I recall some time around 1994 or 95 reading my first loaded article. The magazine had been left in the pub in which I worked. IThe article was a report from some idiot who had joined a Camel Trophy land rover going through some jungle or other. It left me wide eyed and open jawed. And inspired. I departed from bar work and had the next 20 years at sea, jungle, desert, mountain, valley. Thanks, loaded.
I recently finished a history of Prohibition in the United States, and one of the most repeated motifs was the way in which Prohibition did not eliminate drinking culture but rather vulgarized it by removing its legitimate outlets. The quality of alcohol went down and so did the quality of the people drinking it, regardless of social class. Once you ban something, all transgressions against the ban become equal; rotgut is just as illegal as Glenlivet, and much more readily available. If certain impulses are ineradicable, then banning them simply opens the door for them to be expressed in the most vulgar and base way possible. The penalty’s the same either way, and the lowest common denominator often seems much more fun.
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Very enjoyable, easy read. Made me nostalgic for the days when censors went after porn and rock music.
Studio Largo
2 months ago
Fed up of? With all due respect, Dr Stock, what the hell?
Thanks for the support. As you say, we hold writers to a higher standard.
Billy Bob
2 months ago
Looking back, what a happy time the 90’s were. Perhaps it’s my rose tinted glasses, or the fact I was hammered for half of it, but everything just seemed so much more carefree and less judgemental. The lads mags just summed it up nicely, basically Men Behaving Badly in print form
Hear, hear! If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t really there? Maybe true of Mick Jagger and his middle class mates all flouncing about in Carnaby Street. The 90s was were it was really at. God, I miss those days.
Then you really would have loved the 70s. We neither remember them or feel inclined to brag about that fact. 😉
Fafa Fafa
2 months ago
Thank you. Reminded me of my 1990s when, doing something stupid and slightly crass again, my gf made some comment to the effect that “men are assholes”, to which I came back saying something like that my behavior was an example of “male mystique”. As a counterpart to “female mystique”, which is something presumably to be admiringly accepted by males but understood only by females. No, I was told, only females have mystique, males are simply assholes. (Now, of course, it just proved my point…)
Jonathan Andrews
2 months ago
Kathleen Stock seems like a woman who put you in your place if she thinks you’re behaving badly, being rude or talking rubbish. She seems a woman who really cares that women get a fair chance and will stand up for their rights. She’s married to a woman.
But she also seems to like men and appreciate men. She seems to be as much on our side as on women’s side.
She’d be great company in the pub. I really enjoy her work
She doesn’t suffer fools gladly and she’s a philosopher who often writes on topics in terms of right and wrong, which is uncommon. She’s also not a one trick pony. “Material Girls” is an easy to understand critique of the trans movement, whereas “Only Imagine” is a dense, academic work on the nature of fiction writing.
That’s not hard. I understand quantum physics better than I understand women and I’ve been married to one for years
2 plus 2 equals 4
2 months ago
I’ve no idea what possible purpose an online version of Loaded would serve these days when everything from mildly titillating celebrity photos to hard core porn is available for free on t’internet.
Andrew H
2 months ago
Refreshing, amusing and spot on yet again from Professor Stock.
Jon Morrow
2 months ago
Brilliant review, I reckon a new version of Loaded would be wise to offer Kathleen some column inches.
Loaded Reloaded? If they’re taking the general perspective of someone like podcaster Chris Williamson it would be worth it, he’s doing good work. If it’s being written by and for woke millennials it’ll fail.
I’d have put it more as a late Gen X thing in the earlier days. But if not what hell happened to millennials to make them so wet.
Matt M
2 months ago
Looking back, what strikes me about the Nineties is how British the culture was then. Loaded, Viz, Blur, the Happy Mondays, etc. The were all homegrown – and regional – rather than being US imports. We loved Tarantino and Nirvana, of course, but the British culture was dominant over here. It was the last decade before the great global homogenisation? Bloody internet!
In my opinion one of the hallmarks of the British culture back then was that there was a range of opinions and attitudes rolling around together quite happily.
