Be heard on the issues that matter most to you!
What timing! Just as Chris was reviewing Rober Jensen's newest anti-porn treatise I was talking with Tristan Taormino about her most recent addition to her "reality porn" series, Chemistry 3 . We thought it would be interesting to expand our discussion of pornography, widening it to include our community here. We'll start with Tristan Taormino and see where we go from there!
To get us started, I emailed Tristan a set of questions, mostly about the making of her newest addition to the Chemsitry series. Those questions and her answers are posted below. Please feel free to leave your own questions and reactions in the comments. She'll be checking in regularly to participate in the conversation.
Some background: Tristan Taormino has published several books on sex, anal sex for women being one of her main topics. She produces the Chemistry porn series (which features a group of performers in a house with no script or direction, so they determine their own scenes) and has consulted on a wide variety of film projects, specializing in the representation of sexual minorities. She even consulted on Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule. Her work has been featured in a variety of mainstream press outlets including The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Out Magazine, The Advocate, Men's Health, Salon.com, Nerve.com, Redbook, Playboy and Penthouse. (One wonders how common it is to be featured in both Redbook and Penthouse!). You can find her online at PuckerUp.com.
Elizabeth Wood: How did you come up with the idea for the Chemistry series?
Tristan Taormino: That probably goes all the way back to my days as Editor of On Our Backs. When I directed photo shoots for the magazine, they were always a collaboration with the models. We mostly shot real-life couples, and we wanted to know what kinds of things they wanted to do, and we'd capture them. I am also a reality TV junkie, and that has had a big influence on me. So, I was really interested in creating an environment for porn performers where they could feel safe and comfortable, and they'd be in control of who they have sex with, when, where, and what they do. For me, this part of the process is about empowering the performers to participate in their own representation—to challenge the anti-porn notion that all porn performers are exploited objects. Plus, I find it much more interesting to watch them doing what they like, rather than telling them what I want to see. In between the sex scenes, I do extensive interviews with them, and lots of viewers have told me that they really get a sense of the performers' personalities, which is my goal. I want people to see them as the fascinating, three-dimensional characters that they are. The performers have a lot to say about what they do, why they do it, what they like and dislike, and how it affects different aspects of their lives. Again, the interviews are a conscious choice: I am not interested in sex robots fucking, I want to see people fucking.
EW: How do you choose the performers for each episode? Do the performers have any influence in the selection process?
TT: The performers have all the influence! Casting Chemistry is like a puzzle. I usually start with one or two people in mind. I get in touch with the first person to see if she is interested (it's always a woman). I ask her for her "No" list—this is standard in casting; each performer has a list of people they won't work with. Then, I ask her for a "YES" list: who are the performers you love to work with, the ones you have chemistry with, the people who top your list, and who are the people you've never worked with before, but are interested in working with? From that "YES" list, I cast the second person. Then I ask performer #2 for the same lists. The final person is the most difficult to cast, since his or her name needs to be on most (if not all) of the other people's lists. So, going into the shoot, I know that the cast is what I call "sexually compatible." In that way, it's not like reality TV, it's not a random group of strangers.
EW: How important is it that each performer fit a different kind of image? For example, in Chemistry 3 you have a goth/alternative woman, the petite blonde ultrafeminine woman, and a defensive/assertive African American woman. I have a harder time distinguishing the men, though you have one who is into tattoos and domination, and one who doesn't shave his head or his body hair. When choosing performers do you pay a lot of attention to how much diversity you've got? And is diversity in terms of appearance more or less important than diversity in sexual inclinations?
TT: Diversity is very important to me, but only in one sense: there are performers of color in every volume of Chemistry. But beyond that, I really choose performers who are enthusiastic about the project, opinionated and articulate, and interesting. I don't see it in terms of aesthetics or archetypes like those you listed. In fact, it was interesting how you characterized each woman, because I don't see them that way at all. Roxy DeVille actually talks in the movie about how people assume she's goth because of the way she looks, but she doesn't identify with goth culture at all. To me, I love Roxy because she presents a different version of femininity and female sexuality than "typical" porn stars. She even mocks the sort of sex kitten people expect her to be, one of my favorite moments in the film. Hillary Scott, the blonde, is really shy and introverted but when she starts to have sex, she transforms into an uninhibited exhibitionist. Jada Fire, an African American woman who has been in the industry for almost ten years, is very complicated. Yes, she can be assertive and guarded, but she's also very honest and gets into a submissive headspace in her scene with Steven. To me, the men are all very different from one another. Steven is a veteran and he's really into the psychological aspects of sex, getting into the heads of the women he performs with. Derrick talks a lot about dominance and rough sex, and what it meant for him when Roxy turned the tables and got rough with him. Christian is super laid-back, Mr. Go-With-The-Flow, and he genuinely loves his job.
