By Kate Hefford

“This is a good brand,” says sex blogger Erika Szabo, motioning toward a pair of $50 underwear. They’re silky smooth, dusty blue boxer briefs with an exaggerated bulge. We glance over electrosex gear, sex toys that apply electric stimulation to the genitals. We’re in Priape, a sex shop and gay haven in Toronto’s Church and Wellesley Village. We discuss natural lube (“You should try Sliquid!”), kegels, and BDSM—she says bondage tape is great for first-timers.

Szabo often finds herself in stores like this doing research for her blog, xoxoamore. Like sex columns worldwide, it features sex tips, toy reviews, and date ideas. She also often interjects her personal experiences in her sex toy reviews. Of the Evolved Duo Obsessions Lavish vibrator, she writes that“flipping the toy onto its side and using the textured shaft for clitoral stimulation proved better, but was awkward.” Szabo tells me, “What is so interesting is you have to put yourself out there and try to make it informative.”

Szabo works as a copywriter at the head office of Seduction, a three-storey sex shop that claims to be “North America’s largest adult department store.” She founded her blog in August 2011 with her boss. For Szabo, blogging is a more personal form of journalism, at a time when the mainstream coverage of all things hot and heavy in Canada isn’t exactly turning her on. “Sometimes I think sex journalism can be misguided,” she says. “A lot of it is biased and stereotypical. It’s not aiming for the right hole.”

She’s right: the way magazines cover sex can leave something to be desired. Publications like Best Health, Canadian Living,and Chatelaine are attempting to improve Canadian women’s sex lives, one article at a time. They offer solid information, but they’re so scared of rubbing people the wrong way, they’ve turned sex into sex ed. It’s time for Canadian media to stop being such prudes around anything kinky.

There’s no argument we’ve made progress. Journalists were reminded of how far we’d come last August with the death of Helen Gurley Brown,Cosmopolitan’s eminent editor for 32 years until 1997. Before she took over Cosmo in 1965, it was a literary magazine. She brought sex, “the subject that every woman wanted to know about but nobody talked about, to life, literally, in Cosmo’s pages,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, in reaction to her death. When Brown was hired, she pledged to give how sex was written about a makeover. Her philosophy was: “So you’re single. You can still have sex. You can have a great life. And if you marry…don’t use men to get what you want in life, get it for yourself.”

Journalists today—and Cosmo in particular—are still following her blazing-hot path. Current Cosmo coverlines include “100% Hotter Sex,” “Dirty Sexy Sex,” “His #1 Sex Fantasy,” “Best. Sex. Ever.,” and “What Guys Crave…(Besides Beer and Pizza).” There are still taboo topics, though, in almost all magazines. Body abnormalities, kinks, disabilities, and even mainstream LGBT sex seem not to exist in their glossy pages.

The exception is the weeklies. We can thank the explicit example set by Savage Love. The sex advice column by Dan Savage that appears in a number of Canadian alt-weeklies is syndicated by Seattle’s The Stranger, in which it has been published since 1991. Savage gained popularity when he launched the It Gets Better Project in 2010 after several high-profile teen suicides. More recently, he’s been the star of the MTV showSavage U, on which he visits American universities and answers students’ sex questions with wit and honesty. And he isn’t shy. In the November 1, 2012, column, reader “Completely Utterly Mortified” asks about salining one’s balls. Savage responds with directions: Saline can be injected into the ball sack with a needle to make testicles appear larger. He elaborates that “the inflation process takes about an hour, the effect lasts a day or two, and the sack gradually returns to normal size as the saline is absorbed into the body.” Education, one; judgement, zilch.

Occupying the same real estate in Toronto’s The Grid is a column called Dating Diaries, which gives the real estate back to the readers. Gay, straight, or whatever readers offer their “diaries” of a date they’ve been on recently—and a rating. Nothing is off limits, from tales of blowjobs to one-night stands. On these dates, men say insensitive things like “You failed,” women have filthy apartments, and guys meet up after spotting each other on gay dating sites. “What I love the most is anything that is either unexpected and there’s a crazy twist,” says Kate Carraway, a columnist for The Grid, Vice, and TheGlobe and Mail, who compiles the tales. “[Or] something that is universally wonderful or terrible.” A favourite column of hers involves someone who accidentally made a date with someone she met online but didn’t like, then had a great in-person date. “That to me is perfect,” Carraway says, “because it definitely shows something about dating that is common [which] is something we understand about the randomness of it.”

In February of last year, she wrote an article outlining what we can learn from Dating Diaries, and it’s clear that it subtly provides sex and relationship advice. Where to pick up, what not to say, when to invite your date upstairs…it’s all in there. Weeklies don’t hold back on dirty details. They have the kinky content that their magazine counterparts are lacking. So where do the magazines fit in?

