(Via Viviane’s Sex Carnival)

Cory Silverberg of About.com:Sexuality has a heartfelt lament about the current state of sex blogging.

I have a deeply neurotic and fundamentally unhealthy relationship to blogs. I belong to a transitional technological demographic and while I read blogs voraciously for work, every click holds the possibility of sending me reeling into a fit of informational inadequacy. To top it all off, reading, writing and thinking about sex is work so virtually the only fun thing left for me about sex is actually having it. So in the end, I’m not really sure that I want more sex blogs as much as I might like more blogging about sex. But Susannah’s post made me realize that I haven’t thought much about what I’d actually want from a better sex blog.

• A better sex blog would incite action.
• A better sex blog would be less cool.
• A better sex blog would reveal something about the reader and the blogger.
• A better sex blog would be about everything, just like sex.
• A better sex blog would be critical about sex.
• A better sex blog would be subversive.

In his original post each bullet point is expanded into full detail. See the whole thing here.

On the one hand I could gently reassure Silverberg it’s not as bad as he fears, although on the other hand I could give him a cup of coffee and say perk up!

I think one issue with his lament is that — just as some people seem to think “sex” is limited to only PIV intercourse till male ejaculation — a lot of people think “sex blog” is limited to first-person accounts of their Saturday night down at the Stop ‘n Fight. Or something not far enough from that. But just as there’s way more to sex than having it there’s way more to sex blogging than blogging about having it.

Instead there are plenty of excellent, thoughtful blogs that hit each of the points you mention — calls to action; revelations about the writer and forced reflection by the reader; about not just the ins and outs of sex but also the politics, the sociology, the history, and the variety of sex; of critical commentary on the manias and conceits and blind spots of sex. Susie Bright, of course, manages rather nicely. And while I’m not crazy about his innovative but too-much-like-a-thumbnail-site design, Sam Sugar can too. Chelsea Girl and AlwaysArousedGirl each compellingly thread their sex lives through the greater fabric of the rest of their lives. CollegeCallgirl can knock your socks off. Same, though for different reasons, with The Beautiful Kind or Cassandra Says. And I don’t even think Bright, or Bank, or Collegegirl or TBK or the others are even necessarily the best non-Bridget-Jones blog out there. (I know I left a lot of good people out and besides… what’s wrong with Bridget-Jones-blogging anyway?) Anyway I did miss good sex bloggers but follow the links and you’ll find someone you like in one or more of the blogrolls you find.

If I can just beat my own drum for a moment, just since Friday I think I’ve posted about finding common ground between pro- and anti-porn feminists (over the role of agency) which is an invitation to action; I’ve posted about using instant mac-n-cheese powder as a (surprisingly harmless and flavor-appropriate) sexual flavor dust, which is just about as not cool as you can get; I’ve posted about cognitively-sound contrarian sex education tactics and parodies of evolutionary psychology, which — while not about everything just like sex — helps remind people that there’s more to sex than the old in-and-out; riffing off a Susie Bright review of a lame porn video I criticized the Johnny-Knoxville-ization of “gonzo” porn which is pretty critical of a direction away from actual sex people seem to be going with porn (and, sadly, viewers seem to be following); and finally I posted about what I believe is the deeply subversive indictment represented by the actual text (as opposed to the funny pictures) in Rachel P. Maine’s The Technology of Orgasm. And if I haven’t revealed something about myself in the last week I’m working on a post — one in a series — that’s about my own personal quest for “worthiness“ which, I contend, is for men comparable to the “beauty myth” phenomenon that affects women.

Heck, not to put too fine a point on it but Cory’s blog is a very good sex blog and his post was a wonderful example of the genre! You just gotta look a little.

So! Sex bloggers. We’re there, we’re sexy-but-square, get used to it! :-)