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Sometimes, intruding into the screenings, the peddling of shows and the actors preening, here on the TV Critics Press Tour, a serious discussion breaks out. A sort-of seminar on a topic that matters.

Like, sex. Specifically, sex on serious cable TV shows. There's a lot if it. Some shows are actually about sex, such as Masters of Sex, obviously. What the world and the TV racket needs is a female perspective on the matter – all that canoodling, nudity and frenzied sex in bathroom stalls and on kitchen counters. Is it exploitation and titillation?

So, Showtime helpfully presented a discussion forum: Sexuality and Television – A Female Perspective. There to thrash it out were Masters of Sex executive producer and showrunner Michelle Ashford and star Caitlin FitzGerald; from Shameless, executive producer Nancy Pimental and stars Emmy Rossum and Shanola Hampton, and from The Affair, creator/executive producer/showrunner Sarah Treem and star Maura Tierney.

In an area of the culture that, typically, is defined by male creators and characters, represented on this panel were three shows run by women and four female actors.

You might expect solemnity. Not so. While there were serious points made, the seriousness sometimes slipped and issues of exploitation were batted away.

The first question, from a female critic, was this: "We see women's sexuality on TV defined by dysfunction. Either they're hyper-sexual for some reason that has nothing to do with enjoying sex, or they're not having sex and they're unhappy about it. Why do you think that is?"

Emmy Rossum, who plays Fiona on Shameless, a character who had a lurid affair with a married man and was called "slut!" by his wife, tackled the answer. "Sexuality is a part of life, I hope, and it's interesting that the women on this stage get to write, and we get to show characters."

"We get to explore the intimate parts of them, be that anger or loss or happiness or sexuality," Rossum continued. "We get to show so much about these characters. You're right. Sometimes you do have sex for a reason that has nothing to do with sex. Maybe it's about power. Maybe it's about insecurity. Maybe it's about just wanting to connect. Maybe it's about just wanting to feel good. But, regardless, they don't show it in a gratuitous way. It is illuminating something else. It really has nothing to do with sex and everything about emotion."

Michelle Ashford said: "We came out of the gate knowing that we were going [to] have to tackle sex all the time, because the main characters are studying the science of sex. So we look at sex in the polar opposite way to how it previously had been approached – how do you make sex look sexy? But our job was: How do you make it look as unsexy as is humanly possible? Then, when it came to the characters, we thought, well, let's just expand this idea and make sure that we're never showing sex to be sexy. It's just a symptom of some emotional stage or some bargain that's been made or whatever. But, first of all, this is a hard topic because, yes, there are people who just have nice, happy sex and … "

At which point Rossum interrupted to ask: "There are?" To which Ashford deadpanned: "Well, I don't know. I've heard about it." And the room was giggling.

Rossum, on a roll, also objected to the term "strong female character." She wants to take gender out of it. "How about 'a strong character?'" she asked. And she added that, on Shameless, "our women are way raunchier than our men. We're just trying to find the honest truth of what a character would do in that moment. If the honest truth involves sexuality, if it involves intimacy between two characters or violence between two characters, whatever it is, as long as it feels real."

Then there was a question about exploitation. As critics, we sometimes look at certain lurid scenes and wonder, skeptically, is this creative and necessary and moving the story forward? Thus, are female showrunners and female writers more likely to present sex scenes that are not exploitative of the female characters?

Maura Tierney, who plays the betrayed wife on The Affair, said in reply: "I think you have to be in the room or in the scene to decide if it's exploitative or not, as opposed to being a critic. The actress or the actor, I think, decides what is exploitative."

The Affair's creator, Sarah Treem, added: "I don't think anyone ever tries to be exploitative. I think that would be strange. That's porn."

The issue wouldn't die, though. Critics like me have poured scorn on some of the sexual content of Game of Thrones. And others wonder how much sex and nudity amounts to mere titillation. The women were asked if they have that sort of debate on the shows they make.

Rossum was quickest to answer. "I think we do." Her Shameless co-star Hampton concurred: "Absolutely, we do."

Michelle Ashford then contributed some clarity. "There are many, many layers to doing sex scenes. We actually do them in the same way that on movies, where they're blowing things up, they have a big safety meeting. We have a big sex meeting about our sex scenes because we realize it has the same kind of danger to everybody and people need to be warned. It's a very complicated thing when you're doing this material."

There followed some strong reminders from these women that they are in charge. They monitor what comes from the writers' room to excise gratuitous scenes, they change scenes to make some female actors more comfortable. There's no crisis of exploitation. There is life, love and raunch in what they do. That's all.

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