Sex Columns Need Value, Not Dirt

The first edition of George Washington University’s student newspaper this year brought two surprises for me, a new graduate student.

One, the newspaper featured a column called “Let’s Talk about Sex.” (All right!) Two, the first sex column was a dirty, clichéd, likely made-up story about sex and the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week. (Excuse me?)

Is that what the GW Hatchet intends for “Let’s Talk about Sex?” If so, let’s not.

The author — writing under the pseudonym King Salmon — starts out by saying he wants to disprove the thought that men only think about sex, but he concludes with the statement that men only think about sex unless it’s Shark Week. In between, he writes about a booty call, a tongue ring, and a mid-sex rejection of a woman in favor of watching Shark Week programming.

Maybe the Hatchet didn’t give King Salmon the column to challenge stereotypes or gender roles or to talk about STDs or sexual harassment. Recounting real sexual experiences can be enlightening. But this writer’s dramatized, fictionalized story says nothing constructive about sex or about people. If King Salmon doesn’t have anything real to say about sex, why give him a column?

I’m not arguing for censorship here but rather for a proper place for King Salmon’s dirty stories. He is free to publish a blog or a Facebook note for the viewing (dis)pleasure of his friends, but his column doesn’t have any value and therefore doesn’t belong in the student newspaper. A column, regardless of the topic, should at least add to the discourse.

I also take issue with allowing the writer use a pseudonym. To my knowledge, the sex columnist is the only one allowed to write anonymously at the Hatchet. What kind of message does that send regarding conversations about sex? Allowing a pseudonym for a sex columnist only adds credence to the argument that we’re not supposed to talk about sex.

Being open and genuine about sex and writing under your own name in a public forum such as the campus newspaper may sound scary until you consider that everyone who writes a political column or about issues like racism, sexism, or classism also opens herself or himself up to critique without the cloak of anonymity. Sex is personal — but so is talking about who you are and what you believe in.

I get (or at least I think I get) that the column was supposed to be funny. Feminist graduate students laugh about sex, too. Sometimes we even laugh as we’re writing a letter in response to a column that shouldn’t be in our campus newspaper.

But we didn’t laugh during King Salmon’s column. And, as a woman in my program said, he ruined Shark Week for us.

This blog post was written by AAUW Communications Fellow Elizabeth Owens, a master’s student in women’s studies and public policy at George Washington University.