We May Have Won The Battle, But The War Rages On

Today, #Meninists everywhere are in mourning. No, not for their sanity, dignity or humanity but for Page 3 (or so I imagine). It seems as though media Mogul and long term fan of breasts, Rupert Murdoch, has decided to rather quietly pull the feature from The Sun, it only took him 46 years. Well done, Rups! 

The reasons are unclear and a spokesperson from The Sun is yet to comment, but their sister paper, The Times, has respoerted that it's over - and I'm pretty sure that's as close to an answer as were ever going to get. 

 

There's no denying that the No More Page 3 Campaign had something to do with it. Murdoch may have been tweeting that he thought it was old fashioned, but the campaign was a platform. It was a spring board for those, up and down the country, from all walks of life, to come forward and share their stories. I don't think anyone expected the impact Page 3 could have. Women and men came out in their hundreds of thousands to sign the petition. Hundreds of thousands. If you think that this was work of some group of 'fucking feminists' then you, my friend, are wrong. This is a battle that has been won by everyone. 

As for those wonderful people at NMP3 HQ - thank you. Thank you for your hard work and dedication. Thank you for your loyalty to the cause. Thank you for waking up every morning and still believing in this. Whilst 3rd Year and being a graduate took over my life and my involvement sadly became less and less, that awe-inspiring group haven't rested. They developed and they've grown. They've adapted their stance. They created a movement. 

I'm not sure what happens next. The media is still horrible at portraying women properly. You've only got to glance at a magazine wrack to figure that out. Chances are, they'll just show celebs in their bikinis or in their latest underwear collections. It'll be called progress (and in so many ways it is) but women's bodies will still be the only thing of inportance. Young girls will still grow up being catcalled, my friends and the millions like us will still walk into bars all over the world and have their arses pinched by those who wrongly believe it's theirs for taking. Our mothers will still worry if we walk home alone at night. But it's a start. 10 years from now, no one will think it's normal to have half naked ladies in the paper, no one will be sitting awkwardly on the Tube with boobs in their face. It's a tiny drop in a massive ocean, but drops create ripples, and some ripples are infinite. 

This has, in no way, eradicated sexism. It in no way means that the stigmas around sexual violence that affects both it's male and female survivors have disappeared or that we've solved the global pay gap. 

It's 2015. You can catch a commercial flight to space and for now it seems, there is No More Page 3.