I read the previous comments by Mark and I am very surprised that Catherine had it removed. What is the point of discussion if we can't look at what he had to say in a fair light? In all fairness I think Mark was pointing out what a lot of blokes think - but wouldn't say to your face. Promiscuity oozes off your pages but we're supposed to say "hey that's cool" and massage your ego about it? It isn't cool and a couple of times I have wondered if you really don't see past sex. Blokes don't want a trophy on their arm. They want a partner who has got depth and something else to offer,too.

To put it briefly:

if you don't wish to be treated like a bimbo

then please don't act like one.

On a more serious note what with all those really horrible cases of abuse in the news right now,doesn't it bother women whenever they are portrayed as sexual objects (and Jordan is a case in point)?

That women and young girls, and boys are becoming increasingly treated as sexual objects of some twisted men's sick fantasies from a young age. Just how much abuse is going on and is being covered up? Even evidence was destroyed in the Austrian girl, Natasha Kampusch's case, so as not to implicate officials, which the police admitted would have caused a national scandal. How could they destroy evidence of what happened? Was that not a crime in itself ?

The child star Cyrus Miley - I can't remember her name exactly, posed for Vanity Fair and the shot of her was exactly as a Lolita - a paedophile's fantasy of a sexualised little girl. The fact that this shot happened and that people think it is acceptable, is worrying. What exactly are we exposing our kids to, when people give out messages like that?

Sex is being pushed at men literally 24 hours a day. We have a 1% conviction rate for rape. In Britain every 5 minutes someone is being raped. In the USA it is worse; the statistics are 1+ rapes per minute.

Why is sex being pushed to us as entertainment in the face of all this ongoing abuse in every society? Isn't that a sick travesty in light of these horrors? Why hasn't there been any kind of change?

Are people like Scarlett Johannsen and all the rest acting out male fantasies? After all these years, Hollywood is still promoting demeaning and degrading roles for women which still show them as passive and willing participants in abusive scenarios, as victims, as weak objects meant to fulfil a man's sexual gratification and nothing else.

Don't you think in the light of all this horrible sexual abuse that we need to draw the line on all these blond bimbo degrading images and characterisations of women? The treatment of women in latin american countries never even gets a mention on the news, it is appalling and disgusting. A young girl was jailed in a south american country for a minor charge, and put in a jail alongside 30 male criminals who raped her for a whole month before she was moved. Why are women's rights completely ignored in south american culture and the mainstream news?

Why has this false "War on Terror" absolved all nations from tackling real abuses against women everywhere? Why do our pathetic liars in government talk about invading the middle east "to protect women" when there are equally worse abuses going on everywhere else too? Why ignore what's happening in other poor countries?

Isn't it time to stop sexualising every single female who appears on our screens, now? From the blond, bland bimbos on Hollyoaks to the tarty reality shows, to the sordid plots in eastenders which show a young girl Stacey having sex with her future father in law? All these story lines reinforce the fantasy that "all women want it" ie that women are all no better than whores. How is this fair to the thousands of victims of sexual abuse?

At a time when so many of us are despairing at the horrors unfolding in Austria, isn't it time to stop pushing these offensive "bimbo stereotypes" of women?

Just a thought...

oh, i wish I could have seen those comments by Mark because I am wondering when Catherine was going to receive some flak from guys and it is about time too - she has deleted my posts before too - i must admit Catherine's articles seem to have got better lately - I wonder if she has taken notice of some of the harsh remarks that I and others have given her about her trollopy behaviour and more than that - the absolute drivel that she writes (most of the time). As I have said before I am sure she has something going on with the Editor of the Independent because why would he allow these pieces in his newspaper, mind you Claudia Winkelmann is as much of an airhead and writes very BADLY.
As for Jordan being a feminist icon - MY ARSE! She is an absolutely weak woman because her whole life is geared to PLEASING people and of course she has got money out of her looks and tits but she had been used and abused by the media because everyone knows including her closest friends that she is a money machine and they can benefit from it. She has not got a real friend in the world as soon as her looks are gone, we'll see! The general public buy into the worse aspect of her self promotion and it is voyeurism - it is the ugly dynamic between her and her very weak husband that is fascinating to watch because it is so jaw droppingly ignorant. Anyone who may have seen recent footage of her documentary on ITV2 will observe that her husband is very verbally abusive to her and insulting - that is NOT a feminist icon - Catherine has fallen into the trap of confusing MONEY and lots of it - as a symbol of feminism, forget it!

