Dear Readers:
Doc’s colleague, Kelly McBride, has provoked a brouhaha with her suggestion that journalists might want to find a way to write about sex without reference to celebrity or criminality. Her detractors argue that sex ain’t news.
But neither is race. And consider how much ground was broken when The New York Times reported, in an extended series, the ways in which the differences of race are experienced in America. In fact, Dr. Ink once heard Gerald Boyd, the editor of that series, say that the only other topic he could think of that would lend itself to such in-depth and unconventional investigation was sex.
Now Dr. Ink is no expert on sex. Just ask his dominating wife Inka. But he is curious, so he could imagine the ultimate newspaper series on sex, reported through these frames:
- Frequency: As influenced by gender, orientation, age, culture, profession, and health.
- Quality: What makes it good (physically, emotionally) and who defines goodness.
- Representations: In art, language, literature, advertising, pornography, erotica, homilies.
- Places: Bedrooms, bordellos, bars, spas, health clubs, jail cells, back seats, and many less conventional locations.
- Businesses: Who makes money from sex, legally and illegally.
- The Arc of Age: How sex is experienced and understood by the old and the young, and how drugs, legal and illegal, may influence this.
- Sex as Metaphor: Sound technicians use male and female plugs; mystics and poets experience ecstasy with a higher power.
- Procreation: Whether reproductive technology will continue to disassociate sex and procreation, and how might things become better and worse as a result.
- Chastity: Anyone left in the world who sees this as a virtue?
- Where can Dr. Ink meet some groovy chicks?
(Upon reading #10, the oh-so-young Kelly McBride asked Dr. Ink to define “groovy chick.” Doc’s answer was to refer her to the not-so-obscure objects of desire that caught the eye of Greg Brady, — a.k.a Johnny Bravo — the oldest brother on “The Brady Bunch.”)
[ Add your ideas for Doc’s comprehensive series on “Sex in America.” ]
