Probably.
They are not commenting but for the last two days there has been no half naked girl on that page. It's unlikely that this is an oversight. I can't imagine the editor is sitting in his office, slapping his forehead and saying, "Damn, we forgot to find a schoolgirl, convince her to take more than half her clothes off for loads of money and take pictures of her." There are rumours that Murdoch decided to give dropping this feature a go, which means no more Page 3.
Probably.
The campaign to get the Sun to drop it has been going for a while. Clare Short had private members bill passed to ban page 3 pornography 1986, (The whole history of what happened is fascinating http://www.clareshort.co.uk/node/12 ) Why it carried on for another 19 years is still a mystery to me. More recently the campaign has been taken up on social media, with women (who appear very organised but are actually sitting in bed in their pyjamas after work promoting the campaign on their laptops and mobile phones). At the last count the Change Organisation online petition counted 202524 signatures and so The Sun are finally listening to all these people who don't want to see it anymore.
Probably.
The truth is that this feature will be re-introduced in a heartbeat if sales drop. Let's hope market forces show that people really aren't that interested in getting a sexual thrill in front of their children over their cornflakes in the morning. I'm quietly confident. The world has changed. It's not as openly sexist as it was in the Seventies, when the feature was introduced. Then, we thought nothing of Bodie of the Professionals ripping Pamela Stephenson's shirt off and dusting debris off her boobs after a bomb ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBMSK6Bz4tc Benny Hill was Saturday evening family entertainment, Parents wanted Jimmy Savile to take a special interest in their children and for their teenage daughters to get felt up on Top of the Pops. These things were normal but now we are disquieted by such programmes. Aren't we?
Probably.
Many men have commented that the removal of Page 3 will just drive men to the internet for their porn. God forbid! Who on earth thought people were accessing porn on the internet? The internet is for porn from Avenue Q . Surely, those looking at Page 3 were getting deeper thrills elsewhere anyway? Page 3 porn was different though, it was inappropriately placed. If people are going to look at porn they usually do it in private unless they are a bit weird and if you got onto a tube and sat next to a man getting his rocks off to a specialist magazine or watching porn on the internet you would instantly know to move but it was unacceptable to move away from the sweaty man, rubbing his thighs while reading the Sun because it was just a newspaper. Luckily, parents will never have to try to explain to their 7 year old daughter why an interesting story about a girl who ate her own hair and had to have it surgically removed was illustrated with breasts, as I had to on a crowded aeroplane once (the paper was a free handout). Our daughters will be able to grow up believing that their value comes from more than being a sexual object for people to stare at.
Probably.
If you look at Twitter and see the comments that are made to women who are posting relief at the end of this institution then it is clear that a large section of the population are angry about the move. They believe that women who don't want this feature in their national press are complaining because they are 'too ugly' and many worse comments. We shouldn't let a few people who feel like this make the rest of us change our mind. Today, we have taken a small step and that's the best way. This way of publicly objectifying women has had it's day and we are all glad. As the Long Suffering Husband said when watching the News last night, "God, is page 3 still a thing? It's such an old fashioned idea."
Probably.
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