In a paper for the British Journal of Psychology, researchers have found that lads’ mags are perhaps not as much ‘laddish fun’ as their editors would like to think.  Taking a selection of quotes about women from FHM, Nuts, Zoo and Loaded, and a selection of quotes about women from convicted rapists, most people who took part in the study were unable to distinguish between the two.

Indeed, according to the summary, when asked to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, the quotes from the lads’ mags were rated by both men and women as more derogatory.

Women have been complaining that these magazines glorify the worst excesses of violent misogyny for a while, but those complaints were generally dismissed as outbursts of hysteria from fun-killing prudes who call for a fainting couch at the suggestion of a nipple.

Maybe this research will show that our complaints were justified – this isn’t cheeky scamp laddishness, but hostile sexism with a few pictures of cars thrown in.