American publications like Elle, Glamour, InStyle, and Cosmo hit Canadian newsstands every month. But the climate is way different up here. While the U.S. mostly spills its sex secrets in fashion magazines, in Canada, it’s often the health and lifestyle titles that are giving “the talk.”

“We’re the trusted resource for if you’re wondering about the G spot, or sexual health, female reproductive health and fertility, those kinds of things,” says Bonnie Munday, editor-in-chief of Best Health, a magazine published by Reader’s Digest Canada aimed at women in their 30s to 50s. “It’s about the whole woman, it’s about all aspects of health, including mental health, sexual health, looking great, feeling great,” says Munday. The magazine often includes readers’ questions for B.C.-based sex and relationship therapist Cheryl Fraser. It also features a column called Girlfriend’s Guide, where women can ask embarrassing body questions. It’s proven so popular that Best Health has compiled it into a book. The magazine doesn’t, however, touch taboo content like fetishes. “We’re kind of driven by what our readers are asking for information about,” says Munday. “We’re covering topics that we think our readers want to hear about from Best Health.”

Sex—as health? Hugh Hefner must be rolling over in his, um, bed. He launched sex into the mainstream when Playboy hit the stands in 1953. But amid the nude centrefolds and photos of Playboy-Bunny-suit-clad women, and despite the fact that the magazine’s noteworthy features showed it was clearly capable of doing great journalism, articles about sex itself weren’t common. Its competition, Penthouse magazine, which launched in the U.S. in 1969, did sometimes feature sex tips, hidden among nude pictorials. But by then, Cosmo had already set the precedent.

In the early 1980s, the lack of accurate coverage was deadly. When mainstream publications ignored the facts about the AIDS epidemic, the harmful stigma arose that it only existed in the gay community. In journalist Randy Shilts’s book And the Band Played On, he reports that “the mass media did not like covering stories about homosexuals and was especially skittish about stories that involved gay sexuality.” The publications considered it a “dirty little joke.” Nowadays, most mainstream publications are solidly on the side of equality—running coverage of bullying and gay celebrities, for example—although many are still heteronormative, which is most obvious in their sex coverage.

Magazines aren’t the only way the public is getting information on how to get off. Who could forget the Sunday Night Sex Show, with sex educator Sue Johanson, which took live call-ins about all aspects of sex until 2005? Certified sex and relationship therapist Rebecca Rosenblat has assumed the mantle, answering viewers’ questions and interviewing experts on her show Sex @ 11 with Rebecca. Since she moved to Canada from India, she’s realized that sex is a taboo subject here.

Rosenblat has noticed a few hot topics in Canadian magazines right now: sexting, cheating, and sex addiction—although sex addiction is being written about inaccurately, as if it were alcoholism, she says. “Then some of the stuff is the same old same old, but people are able to talk about it more openly…like how women are every bit as sexual as men. Which makes my job easier.”

Rosenblat says magazines can be dry about sex, and they get it wrong sometimes. She blames writers using unqualified sources, pointing out that relying on the so-called expertise of other people can lead to inaccuracies. She says that “you go into any kind of a therapist forum [online], and everyone is saying how they were cringing that some person could have given such wrong advice.” One example of bad advice that Rosenblat sees repeatedly online is that men who suffer from erectile dysfunction should drink wine to loosen up. “That’s so irresponsible, because as soon as he has that, circulation will be impacted and chances of getting a boner are close to nil.” She also bristles at the term “sexpert.” “Like, what is that? It could be someone working in a sex shop, or who has decided to write a column. I need to know, what are their credentials?”

Following in Hef’s footsteps, modern men’s magazines rarely talk about sex. Publications like Sharp, GQ, and Esquire include pictures of sexy women in place of articles about sex. The exception is Toro, an online magazine that has both. Letters to Levenson is an advice column for men with questions about their wives and girlfriends, or, in Noah Levenson’s words, “people who are so confused and hurt that they reach out to a stranger for advice.” What is lacking in advice columns is what it’s really like to be a sexual man, he says in an email. “Men are either portrayed as whimpering, hyper-sensitive eunuchs or dinosaur-brained guidos. Of course, the reality is that we’re all somewhere in the middle.”

But Szabo, the xoxoamore blogger, believes the genre may be heading in the right direction. “I like to think it’s becoming more and more open.” She stresses that the ultimate purpose of sex journalism is to teach the readers something they didn’t know before. “A lot of sex columns are not always educational, or aren’t sex education that people can understand.”