EW: I think it is in an "extra" scene but I recall seeing you sitting on a couch with a clipboard that had what looked like a chart of pairings on it. How much "managing" do you do on the set?
TT: It's sort of like controlled chaos on my set the first day, everyone jumps right into it, and the crew can hardly keep up. In the morning on Day 2, I sit down with everyone and go over what/who they've already done (that's the chart you saw), and ask them what they might be thinking about for the coming day, so I can have an idea what to expect.
EW: How much do performers get paid on your projects? How does that compare to other work in video porn?
TT: The performers get paid per scene whatever their rate is; in the industry, performers set their own rates depending on activities. So, performers aren't paid more on my set than other sets.
EW: Pay aside, what do you do to ensure the best possible working conditions on your projects? How would you say that working conditions on your projects compare working conditions on other projects? (And speaking of conditions and pay, how do conditions and pay for photographers, technicians and others compare on your projects and others? Those are folks we hardly ever hear about.)
TT: Creating a safe, positive working environment is at the top of my priority list when it comes to making porn. I follow industry standards in terms of STD and HIV testing protocol: each performer must have a valid negative test results that are less than 30 days old. They always have the option of using condoms. I make sure that anywhere they want to fuck is clean and safe. I bring my own sheets, and change sheets between scenes. I encourage them to bring/use their own sex toys and make brand new, in the package, sex toys available to them. I have their favorite lube on set. I ask in advance about food and beverage preferences, and anything they request—within reason—is given to them. I shop at Whole Foods and am known for having the best food on my sets. I figure, if I am going to ask them to fuck all day, they should be well hydrated and nourished. And not with cold fast food on the catering table. I never ask anyone to do something they don't want to do or pressure anyone to do something. I treat everyone with respect and make it known that it's all about them for these two days. I can't speak about working conditions on other sets, but I can tell you that many performers tell me that mine is the best production they've ever worked on, one of their favorites, etc. It is incredibly rewarding to hear from performers that they feel relaxed, they don't feel pressured, and they feel respected and cherished when they are on my set. My crew is AMAZING and every person has been with me since Chemistry #1 with the exception of the makeup person. The days are longer and harder for them than a typical porn day, because we are shooting so many hours and often running around trying to catch up with spontaneous sex scenes. But they tell me consistently that they appreciate working for me because they see that I am trying to do something different. They look forward to my sets because they know they will learn something new about performers they work with all the time (during an interview), and the mood will be spontaneous and fun. I hope my work ethic, enthusiasm, and commitment to respect is contagious to those around me.
EW: One critique of porn is that it is all about men's pleasure and not about women's. A different critique that I'd love to explore is that, at least in terms of visual representation, porn is not about men's pleasure at all. It makes sex look like a lot of work for men, where it makes sex look like lots of pleasure for women. What's your sense of how your porn portrays sex and pleasure for men and for women?
TT: I feel like lots of porn represents male sexuality as hard, aggressive, and robot-like, and female sexuality as merely a vehicle/receptacle for men's pleasure. To me, a lot of porn does a disservice to men and women, and I want my porn to be different. The first thing is that in my movies, you can *see* the men. I try to give them equal space in the frame—literally. Visually, in the majority of porn, men are literally CUT OUT of the frame, and they are reduced to an erection only. We never see the rest of their bodies, let alone their faces while they are fucking. I love to see an expression wash over someone's face as they experience pleasure, and for men, those images are never included in scenes. We also never hear from them. Men are rarely allowed to speak, some are even told to not speak; in my movies, I give them equal "talk" time in the interview segments. One of the complaints I hear a lot from female performers is that they are not given time to reach orgasm, because when things start to heat up for them, the director calls for them to change what they are doing. I let performers pace themselves and never tell them to stop what they are doing, and I find that it leads to more real female orgasms, which are still lacking in a lot of porn.
