Even amateur Web pornographers know the truth: Talk dirty and the masses will come. Sex, in all shapes and sizes, has long been the preeminent community-building tool on the Net. But in recent weeks, high-brow online zines - like Salon, MSN's Mint, and "mature" reader site Third Age - have increasingly started to go below the belt by adding sexperts to their cache of quality writers. And with Thursday�s collapse of the CDA, this raunchier edge may signal a new fearlessness about explicit content online.
At quick glance, the proliferation of pillowtalk is building to a fever pitch. Salon, which already carries two sex-oriented columns, by Courtney Weaver and Camille Paglia, last Friday added a column by sex writer and political firebrand Susie Bright called "Sexpert Opinion." MSN's Channel 5 zine Mint started a sex advice column, "Heavy Petting Zoo" by author and ex-prostitute Lisa Carver in May. And Third Age is now running a Q&A with sexuality researcher Linda Ade-Ridder titled "Still Sexy After All These Years."
But the columns aren't part of a strategy to exploit their readers' more prurient interests, says Salon senior editor Gary Kamiya, who edits Weaver's popular "Unzipped" column. "We didn't [add a sex columnist] in order to survive," he says. "People are just perennially interested in things having to do with sex."
Though Bright says the column gives her "a wide berth" to write about the cultural scene, her first piece aims squarely at the center of sexual politics. Her first column, "Sexperts Who Love too Much," describes the interview with a puerile television producer who "became noticeably inarticulate about the subjects closest to his panty line."
For Bright, the Net offers a unique space for honest discussion without the tedium of traditional magazines. "The rest of the media seems oddly out of touch or endlessly titillating about sexuality," says Bright. Us and People, she says, "are just filled with anecdotes that just tease you and leave you with their anxieties about why you're not Cindy Crawford."
Bright, who has long encountered trouble with censorship, may have found a home for her most frank prose on the Net. Though her last three pieces of freelance journalism for magazines were killed because of advertisers' concerns, she doesn't have "investors breathing down her neck" at Salon.
Advertisers, says Kamiya, are quickly learning the differences about what is acceptable on the Web. "[Frank sex talk] is very accepted within this subculture," says Kamiya, "and advertisers also like [high-traffic] numbers, so it's a double-edged sword."
Lisa Carver says audiences are desperate for frank advice. In the first hour after her column's initial posting, Carver got 51 email responses, the most ever for Mint, she says. Mint is clearly hoping to expand the audience for Carver's work. Her column, which was intended to run biweekly, now runs weekly - and the editors have doubled her salary. Surprisingly, censorship has not been a problem for Carver, though MSN is a subscriber service. "The only thing they ever object to is violence against women," she adds, while other raunchy material has slipped by untouched.
But the zines do run the danger of allowing their ribald additions to dominate their content entirely. "We're not aiming to be driven by sexual commentary," says Kamiya, noting that Salon won't be adding anymore spice to the mix. "We've maxed out columns on sex."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
