Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
Whether crafting an article, headline, or a mere blurb, writers and editors make choices which profoundly affect the way their work is read. Even something as minor as a couple apostrophes used as ‘air quotes’ can alter the tone and meaning of a statement, introducing doubt and skepticism just as effectively as dozens of words used for the same effect.
For example, if I refer to The Sun as a newspaper, it has a completely different impact than if I refer to it as a ‘newspaper.’ The former is neutral; the latter suggests I’m skeptical as to whether the publication really deserves to be honored with such a description.
You know what? In this instance, let’s go ahead and run with describing the Sun as a ‘newspaper.’
It’s Not A Quote Unless Someone Actually Said It
Granted, the Sun is probably most aptly described as a ‘tabloid,’ a journalistic life form which falls somewhere between a gossip column and your full-of-shit cousin’s Facebook posts.
Still, even in the context of gossip, there’s no call for undermining the subject of your article by using air quotes to visibly undermine – or even mock – the way in which that person choses to describe herself.
That’s exactly what the Sun did to Vex Ashley, however, when writing about an upcoming workshop the performer is going to conduct at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow.
“SEXED UP ART FEST,” the beginning of the headline screams in all caps. “Free porn workshop in Glasgow’s CCA hosted by ‘ethical’ adult entertainer Vex Ashley and funded by taxpayer sparks outrage” reads the rest.
If one feels like being charitable, you can explain away the fact ‘ethical’ appears in single-quotes by saying it was done this way simply to emphasize someone is being quoted. If that were the case, however, you’d expect the quote to be attributed to someone eventually, which this ‘quote’ never is in the article. (My assumption is Ashley has described herself as ethical in the past, but the Sun does nothing to confirm or contradict this assumption on my part, so who knows.)
The headline isn’t the only place the term is rendered as ‘ethical,’ either; it also appears thus in the first line of the story and the tag for the top photo of Ashley.
To Find Balance, Keep Scrolling…. And Scrolling
The article follows its diminishing reference to Ashley’s ‘ethical’ nature with a quote from Member of the Scottish Parliament Rhoda Grant, who takes Justice Potter Stewart’s old “I know it when I see it” porn definition a bit further.
“There are very clear lines about what is pornography and what can be artistic,” Grant said. “I’m a little puzzled as to why Creative Scotland are funding this. If the Government are clear that sexual exploitation and pornography are linked to violence against women, why is the public purse funding it?”
Gosh, Rhoda; maybe it’s because the lines between porn and art aren’t quite as clear as you see them to be? Nah, it must be that the Scottish government is in favor of exploitation of and violence against women.
Beneath Grant’s comments are a block of “read more” links, followed by more of Grant’s thoughts on the perils of porn, followed by a link to a video and a photo of Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. Only after that do we start to get any comments in defense of Ashley and the CCA’s decision to fund her workshop.
In my view, this formatting is no accident. I suspect the editors of the Sun know full well most readers don’t get too far past the headlines, much less read all the way to the bottom of an article which is surrounded by other salacious, screaming headlines like “VICIOUS ATTACK BY ANIMALS” and “HE HAS NO CLASS” and “SHAMPOO SCARE.”
By the time we get to anyone bothering to speak up on Ashley’s behalf, I figure most readers have veered off into clickbait land, where they’re probably still trying to figure out how they wound up looking at a slideshow of celebrity plastic surgery disasters, or reading a bit of ‘sponsored content’ about miracle facial cream – which was, by amazing geo-targeted coincidence, invented by a ‘mom’ who happens to live in the same city as the reader(s) in question.
What the article doesn’t include, perhaps not surprisingly, is any response from Ashley herself, or any indication the publication even tried to secure such for the article. For that matter, other than Grant’s (really rather measured) comments, there’s not much evidence of the alleged “outrage” supposedly sparked by the CCA’s decision to fund Ashley’s workshop, either.
All in all, a very ‘ethical’ display by this ‘news’ website, don’t you think?
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