Since then British culture has been colonised (see what I did there?) with a developed world, one note, grey, only-what’s-permitted, auto-tune, collective sneer.
Ordinary people still manage to get some joy out of life, but they are so very careful not to draw attention to the fact.
Online porn and lad mags is an interesting dynamic in marketplace competition. In the 2000s Playboy and Penthouse went softcore around the time dial up internet gave way to much faster internet speeds. But the market was already saturated with magazines that showed boobs (covered or uncovered) but not genitalia and had articles too edgy to appear in normal periodicals. Circulation kept dwindling as a result. In other words, everyone who said he subscribed to Playboy “for the articles” was of course obviously lying.
anthony killeen
2 months ago
I have to admit I loved Loaded when it came out in the mid 90’s as someone in their early 20’s in the cultural backwater of West Cumbria. It had some really great writing. The mixture of travel, drinking stories, football and Britpop was ideal for that cultural moment.
Mike Downing
2 months ago
Prior to the advent of Loaded, the ‘New Man’ was meant to be a mild-mannered, somewhat post-hippyish, bearded, semi-androgynous specimen who (never actually saw this myself) knitted on the Tube on the way to work.
Clearly, that could never last.
JOHN KANEFSKY
2 months ago
Nothing wrong with nipples, I have two myself.
Context is everything.
Jules Anjim
2 months ago
Men of the heterosexual variety generally like looking at naked women, at naked women having sex with men or other naked women or even just with themselves. Is that wrong ? Is that so wrong ? And so what if men like to look at women’s breasts ? And arses. Breasts and arses together, preferably. And a bit of minge if you don’t mind. Is that wrong ? Is that so wrong ? To want to see women naked. To see their breasts and arses and minge. All the time. Is that really so wrong ?
Serious-minded women have always hated – and when I say “hated” I mean a visceral, furious loathing – the fact that even serious-minded and intelligent men are perfectly happy to put up with complete morons in feminine form as long as they possess the attributes you describe.
I have never been able to decide whether the fact that women tend not to behave the same is a failing of men (as women maintain), or actually a failing on the female side. I’d say there are arguments in favour of both sides.
As for the part where men tend to like looking at the naked female form, well that one always ends up in vacuous arguments about objectification, which I consider idiotic. The entire basis of human prosperity is specialisation of production and diversification of consumption, and specialisation is just another way of saying that a human as an economic unit is objectified in terms of what he or she can produce. Thus objectification, far from being something that only ever happens when a woman’s physical appearance is promoted over the totality of her personhood, is something that happens to every single human on a daily basis and is welcomed by each person as the principle means by which they prosper.
I realise that I digress somewhat, but it’s in support of the wider issue that men should not be made to feel guilty over how they appreciate the female form.
I miss the old days of Benny Hill and the Playboy mansion. Fun and fantasy.But then again I remember the 60’s and being disappointed that Free Love wasn’t really free. Maybe a couple of times. Maybe video tape made hard core X-rated movies too easy and the addiction became in some way mentally harmful for a few guys including Middle Eastern dictators.
Why bother with magazines, the real thing is just so much better, and afterwards they can cook you a
pizza and open a few beers for you.
Alex Lekas
2 months ago
Society was more tolerable when we didn’t take ourselves quite so seriously, weighing every word for possible but unintentional offense, and being able to laugh at ourselves if not others.
John Riordan
2 months ago
“In getting rid of the Nineties loaded lad, we did not get anything much better in his place. The arc of masculinity, it turns out, does not always bend towards justice.”
Well no, and there is a simple reason why it has not proved possible to improve men by any of the means attempted by Progressive activism: all forms of such activism make people less free, not more. That’s why the officially-received version of masculinity keep failing to satisfy: they are men who cannot be themselves. And as long as feminists have any say in the matter, we’ll have useless men as the answer to their questions.
Luckily, for most men, all this nonsense applies only at the bien-pensant level and doesn’t affect us.
