A little less than three weeks ago, we received the following letter of complaint. Our official response is posted below it:

Dear Em & Lo,

I want to express my disappointment in this website for not giving space to any of the major sex and sexual health-related news stories this week.  While I visit your website because it is a lot of fun, I also find it informative.  I think you’re doing your readers a huge disservice by not incorporating current news on relevant topics.  You should seriously consider having a “current events” post as part of your weekly roundup.  Issues you could have included this week:

• CA’s 9th circuit court of appeals finds Proposition 8 unconstitutional
• Washington state’s House legislators vote to legalize gay marriage
• President Obama makes a compromise with the Catholic Church which protects their religious freedoms while still allowing all women access to free birth control
• JC Penny stands up to “One Million Moms,” defending their decision to make Ellen DeGeneres their spokesperson

Em & Lo, I expect more from you.  I hope to see more coverage of important sex-related current events on this website in the future.

Ouch. You really know how to hit us where it hurts. We pride ourselves on being activists, in our own small way, for reproductive rights and sexual freedom. Everything you mentioned above is important — and should be on every thoughtful person’s radar, especially ours. But there are several reasons why we might not be as thorough as you — or we — would like (cue the violins!):

• It’s literally just the two of us. We are the editorial directors, writers, uploaders, project managers, marketers, business developers and designers of this site. Yes, we have interns that are great with research, three doctors who are wise with all things health-related, a small army of Wise Guys who give this site some much-needed male perspective, and two personal love slaves who write the code and fix tech stuff when it breaks. But they all volunteer their time and talents, and so we can’t expect them to take on the responsibility of an actual staff. If we want to get something done, we’ve got to do it ourselves.
• You know the old adage, “sex sells”? Well, we’re here to tell you that it doesn’t. At least not if the sex is honest, frank, realistic, feminist, and has a sense of humor. Trying to get this site in an ad network that doesn’t push porn or online dating sites for cheaters is like trying to get on “America’s Next Top Model” with a goiter. You mention strap-ons once and forget it! Plus, as a quiet German major and an artsy-fartsy English major respectively, neither of us ever really mastered the hard sell necessary to get ahead in business. And so despite all appearances to the contrary (our site does seem fairly slick, if we do say so ourselves), we’re not exactly rolling in it. In fact, we’re not even dipping our toes in it.*
• The two previous points + the reality of raising four little ones between the two of us = a limited amount of time we can dedicate to EMandLO.com. There just aren’t enough hours in our day to cover everything we’d like to cover.
• Finally, we do try to cover topical events in our weekly Naked News feature. But since we only have time for one installment every Tuesday, sometimes it seems a bit late for us to mention stuff that was all the rage the previous week — and so important events don’t always get covered.

All that said, we hear you, we get you, we agree with you. And so, in an effort to be a little more on top of current events, we’ve added a new Twitter feed in the lefthand sidebar, where we will aim to be a little more politically savvy and a little more current a little more often. It may not be the sweeping, exhaustive coverage we’d all like, but we hope you’ll appreciate that it’s something coming from the heart. Don’t say we never did anything for you!

Love,

Em & Lo

* Anyone who would like to offer their business acumen in an effort to not only keep EMandLO.com afloat, but also make it more vibrant, please contact us here. Obviously, we could use the help! Or, if you would like to donate to the cause — we’d love you forever — you can do so, securely, via Paypal right now, using the button below…