As we’ve already reported today, The Sun have been relentlessly trying to persuade us to vote Tory. The reason for this is that the Murdoch empire that owns it has sunk millions into pushing the Tories, in the hopes of getting a government that will give them everything they want.

One of the things they want is to be able to keep using pornography to sell their papers. For decades, The Sun has put pictures of nearly naked teenagers on page 3 to help keep them as the number one “news”paper in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, many women are unhappy about the way that page 3 exploits women, encouraging Sun readers to objectify them and think of them solely as sex objects. There’s been frequent calls to try and stop The Sun pushing pornographic pictures of young women.

Since 2003, The Sun have accompanied the pictures with what they call ‘News In Briefs’. This basically consists of putting words in the mouth of the young women they’re exploiting, in order to push their political agenda. Supposedly, we’re led to believe, these women are not only hired to bare their chests, but also because they share the extreme right wing agenda of the Murdoch empire. Not only is this exploiting the models, it’s also manipulating the readers through a twisted version of sexuality, in order to try and get them to support their sinister agenda. You can check out some of the examples here, such as “Poppy thinks Tony Blair was absolutely right to send the troops into Iraq,” or “Tina thinks the G20 have taken the right decision to inject a trillion dollars into the financial system.”

It’s hard to tell what they intend you to think as you read these captions. Is it meant to mean, ‘These are intelligent young women who have made a free choice to be glamour models.’ Or are is it just a way to mock the objectified women even further, by making the patently ridiculous claim that they really said the things attributed to them?

The election special of ‘The News in Briefs’ concerned the noises that some MPs have made about taking action against page 3. Normally I would just link to it, but I’m not sending hits to right wing porn, so here’s the text:

“SIXTEEN Page 3 Girls in all their glory represent the very image of freedom in this country.

But if Labour or the Lib Dems win the election, this could be the last time they are allowed to pose together.

MPs Harriet Harman and Lynne Featherstone will move swiftly to change the law and ban Page 3 forever.

John Locke: Not happy about his theory being appropriated to justify pornography

Our national treasures – who even enjoy the Royal seal of approval from our future King Prince Charles – will be no more.

And at a stroke the very liberties that put the Great into Great Britain will be torn asunder.

The radical ideas of the 17th-century philosopher John Locke helped shape our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and, later, America’s Constitution.

Lib Dem frontbencher Featherstone was cheered by women’s rights activists when she declared she would “love to take on Page 3″.

But our Poppy said: “The basis of Lockean thought is his theory of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people.

“His thinking underpins our ideas of national identity and society. Please don’t let those who seek to ban our beauty win. Vote to save Page 3!”

There’s so much wrong with this article I don’t know where to start. That’s why we’ve lined up Leftfield’s own page 3 stunnas to give our own left wing take on this particular nonsense.

Bob from Airdrie says: “I resent the way they say that banning page 3 would put women on the dole queue, because it implies being a ‘glamour model’ is actually a proper job.

The fact of the matter is it’s not a proper job, it doesn’t come with a wage. Models are not employed, they’re rented from an agency, and paid a tiny portion of the fee that that agency takes. A small minority get to make a bit more money by becoming celebrities, but the vast majority either have to get an actual job, or become even more exploited by going fully into the horrendous pornography industry.

It’s a big lie that glamour models are liberated women who have made a choice, and who make loads of money. They’re exploited and paid a pittance. Page 3 models are not employees, they’re products, as far as the Murdoch empire is concerned.”

Doug from Kirkcaldy says: “This whole so-called controversy is ridiculous, because it’s clearly a transparent ploy to shore up the vote of progressive women for Labour and the Lib Dems.

If Harriet Harman actually took page 3 seriously, she’s had 13 years in government to do something about it. She’s been deputy leader of the Labour Party since 2007, and it’s proven to be all talk.

The fact of the matter is that Labour care far more about the support of the right wing press than they do about doing anything serious to try and stop the sexual exploitation of women.”

And Bill from Auchtermuchty says: “The philosophy supposedly spouted by the models in this article is nonsense.

First of all, the Bill of Rights and the American constitution are in the USA. Britain has neither, so the idea that John Locke’s philosophy has been enshrined in law here is totally wrong.

As a socialist, I do recognise that John Locke made an important contribution to the history of philosophy. His theory of the social contract argues that a government cannot be legitimate without the consent of the people.

The problem however, which was recognised by Marx and other socialists, is that the individualist conception of human rights pretends that everyone can be equal in a society that is still really unequal, because some own property and get rich from the labour of the vast majority.

In the case of page 3, the objectification of women reflects a society where women are forced to compete for the attention of the men who dominate sexist society. Our patriarchal society means that men have power and access to resources that women don’t. Women are only considered valuable to this sexist hierarchy if they’re deemed sexually attractive, and page 3 encourages men to keep thinking this way.

How, in this context, can we really claim that everyone has an equal say in society? How can we pretend that sexism is over women are liberated when this kind of misogynist propaganda is looked at daily by millions all over the UK?”

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