“If you’re coming to us for information, we owe it to you to be accurate,” says Kaitlyn Kochany, a freelance journalist and fellow blogger on xoxoamore. To her, getting it right allows it to be legitimate, and the internet makes this information accessible to readers. She cites from the rules of the internet, as created by the online-culture-based wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica: “If it exists, someone has made a porno about it.” In this way, sex blogs have leveled the playing field, and anything that readers aren’t getting from magazines may be found online.

University and college students have access to another format for accessing sex tips: the school paper. Kaite Welsh, author of “Sex and Blogs and Shock-‘n’-Tell Journalism” in Times Higher Education, says that students are taking this trend personally. She found that prospective journalists in western universities are using their schools’ papers to discuss sexuality issues, and that the papers can be more explicit than mainstream magazines. “Whether it is pictures of scantily clad models or sex-obsessed bloggers, the modern student press is increasingly X-rated,” writes Welsh. School papers are, even now, producing future Carrie Bradshaws.

So why is sex covered by every form of media? “There’s an old adage, and it’s not just for magazines: sex sells,” says Scott Bullock, a magazine circulation expert in Canada and the U.S. “What I tend to focus on is just how covers influence people’s buying decisions.” He’s compiled data on magazine sales and compared them with what’s on covers. This reveals interesting information about how we relate to sex in magazines: the sexier the cover star, the better they sell, usually.

Photograph of Erika Szabo by E. Wynne Neilly

Illustration by Kathryn MacNaughton

Tucked away in the folds of glossy magazine pages, below the fold in newspapers’ lifestyle sections, you will find them. They have the wit, the sarcasm and the good sense to make you laugh about war, politics and celebrity – if and when they ever get the chance to crack wise. With few venues, and fewer editors willing to take a risk on humour, these ghettoized Canadians are often treated as inconsequential space-fillers who are supposed to point out the lighter side when they’d rather be baring their teeth.

They can’t seem to get a break, which leaves the file open for a smart guy like Jon Stewart to pick up the mantle as the era’s dominant satirist. North America’s “it” boy of satire and all things irreverent, Stewart has become the particular elephant our Canadian humour writers have been trapped in the room with – not that they mind.

Neither do Canadians – at least the 158,000 of them who watch The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report every Monday to Thursday night on the Comedy Network.

Our funniest Canadians speak to Diana Cina about how they sneak onto the few pages that’ll have them, why that can be a good thing, how they manage to make a living despite it all – and why Stewart hasn’t jumped the shark.

ON JON “MR. ELEPHANT-IN-THE-ROOM” STEWART

That famous survey came out that said more young people get their news from The Daily Showthan from the news, which some people saw as cause for concern. The thing is, there is more truth in an episode of The Daily Showthan there is on the network news. The news is this sort of ridiculous television show, with the haircuts and the serious anchorman and the wacky weather guy. You turn on the news and it’s terrifying stuff and then “here’s a kitten in a tree” or “now here’s our funny weatherman.” Or here’s the story about a deer that peed on town hall – they love their fucking animals, you know. Stewart is doing an incredible service – what he does is put the news to shame.

– Jesse Brown

I don’t see him over my shoulder when I’m doing something, but I do see him four nights a week on the Comedy Network.

– Craig Silverman

In Canada our traditional media tend to work on a traditional model and the traditional model is like 60 Minutes. You’ve got 58 minutes of serious things and then you have Andy Rooney at the end. That’s how a lot of newspapers and magazines have been set up over time.

– Scott Feschuk

Lately, the burden of bearing the mantle of Chief of Humour is beginning to show on Stewart. Everybody’s onside against Bush, it’s a bit safe. The interesting thing would be to be anti-Jon Stewart.

– Marni Jackson

MY CONSERVATIVE DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR LIBERAL DAD

I’ve been watching Stewart for a long time, long before it became trendy. He’s always been quite adamant about attacking both sides. A lot of his stuff that makes fun of Democrats is in some ways funnier and more memorable than some of the stuff he’s done on Bush.

– Scott Feschuk

I don’t agree that humour is more on the left of the political spectrum. South Park has done a wonderful job of pointing out the hypocrisies of lefty political correctness. To me, it’s not really about left and right – satire should be aimed at whoever is telling us how to think or what to do (including satirists). Traditionally that may have come from liberals, but these days you get it from both sides, and the best comedy is fiercely independent.

– Jesse Brown

NOW YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR

You certainly can get away with saying a lot more in the confines of a so-called humour column than you could in a normal column. Probably because, in all honesty, the things you’re trying to say with humour, if you tried to say without humour, they would sound really mean.

– Scott Feschuk

Humour allows the writer to push the envelope the way editorial cartoonists can be super-irreverent and insulting, characterizing someone as a donkey, for example, but it’s somehow more palatable than just calling someone an ugly jackass.