John Galt Was Correct
2 months ago
I remember the 1990’s as being a lot of fun. One of the reasons we did a lot of the things that we did, and read stuff like Loaded was because we were fed up of being told what to do, what kind of men we should be, by entitled people who thought they had the right to change others to be as they wanted them, and just said ‘f**k it’ and did what we wanted instead. Younger Males now do it differently. they just don’t get involved and live their own lives and ignore the people trying to tell them what to do, because there does always seem to be someone, usually Female, telling men what they should be doing.
Alphonse Pfarti
2 months ago
Many disappearing comments here today. Mine and threads to which I replied. Into the entropy well they go. Nothing more than the occasional use of non-profane slang or euphemisms which were entirely in keeping with the tone of the article.
Guess everything is censored nowadays..perhaps it’s a cycle of censorship that will be awash in a new wave of something else later. X
N Satori
1 month ago
A somewhat patronising (or should that be matronising?) lecture by a lesbian feminist in a same-sex marriage on the topic of blokey-blokes as an endangered species.
Not a surprise really. I always expected that when feminists had completely hollowed out the masculine world their next move would be to provide a definition of ‘manliness’ that suited the new woman and (as women always do) bemoan the failure of men to live up to it. Men themselves would have little to say in the creation of that definition.
I recall some time around 1994 or 95 reading my first loaded article. The magazine had been left in the pub in which I worked. IThe article was a report from some idiot who had joined a Camel Trophy land rover going through some jungle or other. It left me wide eyed and open jawed. And inspired. I departed from bar work and had the next 20 years at sea, jungle, desert, mountain, valley. Thanks, loaded.
“I departed from bar work and had the next 20 years at sea, jungle, desert, mountain, valley.”
You joined the Royal Marines?
Nah he just got lost on his way home
I recently finished a history of Prohibition in the United States, and one of the most repeated motifs was the way in which Prohibition did not eliminate drinking culture but rather vulgarized it by removing its legitimate outlets. The quality of alcohol went down and so did the quality of the people drinking it, regardless of social class. Once you ban something, all transgressions against the ban become equal; rotgut is just as illegal as Glenlivet, and much more readily available. If certain impulses are ineradicable, then banning them simply opens the door for them to be expressed in the most vulgar and base way possible. The penalty’s the same either way, and the lowest common denominator often seems much more fun.
Very enjoyable, easy read. Made me nostalgic for the days when censors went after porn and rock music.
Fed up of? With all due respect, Dr Stock, what the hell?
I say I’m fed up of something, what’s your point? People in Britain have different ways of talking in case you haven’t noticed
It’s fed up with, wherever you live.
With is probably the “correct” way of writing it, but of would be much more common when spoken in my opinion
Wouldn’t matter if we were all still hammered half the time. I miss the 90s, too. What days they were.
Agreed (not aggrieved)
Fed up with the grammar police diverting the conversation. Yep fed up of those people
This is a particularly bad and obvious one though. I think we should hold writers to a high standard.
Not in Hull, luv.
Very sloppy and low brow.
Thanks for the support. As you say, we hold writers to a higher standard.
Looking back, what a happy time the 90’s were. Perhaps it’s my rose tinted glasses, or the fact I was hammered for half of it, but everything just seemed so much more carefree and less judgemental. The lads mags just summed it up nicely, basically Men Behaving Badly in print form
Hear, hear! If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t really there? Maybe true of Mick Jagger and his middle class mates all flouncing about in Carnaby Street. The 90s was were it was really at. God, I miss those days.
I was there in the 60s a lived in Brighton. That I remember them is a minor miracle, but if you missed them you have my sympathy.
If you liked the 90s, you would have loved the 80s.
