legal action over 'lads' mags'

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.

(continued)

Personally I find those rows and rows of apparently indentical airbrushed women on the covers of the gossip mags far more insidious and sexist than the mags you read with one hand.

[Audley Strange]

Hmm I wonder if I could get "Witch Burning Enthusiast" in stores, seems like it might sell well these days.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hmm I wonder if I could get "Witch Burning Enthusiast" in stores, seems like it might sell well these days.

Witch issue are you looking for?

[Coito ergo sum]

For what reason should handling nudity or semi-nudity be regarded as sexual harassment or discrimination? It's little more than prudishness and belief protectionism.

Yet another example of modern feminism simply re-casting 1950's era morality. They've just "protect the women" with "equality."

Funny - the feminists are getting dangerously close to redefining the sexual revolution as the sexual harassment revolution.

By their logic, they should be opposing topless freedom for women (when they generally campaign for it) because exposing people to female nudity involuntarily is apparently sexual harassment.

[Coito ergo sum]

I guess from one female's point of view, I'm not offended by these mag covers, I merely find them yawn worthy because as Audley says, there are so fri king many of the same old same old. If that's what sells the mags then they're not going to put pictures of neck to ankle Victorian dressed elderly spinsters are they? However, it's a pretty sad state of affairs if pictures of scantily dressed women are the ONLY thing that'll sell these mags- surely they're lifestyle and not just soft porn publications?
Maybe the women's lifestyle mags (which also usually have beautiful women on the cover but with more clothes on) should start displaying barely clothed muscle heads to keep everyone happy. It wouldn't make me any more likely to buy that formulaic shit anyway!!!!

Men buy them for two reasons:

Jerking off
Bathroom reading while taking a dump.

And, there are magazines with barely clothed muscle heads -- just check out all the men's fitness and workout magazines. But, I'm not sure that equality of sales ought to be the test. Culturally or for whatever reason, young men buy Maxim magazine, and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition, as well as Playboy and such, and Car & Driver, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science -- that sort of thing - whereas the demographic for sales of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, People Magazine and such is mostly women. I can't understand why folks can't just let other folks do as they please. Even if more men then women buy wank-mags -- so what?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"Nick, why do you keep all those magazines of naked muscle men in your desk?"

"Suspects, sweetheart, always looking for suspects."

[MrJonno]

There are no legal protections against being insulted in public there are however some for the workplace as you are trapped them.

However an employer is only meant to make reasonable adaptations and refusing to sell a legal magazine in a magazine shop is not going to be one of them. I put porn filters in at work not to improve work efficiency but to stop female employers seeing them complaining and sueing. They aren't 100% reliable but show the employer has made a reasonable attempt. It is not 'reasonable' to expect an employee to tolerate seeing porn on some else machine

Another example would be forcing a Muslim at supermarket counter to taste test beer which would be a totally unreasonable request, asking them however to sell it is a different matter