Banning The Sun: A Certain Kind of Man

After this week’s heated debate concerning the fate of  The Sun at our University,  this piece of ‘new journalism’ written by former President of Exeter Gender Equality Society Rachel Brown gives a narrative which explores what stereotypes exist concerning The Sun’s male readership due to the presence of Page 3.

The little door opens, delinquent winds seize chance, throwing upon the innocent café entrance handfuls of rain and dust made fugitive from the cobbled square outside. As the remaining gusts quarrel with the tinny jingle of the doorbell, the discordant orchestration compels my gaze above the top of my book and toward the source where I observe your final wrestles against the wind.

As you triumphantly close the door, raindrops cling stubbornly to your coat and pull neglectfully at your hair. Sweeping the weather-beaten strands from your cheeks, your face is revealed like clouds parting for the sun.

“…I hoped: May you and your newspaper one day possess a more visionary male stereotype than just a certain kind of man.”
Photo Credit: An Untrained Eye via Flickr cc

I barter with luck while you survey the low-ceilinged café. Composed of typical West Country furniture, their blockish framework is so enduring that your grandchildren, buttery-faced, will probably swing their chubby legs from the same chairs as they gleefully tuck into their scones.

Fortune is mine, you sit at the neighbouring table and ask the waiter for a pot of Darjeeling tea. I inhale, and, trying not to disclose smiling joy at your choice, I briefly close my eyes to recall the virtues of your chosen tea:  “Its leaves decorate only rare heights and just one clime. Its texture rich, notes delicate and swansong sweet…”

I open my eyes. You have settled into your seat and assumed sovereign poise. Turned so slightly facing towards me, I bask in nature’s sweet coincidence — our equal purview of one another. Your posture is elegant, your plaid scarf wrapped as though arranged by birds in flight, your woollen coat sharp as a cliff’s edge and brogues that cannot silence unfailing taste. The waiter returns and you meet his face to thank him with kind eyes and a smile.

Any attempt of return to my book, without mere affectation, would be unthinkable! All I can do is give definition to the flowering picture of you. You exhale, perhaps signalling relief at your escape from the torments of the raging weather now behind us.

You draw down into your bag to produce some reading material. “What tales of you might this speak?” I ask myself hopefully. Its scarlet topped paper remains obscure to my vision. The article rises in your hand toward the table you rest upon. You open to its pages, now unveiling to me its cover from which I read: “The Sun”

Images of male “Sun readers” paraded in my mind — Misogynist. Chauvinist. Sexist. These words hurled themselves at me with a greater violence than the marauding winds outside. Arrows began to cast themselves into the picture of you. Your defence attorney pointed and quibbled: “But he will, of course, take no interest in passé page three. He is interested, I am sure, in only the sport and actual news.” But you did not hasten past page three to the later sports pages.

And it would always be: You had purchased The Sun, a newspaper that still makes boobs news. My vision of you punctured, I picked up my book, my bag and my disappointment, and there I hoped: May you and your newspaper one day possess a more visionary male stereotype than just a certain kind of man.

Rachel Brown

Is somebody’s choice of newspaper an accurate way to judge their personality? Is it fair to label readers of The Sun as misogynistic and sexist? Leave a comment below or write to the Comment team at the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group or on Twitter @CommentExepose.

 

Is the "Homeless Drug Addict" Stereotype a Defence for Doing Nothing?

Rachel Brown looks at the current controversy regarding homelessness on the streets of Exeter and asks if the, “Homeless drug addict” stereotype is more of an excuse for general apathy towards the homeless population.

“But look! You can get a fiver out of the cash machine over there!” went the feared retort fired at the passer-by who had “engaged”. On the receiving end, I mumbled a doubtful defence and hurried away, probably to buy “the good bread” from Marks and Spencer. In the wake of Exeposé’s front-page article which said that drunken, Jack Wills donning Exeter students are the target of boozed-up beggars who really have accommodation, we must reflect: do intimidating experiences justify our detachment from homelessness when it is in our streets and actually, “it” is sat outside Sainsbury’s looking mournful and clutching his dog for warmth?

Photo Credit: Hotpix [LRPS] via Compfight cc

It’s reasonable that when giving money to drug-addicted homeless people, we are actually keeping them on the streets and away from support. But what about the rest of the homeless population who are not shooting-up every night courtesy of student goodwill? “Homelessness is not what you think” says Kay Hammond of Emmaus, an Exeter-based homelessness charity. “Yes there are a lot of drugs and alcohol, but there’s also a lot of returning service personnel with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a lot of families – people who never thought they’d end up homeless.” These are the stories of the homeless overshadowed by the smackhead stereotype; that same stereotype giving us licence to avoid eye-contact and walk past, guilt-free. Additionally, how do we know “the help is out there” without up-to-date insider knowledge? Just days ago, a charity for homeless young people, Nightstop made a Radio Exe request for more host families because demand is increasing. It’s nice and simple to apply a blanket approach of “do not give money”, but homelessness is not simple because it’s human.

