Last week the Independent ran a feature with the exciting headline “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. Sounded fascinating. Another tart with a heart story, perhaps?

No, reading the piece indicated the headline was wrong.

The feature described blogger and sex writer Zoe Margolis, better known as the Girl with a One Track Mind. It focused in part on Margolis work as an ambassador for sexual health charity Brook, raising issues about sex and relationships with young people.

Zoe Margolis is not, and has never been, a sex worker.

Pretty soon after the paper was published (in print and online) a discussion began on twitter and spread to blogs and forums highlighting the inaccuracy and discussing the appropriateness of the headline.

The Independent quickly altered the headline online to ‘I was a good time girl who became an agony aunt’ but obviously the print edition remained the same. It took pressure on the paper for them to actually issue a correction.

Although it is just a headline, the Independent gives us an insight into the media and how sex – particularly female sexuality – is understood and represented. Although the media likes to present itself as impartial, fair, broadminded and even adventurous about sex, it is very often judgemental, inaccurate and negative. Writers don’t often value sex as a topic, seeing it as ‘lite’ and not requiring any real fact checking. Sex features are often seen as the female preserve with women constructed as better placed to write emotional pieces, while hiding a more misogynistic view that writing about sex isn’t ‘proper journalism’.

All too often features about sex and relationships represent sex through products or positions or a moral or medical gaze is pretty much standard practice. Sadly sexism is thriving, meaning it is not unusual for journalists (like the public) to believe women who speak openly about sex are sluts, who deserve little sympathy if criticised.

This is problematic on a number of levels. It influences who is selected to talk about sex and what they are allowed to say. It frames the terminologies we can use to name our bodies (vaginas are always more palatable to editors than clitorises). It means many writers view those who talk about sex as hookers, but since the term is used pejoratively it also means they look down on sex workers too. This in turn impacts upon how prostitution is treated in the press.

While we may be used to poor media coverage of sex and general female blaming, there is a more sinister side to this particular story which has a direct impact on agony aunts. The Independent may have forgotten that only recently we were facing major threats to even being allowed to offer sex advice via the media to young people in the UK (2003) and Scotland (2005). Indeed there is pressure for those agony aunts who work with young people to deliver accurate and ethical information, with media scrutiny and often campaigns from the right wing press against such advice giving.

Suggestions that those offering advice to young people may not be qualified, or may have a past that’s presented as sexually dubious is not going to help agony aunts or support to young people via the media – a service that is essential to many children and teens.

Even the changing of the Independent’s headline of ‘hooker’ to ‘good time girl’ still carries with it negative labelling that many anti sex education groups could use as a weapon against advice givers.

The Independent headline debate raises the question why shouldn’t someone who has been open about their sexual life or been a sex worker give advice? And the answer is of course there’s no reason why they couldn’t. However, there would need to be some caveats based on their current work, not their sexual past. Sadly there are many advice givers who base their whole career on having been to the ‘University of Life’ and simply describe their opinions and experiences. Even those with professional qualifications in medicine, journalism or psychology often offer advice that is misleading and outdated. So anyone who wants to offer advice needs to demonstrate they could also indicate current good practice; be aware of, appraise and apply evidence; undergo supervision and regular professional development; and indicate critical thinking to sex and relationships issues.

Thankfully in this case twitter and other social media allowed this story to be shared and challenged very quickly. That is not to say damage hasn’t been done – and I would argue it’s more damaging than just the personal distress caused to Ms Margolis. Potentially it has done a lot to harm advice giving in the media too. And it has done little to help sex workers as the subtext to this case is nobody wants to be associated with hookers.

However it has been talked about openly and the Independent have not come out well from this debacle. Most important has been Ms Margolis’ willingness to challenge this in public and discuss her feelings about the defamation. Many people often don’t feel able to do this and certainly in the early part of the last decade when agony aunts were under threat from the media many opted to avoid the media for fear of further personal reprisals.

In a statement she sent me after reading this blog, Ms Margolis explains her position thus: “I’m absolutely distraught by this damage to my reputation both professionally and personally. Unfortunately this situation just shows how much work still needs to be done to challenge the sexism of the media in their conflation of female sexual desire with the sex industry.”

So what can we do about this problem? We can support those who are offering sex advice via the media, and ensure those who do act as columnists, advisors or ambassadors are well trained and assessed. Optimistically I’d love to offer more training to journalists for them to reflect on how they write about sex, understand human sexuality and also source their materials to stack up sex stories. I’m not holding my breath but it’s an avenue I think we ought to explore.

We need to continue speaking out about poor media coverage, whether it’s a judgemental headline or a more sustained critique on a particular sex topic (sex education for example). We need to highlight where the media tries to keep women silent by using their sexuality against them. And we need to expose hypocrisy in the press. After all the same papers who have been complaining about how dreadful sexualisation is are the same papers who also label sexual women negatively and do their best to scupper statutory school based sex education.

Let’s remember that using pejorative terms to describe sex is not good journalism. It’s a means of silencing people. And that’s just another word for censorship.

Update: since posting I’ve had some feedback from people questioning whether the decision not to be called a hooker actually further denigrates sex workers, implying there is something so wrong with being a hooker that you wouldn’t want that label. That is a problem since promoting one set of women’s sexual rights should not be at the expense of another group (not that I’m assuming all sex workers are female).

On a point of accuracy if someone isn’t a sex worker then it should be reasonable for them to make this clear. Indeed one issue that is often upsetting to sex workers is feeling they are spoken for by those who are not really involved in sex work, so you could argue in this case not challenging the term could be problematic for that reason. If, however, it seems the clarification also implies there is something wrong with sex work that is more troubling – and if you look at the Independent’s correction it does seem to imply this. So has some of the discussion of the case online. The issue here is not that being a hooker is bad, but that any women who writes about her sexual life can be subjected to misogynistic name calling and we must be careful to differentiate while we criticise this case and others like it.

Unfortunately this is the case of poor media writing about sex, it ends up marginalising and stigmatising a whole range of people, misrepresents sex work, and devalues female sexuality.

This case is also discussed by Paul Carr over at Tech Crunch (in comments you can also get another depressing insight into how some people view sexual women and whores) and also at Gawker.

*Quote is a play on script from the film Pretty Woman, based on the exchange between the lead characters Edward and Vivian.