Our sexualised society

A petition asking the editor of The Sun to stop running topless pictures on page 3 of was launched last year.   It caught the public imagination and quickly attracted support from high-profile figures including Jennifer Saunders and Alistair Campbell.  It was soon followed by other online petitions, including one asking Lego to stop partnering with the paper because of its page 3 images.

This week it was announced that Lego’s two-year association with the paper was to end.  The company officially denied that the move was linked to online petitions; however a senior Lego executive had previously acknowledged concerns about its association with page 3 in an email to campaigners.

Even the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, has now hinted that he is considering replacing the regular feature.  Last month he responded to a tweet calling for the pages removal because it was outdated saying: “You maybe [sic] right, don’t know but considering”.

News like this is a welcome reminder that we are being heard.  However other news this week is a stark reminder of just how important it is that we keep on fighting.

A survey of parents found that their children were under so much pressure to grow up in our over-sexualised culture that most parents thought childhood finished at the age of 12 with about a third of parents thinking it ended even sooner, at the age of 10.

Of even greater concern are figures released this week which revealed that children as young as five are committing sexual offences.  The NSPCC warned that ‘easy access to sexual material is warping young people’s minds’ and demanded that we “do more to shield young people from an increasingly sexualised society.”

They are quite right.  When the stakes are this high we cannot afford not to act!