Sex-Positive Coverage of Negative Sex News

[miriamjoyce]

As you're thinking about what to submit to the 2009 Sexies, I wanted to make a specific call for well-done news stories about "negative sex news."

What do I mean? In short, when people hear "sex-positive journalism," they tend to think of things like sympathetic profiles of sexual subcultures, or coverage of good news about legal defense of our sexual freedom, or myth-dispelling coverage of good sex research.

All of these things are awesome and we want to see more of them.

But there's another place where we need better reporting about sex: when things do go wrong. We can't pretend that sex is always good or that news about it is always cheery. And when it's not, it gets in the news. Think about these scenarios:

• A beloved priest is accused of child abuse and those accusing him keep talking about "these gay priests."
• A sexual relationship ends up in court and one person is saying it was consensual kink and the other is saying it was abuse.
• Neighbors are complaining that people going to a private swingers party at a local inn are disruptive and loud-and immoral.

In each of these situations-and countless others-a sex-savvy and responsible journalist can provide a service for readers by giving them the tools to sort out tangled issues and by pointing out when the actors in a story are mixing up different issues due to their own biases. Journalists can explain that being gay does not correlate with abusing children, describe the hallmarks of a consensual BDSM arrangement so actual abuse can be identified, and write in such a way that sorts out true nuisance problems from conceptual discomfort.

This is hard work to do, often thankless, done on short news deadlines rather than fun feature schedules, and yet it is crucial. We strongly encourage writers and readers to notice and submit stories on topics such as these that get it right, are accurate and fair, and increase understanding in their readers rather than hysteria.