Tristan Taormino

[Bryan Snyder]

First off, a great conversation with some people who, after all the
P-content, I grew to respect intellectually and it was nice to be involved
in a conversation not quite P-related even though I pretty much had my ass
handed to me here in terms of factual evidence... lol.  My ending thoughts
on this whole thing:

Yeah - I pigeonholed her real quick and probably really unfairly, but I have
a pretty hard line stance towards that whole prostitution/pornography
thing... extending towards the advertising sectors and then extending to MTV
@ 3 pm etc... maybe it's good for society but I tend to disagree.  Maybe
it's all me... I always thought that I was pretty healthy sexually.. I'm
pretty open (behind closed doors in the bedroom) to most things sexual.  I
was shocked to see that I came off very prudish and almost like... a
zany-right-winger (I re-read my posts)... very shocked.  I had to seriously
sit and think about this like all weekend.

I came to the conclusion that I'm ok with anything that one wishes to do
that doesn't harm someone who is not consenting, which would logically mean
I'm ok with all porn.  So I am... by nature of the first statement you know.
I am privately as well... if a girl wants something I think is odd and I
like her... I comply, no problem.  

So what was my problem??  Obviously a little over defensive of TRP, which is
totally laughable (lol @ self) since he wasn't being attacked.  

First, I really only know porn as an internet thing.  I never had the porn
in a VHS (I'm 27) that my older brother (don't have one) found at his
friends house.  So to me, porn is something that can be accessed
immediately, regularly and for free.  I think that matters to rest of my
thoughts. 

I think my problem is the porn creep and that, to no fault of porn, the
creeping facilitates the "empty sexual experience" and creates (what I
perceive as) a large population of fat, greasy, "sweat panted" men ignoring
real women (and what it takes to experience real women sexually, what a man
has to give out to ... um... get in) for the girls who will "do anything"
which more often than not means "do anything" for the anonymous "him" (the
viewer, the male in the shoot, the camera, etc).  I also think (read:
"know") that the porn creep has infused itself with advertising (which
clearly works, don't get me wrong... and if it sells it must be used... I
get it) and that whole "sex-sells" approach has been pushed into music,
books, TV, painting, photography, film etc...  because the creators,
publishers and distributors of all that art still need it to sell.

Now - all the women in films are not allowed to look normal  (I'm talking
major films that hordes of impressionable teenagers run to witness every
weekend night) and on the other extreme if someone wants to vicariously live
through their rape fantasy... they can find that material in a matter of
seconds (literally).

While porn per se (and I hope and pray I used 'per se' correctly) is not
anything that is bad, or morally wrong in my opinion but I think the idea
that the reverberations are harmful is pretty right on, no matter where your
political mind may lean. 

I will still express that there exists an invisible, wide and subjectively
blurry line where pornography is either tasteful or not... I mean, if one
finds a rape fantasy tasteful because it is not real... does the fact the
rape fantasy is acted and scripted make this person who has a desire to see
it any more tolerable?  My opinion is pretty clear.

But a great discussion that really made me do some self-searching on the
issue... I was very confused as to what my problem was and regardless of
collective agreement here, I'm happy to at least made sense of it for
myself.

Take care,
B

PS - I'm pretty liberal politically, socially and economically (both
personal and social... lol) just in case anyone thought I was a bible
thumper.  Are there any bible thumpers (no offense) on the P-List??  Their
take on some stuff would be very interesting indeed.


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of davemarc
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 11:25 AM
To: Pynchlist
Subject: Tristan Taormino

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/?&=