Tristan Taormino

[davemarc]

Regarding the recent discussion of Tristan Taormino, I just thought I'd
share the bio that can be found at her website. (See below.) As someone who
has met her, read her Village Voice columns regularly, and followed her
career for about a decade, I can say that she is smart, funny, and an
earnest and dedicated sex education advocate. Her porn activities--just one
aspect of her career--might involve her in a field that has catered largely
to men, but she is clearly not satisfied with the status quo. I bring this
up because I'm concerned that some of the recent discussion might have
pigeonholed  her unfairly.

d.

*

TRISTAN TAORMINO is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex
educator. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her Bachelor's degree in
American Studies from Wesleyan University in 1993. She is the author of
three books: True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion (Cleis
Press); Down and Dirty Sex Secrets (ReganBooks/HaperCollins); and The
Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (Cleis Press), winner of a Firecracker
Book Award and named Amazon.com's #1 Bestseller in Women's Sex Instruction
in 1998. The second edition of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women  was
released in February 2006. She is series editor of twelve volumes of the
Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Best Lesbian Erotica, an annual
anthology published by Cleis Press, for which she has collaborated with
writers Heather Lewis, Jewelle Gomez, Jenifer Levin, Chrystos, Joan Nestle,
Pat Califia, Amber Hollibaugh, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Tea, and Felice
Newman. She is working on a new book about open relationships. She runs her
own adult film production company, Smart Ass Productions, and is currently
an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment. She directs two series for
Vivid: a reality series called Chemistry, which debuted in September of
2006, and a new sex education series which will be released in early 2007.
She is a columnist for The Village Voice, Taboo, and Velvet Park. She is the
former editor of On Our Backs, the nation's oldest lesbian-produced lesbian
sex magazine. Tristan has been featured in over 200 publications including
The New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly,
Details, New York Magazine, Men's Health, and Playboy. She has been named to
several media lists, including Out Magazine's 100 Gay Success Stories of the
Year and The Advocate's Best and Brightest Gay & Lesbian People Under 30.
She has appeared on CNN, HBO's Real Sex, NBC's The Other Half, The Howard
Stern Show, Loveline, Ricki Lake, MTV, Oxygen, Fox News, The Discovery
Channel, and on over four dozen radio shows. She lectures at top colleges
and universities including Yale, Brown, Columbia, Smith, Vassar, and NYU,
where she speaks on gay and lesbian issues, sexuality and gender, and
feminism. She teaches sex and relationship workshops around the world.
http://www.puckerup.com/about_tristan/?&=