Nina Hartley's Sexwise

Nina Hartley has had an amazing career as a sex educator, author and adult film actor. It's with some interest that I recently spotted an announcement that she is launching a new web venture called Sexwise, which aims foster discussion about "sex, sexuality, and sexual expression." The discussion/education community is Sexwise.me. Additionally, there's a Web talk show component at Sexwise.tv. This is not to be confused with Susie Bright's book, Sexwise, or the BBC's global sex education project, Sexwise.

 

I'm excited to see sex-positive discussion being fostered. The people of United States are so deeply fucked up about sex that good information and discussion are in critically short supply. We're still arguing over whether we should educate teens about sex or have them pray away temptation and raging hormones.

That said, one has to wonder about the subscription nature of this, in addition to the viability of a web show. The latter issue may be due in part to the fact that I just sat through the whole first season of the polyamory web series, "Family" and spent several days trying to get that theme song out of my head. The content level has to be high from the start to get people to sign up and continue to subscribe. Production values of the show will have to be reasonably high as well. The target audience will have to be pretty sex-positive, especially to keep up with it and pay for the privilege. That's a group that she'll have to keep engaged by not talking down to them, while also avoiding spending too much time on the sexual fringes.

I really hope this works out for her and that site gets more people talking frankly about sex. The site goes live tonight at 7pm PDT.

Edit: The Girl would like to note that she had the opportunity to meet Ms. Hartley on multiple occasions while working for a PO Box store in Berkeley in the early 2000s.  Nina was one of her favorite customers, and always had a great dirty joke to share.