Tristan Taormino's Blog, page 21

Apr 12: Magdalene St. Michaels on a Passion for All-Girl Erotica and T Cooper on Real Man Adventures

This week on Sex Out Loud radio I’ll be live with two guests: Magdalene St. Michaels will talk about her success that came with starting a new career in adult film at the age of 49. She’ll talk about how she came into the business, her website MagdaleneVOD.com, and her work that has earned her three nominations for AVNs prestigious MILF/Cougar award – in 2008, 2009, and most recently 2013. Author T Cooper will discuss his latest book, Real Man Adventures, a brash, wildly inventive, and comic exploration of the paradoxes and pleasures of masculinity that will forever change what you think it means to be a man.

This week’s show is live, so find out all the ways to listen here and you can call in with questions at 1-866-472-5788, join the discussion on Facebook or Twitter, or even e-mail me via tristan(at)puckerup.com and I’ll read them live on the air!

Magdalene St. Michaels was born on the isle of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea on June 3, 1957 and raised in England where she pursued singing, dancing and acting. In her early 20′s, she moved to the United States, joining her mother who had moved here earlier. She continued her acting with scenes in mainstream movies including “Executive Decision”, starring Steven Seagal, and “Turk 182″, starring Timothy Hutton.

Then in 2007, she just happened to be at the 2007 AEE convention in Las Vegas when fate somehow intervened and guided her to the Girlfriend Films booth, at the last minute of the final day as they were packing up to leave. The owner Dan O’Connell, was quite taken with her and begged her to at least think about performing for him. Magdalene filled out some paperwork, but still had doubts that success could come when starting a new career at the age of 49. Well, it did! And the rest is history (or herstory, lol!).

Her very first adult film – and one of my personal faves, was an all-girl feature film, “I Like To Kiss”, which was written just for her by Mr. O’Connell. For the next year or so she worked exclusively with Girlfriend Films, but soon her popularity had other directors like Nica Noelle (Sweetheart Video and Sweet Sinner studios) knocking on her door – and thank Goddess for all of us fans, she answered!

She prefers the lesbian genre, and has the reputation as being one of the most authentic performers ever to grace our screens in girl/girl erotica. Her other performance genres include boy/girl, mixed group and even BDSM, with well over 100 released scenes to her credit, which have earned her three nominations for AVNs prestigious MILF/Cougar award – in 2008, 2009, and most recently 2013.

T COOPER is the author of three novels, including The Beaufort Diaries and Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes. He is also editor of an anthology of original stories entitled A Fictional History of the United States With Huge Chunks Missing. His most recent book, Real Man Adventures, has just been published (by McSweeney’s Books).

T Cooper was born and raised in Los Angeles, attended Middlebury College in Vermont, and then taught high school in New Orleans before settling in New York City in 1996. He earned an MFA from Columbia University, and in addition to his novels, T’s work has appeared in a variety of publications and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Believer, One Story, Electric Literature, and some others. His short story “Swimming” was one of “100 Distinguished Stories” in The Best American Short Stories 2008 (ed. Salman Rushdie).

T has been awarded residencies to The MacDowell Colony, Ledig House International, and The Millay Colony (where he was The New York Times Foundation Fellow). Not too long ago, he was a visiting faculty member at Middlebury College.

T also adapted and produced a short film based on his graphic novel The Beaufort Diaries. The animated short, directed by the book’s illustrator Alex Petrowsky and starring actor David Duchovny, was an official selection at several film festivals, including Tribeca Film Festival, South By Southwest, The New Orleans Film Fest, The Worldwide Short Film Festival, and the Anchorage International Film Festival.

T enjoys vintage airplanes, M*A*S*H, the great outdoors, world peace, and anything to do with pit bull advocacy. He lives with his family in New York and the South.

loud,

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This post, Apr 12: Magdalene St. Michaels on a Passion for All-Girl Erotica and T Cooper on Real Man Adventures originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 9, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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The 1st Annual Feminist Porn Conference Draws Hundreds to University of Toronto

TORONTO (April 8, 2013)—The First Annual Feminist Porn Conference was held at the University of Toronto on April 6, 2013 and drew nearly 250 attendees. This one-day conference brought together academics, cultural critics, performers, directors, producers, sex workers, activists, students, and fans to explore the emergence of feminist porn as a genre, industry, field of study, and movement. The event, the first ever conference devoted exclusively to feminist pornography, featured 45 different presenters from around the world.

