S-E-X and SEO Writing
Gabrielle Kassel on becoming a go-to writer on queer sexuality
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Hey writers,
I was first introduced to Gabrielle Kassel’s work through a video about the Ohnut, a sexual aid that’s used to buffer the depth of penetration. Through this short Instagram clip, Gabrielle mimes and cheeses to music as she plays around with the squishy ring, stretching it over a dildo to demonstrate how it works. And so I found myself sucked into her vortex of delightful and inclusive sex education content, much of which focuses on queer sexuality.
Gabrielle manages to strip away any shame we might associate with sex and sexuality to produce content that feels suddenly necessary in a way you never realized before that video about butt plugs popped up on your feed.
Turns out, Instagram is only a small part of Gabrielle’s body of work, which includes regular bylines in Shape, Well+Good, Greatist, Healthline, Women’s Health, and more.
And so I was dying to know more about Gabrielle’s career, and I was thrilled when she agreed to answer some questions about her path to queer sexuality content creator and journalist.
So writers, meet Gabrielle!
Gabrielle Kassel on Writing About Sex
B: Can you start by telling us how you describe yourself professionally?
G: I am a content creator who creates written, audio, and video content at the intersection of queerness, sexual health, and pleasure.
I first found your work through Instagram, where you share the most positive, delightful sex education content. Can you tell us how sex became such a prominent topic in the many that you cover?
I was a queer studies major in college, so writing about queer sexuality, and more specifically queer sex, was something that I’d been doing since college. When I entered the journalism field shortly after graduating, I knew I wanted to continue writing about sexuality. At the time, I thought that meant I would be writing topics like how do two lesbians have babies and how do two lesbians get pregnant and how do I know if I’m a lesbian—topics like that. As I continued writing about sexuality in those ways, the opportunity to write about queer sex presented itself when in 2016 and 2017 there began a shift toward SEO content. Basically Google said to all of these magazine brands, we do not want to show pornographic content when folks Google questions about sex—for example how to scissor or what is lesbian sex or what is fisting. For the first time in a really long time, these publications had reason to publish content on those topics. So when there was a draw or a need to write about queer sex, since I was already someone who was writing about queer sexuality, I became a go-to person for a few different editors on those topics. Since I’ve been doing it, I absolutely love it. And since then, I have enrolled in sexuality educator school. I’m currently in the process of becoming a certified sex educator. That’s how queer sex became my niche.
What role does Instagram play in your work as a journalist? Do you feel a need to separate your creation of social media content from your journalism work? How do you navigate that division, or the relationship between the two types of work?
I definitely *don’t* feel a need to separate my work on social media with my work as a journalist.
On the contrary, most of what I post on my Instagram are graphic-iterations of already-published work. I turn many of my articles into shareable graphics on Canva, which I then post on Instagram with a lil caption like “to learn more click the link in bio”. My hope here is to get more eyes on the article, therefore showing my editor that this kind of content does well! (And therefore, that they should assign me more similar content!).
When I post things on my feed that are *not* already articles, I use the engagement I receive on those posts to show editors the topic deserves to be an article when I pitch the idea, by linking to the post in my pitch.
I could say a lot about the relationship between the journalist and the influencer. But I think Allegra Hobbs says it best in her Guardian essay, The journalist as influencer: how we sell ourselves on social media. She writes: “In the age of Twitter and Instagram, an online presence, which is necessarily public and necessarily consumable, seems all but mandatory for a writer who reaches (or hopes to reach) a certain level of renown, especially for anyone dealing in personal essays or cultural criticism. In the way that the influencer uses her image to sell her swag, the writer leverages her life to sell her work, to editors and audiences.”
Did you ever feel nervous or self-conscious making sex a focus of your work? If so, how did you break through that and get comfortable having your name on some articles we might not want to be seen reading at work?
I’ll start out by saying that when people find out that you write about sex for the internet, they assume that you don’t have any boundaries in terms of what you share. On the contrary, I have found that people who write about sex for the internet have some of the best boundaries in terms of what aspects of their own sex lives they are willing to share. For me, getting really firm with my boundaries, and understanding what I do and do not want out there about me personally is really important. Boundary setting is a big thing.
