No More Page 3: The Inside Story

Wow! Quite a lot has happened since I last wrote a blog about the No More Page 3 campaign for Beestonia. At that time I was involved on the outskirts, with quiet determination, trying to draw support and signatures to a campaign that , for reasons I didn't completely understand had captured my heart.
I ran two local demo's that were both well received. Then over Christmas things went quiet. I thought nothing of it at first when the usually buzzing facebook group seemed less busy and put it down to the distractions of the season, but well into new year there still seemed to be little sign of life and I all but thought the campaign may be about to fold. Then something amazing happened. The fabulous, bubbly, determined young woman Lucy Holmes who founded the campaign and who I had only seen in her comical online videos about it sent me an email, a long and heartfelt email explaining that she had put quite literally everything of herself into this campaign and was spent. She was reaching out to a small group of us that she had spotted through the networks for help and she seemed less than confident of a positive response. My goodness did she get one! We were all excited, thrilled and flattered to have been picked out and there are now 8 of us on the No More Page 3 team or NMP3HQ as we call ourselves. Most of us have never met and the whole thing is co-ordinated online through social networks. We are all busy people with jobs, often young children and lots of other things going on but we have this amazing determination in common - to improve the representation of women in the UK media starting by removing the sexist 1970's dinosaur that is Page 3.

Within 24 hours of the new group forming our private site was alive with ideas - involving more students, universities, schools, going after The Sun's advertisers, drawing more popular support. Amongst the ideas that Lucy had noted down was tweeting Rupert Murdoch himself and we started to do this straight away, giving him an occasional update. Then after a day of Men against Page 3 was really well received across Facebook and Twitter we decided to run the following Sunday with a "Tweet Rupert Murdoch day". He must have received 100s of tweets but responded to just 1. A supporter named Karen who simply suggested page 3 was "So last century". The rest is a bit of history now that was splashed across national media for much of the following week whilst we at NMP3HQ attempted to deal with press interview after interview. Interestingly we have done a hell of a lot of international TV and newspaper interviews with most of Europe seemingly fascinated by this story and all utterly perplexed at the "strange Brits" having something like Page 3 still around. They, without exception see it as bizarre. It was all a bit of a whirlwind of activity but with us never quite making it onto our own TV screens owing to the pope who decided to retire the next day. Most inconvenient timing.
So this just about brings us up to speed, with the issue now constantly ticking away in the media and the pro-page 3 mob clearly very rattled. Presumably not helped by the fact that, despite the awful coverage of Reeva Steenkamps tragic death/murder, page 3 has been absent from The Sun 3-4 times already this year which, we have on good authority is unusual. It seems the end may be in sight, except we all know it isn't an end....

Yesterday I was interviewed (little old me *snort) by a Times journalist who quotes me in an article saying “The Sun, as the top-selling paper, has a brilliant opportunity to change things for women in this country, and to present them in an equal, non-objectified way,..But unfortunately, it chooses not to accept that opportunity. Page 3 is part of that, but it’s certainly not the whole picture.” I was over the moon to have the opportunity to say that and it should have been a really good day. Sadly two other things happened yesterday -The Sun ran again with no traditional page 3 but instead photographs from a playboy bunny beach shoot (the model wore a bikini top! Whoop de doo) and a petition was started, seemingly by page 3 girls who were up in arms that they may no longer be able to pose topless as they want to in the newspaper and would no longer therefore be able to continue their important charity work and their morale building visits to troops in Afghanistan etc.

I have had a sleepless night (again) trying to marry this reality with the world that I like to think I'm living in.

You see....in the world I would like to be in there are newspapers with news, current affairs and features. These papers may at times focus on sex or sexual issues, they may also focus on glamour but they do it proportionately and equally. They ensure that nobody of any particular gender, race or creed is singled out for exploitation or public undressing. These newspapers make sure that at the very least when a woman is brutally beaten or murdered by her partner the murder/rape/assault is treated as that. As a crime against a woman who is worthy of respect by a man who allegedly has behaved in a deplorable fashion.
The world I would like to be in has newspapers and media that showcase young people's talent.  Sometimes that may be their looks but it may also be their hard work and ability. The media support these extraordinary young people in carrying out charity work. They take amazing young musicians/artists to Afghanistan to entertain the male and female troops there. They may even take a model sometimes, female or male.

The world I would like to live in would stop putting pictures of young women in a national newspaper for men's titillation (there are other publications for that which don't make it onto family dining tables and into family restaurants) and start treating all women, regardless of their allure with respect. It would certainly not however immediately stop supporting the models it has encouraged to pose topless all this time but would continue it's fabulous charity work and indeed expand the opportunity to give all young people a chance to be a part of that. It wouldn't in a million years consider only supporting, in this charity and overseas work, a certain demographic of young, mostly white women of say, below size 14 dress size and it would surely to goodness not only take the ones who are willing to undress for the privilege? Surely not!

Sadly when I wake up it seems this is not the world I am living in, not yet anyway. So until then on with the fight...