Professors Kevin Heffernan, Constance Penley, and Bobby Noble

Presenters included leading professors whose work spans multiple disciplines from history, sociology, film and media studies to comparative literature, sexuality studies, and feminist studies, including Kevin Heffernan from Southern Methodist University, Lynn Comella of University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Ariane Cruz of Pennsylvania State University, Jill Bakehorn of UC Davis and UC Berkeley, Nicholas Matte of University Toronto, Emily Nagoski from Smith College, and York University’s Bobby Noble as well as scholars from CUNY, UCLA, Northwestern, and Ohio University.

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Madison Young presents “The Politics of Kinky Porn and Feminism”

Several panels featured some of the most well-known producers and performers working in feminist porn today, including Jiz Lee, Courtney Trouble, Madison Young, Sinnamon Love, Dylan Ryan, April Flores, Carlos Batts, Loree Erickson, James Darling, Carrie Gray, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Tina Horn, Arabelle Raphael, Quinn Cassidy, Jes Sachse, and Bianca Stone. The international conference drew presenters from around the world, including Liesbet Zikkenheimer and Marije Janssen from Dusk TV, an erotic TV channel for women in the Netherlands and Australian webmistress and director Ms. Naughty of ForTheGirls.com. Carol Queen, PhD, co-founder of the Center for Sex and Culture and Good Vibrations’ sexologist, spoke on two panels: “Conspicuous Consumption: If We Sell It, They Will Come,” about the connection between feminist porn and sex-positive retail stores and “Feminist Perspectives on Sexual Identity and Sexual Health in Educational and Feminist Porn.”

Tristan Taormino, Shar Rednour, and Nan Kinney

Award-winning filmmaker Shine Louise Houston of Pink and White Productions screened her documentary Shiny Jewels to a huge crowd. A screening of Lesbo Retro: A Dyke Porn Retrospective, a clip show of lesbian porn from 1960-2000, was followed by a question and answer session with its curator, Shar Rednour and special guest Nan Kinney, co-founder of On Our Backs and Fatale Media and recipient of the 2013 Trailblazer Award at The 8th Annual The Feminist Porn Awards on April 5.

Professor Mireille Miller-Young was one of the keynote speakers

The keynote was delivered by feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino and Professors Constance Penley and Mireille Miller-Young (both from University of California-Santa Barbara). As three of the four co-editors of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure, recently published by The Feminist Press at CUNY, they discussed how feminist porn has shifted sexual representation and pondered what the future holds for feminist porn. “The goal of our book was to put academics and sex industry workers into conversation with one another to discuss critical issues about feminism, sexual media, representation, sexual agency, and labor. This conference took those conversations to the next level,” said Mireille Miller-Young. “We hope it mobilizes academics and sex industry workers to create coalitions to support each other’s work,” said Constance Penley.

“The event exceeded my expectations,” said Tristan Taormino, who produced the conference. “I was inspired by the diversity of voices from professors and students to performers and fans. The enthusiasm for dialogue about feminist porn issues was overwhelming, and I am already planning next year’s conference.”

The Feminist Porn Conference was sponsored by the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, Good for Her, The Feminist Porn Awards, and The Feminist Press.

Photo credits: Tania A.

 

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This post, The 1st Annual Feminist Porn Conference Draws Hundreds to University of Toronto originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 9, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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Tristan Taormino on Joy Behar: Say Anything!

Author, educator, and feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino visited with Joy Behar to discuss THE FEMINIST PORN BOOK (Feminist Press), a new anthology co-edited by Taormino, Constance Penley, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, and Mireille Miller-Young.

During the two-segment interview, Tristan and Joy engaged in a lively discussion about the growing field of feminist pornography. They also talked about porn in academia, ethical porn making, sex education, the antiporn crusades, and current hot topics including Fifty Shades of Grey and Todd Akin. “I love how sharp and funny Joy is, but I also really appreciate how genuinely curious she was about feminist porn. She took the time to have a real conversation about it, which can be rare on TV these days,” said Taormino.