I think that people assume, when you write about sex, that you are doing all of the sex acts that you write about, in a way that when you write about weight loss or fitness trends, they do not. When someone approaches me with assumptions about me because of the topics I write about, I like to remind them that I am a journalist which means that when I’m writing a piece with expert insight, I am using that expert insight to sculpt an article, not necessarily first-person experience.
Can you look back and identify any pivotal moments in your career that made you the writer you are today?
Over the first three years of my career, I had three separate editors take the time to mentor me, and there’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without them.
Ashley Oerman sat down with me for an hour and really (really!) explained the difference between writing an essay for college and writing an essay for a magazine. She also helped me understand the value of lede with a culturally-relevant nod.
Lauren Del Turco taught me how to understand WTF a study was saying, and how to use that study to bolster my stories.
And Alexis Berger taught me how to pitch the queer sexual health and lifestyle topics so that they had appeal to a mainstream publication.
What does your cycle of work look like as a freelancer? Do you pitch regularly or do you have publications that come to you with assignments?
A combination! Five years ago it was about 95 percent pitched articles, and 5 percent assigned pieces. These days, it’s closer to 50-50.
Any tips for pitching health/wellness/sex topics?
My tips for pitching health/wellness/sex topics are the same as my tips for pitching any other types of content:
Follow-up after 2 weeks!
Label your emails PITCH: [“proposed article title for one of the pitches here”]
Pitch new editors via LinkedIn, not email.
Be THRILLED with a 10% response rate!
Don’t take it personally if an editor didn’t respond because it’s not personal—the editor’s inbox is just bananas and they don’t have time to respond. (Remember: sending a gracious “no” is time consuming! Heck, sending a bitchy “no” is time consuming, too!).
Don’t ask for permission to pitch—just do it. Likewise, don’t ask if an editor is currently accepting pitches—just send them!
Make sure the website hasn’t already covered the topic.
Ok, so let's say you don't have any assignments right now. (Ack!) You're sitting at your computer trying to figure out what to write that someone will pay you for. How do you come up with topics/story ideas?
At risk of being easy to hate, since I’ve started freelancing, I have never been at a point where I haven’t had any work lined up!
When I started freelancing, my goal was to always have the next two weeks lined up with work. These days, my goal is to always have my next 4 weeks lined up with assignments.
How do I do that? A few ways:
I am CONSTANTLY pitching!
When I’m pitching an editor I’ve worked with in the past, I’ll send 5 to 7 article ideas.
I very rarely write timely stories. Most of the content I write is SEO-driven, first-person, or service-driven but not timely. I keep a draft open in my inbox for all the publications that I write for with pitches. Then I constantly update that draft for a few weeks until I’m ready to send it to my editor.
What do I “update” those pitch drafts with? Let’s assume I get a PR email in my inbox for an upcoming sex toy, I’ll go to the email draft type “check sex toy email from X”. Or, I’ll write out a full pitch in response to the launch. Other times the idea comes because I’m writing a story for a brand, want to link out a key word, and find out that they don’t have a story centered around that keyword.
If you could go back in time and give some advice to your younger self on making a career as a writer, what would it be?
I’m so proud of my younger self for having the guts to go freelance. I had been offered a full-time position at (retracted) company, and I just knew in my gut that it was not the right fit for me. So I’m really proud of myself for listening to my gut and making the move to go freelance. If I could tell her something I’d say, “Do it again.”
Can you share one piece of writing that you're particularly proud of and why?
For Healthline, I wrote a piece called, “A Beginner’s Guide To Fisting” which is about—you guessed it!—fisting.
Is the reporting especially exceptional? No. Is the writing the most creative I’ve ever crafted? Also no.
So why the heck am I so damn proud of this piece?? Because I pitched this story 10 times over the course of 4 (four!) years before an editor finally picked it up! And since it’s been published I’ve received no less than 100 DMs from people thanking me for writing this piece. This piece is a good reminder to me.
A big thank you to Gabrielle for sharing her insight and advice. For more of Gabrielle’s work, you should sign up for her recently launched newsletter! At the end of each month, she’ll bop by your inbox with a round-up of articles she’s written for various places around the internet that all focuse on a specific queer sexuality theme or topic.
That’s all for today, friends! If you’re a paid subscriber, I’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday with lots of writing opportunities. If not, considering getting in on all the good stuff and supporting this newsletter!
Stay inspired,
Britany