EW: There are a lot of standard features of mainstream porn that come to seem pretty repetitious. Audacia Ray has called this the "pornula" and has written about how it can be frustrating but is also to large degrees an artifact of the limitations on making and marketing porn. One such feature is the cum shot. When you started putting porn stars together without a script how much did they deviate from the standardized "pornula"? (One example I can think of immediately was from a scene in Chemistry 3 where the man in the scene came without pulling out and ejaculating on the woman he was fucking. How unusual is that? It seems like it would make the sex more pleasurable for the men involved. Also, what other deviations from the standard do you see in Chemistry 3?
TT: have a big sit down with all my performers at the beginning of Day 1 and I tell them, "Forget everything you know about porn. Forget everything you've learned. Forget the formula: cunnilingus (if you're lucky), blow job, position 1 for 2 minutes, position 2 for 2 minutes, position 3 for 2 minutes, pop shot." But it's difficult. They are professionals and they do stuff automatically: they get into weird positions that don't feel good but look good for the camera and they don't stay in one position for "too long". So, my goal for Chemistry is for as much as possible to deviate from the formula. I shoot scenes where there is intercourse, then oral sex, then intercourse. I shoot so-called "internal" cum shots and—this is a HUGE no-no—scenes WITHOUT cum shots. I shoot scenes where performers stay in one position for a long time. I shoot scenes where sex toys cover the pussy, a cardinal sin. I shot a scene with Jack Lawrence and Dana DeArmond in Chemistry 1 of just cunnilingus and Dana's orgasm; Jack did not even take his clothes off—unheard of! I've shot men receiving anal pleasure in Chemistry 1 and 2, which is usually relegated to strap-on niche movies only. As for the internal cum shot in Chemistry 3, usually the only time you see these are in “niche” movies dedicated to them, creampie movies. Steven wanted to come inside her, Roxy really trusts him and said yes (internal ejaculation obviously puts a female performer at greater risk for STDs or pregnancy). They talk about it later in an interview, and Roxy says she did it because it was Steven, and doesn’t do that with just anyone.
EW: I enjoyed some of the extra scenes. How did you decide what scenes to put into the video and what ones to leave as "extras"? For example, there was a scene where Roxy demonstrates how she rinses her vagina before a sex scene. There was something very charming about the way that she explained what she was doing, but also about the fact that someone in the background asked her why she would bother, since there is nothing wrong with vaginal secretions as they are. She responded that it was a "professional courtesy." That made me wonder what other kinds of "professional courtesies" porn performers extend to one another.
TT: That scene is a funny one. Well, there are all sorts of rituals that go on before a scene starts. Most women douche. Roxy douched with water, although I think most women douche with the liquid that comes in a pre-packaged douche. If there is going to be anal sex, women do an enema. I think the most fascinating thing about interactions between performers is their negotiation process, which almost always happens off camera. I try to capture as much of it as I can. I think this is especially apparent in the scene with Jada and Derrick, where he starts to get rough with her, and she tells him to slow down and relax. It's an interesting moment, like hearing someone say "No" in porno, which is rare.
Photo provided courtesy of Tristan Taormino.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
thanks very much elizabeth and tristan for the interesting information about the ins and outs of making a porn film....i think SO and I would really love to watch tristan's movies...
i was all set to order a chemistry DVD til i read the international shipping restrictions...now i'm wondering who i can have it shipped to in the states and have it brought over!
very curious.... why can't you ship to alabama???
cheers, ladies!
We don't ship sex toys (but we do ship videos) to Alabama because that state bans the sale of sex toys. Check out this link for the details of that court battle: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071001/D8S0L3FO1.html. As for the "international shipping restrictions," I am not quite sure where you are located or what you mean, because we do ship internationally and all are DVDs play worldwide (no regional coding). Email me directly at tristan at puckerup.com and we'll discuss.
