If you’re under 18, please ask your mum whether you’re allowed to read this ;) apparently it’s horribly political and controversial.

Porn is not a dirty word in this house. It’s something we joke about, not something that gets stuffed under the mattress or builds up in the back of the wardrobe. Pete and I both tend to agree with the sentiment expressed by Dr Cox in Scrubs when he said something along the lines that if all the porn was removed from the internet then there would only be one website left – and all it would say was ‘bring back the porn’. Beyond that it’s not something that crosses my mind very often.

But I’ve just come across an opinion piece in the Guardian (entitled ‘A limp response to women’s erotica‘!) about a new print magazine I hadn’t heard of before – Filament.

The ideology behind Filament is that it’s a women’s magazine with a difference. It doesn’t run any features on fashion and cosmetics, diets or celebrity gossip. There’s nothing in there that attempts to make you feel bad about how you look, and what there is instead is pictures of beautiful men.

The people behind Filament have done some research and have come to the conclusion that what their readers would really like to see is pictures of aroused men (some of them time, anyway!), but they’ve run into a bit of a problem – although the law will allow it (gay porn does it all the time), the printers they can afford to use won’t print it, for fear of running into problems.

In a country where equality is the name of the game, or at least something we should be working towards, this doesn’t strike me as entirely fair. Pictures of women (aroused, or at least feigning arousal) are everywhere, and practically inescapable. If a woman wants to look at pictures of an aroused man, why shouldn’t she? If she wants to spend her money on women’s erotica then surely that’s her choice.

Filament need to sell 328 copies of Issue 1 to raise enough money to make history and print (they’re pretty sure) the first explicit male pictorial in a British women’s magazine. To support the cause of equality order Issue 1 or subscribe.

And yes, this is a little off the beaten track of what I usually witter on about. And no, I am not condoning the exploitation of women, men or any other life forms. If all of this has got you all hot under the collar, then take a break and go look at some pretty flowers instead.