Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken"It is a strange thing because of course in my previous post I did exactly what I said I didn't intend to do - I DID include paedophilia in my summary because I spoke of 14 year olds being "available" in nightclubs, albeit in the guise of 18 year olds. ...'"
My understanding is that paedophilia refers to 13 or under, so you're safe.
Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken"... What I do find heartening now is the concept that boys and girls of teenage years can be genuine friends with no sexualisation involved - it would be unheard of when I was a pimply youth but on the other hand I went to an all boys school and girls remained a thing of mystery until I was ... , well, they still are. ...'"
Single-sex schools, eh? It works the other way around too – or at least it did for me.
Quote JerryChicken="JerryChicken"... The most bizarre juxtaposition, the one that everyone notices and comments on, is that on the Daily Mail web site and I assume in its printed media too ... and then complain when they are sexualised by males.'"
The [iMail[/i really is quite hideous, on so many levels. So, for that matter, is editor Paul Dacre. I've been close enough to a couple of situations to know how it's next to impossible to get the [iMail[/i to retract lies (or at least print a correction). It seems to work on the basis of having no responsibility to prove anything – it's your responsibility to disprove it. Thinking of one specific case, it took a press officer an entire week to screw a correction out of the bustards over something completely factually incorrect.
There's a reason that the likes of Dacre don't want any form of what Leveson has recommended.
[url=http://thevoluptuousmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/this-isnt-just-journalism-this-is-daily.htmlI did a thing recently of looking at just one aspect of the [iMail[/i's sexualisation of underage children[/url – mostly girls but sometimes boys. Yet this is the same publication that, recently was shrilling away about Starbucks not blocking porn from it's free, in-store wifi.
And yes, it also essentially encourages a bitchiness – plus, together with that, insecurity. For goodness sake – the paper seems to live of health scare stories (I've had one cancer charity tell me that it sees a fall off in people seeking information whenever the [iMail[/i prints another sensationalist story about research showing that daylight will give yo cancer or some such other nonsense. The thing is, the research itself is almost certainly genuine, but publishing it outside of its scientific context can be misleading and usually means that it's sensationalised.
Then there's the constant stream of self-hating stuff – 'oh look: women in middle age get cellulite' etc. 'Oh, she shouldn't have worn that at her age' etc etc. It's quite nauseous.
The paper version is bad (I see it in the office) but the website is worse. And just to be clear, as Martin Clarke, the editor of the website, explained at Leveson, he is answerable to Dacre, who is not only the editor of the [iMail[/i, but is editor in chief of the family of papers.
Ah yes – the fragrant Dacre. Think again about all the things the [iMail[/i spouts hatred of. This is a man who is himself an adulterer – and is also a foul-mouthed bully.
His editorial meetings are so renowned for his language that they're known as 'the vagina monologues', and he's apparently an 'expert' at what has been described as 'double c**ting'. A truly lovely specimen.
If the [iMail[/i were just a comic, much of this wouldn't really matter. But the horrifying thing is just how much people believe it. These are people who (like my mother) consider themselves intelligent and educated – and absolutely of a certain class – and they believe it absolutely.
Perhaps people get the press they deserve? The trouble is, the rest of us then have to put up with the results, and that, in the UK, mostly means an utterly infantilised press and an infantilised public discourse.