The program aired on Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 9pm ET on Current TV and you can watch a clip of it here.  THE FEMINIST PORN BOOK: The Politics of Producing Pleasure is available now at feministpress.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your favorite local bookstore.

About Joy Behar: Say Anything!

Emmy® award winning talk show host Joy Behar is back with Joy Behar: Say Anything!, airing Mon-Thurs evenings 9pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT) on Current TV. One of TV’s most irreverent and outspoken personalities, Joy takes on social issues and relevant topics that impact the American zeitgeist.

Media Contact: Elizabeth Koke: ekoke@gc.cuny.edu

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This post, Tristan Taormino on Joy Behar: Say Anything! originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 4, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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Tonight, April 4th: Tristan Taormino on Joy Behar: Say Anything!

Author, educator, and feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino visited with Joy Behar to discuss THE FEMINIST PORN BOOK (Feminist Press), a new anthology co-edited by Taormino, Constance Penley, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, and Mireille Miller-Young.

During the two-segment interview, Tristan and Joy engaged in a lively discussion about the growing field of feminist pornography. They also talked about porn in academia, ethical porn making, sex education, the antiporn crusades, and current hot topics including Fifty Shades of Grey and Todd Akin. “I love how sharp and funny Joy is, but I also really appreciate how genuinely curious she was about feminist porn. She took the time to have a real conversation about it, which can be rare on TV these days,” said Taormino.

The program will air tonight, Thursday, April 4, 2013 at 9pm ET on Current TV.  THE FEMINIST PORN BOOK: The Politics of Producing Pleasure is available now at feministpress.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and your favorite local bookstore.

About Joy Behar: Say Anything!

Emmy® award winning talk show host Joy Behar is back with Joy Behar: Say Anything!, airing Mon-Thurs evenings 9pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT) on Current TV. One of TV’s most irreverent and outspoken personalities, Joy takes on social issues and relevant topics that impact the American zeitgeist.

Media Contact: Elizabeth Koke: ekoke@gc.cuny.edu

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This post, Tonight, April 4th: Tristan Taormino on Joy Behar: Say Anything! originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 4, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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The Ultimate Guide to Kink nominated for NLA-I Award

FINALISTS ANNOUNCED FOR 2012 NLA-I WRITING AWARDS

(Columbus, OH) — National Leather Association: International (NLA-I), a leading organization for

activists in the pansexual SM/leather/fetish community, announced today the finalists for its annual

writing awards. Named after activists and writers Geoff Mains, John Preston, Pauline Reage, Cynthia

Slater, and the groundbreaking organization Samois, they are awarded annually to recognize excellence

in writing and publishing about Leather, SM, bondage and fetishes.

The finalists for the Cynthia Slater Non-fiction Article Award are:

Civility Revisited by Kassie (Leatherati.com)

Rogue Leatherwomen by Leland Carina (Leatherati.com)

Stop, Drop and Role! Erotic Role Playing by Mollena Williams (The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role

Play and the Erotic Edge)

Digging in the Dirt – The Lure of Taboo Role Play by Mollena Williams (The Ultimate Guide to Kink:

BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge)

On Collars And Closure and Owning Myself by Mollena Williams (The Perverted Negress)

The finalists for the Geoff Mains Non-fiction Book Award are:

Twenty-Five Years of Living in Leather: The National Leather Association, 1986-2011 by Steve Stein

(Adynaton Publishing)

The Ritual of Dominance & Submission: A Guide to High Protocol Dominance & Submission by David

English

Playing Well With Others: Your Field Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather

and BDSM Communities by Lee Harrington and Mollena Williams (Greenery Press)

The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan Taormino, ed. (Cleis Press)

Sexual Outsiders: Understanding BDSM Sexualities and Communities by David Ortmann, LCSW and

Richard Sprott, PhD

The finalists for the Pauline Reage Novel Award are:

The Masters of Falcon’s Fantasies by Cassidy Browning & Reggie Alexander (Siren Publishing)

Power Exchange by A. J. Rose (Voodoo Lily Press)

