The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Porn: How to Make Sex Boring

Posted on | July 19, 2011 | 26 Comments

Susannah Breslin:

Nowadays, I get emails from young journalists asking for leads in the adult business. They want to write a porn story, they say, but they can’t find a way in. Can I help? Increasingly, these inquiries come from young women. Curious, they want to see what it’s like inside the sausage factory.
To a few, I send a reply. Don’t do it, I write. It’s not worth it. Besides, I think to myself, once it gets hold of you, you will never be able to let it go.

Breslin wrote that as part of a series, the most recent being an interview with a middle-aged stripper. Breslin’s remark that many young female journalists “want to write a porn story” reminds me of something I noted a couple weeks ago: “Feminism licenses women writers to get away with stuff that no male writer would dare even attempt.”

That young women are itching to write about the porn business confirms this: What publisher nowadays would pay a male journalist to write about strippers and porn stars? It’s ridiculous to suggest it.

Ever since Gloria Steinem wrote about her stint as a Playboy bunny, there has steadily developed a genre — Empowered Woman Writing Dirty — that has turned into a cliché. It probably jumped the shark in 2003 when Toni Bentley wrote an entire “erotic” book about anal sex, which was actually reviewed in the New York Times.

Breslin is right to warn young female journalists away from that overdone genre. Sex is boring. Write about money, politics or war.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Category: Journalism, Sex

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