Tristan Taormino

[Daniel Harper]

This is clearly a heartfelt letter, and I have enormous respect for a person
who can admit where they were wrong. I may disagree with your position, but
you have thought it out and I think we've both learned something.

Thank you for the discussion -- it was very interesting.

--Daniel

On 5/21/07, Bryan Snyder <wilsonistrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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/?&=
>
>
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