The Portrait by L. M. Somerton (Total-E-Bound)

Eve Portrait of Submission by Steve Maser (Pink Flamingo Publications)

Beyond the Edge by Elizabeth Lister (MLR Press)

A Forbidden Love by Lee Dorsey (Pink Flamingo Publications)

The finalists for the Samois Anthology Award are:

Bound by lust: Romantic stories of submission and sensuality, ed. Shanna Germaine (Cleis Press)

Cheeky spanking stories, ed. Rachel Kramer Bussel (Cleis Press)

Luscious: Stories of anal eroticism, ed. Alison Tyler (Cleis Press)

Whatever Lola Wants (and Other Wicked Tales), ed. Wes Royal (FDC Publication)

LIPSTICK LOVERS, ed. Elizabeth Coldwell (Xcite Books)

The finalists for the John Preston Short Story Award are:

THE GREENER GRASSES by M. Christian, from “STROKE THE FIRE: The Best ManLove Fiction of M.

Christian” (Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions)

Christmas Comes to Otters’ Gap by Jeff Mann, from “The Dirty Diner” (Bold Strokes Books)

Wild Like Honey by Angel Propps, from “Dangerous Curves” (Ravenous Romance)

Muriel by Annie Cox (Pink Flamingo Press)

“Aunt” Grace by I.G. Frederick & Patrick (Smashwords Edition)

The winners will be announced at the National Leather Association’s Annual General Meeting, which will

be held during Tribal Fire on May 3-5, 2013 in Oklahoma City, OK. For more information on the AGM or

Tribal Fire Please go to http://www.tribalfireokc.com/

For more information about the awards, please contact the award committee chair, pyxy, at

nlai.awards@gmail.com

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This post, The Ultimate Guide to Kink nominated for NLA-I Award originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 3, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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Apr 5: Legendary Sex-Positive Icon Carol Queen

This week’s episode of Sex Out Loud is our first in the CatalystCon Series, interviews recorded live in front of a studio audience at Washington DC during the weekend of CatalystCon. We kick off the series with Dr. Carol Queen, a cultural sexologist and staff member of Good Vibrations, as well as founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture. We talk about her long and storied career in the Bay Area sex-positive scene, favorite exhibits at her Antique Vibrator Museum, and the re-release of Leather Daddy and the Femme. We’ll also discuss the Feminist Porn Conference and Fem Porn Awards happening in Toronto this weekend. Find all the ways to listen along this Friday at 5 pm PT / 8pm ET.

Carol Queen has a PhD in sexology and a prior degree in sociology. She calls herself a cultural sexologist; while she addresses individual and couple’s sexual concerns, her overarching interest is in cultural issues. Queen has worked at Good Vibrations, the woman-founded sexuality company based in San Francisco since 1990. Her current position is Staff Sexologist and Company Historian; her roles include representing the company to the press and the public; overseeing educational programming for staff and others; scripting/hosting a line of sex education videos, the Pleasure-Ed series, for sister company Good Releasing; and curating GV’s Antique Vibrator Museum. She is also the founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture, a non-profit sex ed/arts center San Francisco and is a frequent lecturer at colleges, conferences, and community-based organizations. Her dozen books include a Lambda Literary Award winner, PoMoSexuals, and Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture, which are used as texts in some college classes. She blogs at the Good Vibes Magazine and is a sometime contributor to the Boston Dig.

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This post, Apr 5: Legendary Sex-Positive Icon Carol Queen originally appeared on Pucker Up on April 2, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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Feminist Porn Awards and Feminist Porn Conference Hold Joint Press Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TORONTO (March 28, 2013)—Producers of the 8th Annual Feminist Porn Awards (FPAs) and the 1st Annual Feminist Porn Conference will hold a joint media event on Friday, April 5 at 12 noon at The Holiday Inn Yorkville, 280 Bloor Street West in the Varsity Room on the 2nd Floor. The event will open with a panel of distinguished guests who will discuss their passion for feminist porn, the significance of their work, and their involvement with the 2013 Feminist Porn Awards (FPAs) and the 2013 Feminist Porn Conference; the presentation will be followed by a question and answer period. The panel will include: Carlyle Jansen, owner of Good for Her and producer of The Feminist Porn Awards; director/producer Tristan Taormino, who is the Feminist Porn Conference producer and co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book; performer Jiz Lee, 2013 Feminist Porn Award nominee and Public.Provocative.Porn special guest; director Matthew Clark, a 2013 Feminist Porn Award nominee and Public.Provocative.Porn special guest; performer Wolf Hudson, a 2013 Feminist Porn Award nominee; performer James Darling, the 2012 Feminist Porn Award Heartthrob of the Year winner; Nan Kinney, groundbreaking lesbian porn director/producer and featured guest at the Feminist Porn Conference; and Professor Mireille Miller-Young from University of California-Santa Barbara, co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book and a Feminist Porn Conference keynote speaker.