I certainly meant no offence when I posted my comments earlier. This is a completely honest description of how I feel when I read her stuff. It's just not intelligent and it insults the intelligence of women who want to be taken seriously. This is what I wrote earlier and I apologise if it has offended anyone.
If Catherine wants honesty, she will appreciate that I am pointing out how a lot of men see her behaviour. It is important to realise that overtly sexual behaviour has consequences, that's all.

Unfortunately Catherine Townsend promotes a sluttish lifestyle devoid of any meaning. Do you honestly think that your opinion is going to mean anything to anybody? I've read your columns regularly and I have never been impressed by your promiscuity and your arrogance. Believe me, someone like you is considered "damaged goods" and most men I know just wouldn't respect someone who calls herself a feminist and then can't keep her legs together. You sound as if you think you have a great lifestyle, well it just sounds like you have absolved yourself of any moral responsibility. A little girl who can't grow up? Your mentality and your casual attitude to sex isn't even funny; it turns off most guys. I don't want someone who can't say no and who acts like a rabbit at the height of mating season in spring. Too brainless, relying too much on personal bimbo qualities doesn't really amount to very much in the end. If you consider Jordan a feminist icon then you are even more deluded than I thought. Because she is widely held to be a money minded surgically enhanced persona who the world could do without. Since Jordan is motivated by nothing more than making money, she doesn't care how she gets it. Not all men are obsessed by sex we want to see brains in a woman. You are living in cloud cuckoo land and maybe oneday you'll grow up. If you are not capable of being marriage material by now or capable of making a long term relationship work then you have got to check your priorities. Your worthless priorities, Catherine which have mired you into living a pretty worthless life.

I am again flabbergasted by these media whores be they male or female who are promoting trashy people as icons of our society - no wonder our society is degenerate.
It may be unpleasant to look at this but I tell you who is a feminist icon in our current society - someone like Elizabeth Fritzl, the Austrian LADY who went through the most horrific abuse for decades and SURVIVED and brought up her children to live and even have some education although they were children of rape and torture; I would bow at her feet she is an absolute ICON, and any women in Afghanistan who lived and survived the atrocities of the Taleban idiots and maybe the beautiful Iraqi girl who was murdered by her father for loving a British soldier - THESE WOMEN are the feminist icons of our society, not that silly Jordan who is greedy, self centered and ignorant and has not got a good thing to say about anyone who may hold up the mirror to her. Please Catherine what are you talking about? You are soooooo shallow.

This topic made my mother and I debate at the dinner table. My mother, who believes that Jordan is a feminine icon and myself, who disagrees. Jordan, my mother says, is because she manipulates the media, she manipulates the men and gets money from them. Not only that, she says, Jordan looks after a disabled child, she is beautiful and a "business women". I don't disagree with this, but I refuse to believe that this is what consititues as a 'feminine icon'. Jordan, for all the branding of herself and the money she makes, is nothing more than a processed packages outline of exactly what society wants a women to be, her image is entirely constructed, entirely not her own doing. She is exactly what men and society want her to do. If we think feminism s about making up your own mind, this isn't it. Jordan never has. She started off as a glamour model, hardly a feminist proffesion, and has worked her way up to be the darling of the tabloid press. She's not an indivdual. She writes books about glamour models, hardly intellectually taxing. She makes her own clothes and make-up line, she advertises for magazines which promote nothing but idleness. What exactly have women always wanted to do but be taken seriously outside this concept of a women having no brains and being obsessed with material ideas? She's the pawn of the media, she acts dumb, she goes to parties and then tells everyone about her horrible life of dieting and post-natal depression which hundreds of women go threw every day. What Jordan stands for is not what should be a feimine icon. She stands for dressing how society wants to be, she stands for acting how they want you to act and she stands for not an ounce of brains. If Jordon got fat, would anybody like her? If Jordon went to University to study would any girl like her, if she was interested in books or history or culture would anybody pay attention? Is she even allowed to display an ounce of sense or would she be mocked? An Icon is what every women should aspire to be and Jordan isn't it. A feminine icon should be about brains, power, contributin something to society and actually doing something that involves an ounce of brains. Examples,the hundreds of women we have in parliament, JK Rowling, Hilary Clinton,Cherie Blair Benazir Bhutto,the women who fight in the army in Iraq and Afghanistan, the women who work in communities to bring stablity to them, the women aid workers who work in countries accross the world, Marie Curie, Oprah Winfrey. You may not even support what their poliical issues are but you have to respect what they do. But, you'll say, girls dont' aspire to be like these women. Yes, and that's the point. Why is it that a women who has brains, is in business, law, politics, is not blasted across magazines and treated like Jordan is? If we are talking about her as a female icon we are lowering ourselves. If we aspire to be like her, then we've lost. We fall for the very idea that we see Jordon to power over. Jordan isn't free, she's the victim of societies expectations and packaged version of a female. Her life is nothing but talking about her role as a mother/ housewife and keeping her image in check and getting money to talk about it. In ten years time she'll be gone and sent away like every other girl in the fame business. Do we really want an icon to be that?

