Why I hate page 3

Once, on a school trip to north Wales, the kids in my class were passing round the bus-drivers' copy of The Sun. Of course we all new what page three was and at the age of ten our interest in nudity was at it's prepubescent peak, so I was as keen as the other boys to get a look at some real boobs. Then this artefact from the world of the greasy spoon cafe (we were a middle class school and our parents would have read the broadsheets or, at worst, the Daily Express, in fact my own parents were among those for whom "The Independent" was eventually birthed ) was finally passed back to me by my giggling peers so I could join in the risqué hilarity of the moment. But opening to the famed page my feelings were anything but hilarious. 

Communing like this with my ten-year old self is hard. There are thirty, experience packed, years between us. I have changed, developed my ideas and seen many more half-naked women but he is, unquestionably, still with me and for that i am glad...

The feelings of ten-year old me were that tricky combination of powerful and subtle. I felt the natural excitement of any male at the sight of beautiful boobs but along with it a sense of guilt and unease. I was not taught by my parents that sex was the original sin. It was a theme of their parenting to have fairly open discussion about sex with the emphasis on respect, commitment and mutual enjoyment, the real enemy of good sex, they informed their wide-eyed children, was objectification. Women weren't toys, they were human beings equal in every sense to men and if their sons adopted this repellent habit of viewing women the wrong way then successful relationships would elude them and their lives would be blighted. 

On encountering page three I had a premature glimpse of the enemies' siren propaganda. I recognised instantly that this was what mum and dad had been   talking about, the woman for sex and sex alone and I was shocked and dismayed, by fact of what I was seeing, yes, but also by its strong power over my   Immature mind. This was the other path for men and it promised fun, compliant and apparently endless partners without all the agonising complexities of actual relationships. The guilt I felt was not about a prudish view of sex and nudity it was because I knew this was the wrong kind of sex and nudity and part of me was loving it.

All men face essentially the same choice, whether to engage with women as equals and face the heart-break, the confusion and yes the frustration of real relationships or to view life as a game where the prize is getting "it" and the fact that women are people too merely another obstacle to be overcome. The second option there has enjoyed enormous popularity, it's objective is clear and largely attainable. There are literally millions of ways to enhance, maintain and sustain the excitement. But none of it is the real thing, and frankly it's cowards not men who shrink from reality.

 

The world does not need more rapists, (which is another word for cowards) it needs men who don't shrink from the reality that men and women are facing this complex existence together as equal sharers in a common challenge. 

It also needs men who can push their own bodily needs down the order of priorities so than mankind can drag itself closer to achieving security for the vulnerable and powerless.

It also needs men who aren't busily creating the cultural, economic and social atmospheres that best facilitate their sordid adventurings. 

All that hideous crap starts with sexism it starts with the path of least resistance for the male sexual impulse. It starts with objectification. 

The world needs men who would never have allowed page three to happen in the first place.