Image via Map Girls.
When I had a porn article in Oprah I was like, whoa, mainstream — but now it’s looking like even the more straitlaced media outlets are ponying up to *finally* viewing sex culture as a constantly relevant set of issues worth covering, in all its myriad forms. And this is a good, *good* thing. Well, we hope it will be anyway — normalizing cultural conversations around sex is one of the main reasons I’m here, and I’m hopeful. Though as we’ve seen with the Phils and the Drews, some sex pundits’ steps go backward instead of forward. That said, let’s check out what’s up at The Nation, where they have a new sex columnist; she’s not new, she’s actually written for The Nation for a while (mostly about sex scandals) so she doesn’t have other sex background, but here’s a few revealing snips from MarketWatch about what the future of this column holds:
I don’t know about you media mavens, but I’ve always suspected that the liberal-leaning Nation, while producing a consistently thought-provoking product, took itself a wee bit (too) seriously publish a sex column. I’ll just come right out and say it: It blows my mind that one of America’s most asexual magazines launched a sex column (and issued a press release about it, to boot).
JoAnn Wypijewski, who is writing the new ‘Carnal Knowledge’ column, sees the exploration of sex as a natural corollary to examining politics. (…) “I don’t think people on the left side of the political spectrum take sex seriously — or seriously enough.”
(…) Good for business
What’s going on here has much more to do with commercial interests than titillation. The Nation, which has a magazine circulation of about 175,000, hopes the topic will boost readership and advertising in all of its platforms. It’s a smart business move.(…) Wypijewski resents any prurient smirking about her sex columns. She points out that sex is a wide-ranging cultural and political force. As she sees it, the subject pervades and influences every aspect of American life, ranging from politics to religion.
In the first sentence of her first column, Wypijewski makes it clear that she intends to attract attention: “In politics as in pop, legions of little girls jumping out of their panties can’t be wrong.” She follows that with: “That’s the vital lesson so far of Election ’08.”
Later on in the column, Wypijewski notes: “The right will no doubt try again to paint Michelle [Obama] as a bomb-thrower and might mine the vein of white fear of unbridled black sexuality that Barack prospected disturbingly close to when he scolded black fathers.”
When I talked to her on the phone last week, Wypijewski explained her philosophy for the column: “I’m not going to write a ‘how-to’ column about sex. This is more about culture and the way in which sex is used. More and more, we see it in terms of scandals, which is a whole other realm. I don’t really have an ‘agenda.’ I think that too often we put issues in boxes — here’s the ‘sex box,’ the ‘really serious political box.'” (…read more, thanks Eve!)
Let’s just hope that Wypijewski doesn’t end up on a list like this one I just found at The Sex Carnival: 5 Sex Experts Who Made the World a Worse Place (To Do It) | Cracked.com.
