Sex in older people: What were these writers thinking?
When I spotted this story about the sex lives of older people, I immediately began polishing the one-liners I would use in this post. Isn’t a story about sex, especially sex in older people, just asking to be burlesqued in a brilliantly witty tracker post?
That’s what I figured, until I happened upon this headline and lede from Susan Rivera on the website of NBC Chicago:
Study: Old Men Stay Frisky LongerWomen may outlive men, but men out sex women
Women may live longer, but dudes pack more sex into their shorter lives aand [sic] they remain randy until much later in life, according to a new University of Chicago study published in the British Medical Journal.
Ugh. After reading that, I decided to play it straight. Some stories, like this one, are so inherently suitable for jokes and silly water-cooler conversation that it’s best to lay the facts out there and let the readers have the fun. Besides, this story is just unsavory. I happen to be writing while looking out the window at the beach in Florida, and I don’t especially welcome the image of the old guys walking by as frisky dudes outsexing women. Think I’ll draw the curtains.
The NBC team was presumably so enchanted with its wit and so busy collapsing in laughter that it failed to notice the typo in the lede, which, when I last looked, was still there. (And while you’re fixing the typo, NBC, fix the lede. Please.)
Writers who took this story a little more seriously found two different ways to report it. As often happens, the study, published in the British Medical Journal, came to a couple of related conclusions, either one of which could be used as a lede.
The study’s authors, in their abstract, said, first, that “sexual activity, good quality sexual life, and interest in sex were higher for men than for women, and this gender gap widened with age.” That’s an interesting angle; differences between men and women regarding sex always make good copy. But there was a second finding: Healthier men had better sex lives and experienced more years of sexual activity.
Interestingly, the press release, written by the journal and posted on Eurekalert, flipped the findings, with a lede that said, “people who are in good health are almost twice as likely to be interested in sex compared to those in poor health.” The comparison between men and women came later.
So what did the press corps do?
Rosemary Black of the New York Daily News wrote under a headline that said “Men stay sexually active for longer than women.” (I would have dropped “for,” but that’s probably some sort of New York dialect that I don’t understand.) Her lede: “Nothing, not even old age, comes between a man and his sex life.” O.K., that’s taking a little liberty, but it’s reasonable; we don’t have to be too stiff about our reporting of this story. Besides, she followed it immediately with stats from the study.
Rob Stein in The Washington Post blog The Checkup, turned the findings into a bit of advice: “Here’s another reason to try to stay healthy: It extends your sex life as you age, according to a new study.” Is he confusing an association with causation? The researchers found an association between good health and longer sex lives; they didn’t do an experiment to show that staying healthier could produce an extended sex life.
Frank James of NPR blog The Two-Way (whatever that means) does the same thing, but in the very last sentence of his post: “Yet one more reason to stick to that workout schedule.” Here’s his lede:
“It’s a stereotype, the aging man still keenly interested in sex, the aging woman, not so much. Some University of Chicago researchers have added statistical support for the cliche…
Could any lede possibly be less enticing? Here’s a story about a boring old cliche! Read on! If it wasn’t my job to read on, I wouldn’t have.
And while I’m grumbling, can anyone explain to me what George Mathis of the Atlanta Journal Constitution was up to with this post?
The British have quite a history at getting to the bottom of things. Sherlock Holmes is the world’s most famous detective and Scotland Yard, though it sounds like a cricket field, is actually an organization of highly trained spelunkers of truth.
Now, researchers have concluded men want sex until they are almost dead, according to a report in the British Medical Journal.
“Spelunkers of truth” on a cricket field? As The New Yorker used to say, “Block that metaphor!” And men want sex until they are almost dead? Mathis apparently wants to bleed this story of any cheeriness whatsoever. If you see him at the water cooler, make a sharp turn in the opposite direction.
- Paul Raeburn
