No titillation here, move on

I’ll be straight with you: I want to write about sex – and have done so in the past – but I have absolutely no longing to titillate or talk about my own sex life. So there won’t be any pictures of me perched on a desk peering over my glasses here.

Are sexy glasses necessary to be a self-proclaimed 'sexpert'?

This is because I also want to write about things like climate change and health issues unrelated to sex, and I am afraid that to become a “sexpert“ would mean I wasn’t taken seriously. In a paper published in Sexual and Relationship Therapy, authors Petra Boynton and Will Callaghan state: “Journalists do not value sex as a topic.”

The dilemma is that there are very important topics to cover that fall under the umbrella of sex or sexuality, that just aren’t being treated as rigorously as other health stories in magazines. Boynton is concerned about:

“…sex and relationship advice (that) is neither critical nor evidence-based in an era where sex education is poor, global gender in equalities remain, but where the wider culture is becoming increasingly commercial and sexualised” in a ‘Sex Education in the Media’, a paper in the journal Feminist Media Studies.

Apart from inadequate sex education according to young people in the UK, other related issues are:

Teen pregnancy

Teen pregnancy rates are down 13 per cent between 1998 and 2008, but not slashed in half, as Tony Blair aimed to do. Is prudishness to blame? Dr Max Pemberton thinks it is part of the problem. If so that’s a social construct that can be fought through the media. In Canada, a report credits the 40 per cent decrease in teen births and abortions to more accepting attitudes towards teen sexuality . This reminds me of my friend Louis Jagger’s observation: “…in order to seem both smutty and moral, media companies must PRESENT it [sex] as naughty and all a bit underhand.” So far, so sordid.

Or are teen births a socio-economic issue that’s more down to inequality and class structures than a squeamish culture? This report by on ‘Teenage pregnancy and parenthood’ by NICE is worth a sqizz.

STIs

Also, sexually transmitted infections are still on the increase. Health Protection Agency stats estimate that a quarter of the 83,000 people living with HIV in the UK by the end of 2008 were unaware of their status. Although STIs are growing most quickly among the under-25s, over 25s are not immune to catching herpes, chlamydia or other infections.

Happy days

But why just focus the social problems associated with sex – isn’t emotional wellbeing also important? Sex can make us happy, even happier than money (over a certain earnings threshold). Happiness aside, if we treated sex like any other human function, such as eating for example, wouldn’t it be a more mature culture? In a video on the Times website (no paywall) journalist Alice Thomson argues that we should have better sex education and a more relaxed attitude to discussing sex with children, like the Dutch, to right social miseries such as high abortion rates and a rise in STIs.

Are you qualified?

So why is sex seen as journalism-lite that anyone with sexual experience can write (Some journalists think anyone can be an expert in sex if they, uh, have it, write Boynton and Callaghan)?

Annie Sprinkle unpicks objectification

Oh it’s a chicken-and-egg question that one. Is it because we are prudes and therefore unlikely to confront the issues and their importance in people’s lives? Do we really think sex isn’t important in our lives or in society? Or is it because so-called sexperts, especially in men’s magazines are sexed-up to sell the advice and therefore not taken seriously?

Taking this sexualisation to the extreme is a pornstar/ human sexuality PhD Annie Sprinkle’s interpretation of an 80s pin-up, which does of good job of de-glamourising the construction of sexuality. See left.

But one thing that men’s and women’s magazines have in common is that sex ‘gurus’ are mostly all attractive women. One ad for an agony aunt for Real magazine in 2007 only stipulated that the advisor be “well-established” and “attractive”, according to Boynton.

There’s nothing wrong with being an attractive person or even a famous person giving sex and relationships advice, as long as you can communicate evidence-based and critically evaluated information, and understand the different kinds of experts specialising in sex that are appropriate to seek information, guidance and quotes from.

Sexpert vs sexologist

Being a self-branded sexpert is world apart from being a sexologist. Sexologists are authorities on sex because they are: sex researchers, sexual health professionals, sex counsellors, or sex educators.

But if being attractive and sexually experienced are the only perceived neccessities for writing about sex, this is far from ideal. You can have a lot of sex and have very limited experience or ill-informed attitudes. For example, you might make assumptions about a person’s sexuality. Ergo, having experience does not necessarily mean that you will give good advice.

Even writing a book on the subject fails to make you an expert. Everywhere you look at the bottom of features and in journalist’s biographies they mention they are authors. This is media currency for ‘expert’. But, on what facts do they base their advice, and how do they analyse those facts? As Boynton writes in the journal Sex Education:

“Even those who have written books… may still be promoting ideas that are outdated, uncritical, prejudiced or even downright wrong.”

All of these rather dim reflections on the state of the media throw me into turmoil. As I said at the start: I don’t want to damage my reputation by throwing on the sexpert mantle (or should that be unbuttoning?). But a part of me wonders – is it better to fight the general lack of editorial standards as far as sex advice is concerned from the inside? Or try and promote evidence-based, critically aware sex advice by calling myself an anti-sexpert?

Boynton, P. (2007). Advice for sex advisors: a guide for ‘agony aunts’, relationship therapists and sex educators who want to work with the media Sex Education, 7 (3), 309-326 DOI: 10.1080/14681810701448119

Boynton, P., & Callaghan, W. (2006). Understanding media coverage of sex: A practical discussion paper for sexologists and journalists Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 21 (3), 333-346 DOI: 10.1080/14681990600798770

Arthurs, J., & Zacharias, U. (2006). Introduction Feminist Media Studies, 6 (4), 539-556 DOI: 10.1080/14680770600990051

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