We are talking about people as unique as you and me, and what actually happens with the blanket approach is we stereotype and may end up giving nothing of ourselves to homelessness. It’s time to stop, make eye contact and realise the burden is on us to know what the right thing to do is. We must engage. That involves finding out what local support resources are really like and giving our time or money to the right ones. When safe, we must talk with those homeless in our community’s streets. Who is the homeless person sat outside your Sainsbury’s? Well, we didn’t exchange names but his canine pal did get a tin of dog food from me!

Rachel Brown

Hopefully he had a can opener too!  Is the assumption that a homeless person is a drug addict an unfortunate reality or just an excuse for us not to part with our pennies? Write a reply below or post a comment to the Exeposé Comment Facebook Group.

Society stigmatised

Photo credits to Fibonacci Blue

Michael Cope puts forward his opinions in response to a comment piece on gay marriage in Issue 47 of Exeposé.

In a discussion opposing equal marriage in the 19th February edition, the author indulges in the same stereotypes and misconceptions that LGBTQ people face every day. Reading his homophobic piece distressed me, as it contains the same arguments used by more vociferous bigots who demand far worse restrictions on the rights of LGBTQ people than a refusal of marriage rights. I found his arguments to be bigoted, hurtful and hetero-supremacist, so here’s my say on the issue.

Firstly, the writer uses the tired argument that the definition of marriage should not be changed, and that marriage is ‘public property’. He seems to forget that there is no set definition of marriage, as marriage is a social construct. Its meaning has changed constantly over time and it means different things to different people. Biblical polygamy anyone? If marriage is ‘public property’, then surely the sections of the public who are LGBTQ own it as much as anyone else?

Photo credits to Mariopiperni

The writer then goes on to state that marriage is unnecessary for homosexual people, firstly because same sex couples in civil partnerships have ‘near parity’ in terms of rights with married heterosexuals, and secondly because, as marriage is based on love, same sex couples do not need marriage as this will not add anything to their relationship. To deal with the first point, ‘near parity’ is not parity. It is not full equality and pretending it is sufficient is to defend the unequal position of LGBTQ people in British society.

The refusal to give a same sex couple the opportunity to marry reinforces the idea that same sex partnerships are inferior to and worth less than heterosexual ones. His argument that ‘the truth of the love and commitment surely comes from the couple, the name is worthless’ is laughable given that he seems very eager to defend the ‘name’ of marriage for heterosexual couples, regardless of how much they may love each other. In addition, does he have to refer to same sex couples contemptuously as ‘these people’?

The next section of his article rehashes two particularly pernicious and incorrect hetero-supremacist arguments: that marriage is a place for rearing ‘the next generation’ and that a heterosexual marriage is the best place in which to do this. Firstly, if the writer believes that the purpose of marriage is for procreation, then surely he also opposes marriage for those who do not want or are unable to have children. Yet there is no mention of this in his article. He focuses purely on same sex couples, which makes his message clear: same sex couples are unsuitable parents.

This argument feeds into hetero-supremacist views that homosexuality and same sex partnerships are innately dangerous. This has usually been linked to accusations of paedophilia or fears about ‘converting’ children. As well as being homophobic, it is also complete nonsense. Secondly, what is it about marriage that suddenly makes for better child rearing anyway? Does the word have magical properties we don’t know about? Despite the writer’s stated wish not to ‘slate’ single parents, this is exactly what he does. The writer argues that heterosexual marriage is the place to raise children because it is ‘the guise that society would prefer’. This is not true. It is simply the guise that those who have the loudest voices and the most power and privilege prefer, and they have used this power and privilege to enforce hetero-supremacy within society. When the writer says ‘society’, he means ‘I’.

Photo credits to Ehoyer

His homophobia does not end there. He uses his next paragraph to reduce homosexuality to a set of acts, to ‘what goes on in your bedroom’. The reduction of homosexuality to acts, historically with the term sodomy, has driven the oppression and persecution of homosexual people throughout history and is still used today to paint homosexuality and homosexuals as sinful and unsavoury. For someone who asks ‘why should I care that you love each other’, he seems to care a great deal about making sure same sex couples remain stigmatised.

In the grand scheme of the fight for LGBTQ equality, marriage equality is not the only or the biggest issue. However, it is an important one, one that reaches further then the right to walk up the aisle. It represents the fight for the de-stigmatisation of same sex couples and LGBTQ people. It is about the end to nonsense arguments about the inferiority of our relationships, our inability to bring up children or our danger to society. The equal marriage vote shows that legislators, in a small way, are starting to get it. The writer may not view marriage as a matter of equality, but he clearly has not spoken to people for whom it means a great deal.

Marriage equality looks set to happen, and with it will hopefully come the death of the stereotypes, misconceptions and homophobic arguments that I felt this article consisted of.

Michael Cope