Friday, February 27, 2009

In light of Alex Chan’s parody of “Forbidden Fruit,” I have decided its finally time to air my grievances with The Denisonian’s new sex column. Firstly, people don’t want to read about spicing up their sex lives in the school’s newspaper, they have Cosmo for that. People who read sex columns either want to read about some lucky writers smutty, graphic sexploits, or awkward questions they were too afraid to ask themselves. The thing is, people who read sex columns are rarely people who are in relationships and actually having sex, they are people who want to have sex, and think about having sex, and talk about having sex. Therefore, articles about how to make sex more interesting in relationships are totally boring. The people in relationships don’t need to read about having sex, they are having sex. This is college, they don’t give a shit about whether or not they’re doing tantric whatever, they care that they are getting some as often as possible. Give us something that makes us feel a little guilty. Hell, if The Denisonian won’t, I will.

Secondly, if you are going to write a sex column, as least have the balls to put your name on it. I mean really, are you afraid of people knowing you know how to have good sex? Shoot, I practically preach that shit, why the hell wouldn’t you want potential partners to know you know what you’re doing? More importantly, using a pseudonym makes it look like its not ok to write or speak frankly about sex--like knowledge of sex is bad--and I just don’t think that’s a view that should be encouraged. I don’t think sex is ever something to be ashamed of and the writers of a sex column should be the last people to enforce that view, even by accident.

Finally, I don’t think everything about “Forbidden Fruit” is bad. I think it’s great that the column is sometimes directed towards men. There aren’t enough references for our boys and I definitely don’t mind their being told how to last longer. Given that the sex column market is so biased towards women I’m glad that we’ve got one men can read. It should be ok for men to talk about sex in ways that don’t include the phrase “tapped that,” and though many men won’t admit it, they probably have just as many questions about mechanics and pleasure as women do. For this reason, (I’ll say it again) the male author shouldn’t be afraid of putting his name on an informative piece for his fellow man.

Really, it never bothers me to read about sex, but I really think that the Denisonian should be going about it differently. Those awkward questions can be helpful and informative, and stories of sexploits might increase readership, lord knows The Denisonian needs it. If they have an interest in a legitimate sex column by a writer who’s not afraid to put her name on it, they should look me up.

“A” for effort Denisonian,
-Rorie Dean
8288

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