Dr Jessica Rongrose - Feminism in Schools

Girls should be taught feminism at school to stop them being disrespectful to each other, according to a leading academic.

I completely agree with this. We SHOULD be teaching feminism at school - not just to girls, but to boys and even to the teachers themselves. Feminism is relevant to everyone, no matter who they are, and we should stop seeing it as a 'bad word' which we can acknowledge, but which cannot actually promote. I would love to see this taken further in the future. I know how accessible teaching feminism is within my course (Sociology) but this subject is mainly taught at post-compulsory (i.e. sixth form and college level) and the subject itself is male-dominated (in terms of research, sociologists and so forth). But we could incorporate feminism into a wide variety of subjects, something which I am sure some teachers already do out of their commitment to the cause and not because of it being required.

Lad Mags Age Restrictions

Whilst in Co-Op today I saw that some lad mags have now been given an age restriction with the buyer having to be over 15. I'm not sure whether this is an national move or just a move by Co-Op, but it's definitely a move in the right direction in my eyes. What concerns me, however, is the age they have chosen - why 15 or over? I'm not too up on laws in this area but isn't the age to watch hardcore porn/purchase porn from licensed sex shops 18 or over? I not implying that what features in some of these lad mags is close to hardcore porn, but they still feature the exploitation of women's bodies which is inherent within porn. As individual cases go, some people are maturer than others and so forth, but perhaps 15 should be raised to 18* - especially since to buy alcohol we have to be 18 and we now have to be to buy tobacco. At 15 we shouldn't be presenting the kind of values featured in lad mags to boys who are in the process of growing up and forming their own ideas about life.

*in an ideal world we wouldn't have lad mags but here I'm just stating that since they do exist, whilst they are circulation this is one way I see of combating certain problems with them.