– Ellen Vanstone

Humour is a dangerous thing. It can be a wonderfully effective tool to use, but the unfortunate thing is that a lot of tools tend to use it. In the wrong hands, it becomes Michael Jackson jokes and, in Canada, insights about Tim Hortons and the peculiar effect that extreme cold has on the genitals. You will discover people who claim to be humour journalists, but who really aren’t funny. They are what I call Air Farce Journalists, and they’re just as dangerously unfunny as the television version.

– Craig Silverman

The very unfunny Air Farce is still on the air.

– Marni Jackson

GHETTO LIFE

First of all, it’s the most awesome ghetto in the world to be in because you don’t have to talk to anybody, you don’t have to phone anybody, you don’t have to do any legitimate actual work. In all honesty, it’s the best job there is.

– Scott Feschuk

Humour journalism in newspapers is often the province of older gentlemen who plumb the depths of their inability to program a VCR. “DVD? That sounds like something I caught during the war!” It’s put on such a pedestal or ghettoized so much in how the media treats it that people are scared or unwilling to engage in it. My concern is how do you find ways to put humour in the rest of the paper, instead of ghettoizing it in one person’s column like, “Here’s our funny guy, if you want a chuckle check out his column.” Part of that is the risk in trying to write something funny. The truth is that there are always a few who do it well, and thousands who pretend to.

– Craig Silverman

Playboy magazine used to label its funny pieces “Humour,” so when you read it you would know that you’d laugh. If not, you wouldn’t know and you’d feel awkward. So unless it’s labeled, people don’t get it.

– Joey Slinger

WHAT DO YOU CALL YOURSELF AGAIN?

I’m a sit-down comedian.

– Joey Slinger

I’m a commentator, not unlike an editorial cartoon.

– Rick Mercer

I hate the term humourist. I’m not a satirist because that’s pretentious… how about irritant?

– Jesse Brown

I would never presume to call myself a humour writer. That’s asking for trouble.

– Ellen Vanstone

Geez, it’s not like you’re calling us pedophiles or Leafs fans. We should lighten up.

– Craig Silverman

HOW I GOT INTO THIS RACKET

When I worked at The Globe and MailI was just a straight reporter, so I never had a forum to write anything funny. But there was a first minister’s meeting in Ottawa and I got assigned to write a lighthearted piece about it. I did and I thought it went pretty well. Then about two months later I went in with an idea for another piece of that sort and the bureau chief at the time just stared at me and went, “Uh, too soon. It’s only been a couple of months – we can’t put another funny piece in the paper.”

– Scott Feschuk

I don’t have the luxury of getting into a knock-down drag-out with an editor about whether Topeka, Kansas or Tuktoyaktuk is funnier.

– Craig Silverman

I get my jokes fact-checked. Like, “How ugly was his mother? Can I get a source on that?”

– Jesse Brown

I love writing humour, it’s always easier than doing research or footnotes or a bibliography or getting quotes right. I went into humour because of laziness.

– Linwood Barclay

HUMOUR HERE, HUMOUR NOW

Wit is more of a lingua francathese days than previously. You can’t even find a kid’s movie that isn’t riddled with adult irony.

– Marni Jackson

Impersonating used to be really great, but how can you impersonate Bush better than he can impersonate himself? You don’t get Dana Carvey to do it because it has no resonance anymore, you have to get Ali G to approach these guys and then you have these political figures with these comedians doing political sketches right there in front of them. And they are unwittingly in a comedy sketch.

– Jesse Brown

It has got a lot tougher and a lot meaner, which is all healthy. It’s a lot less trying to be cute about things – when you take a shot at somebody you take a shot.

– Joey Slinger

THE ATTEMPT TO LAUNCH A HUMOUR MAGAZINE IN CANADA

Some people at two of the main magazine companies were initially very excited about Moustache, the humour mag concept I came up with and developed with Craig Silverman. We have a huge appetite for comedy in Canada, a healthy detachment from and skepticism towards America’s passions, and people here are generally pretty smart. Yet there’s nothing too funny coming out of here right now. That’s because of a general wussiness at the top levels of our cultural institutions. You have to be willing to offend, and most aren’t. I’ve been pretty lucky so far with what I’ve gotten away with. If there are any doubtful millionaires reading this, feel free to get in touch with me and finance Moustache, and if it tanks I’ll buy you a Coke.

– Jesse Brown

That was sort of the core of our pitch, the impact that Jon Stewart has had and looking at how humour has become the preferred language of the younger generation. When you print things in a humourous or biting way, it just seems to have that much more impact. Our magazine was focused at a certain demographic and they decided they didn’t want that demographic. There was a resistance to a magazine with a strong humour component. Because it’s high-risk, it’s like drug use, as if you’re going to get AIDS from telling a joke.

– Craig Silverman