Before we started this site I was blogging only on Wordpress and Tom Joaquin, a friend and a very smart lawyer who later became involved in the start up of this site, wrote a good piece of legal commentary about the Alabama case there. (This was before the most recent decision.) The discussion in the comments may still be worth reading. It even sparked a comedy routine by Mark Day.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Great question. Before I worked in the industry, I was frustrated by the lack of condoms in porn; in my first movie, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (which I did with Evil Angel in 1999), I insisted everyone use condoms except for one real-life couple (and I made sure to establish they were a couple). When I began directing again, I was still convinced that the lack of condoms was all about this notion the industry bought into that "viewers don't want to see condoms in porn—it ruins the fantasy." All the companies claimed that porn without condoms sold much, much more than porn with condoms. They said it the market was driving condom-free porn. Then I began asking performers, and the responses I heard really surprised me. Some male performers said they find it more difficult to perform while wearing a condom; it's harder for them to get hard and stay hard for as long as they have to. Scenes tend to go longer, putting more pressure on them. Some of them just cannot do a scene with a condom. In turn, female performers have the same complaint: condom scenes take a lot longer to shoot, which means more hours and more fucking, thus it's physically harder on them. So lots of performers said that if given the choice, they prefer no condoms. Others disagree and would rather use condoms but don't make it mandatory because they say they lose work, which is absolutely true. My theory is that if every single company got on board and went all condom then the viewers would have to adjust. That's what happened in gay porn and it worked for a while until barebacking porn began to grow. I assume the same would happen in straight porn. I want my performers to be safe on my set. I don't want someone to catch an STI/STD on my set. But I also want to empower them to make the choices that work for them, so I am torn.
Some male performers said they find it more difficult to perform while wearing a condom; it's harder for them to get hard and stay hard for as long as they have to. Scenes tend to go longer, putting more pressure on them. Some of them just cannot do a scene with a condom. In turn, female performers have the same complaint: condom scenes take a lot longer to shoot, which means more hours and more fucking, thus it's physically harder on them.So that raises a technical question I'm embarrassed to say I (who am generally obsessed by questions about working conditions) never thought about before: For a typical-length sex scene in a mainstream porn film, how much sex actually happens? Earlier you were describing the formula of "cunnilingus (if you're lucky), blowjob, position 1 for two minutes, position 2 for two minutes, position 3 for two minutes, pop shot." Does a lot of sex get cut out in the editing?
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
The formula I described was about the final edited scene. How much sex happens to make a 10-20 minute scene totally varies, but it could be as much as an hour of actual fucking, but of course there is stopping and starting, and that one hour isn't necessarily continuous, it can happen within three hours of shooting, moving lights, changing positions, changing tapes, etc. etc.
i have to say that i think it's very cultural...i have seen some very hard core french porn, BDSM, spanking, basically gang bang but the men wore condoms and i don't think it diminished the scene at all.
american mainstream porn just has this slick, silicone boob, pulsing cock feel....i've seen and enjoyed lots of foreign, amateur porn that was much more enjoyable. when watching the mainstream stuff, i get obsessed with thinking....how did they do that? isn't her mouth getting tired?
i am amazed at the amount of work that actually goes into a 10 minute scene...i suppose lots of really great sex gets lost because the camera is not in position....
tristan, i'm in england and after some thought i'm sure we are much more liberal than the US, i think i'll order something for my family free un-christmas...i was a bit put off about the importing cautions,
You may be subject to import duties and taxes, which are levied once the package reaches your country and must be paid by you at the time of importation. You are considered the importer of record and must comply with all laws and regulations of the country in which you are receiving the goods.
i think i'll give it a go, i already have a multi regionDVD player!
We ship to the UK all the time without any issues. We have to put that warning there for people who live in countries where porn can be seized by customs. I can guarantee your package will get to you!! As for the condoms, as a viewer, I really don't mind seeing them, although others disagree with me. Then again, I want to know people are having a good time and are safe in the scenes I watch. If there is any implication of coercion or boredom, it's a total turn-off to me.
thanks for being so tuned in to the conversation....elizabeth is doing a brilliant job here but it all depends on people willing to give an opinion...
do people really say condoms are a turn off???
fake emotions and fake boobs would do me in....i watched a film once with two women, one man...one woman was being buttfucked and the man withdrew and the other woman put his cock in her mouth...as a nurse and a woman the alarm bells are ringing...***unsafe sex*** i'm not saying wow.... cool... wet....and yet some amatuer dogging video can be a real turn on...
it may be a male/female thing because my SO enjoys every fetish out there...
I actually really like to see condoms for vaginal or anal intercourse. (I'm neutral on their presence/absence for oral sex.) My entire experience of heterosexual intercourse for the first 10 years that I was sexually active -- with very few exceptions -- was with condoms. I loved them. When I met my current partner and we decided that we did not need to use condoms at first I was actually grossed out by the ooziness after sex. It also felt like something was missing in the lead up to intercourse. I was surprised by how much I had actually eroticized condom use and how much I'd come to see them as symbol of care and responsibility and preparation -- all of which I find sexy! I would love to see more condoms in porn. It would make the sex feel more "real" to me. A minority opinion I'm sure, but mine all the same.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
I loved Chemistry 3. (My review is here.) I want to see the other two Chemistry movies now.
