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Yay,
sex journalism! Winners and judges celebrate the Sexies
in New York City.
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Better
Journalism, Better Sex
Miriam
Axel-Lute will not be giving out crystal dildos anytime soon,
no matter how much the nation’s reporters deserve them. But,
she wants to encourage journalists to impartially cover the
hot and sticky issues of sexuality with her brainchild, the
Sex-Positive Journalism Awards. Although friends suggested
that she should go with the flashy phallic symbol, she stuck
with a more traditional award format of plaques and certificates.
“These
awards should be something that any traditional journalist
would be proud to hang on their wall,” Axel-Lute said. “This
is not an award for sex journalists; it’s an award for journalists
who cover sex responsibly.”
Axel-Lute, former news editor for Metroland and current
contributing writer, got the idea for the awards, nicknamed
the Sexies, in 2004. In her Metroland story “Who Will
Speak for Bare Ass Beach,” she reported on the threat to close
a 60-year-old nude beach on the Poestenkill River that had
become a gay hook-up spot. A homophobic journalist might have
taken up the city of Troy’s cause, interviewing the area’s
shocked parents or opinionated religious leaders and leaving
the actual subjects of the article essentially voiceless.
She chose to stick to the standards of reporting that she
would follow if she were covering any other story. “To me
a news story that has sexual content isn’t particularly different.
If you have a news story, it’s not at face any different from
anything else. You have to ask all the hard questions, find
out what the motivations are and get past the sound bites.”
“The
point is that people’s own prejudices get in the way,” she
said. “If you’re covering the environment or housing, people
tell you to go look it up and learn about it. But we don’t
do that with sexuality. If you don’t understand the difference
between BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) and
abuse, you can’t write an accurate article. If you don’t educate
them, then you give this misleading perception of an entire
community.”
According to Axel-Lute, sex-positive journalism is “not just
someone saying ‘Yay sex!’ It’s more detailed than that. It
can be a story about something that’s a problem, but if you
report it objectively then it still counts for the award.”
Featuring articles from papers like the Miami Herald,
The New York Times, and Washington Post, the
award is given for several categories: daily newspapers, other
news publications, features, columns, sex-themed publications,
and opinions. Judges included sex columnist Dan Savage, sex
therapist Marty Klein and journalist Judith Levine.
The inaugural first-place winner in the daily category was
Jill Bauer’s article “Never Too Old for Sex,” an article about
the sex lives of the over-50-somethings that appeared in the
Miami Herald. Axel-Lute explained that she was especially
eager to receive entries from daily papers because they are
the publications that reach the most people, and have the
most pressure to avoid explicit language and topics that are
“too icky to cover.”
“If
we don’t talk about it accurately and objectively, then people
think they’re alone,” she said. “They don’t realize they are
normal. But if the newspapers won’t come out and call it as
ridiculous as it is, then [sexual puritans] get this extra
power to have control over people’s sex lives.”
Though the award is in its infancy, Axel-Lute hopes to see
article submissions to the Sexies increase fivefold. She wants
it to be an award for journalists to aspire to, something
that they would be proud to put on their resume, or at least
something that might come up in a journalism class.
Of course, if the Sexies have trouble catching on, the organizers
can just ask the religious right for a leg up.
“Somebody
suggested that we send a press release to Morality in the
Media so they could get all indignant about it, then that
would get us more press,” Axel-Lute said. “We should do that
next year. But I don’t think we have yet reached the stage
where we’re high-profile enough for people to get too worked
up about—that can be our goal.”
—Allie
Garcia
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