After the panel, an additional group will be introduced that includes FPA nominees, past winners, and presenters as well as Feminist Porn Conference speakers. Members of the media will have an opportunity to meet, interview, and photograph the panelists and special guests. Special guests include: Dr. Carol Queen, groundbreaking sex positive feminist and founder of The Center for Sex and Culture; performer/filmmakers Madison Young, Courtney Trouble, Tobi Hill-Meyer, and Carry Gray; filmmakers Shar Rednour, Carlos Batts, Nica Noelle, Shine Louise Houston of Pink + White Productions, and Ms. Naughty of ForTheGirls.com (Australia); performers Dylan Ryan, April Flores, and Sinnamon Love; Liesbet Zikkenheimer and Marije Janssen of DuskTV in The Netherlands; Professor Kevin Heffernan from Southern Methodist University and Professor Lynn Comella from University of Nevada-Las Vegas; and Professor Bobby Noble, Principle Investigator on the Feminist Porn Archive and Research Project, York University. Special guests’ complete bios here.

About The Good for Her Feminist Porn Awards

The Good For Her Feminist Porn Awards have pioneered the celebration of erotica with a difference. Founded in 2006, The Feminist Porn Awards are produced by Good For Her, a Toronto- based feminist sexuality education centre and sex store.  This event was started to celebrate, recognize and endorse filmmakers who who are creating erotic media with a feminist sensibility in porn for everyone to enjoy.  We all deserve to see artistic expressions that celebrate the diversity of who we are in all our glory, and artists deserve to have their work recognized for challenging stereotypes, expanding the boundaries of sexual representation and creating hot movies!

About The Feminist Porn Conference

The 1st Annual Feminist Porn Conference, April 6, 2013 at the University of Toronto, brings together academics, cultural critics, sex workers, performers, producers, directors, activists, and fans to explore the intersections between sex-positive feminism and pornography as well as the emergence of feminist porn as a genre, industry, and movement. Special guests include groundbreaking lesbian pornographers Nan Kinney (Fatale Media) and Shar Rednour (S.I.R. Video Productions), sex-positive leader Carol Queen, award-winning filmmaker Shine Louise Houston and forty other presenters. Professor Constance Penley, Professor Mireille Miller-Young and Tristan Taormino, co-editors of The Feminist Porn Book, will speak at the Keynote Luncheon sponsored by The Feminist Press. The conference is sponsored by Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, Good for Her, The Feminist Porn Awards, and The Feminist Press.

About the Panelists

Since discovering orgasms in her late 20s, Carlyle Jansen has been passionate about education for everyone. She founded Good For Her in 1997, a sexuality shop and workshop centre where everyone could feel welcome and included, especially those who traditionally did not feel reflected in sexuality spaces. In 1996, the Good For Her team created and produced the Feminist Porn Awards. An eco-feminist, she believes in empowering people with knowledge to make the best choices for themselves. As the proud mom of 2 active boys, she loves kid play-time as well!

Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, radio host, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn and Perversion. She runs the adult film production company Smart Ass Productions. She has directed and produced twenty-four adult films, including the groundbreaking series based on real female kink fantasies, Rough Sex and the Expert Guide sex education series, which she created for Vivid Entertainment. The winner of multiple Adult Video News (AVN) and Feminist Porn Awards, she was the first female director to win an AVN award for Best Gonzo Movie for the first film in her reality series Chemistry. She received the Trailblazer Award for Lifetime Achievement at the Feminist Porn Awards in 2010. She is the host of Sex Out Loud, a weekly radio show on The VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network.