Elizabeth, we must be around the same age, because when I became sexually active, safer sex was a big part of my sex life, too. Condoms, gloves, and dental dams were just another part of sex, so I am with you. I don't see them as "barriers" as some others do. I still use gloves all the time for manual penetration because I like the way they feel.
We probably are about the same age. I'm 36. No secret about it. Born at the end of 1970, came of age sexually during the beginning of the AIDS crisis. "And the Band Played On" was probably my favorite book during my first year of college. Safer sex workshops were cool and fun and relatively easy to find. I attended at least two college-approved safer sex events. One was a sex toy "show and tell". I lived in a city with a great feminist sex toy shop where I could attend workshops and demonstrations, all of which eroticized safer sex. Completely different experience from that of a friend of mine, about 20 years ahead of me, who was telling me that when she was developing her sexuality condoms were a sign of distrust and that she never did learn to like them. She probably had the same visceral sense of "ickyness" the first time she used one that I had the first time I didn't!
As for gloves, well, they're even better. The smoothness of latex is an amazing thing!
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Thanks so much for the thoughtful review, Amber. Come back and chat with us here!
Off topic but just wanted to say that I'm totally excited to be headed to Atlanta in April for Sex 2.0 where I'll get to meet Amber for the first time face to face. She's put together an amazing looking "unconference"!
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, aka AIM, (http://www.aim-med.org) is the central agency which tests and keeps track of every performer. I spoke to the director, Sharon Mitchell, just recently for a Village Voice column I wrote on the subject (see http://www.villagevoice.com/people/0737,taormino,77775,24.html). HIV rates are drastically lower in the porn population than in the general population. Mitchell says porn stars have a lot more sexual partners yet get fewer STDs compared to others in the same age group. According to her, AIM tests about 2000 people each month, and only 2.8% test positive for an STD. That’s well below comparable national rates: in the U.S., about 22% of people aged 15-24 get an STD each year. (The CDC groups 15-19 year olds and 20-24 year olds. The majority of porn stars are 18-24, which overlaps two age categories.) Mitchell says AIM has treated about 25-30% of performers for HPV and now vaccinates both women and men with the HPV vaccine. Probably the biggest issue is herpes. 90% of Americans have been exposed to HSV-1 (the virus that causes most cases of oral herpes) and more than one in five Americans are infected with genital herpes (most often caused by HSV-2). Mitchell estimates that about 50% of performers have either HSV-1 or HSV-2. Other industry insiders say it's more like 90% (just based on their experience.) Because one can transmit the virus without having any symptoms, it's difficult for even the most scrupulous performers to detect. Lots and lots of them are on Valtrex, which is supposed to suppress the virus, but that doesn't necessarily prevent transmission.
i know transplant has much higher exchange of tissue and cells but as a transplant nurse...i wanted to point out that HIV+ and hep C can be transmitted without a positive test
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/health/13cnd-organ.html?em&Four transplant recipients in Chicago have contracted H.I.V. from an organ donor, the first known cases in more than a decade of the virus being spread by organ transplants.
The organs also gave all four patients hepatitis C, in what health officials said was the first reported instance of the two viruses being spread simultaneously by a transplant.
Though exceedingly rare, this type of transmission highlights a known weakness in the system for checking organ donors for infection: the most commonly used tests can fail to detect viral diseases if they are performed too early in the course of the infection. Officials say the events in Chicago may lead to widespread changes in testing methods.
it's a terrible shame that STI's brings a negativity to sexual conduct...i enjoyed your discussion with eliazbeth about becoming sexually active in the age of condoms/safe sex. myself being a little older, condoms were always assocaited with prevention of pregnancy not STI's...and that could be solved with the pill.
i agree that the scare of HIV has diminished over time and is seen as more of a chronic illness, which no doubt will lead to complacency, unsafe practice and an increase in STI's
my original question was about the size of mens cocks....do you have try outs, screen and choose male actor's for your films based on size, ability to maintain an erection, charisma....combination???
is it easier to cast men or women???
Visually, in the majority of porn, men are literally CUT OUT of the frame, and they are reduced to an erection only. We never see the rest of their bodies, let alone their faces while they are fucking. I love to see an expression wash over someone's face as they experience pleasure, and for men, those images are never included in scenes.