Then you really would have loved the 70s. We neither remember them or feel inclined to brag about that fact. 😉
Thank you. Reminded me of my 1990s when, doing something stupid and slightly crass again, my gf made some comment to the effect that “men are assholes”, to which I came back saying something like that my behavior was an example of “male mystique”. As a counterpart to “female mystique”, which is something presumably to be admiringly accepted by males but understood only by females. No, I was told, only females have mystique, males are simply assholes. (Now, of course, it just proved my point…)
Kathleen Stock seems like a woman who put you in your place if she thinks you’re behaving badly, being rude or talking rubbish. She seems a woman who really cares that women get a fair chance and will stand up for their rights. She’s married to a woman.
But she also seems to like men and appreciate men. She seems to be as much on our side as on women’s side.
She’d be great company in the pub. I really enjoy her work
She doesn’t suffer fools gladly and she’s a philosopher who often writes on topics in terms of right and wrong, which is uncommon. She’s also not a one trick pony. “Material Girls” is an easy to understand critique of the trans movement, whereas “Only Imagine” is a dense, academic work on the nature of fiction writing.
That’s a shame. I’m a fool.
“Let me get you another drink and we can discuss more opinions I already agree with.”
Oh do be quiet for once, you’re as boring and predictable as the “Wheyfaced” types Professor Stock refers to here.
But I guess we should put up with you, mostly, you’re in a minority, and you only confirm what we already know about whuzzy leftists.
Yes she does seem to understand men better than most and most certainly better than men understand women.
That’s not hard. I understand quantum physics better than I understand women and I’ve been married to one for years
I’ve no idea what possible purpose an online version of Loaded would serve these days when everything from mildly titillating celebrity photos to hard core porn is available for free on t’internet.
Refreshing, amusing and spot on yet again from Professor Stock.
Brilliant review, I reckon a new version of Loaded would be wise to offer Kathleen some column inches.
Said Finbar…
Fnarr fnarr
Loaded Reloaded? If they’re taking the general perspective of someone like podcaster Chris Williamson it would be worth it, he’s doing good work. If it’s being written by and for woke millennials it’ll fail.
Millennials were the ones originally reading it first time around, along with Gen X
I’d have put it more as a late Gen X thing in the earlier days. But if not what hell happened to millennials to make them so wet.
Looking back, what strikes me about the Nineties is how British the culture was then. Loaded, Viz, Blur, the Happy Mondays, etc. The were all homegrown – and regional – rather than being US imports. We loved Tarantino and Nirvana, of course, but the British culture was dominant over here. It was the last decade before the great global homogenisation? Bloody internet!
In my opinion one of the hallmarks of the British culture back then was that there was a range of opinions and attitudes rolling around together quite happily.
Since then British culture has been colonised (see what I did there?) with a developed world, one note, grey, only-what’s-permitted, auto-tune, collective sneer.
Ordinary people still manage to get some joy out of life, but they are so very careful not to draw attention to the fact.
Well said.
Where did all these hundreds of thousands of slim girls with big ‘bits’ come from?
Essex ?
Glasgow?
I can only assume you have never visited!
Correct.
Fair enough. I won’t shatter your illusions regarding the fair maidens of Glasgow then.
From the plastic surgeon’s clinic
I heard they were Bristol’s
The nation’s less stellar high schools.
Online porn and lad mags is an interesting dynamic in marketplace competition. In the 2000s Playboy and Penthouse went softcore around the time dial up internet gave way to much faster internet speeds. But the market was already saturated with magazines that showed boobs (covered or uncovered) but not genitalia and had articles too edgy to appear in normal periodicals. Circulation kept dwindling as a result. In other words, everyone who said he subscribed to Playboy “for the articles” was of course obviously lying.
I have to admit I loved Loaded when it came out in the mid 90’s as someone in their early 20’s in the cultural backwater of West Cumbria. It had some really great writing. The mixture of travel, drinking stories, football and Britpop was ideal for that cultural moment.
Prior to the advent of Loaded, the ‘New Man’ was meant to be a mild-mannered, somewhat post-hippyish, bearded, semi-androgynous specimen who (never actually saw this myself) knitted on the Tube on the way to work.
Clearly, that could never last.
Nothing wrong with nipples, I have two myself.
Context is everything.