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dominic-mohan-take-the-bare-boobs-out-of-the-sun-nomorepage3

My Choice

I wanted to give a very personal (not TOO personal, don't panic!) account of my own relationship with my reproductive system and with abortion so here goes....

I always felt that abortion and the access to it, was a very important freedom of choice for women. I am lucky enough (or cursed) with the ability in most areas of my life to be able to see things from many angles and for this reason I do understand that for some people the sanctity of human life, even at it's most minute and fragile is precious and I would suggest, for these people, who feel so strongly about it, that they avoid abortion for themselves. These were my arguments at 13 when I debated in school on the issue but little did I know, sitting at the front of my RE classroom how important that freedom would one day be for me.

Firstly I am 38. I'm not a young thing unable to manage the psychological or physical impact of pregnancy and childbirth. I'm no free-spirited singleton desperate not to tie myself down. I am (sadly) a proper grown up with my own home and a responsible job and I am quite independent thank you with an absolutely lovely partner.

I have 2 children of my own who are growing up at a rate of knots and the baby days are long behind me. The baby days were not easy days for me, I have lost 4 pregnancies that I desperately wanted to continue and the grief of those losses was unique in each case and sometimes profound. I won't go into it here.
The miscarriages happened, I found out after the third, because I have a chromosomal abnormality. I have a balanced tranlocation of chromosomes 7 and 12 (look it up its fascinating stuff). Which means in short, some of my important bits of information are in the wrong place. Which has no ill effects on me but has a potentially massive effect on my childbearing. My daughter has the same abnormality sadly and it's very common, approximately 1 in 400 I believe.

Every time I get pregnant there is a 50% chance that the foetus has an unbalanced number of chromosomes which would result in MASSIVE abnormality. Not a small deformity but something fundamentally wrong, probably with spine and brain. They can't be specific as every translocation results in different problems.
In my last pregnancy I had to wait until 15-18 weeks to have a CVS (my choice)in order to find out if the baby I was carrying had the problem and then, after a 3 week wait, I would have the choice, based on that result, as to whether or not to continue with that pregnancy.

I was very lucky. I was carrying a baby with a balanced translocation, the same as me and there was every chance she would be perfectly healthy. Thankfully I never had to make that choice myself but lets be very clear that choice would have been mine, with my then husband's support and no one elses. Not a man in a suit, not an MP, mine.

My choice would have taken into account the discomfort and pain of continuing a pregnancy that was incredibly unlikely to result in a surviving baby. My choice would have considered the pain of delivering that baby and probably having to take in some horrendous malformation and then watch it die. It would have taken account of the massive life changing impact that the care of that child (should it survive) would have had on everybody including my then young son, my parents, grandparent and other carers. It would have considered the distinct likelihood of having to end my career as a nurse.

I know that it this point many are shouting by now that the situation is entirely different if there is an abnormality. Well yes, at present, in the UK it is. But not all women are so lucky, only just accross a small stretch of water I would have had no such tests and no such choice. And why anyway should my right to choose whether I want to continue to be the vessel for a foetus only apply if the foetus is abnormal? What of all the other considerations of life, money and means?

I have found in the last few years since divorcing that keeping the baby days behind me is not as easy as i would like. As an older woman accessing contraceptives has been incredibly difficult. I won't go into the ins and outs but cuts to community health care are such, in some areas, that if you're over 21 and not eligible for the pill there are only a limited number of trained medical staff who can, for example, put in a coil and getting an appointment can be hard particularly outside working hours.

A few months ago, due to a potentially misplaced, usually reliable contraceptive device I thought I was pregnant. I cannot begin to explain the cold fear this struck in me. I was horrified and for 24 hours hit near breakdown.

I amin a new and very happy relationship with a lovely man and we decided very early on, that more children was not on our agenda. Despite a good career my income as many other's, has shrunk during this recession. My home is too small for the 2 permanent and 2 visiting children, my partner and I. Our income is stretched to the limit, holidays are non-existent and there are very few treats and THEN there is the reality, the awful memory of the extra stress that one of MY pregnancies involves. I knew, in my heart that if I was pregnant I would not go ahead with the pregnancy, I couldn't. I knew that it would be such a difficult choice after losing 4 pregnancies to give one up voluntarily, but I also remembered the pain of losing the babies I had so wanted, the desperation for them to hold on and I knew that to bring a child into the world with anything less than that desperate need would be unfair on us both.

One day my daughter, my beautiful doe eyed 11 year old, may consider pregnancy and the risk of potential miscarriage and abnormality and facing the choices of tests and abortion will be her burden. I have long wondered if medical science will offer her more choices for genetic selection or earlier screening and I have wondered how the knowledge would affect her choice of action should she find herself unexpectedly pregnant, at an earlier age, when not ready and with the knowledge that this will be even more stressful for her than most. In all my years of considering how hard it will be to watch her go through it and how I will support her in this I had never once considered that for her the choices would be less not more. It is my generation's responsibility and my responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. It can't, surely! How would that be progress?