Sex ed for journalists: Separating group sex, adultery and rape.

One bothersome aspect of the NRL 'group sex scandal' is the very name it has been given by virtue of the fact that no crime was found to have been committed; thanks to the unsavoury nature of the incident, commentators everywhere have rushed to condemn 'group sex' willy nilly.

Group sex is when three or more people engage in mutually consensual sexual activity. There's absolutely nothing wrong with group sex. It shouldn't be considered scandalous if NRL players like to have group sex. It could be considered somewhat strange that a whole bunch of guys in a particularly homophobic subsection of society, none of whom are openly bisexual or or gay, all like to get their dicks out in the same room with a single woman essentially being a facilitator for some pretty homoerotic activity. But I digress. Group sex between consenting adults, hopefully all disease-free and practicing safe sex as well as enjoying themselves mightily, shouldn't be considered a behaviour worthy of condemnation.

Nor should a player be condemned for engaging in this practice with someone other than his wife or partner- unless, of course, he's dishonest about it with her (I won't say 'him', given that there isn't a single 'out' player in the entire league). Even practicing safe sex, the risk of STD transmission is not zero and therefore the player has a responsibility to inform his partner that he is engaging in an activity that may place her at a slightly higher risk of contracting an STD. Besides which, if your partner is someone you can't be honest with about the sort of things you like to do, maybe it's time to consider a) growing up a little and learning the value of honesty or b) ditching your narrow-minded partner for someone whose views and values are more closely aligned with your own, thus freeing up said partner to find someone more sexually conservative.

Funnily enough I get the impression that most of the players are fairly conservative in their home lives and don't involve their wives in this kind of 'fun', let alone inform them of what they're getting up to if the desperate phonecalls by players' wives to the manager of the hotel in the Jones incident were anything to go by.

There is also the question of why these guys feel the need to do the whole 'walk in through the unlocked door after your mate has taken a woman into the room and join in' thing. I'm sure any one of them with a driving need to engage in that specific scenario could easily arrange for it to happen with the knowledge and consent of the woman involved. If there is an obvious lesson to be learned from the revelations of the sexual subculture of the NRL it's that there's no shortage of women wanting to fuck NRL players, and not necessarily just one at a time. Which again begs the question why just one woman, guys? I'm truly baffled. I mean, from an extremely straight woman's point of view, the more cock the better (note: purely from a desirability point of view, not from experience, at this point in my life!), but I was under the impression that most straight guys' fantasies revolved around having lots and lots of girls and not too much man-meat. It's not like footy players have to make do with limited numbers, like so many guys!

One thing's certain, and that's that this sausage-fest with a side of vagina is not about team bonding or whatever bullshit has occasionally been put about by commentators in the media. If there was any real 'bonding' then I'm pretty sure that Matthew Johns' 11 'mates' wouldn't allow him to be copping the fallout from the Four Corners episode solo without coming forward to cop their share of what's happened- particularly since Matthew Johns was one of the two players the woman went to the room with voluntarily.

As far as commentary goes, most of it has been full of condemnation of group sex of any kind, as if it's almost as barbaric and despicable as rape itself. Margie McDonald of The Australian, however, takes a different tack, condemning the idea of a woman having sex with more than one guy at a time and making the pretty despicable suggestion that it should be obvious to any woman who wants to fuck a footy player that there is every likelihood of the entire team busting in and wanting a piece of her too. Essentially putting out for one (or two, or three) is putting out for the whole team. Phew. I'm not kidding- here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:

I make no judgment, but I do have a problem with women who can't make an educated choice: "If I go back to that player's hotel room or even out to a toilet cubicle at the back of a nightclub, can I really trust that the player I left with will be the only player there when I arrive, or even half-an-hour later?"

Ahh... thanks for that, Margie. You've just undone god-knows-how-many hours of hard work by the NRL's 'consent training seminar' facilitators and essentially told women who sleep with players to expect to be raped by their team mates. Is it just NRL players, Margie? Or does every woman who hooks up with a guy who plays team sports of any kind have to sign away her right to have a say in who she has sexual contact with? Christ. I'm sure there are enough NRL players who are decent people to be offended by what Margie McDonald has told every woman they'll ever hook up with to expect. Imagine having to spell out to your date/potential shag that no, you're not going to secretly invite the whole team into the room while she's on all fours facing away from the door. Because apparently that's what every single non-rape-minded player is going to have to do if Margie's proposal gains any traction!

Evidently there are a whole bunch of men and women in Australian society who need to better learn just what 'consent' means when it comes to sex. Less of a priority but still important is the need for journalists to learn to distinguish between consensual sexual activity, adultery and rape.

The first is a matter for peoples' private lives, whether they are NRL players or not. It doesn't matter how many people are involved in said activity. The second depends on the definition adultery is given by two parties in a marriage. You never know- there might be an NRL wife who has to get up there in front of the cameras and pretend to be shocked and outraged by her husband engaging in sex outside of their marriage when she has been fine with it all along, simply because society views an open marriage as deviant and genuine infidelity as perfectly normal.

The third is a crime and should never be covered up or excused.

Australian journalists, just like the rest of Australian society, have fucked up on all three.