Play Bad Sex Media Bingo

Cringingly bad documentaries on sex now seem to be a standard of mid-week TV schedules on Channel 4. After last week’s Porn on the Brain, my expectations of C4’s next offering in the genre to be broadcast on Monday, Sex Box, are not high. However, for all those of us fed up with bad science, sweeping generalisations and being left with the sense that are own particular sexual preferences and practices are not shared by whoever commissions these programmes, there is an alternative to shouting at the television and switching over to the safety of The Great British Bake Off.

Now you can enhance you viewing experience with Bad Sex Media Bingo (http://badsexmediabingo.com/). Every time you spot a “celebrity sex expert”, “token attractive gay couple” or a hint of moral panic over “teen sexualisation”, just note it down or play along at #badsexbingo. How many of the bingo numbers can you spot during each new programme or article about sex? Will you be able to call House! first? You might even persuade your teenage children to stop streaming hardcore porn in their bedrooms and join you for an educational experience.

Put together by the Sense about Sex network (www.SenseAboutSex.com), a group of therapists, educators and journalists who are tired of the clichés and concerned that TV sex programmes perpetuate unhelpful, limited and often inaccurate stereotypes, Bad Sex Media Bingo offers plenty of fun for all the family who are up after the watershed.

According to Sense about Sex, Channel 4’s Porn On The Brain ticked 13 out of 24 of the squares on Bad Sex Media Bingo, notably: porn rewires your brain; sex science = brain scans and labcoats; all porn is bad (or good); sex addiction is real; complex topic oversimplified; Kink! Is weird, strange or dangerous (lots of referring to anything other than images of naked women as not NORMAL); sex ed not good enough: complaining not doing; Zomg! Teens! Internet! Sexualization! STI rates!.

About sextherapybristol

I am a sex and relationship therapist working in Bristol. I blog on professional and social issues specific to sex and couples therapy and on the politics of psychotherapy and counselling in general. Before switching careers to become a therapist, I spent seven years in the UK Diplomatic Service, four of them in Japan, and thirteen years in financial public relations in Tokyo and the City of London. I gained a Postgraduate Diploma in psychotherapy and counselling from Regents College, City University, in 2008, and a Postgraduate Diploma in psychosexual and relationship therapy from Middlesex University in 2011. In addition to my private practice, I teach on the London Diploma in Psychosexual and Relationship Therapy and the NAOS Advanced Diploma in Couples Therapy.

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1 Response to Play Bad Sex Media Bingo

James Banyard says:

October 27, 2013 at 7:56 pm

Hi Graham,
This is a great blog post, I’ve really enjoyed having some of my own assumptions about sex challenged. I was especially interested in the “sex science=brain scans and lab coats” one. It mirrors some of my own feelings about the place of neuroscience in therapy which I’ve written about on my own blog here: http://www.existential-counselling.co.uk/blog/?p=101
Keep up the good work,
James Banyard Counsellor and Supervisor in Exeter
http://www.existential-counselling.co.uk