This is, I think, such an important point! As is the way Elizabeth asked the question. It may be true that mainstream heterosexual video pornography is, generally, even primarily, about the pleasure of the male gzae, the pleasure to be had from "gazing" as a man, but the actual male bodies represented in that pornography are rarely portrayed as experiencing physical pleasure. Some years ago, when I was writing on porn, it seemed to me that this was because the videos are structured so that the male viewer identifies with what the man on the screen is doing, not what he is feeling--because to identify with what he is feeling moves too far in the direction of homoeroticism, i.e., it would require the male viewer to eroticize the male body on the screen.
One of the sites I wrote about when I was doing this research is a horribly misogynist reality porn site called bangbus. In one of the videos I downloaded, though, there was a scene in which a woman was giving a man a blowjob that was shot in such a way that you could see not just the man's erection, and the woman's head and mouth as she worked on him, but his face as well. It was a remarkable moment for me because it was the first time--and I had watched a lot of porn by then--that I had ever seen a blowjob shot from that angle. Then, at some point, the guy holding the camera changed position and the viewers view of the blowjob became entirely conventional: the man's hard-on, the woman's head, and so all you got was her ostensible pleasure in giving the blowjob. The man's physical pleasure was suddenly entirely absent from the frame.
None of the other videos on bangbus that I watched or downloaded had a similar shot in them; neither did any of the other amateur or reality porn sites or videos that I looked at. In other words, while the porn may have been called amateur, it was amateur only because the people making it were not professional performers. There did not seem to me to be any essential difference between the way the "amateur" sex was presented and the way sex is presented in most mainstream heterosexual porn. This made me wonder about the degree to which the people who produce porn--and perhaps even the people who watch it--internalize the norms of the way sex is represented in porn such that those norms become the conventions that govern the way those people have sex in their off-screen lives. At the time, this was just an idle thought, a question that I thought would be interesting to try but ultimately impossible to answer in any authoritative way, but it occurred to me again reading this interview because of a comment Tristan made--that I can't find now--about how the performers in her videos sometimes assume the positions they are used to assuming in the regular videos they make, ones that look good for the camera but that are uncomfortable to maintain, and how these positions are in many ways explicitly not what Tristan is looking for.
It is, I suppose, not a terribly original insight (and it is one that is made by anti-porn critics all the time), but it does seem to me important to bring into this kind of discussion of porn the ways in which porn engenders, or at least might engender, the kinds of sex people have, think they can have, should have, might want to have, etc. Not to point out the evils of bad porn, or that porn itself is bad/evil, but to explore the notion that, precisely because the images in porn have an effect on people's sexual imaginations, and because porn is, after all, only one kind of sexual representation and is very much not divorced from the other kinds of sexual representation out in the culture, we deserve (and I do mean deserve) porn that engages the humanity inherent in our sexual imaginations. And that means--and here is the hard part--being honest about what that imagination contains.
This was a wonderful interview and a wonderful discussion. Thanks for putting it up, Elizabeth, and thanks Tristan for being willing to have it.
I want to say a big "Thank You" to Tristan Taormino for participating in this week long conversation about Chemistry 3, and about porn more generally. Thanks also to TracyA, Richard Newman, and Amber Rhea for joining in. It was a more interesting conversation because of your participation!
I'm going to close this thread for comments after tonight because I don't think Tristan will be joining us regularly as we move forward, but I'd love to suggest that any who are interested continue this conversation in the new Porn Studies forum. There's a thread there called "Continuation of the conversation we started with Tristan Taormino". And if you're logged in feel free to add forum threads that you're interested in!
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Amber, I'm so sorry you missed the conversation! The rest of us -- and certainly Tristan any time she feels like dropping in -- can continue it in the Porn Studies forum, though. Bring friends! I've been thinking I want to discuss Audacia's post from a few weeks back responding to the questions about whether some kinds of porn or some kinds of sex, by extension, are more feminist than others.
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
So Elizabeth, yes, we are the same age. I never had wild, unprotected sex, then had to adjust and learn how to have safer sex, like people who are older than us, and, unfortunately, younger. That really does make a difference I think in the way we conceptualize safer sex.
Same here. But honestly I think I made it into a narrow window of time, AND was just lucky to be the type of person who was always into educating myself (because as far as sex was concerned, the schools in the part of Georgia where I grew up sure as hell weren't doing it). It makes me sad and nervous for teenagers today, and I just hope things get better.