Heard from a friend of mine studying there that Catherine put on a pretty good show at the Cambridge Union tonight (and no, I'm not her!) on the tricky subject of Jordan.
But re some of the tedious and overlong rants above, apparently they're cut out by moderators if they are deemed offensive. Is that a bad thing?
Quite enjoy the comments on this blog, but pleeeease keep them shorter! Much more fun!

I get your point Kate, but would you want to marry a guy who had slept with about three different women every week? It works both ways...Mark may have been a bit over the top with his choice of words but it is not necessarily misogynistic to say that women who sleep around are not the type of women who will necessarily make good wives or mothers...that may be a hard pill for you to swallow but it is true. There may be a promiscuous period when one is young but a person usually grows out of it, especially women by quite a yoing age as it is a normal human trait to find a mate and become happy. Sleeping around with Tom, Dick or Harry or Tracy, Debra or Harriet usually means there is a problem.

I'd like to thank Brigitta for telling me what my "inner complex" is. Her comment is of course, laughable. I don't believe that Ms Townsend's opinion is more valuable because she writes for a newspaper, nor (like so many bloggers) do I believe my own is more important either. That's not the way it works.

Keep trying, maybe you'll convince yourself that your comments are funny.

I just feel saddened that these blogs which could be discussing the merits or otherwise of the individual points that Ms Townsend puts forward, are instead populated by those whose only response is to trot out condemnations of Ms Townsend's lifestyle. It's even sadder when the comments are coming from those who purport to be feminists.

Why does there have to be a single "right" role for women? It's wrong when it was the old "wife/mother/don't even think of working", and it's wrong when it's anything else. For crying out loud, I don't think Ms Townsend is saying ALL women must do what she does, or feel the way she feels. If I thought that for one second, I wouldn't want to read her columns or this blog, because they would be boring. Freedom of choice of lifestyle means what it says on the tin. You can't be in favour of it and then carp on if someone doesn't live the way you would want them to.

Well Mark L that is the problem. I do not want women to be promiscuos, but only women are called sluts. When you guys sleep around, you are never called sluts. Only women are blamed for promiscuos behaviour. Actually a lot of us know what guys think, we are not all promiscuos. Unfortunately the media is responsible for the unhealthy sex lives of not just women but men also. Virgins are ridiculed, have too little sex and you are frigid, have too much and you are a slut. Guys are seen as loosers if they want to wait until marriage to have sex. This is all hollywood's doing. Guys are never called names, women should not be either. And Mark if you are not going to call your guy friends sluts for sleeping around, you have no right to treat and think of women in that manner.

I hate that women are being promiscious, I want them to have healthy meaningful sex lives but I will not tolerate them being called sluts or whores. Men are never called these, and if they are it is some kind of a badge of honour.

To AT, you said you lost any respect for your ex-wife because she was promiscuos. So are you yourself promiscuos, if yes then you have no right to think of your ex-wife a slut, or hold her to a different standard than you hold yourself.

To the other Mark who said if you don't want to be called a bimbo don't act like one. Right! When are dumb men going to be given degrading titles such as bimbos.

If a beautiful (beautiful by the usual pathetic standard set by society) women is smart she is seen as a bimbo. Women who don't meet society's standard of beauty are only seen as smart because well they are not fuckable. Women are always judged by whether they are fuckable or not. And NO it is not women's fault, what is responsible is the sexism directed at women by men.