Here comes the monster

There is an insidious and pervasive force at large among our green and pleasant land right now. You might not have paid much attention to it, alongside daily worries like the gas bill or that parcel that never turned up, but it’s brewing on the horizon like an electrical storm on a hot summer’s evening. It’s taking shape on social media, in press interviews and among the more righteous members of society. And no, I’m not talking about the start of the football season. It’s the jackbooted march of the pro-censorship brigade - led, I’m sorry to say, by a mutant strain of militant feminists.

Let me say at the outset that feminism per se is an entirely laudable aim. Of all the many isms you can accuse me of, sexism isn’t one of them. I disdain prejudice against women, I flatly refuse to visit strip clubs, I abhor boorish chauvinists and I think institutions with female bosses are (dare I say it) generally better run than their male counterparts. I would hate for my daughter (if I had one) to face a tougher life than my son (if I had one), and you certainly won’t be seeing me at Muirfield. Although that’s partly because I hate golf.

So why am I so upset about the recent efforts to force lads mags to obscure their front covers in supermarkets? I hate lads mags, and I find them unutterably depressing. Once, on a flight back from Paris, I was given a straight choice between reading Loaded or Le Monde – they were the only publications in my seat back pouch. Even though I don’t speak French, I chose the newspaper, preferring to try and translate the essence of each story rather than reading about why Chelsy from Wigan prefers pink to brown.

However, there is something deeply worrying about the campaign against lads mags, and it basically boils down to an assault on freedom of speech. Once upon a time, feminism was about demanding equality, and that’s a fine and noble aim. Nowadays, it’s increasingly about banning anything that displeases feminists. In isolation, you may think forcing Zoo and Nuts to cover their, well, covers, is fair and reasonable. But collectively, it’s the thin end of a wedge, and who knows where that wedge stops?

Let me put it like this. It won’t stop here. The more this campaign against what Viz once referred to as ‘the objectification of wimmin’ rumbles on, the more momentum it gathers, and the more danger it poses. What comes after getting lads mags covered up? Why, getting them banned, of course, which is this particular campaign’s underlying aim. Then what? Soft-porn mags. Then what? Max Power (they regularly publish pictures of scantily-clad girls draped over Citroëns, as if either party benefits from this miserable juxtaposition). Then what? The Pirelli calendar. Then what? Erotic art. Then what? Presumably any publication, media outlet or artistic field that in any way, shape or form says, implies or hints that women are in any way different, inferior or distinguishable from men at any activity, ability or function, let alone anything that dares to objectify, glamorise or comment on their aesthetics. Heat magazine is utterly fucked.

The fact is, men and women are different, and the more sensible members of our society embrace and celebrate this, regardless of their chromosomal composition. Sadly, this is not currently a very fashionable perspective to hold, which is why I expect to lose one or two Twitter followers after posting a link to this blog. C'est la vie. I find society’s slow, blinkered march towards the censorship of entirely legal publications unutterably depressing - which, if you were paying attention earlier, is also how I feel about the magazines themselves. I hate them. But to paraphrase Voltaire, although I disagree with what they have to say, I will defend their right to say it. I’m a writer too, just like the teams of journalists and editors who put those magazines together every month. And a ragtag collective of self-righteous moral crusaders should not be able to dictate what I choose to read and write in my lunch hour, just because it offends their sensibilities.

Do you disagree with me? Good. You have every right to. I can say it and you can disagree with it. We live in a free country, where people can make their own decisions about what’s good or bad, right or wrong, risqué or recidivist, and we still have a free press at the moment. I just hope and pray we never live in a country where those who shout the loudest get to dictate what everyone else can read. Or do. Or think.