Men of the heterosexual variety generally like looking at naked women, at naked women having sex with men or other naked women or even just with themselves. Is that wrong ? Is that so wrong ? And so what if men like to look at women’s breasts ? And arses. Breasts and arses together, preferably. And a bit of minge if you don’t mind. Is that wrong ? Is that so wrong ? To want to see women naked. To see their breasts and arses and minge. All the time. Is that really so wrong ?
Would you like a Kleenex ?
If you’re done with them
Whatever’s wrong with the curtains?
They’re oddly brittle.
Serious-minded women have always hated – and when I say “hated” I mean a visceral, furious loathing – the fact that even serious-minded and intelligent men are perfectly happy to put up with complete morons in feminine form as long as they possess the attributes you describe.
I have never been able to decide whether the fact that women tend not to behave the same is a failing of men (as women maintain), or actually a failing on the female side. I’d say there are arguments in favour of both sides.
As for the part where men tend to like looking at the naked female form, well that one always ends up in vacuous arguments about objectification, which I consider idiotic. The entire basis of human prosperity is specialisation of production and diversification of consumption, and specialisation is just another way of saying that a human as an economic unit is objectified in terms of what he or she can produce. Thus objectification, far from being something that only ever happens when a woman’s physical appearance is promoted over the totality of her personhood, is something that happens to every single human on a daily basis and is welcomed by each person as the principle means by which they prosper.
I realise that I digress somewhat, but it’s in support of the wider issue that men should not be made to feel guilty over how they appreciate the female form.
I miss the old days of Benny Hill and the Playboy mansion. Fun and fantasy.But then again I remember the 60’s and being disappointed that Free Love wasn’t really free. Maybe a couple of times. Maybe video tape made hard core X-rated movies too easy and the addiction became in some way mentally harmful for a few guys including Middle Eastern dictators.
Why bother with magazines, the real thing is just so much better, and afterwards they can cook you a
pizza and open a few beers for you.
Society was more tolerable when we didn’t take ourselves quite so seriously, weighing every word for possible but unintentional offense, and being able to laugh at ourselves if not others.
“In getting rid of the Nineties loaded lad, we did not get anything much better in his place. The arc of masculinity, it turns out, does not always bend towards justice.”
Well no, and there is a simple reason why it has not proved possible to improve men by any of the means attempted by Progressive activism: all forms of such activism make people less free, not more. That’s why the officially-received version of masculinity keep failing to satisfy: they are men who cannot be themselves. And as long as feminists have any say in the matter, we’ll have useless men as the answer to their questions.
Luckily, for most men, all this nonsense applies only at the bien-pensant level and doesn’t affect us.
I remember the 1990’s as being a lot of fun. One of the reasons we did a lot of the things that we did, and read stuff like Loaded was because we were fed up of being told what to do, what kind of men we should be, by entitled people who thought they had the right to change others to be as they wanted them, and just said ‘f**k it’ and did what we wanted instead. Younger Males now do it differently. they just don’t get involved and live their own lives and ignore the people trying to tell them what to do, because there does always seem to be someone, usually Female, telling men what they should be doing.
Many disappearing comments here today. Mine and threads to which I replied. Into the entropy well they go. Nothing more than the occasional use of non-profane slang or euphemisms which were entirely in keeping with the tone of the article.
“Entropy well” – beautiful. May I use that (with attribution)?
Of course!
Guess everything is censored nowadays..perhaps it’s a cycle of censorship that will be awash in a new wave of something else later. X
A somewhat patronising (or should that be matronising?) lecture by a lesbian feminist in a same-sex marriage on the topic of blokey-blokes as an endangered species.
Not a surprise really. I always expected that when feminists had completely hollowed out the masculine world their next move would be to provide a definition of ‘manliness’ that suited the new woman and (as women always do) bemoan the failure of men to live up to it. Men themselves would have little to say in the creation of that definition.
Who hurt you? Was the divorce so hard? At least you can console yourself knowing that you kid’s lives are so much better no you are out of them.
More sucker bait from sham socialist.