Jiz Lee is a genderqueer porn star known for their androgynous look, female ejaculation, vaginal fisting, strap-on performances, and fun sex-positive attitude. The award-winner performer prefers the pronouns “they/them,” and advocates for ethical pornography that creatively and authentically reflects queer sexuality. Ever fascinated by the radical potential of sex, love, and art, Jiz runs a personal blog and philanthropic “Karma Pervs” paysite at JizLee.com. They are the editor of the upcoming anthology How to Come Out Like a Porn Star: Essays from the Porn Industry on Family Matters.

Matthew Clark is the co-creator and writer/director/editor of the award-winning crip porn short KRUTCH, his first adult film. Made with collaborator and star Mia Gimp, it explores issues close to Matthew’s heart: disability, perception, authenticity through representation and auteurship. He studied Film and Media Arts at Temple University and currently resides in Philadelphia.

Wolf Hudson is a Dominican crossover adult performer. He’s known for appearing in straight, gay, bisexual, queer, trans and fetish porn. One of the few openly bisexual male performers to successfully transition between genre’s of porn, he’s demonstrated an appetite to push the envelope of sexuality and delivering passionately driven scenes that has gained him a diverse fan base. He’s won numerous awards, including “Best Personality” at The Cybersocket Web Awards and has appeared in acclaimed films like My Own Master. He is also known for being a talented dancer. Hudson runs his own pay site at WolfHudsonIsBad.com.

James Darling is a transsexual male porn performer and sex worker based in the Bay Area. He won the 2012 Feminist Porn Award for Heartthrob of the Year Transguys.com Sex Performer of the Year 2010 for his work across multiple porn genres. James is also the owner and director of FTMFUCKER.com, a porn site dedicated to trans men.

Nan Kinney is the president and co-founder of Fatale Media. She is also the executive producer of Fatale’s lesbian porn and adult educational videos and DVDs. With Deborah Sundahl, she co-founded On Our Backs magazine.

Mireille Miller-Young is associate professor of feminist studies and affiliate associate professor of black studies, film and media studies, and comparative literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research explores race, gender, and sexuality in visual culture, media, and the sex industries in the United States. Her forthcoming book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography, examines African American women in pornography.

Contact:

Tristan Taormino, feministpornstudies@gmail.com

Carlyle Jansen, 416-588-0900, carlyle@goodforher.com

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This post, Feminist Porn Awards and Feminist Porn Conference Hold Joint Press Conference originally appeared on Pucker Up on March 28, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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Anal Advisor: Concerned Anal Citizen

There has been a lot of talk about HPV recently with the release of the new vaccine. But most of what I read for women concerns HPV in the vagina and PAP smears. As a girl who’s way more into anal sex than vaginal sex, what do I need to know about HPV? Can a person get HPV in their ass, is there a test for it, and how is it treated?

–Concerned Anal Citizen

There are more than one hundred types of the human papillomavirus (HPV), and more than forty different strains can be sexually transmitted and affect these areas: the vulva, vagina, cervix, penis, scrotum, anus, and rectum. HPV is a virus most closely associated with genital warts, although not all forms of HPV cause warts. Some of the strains of HPV are low risk and resolve themselves without treatment. High-risk types of HPV can cause abnormal cell growth and cervical cancer. According to Planned Parenthood,

At any time about 20 million people in the U.S. have [genital HVP infections]. Between 10 and 15 million have high-risk types that are associated with cervical cancer. HPV is so common that about three out of four people have HPV at some point in their lives.

The most common way to spread HPV is through vaginal and anal intercourse, but it can also be spread through rubbing, fingering, oral sex, or sharing sex toys. Condoms protect against HPV, but HPV may be present in the skin not covered by a condom, which is why gloves and dental dams should also be used.

Yes, you can get HPV in your ass. If it is a kind of HPV that manifests as genital warts, they can appear in as little as three weeks or as long as six months after infection. The warts begin as small pink bumps that look like cauliflower florets in or around the anus and rectum; they tend to spread rapidly, forming clumps of bumps that may be itchy. The bumps could be painful if they are irritated. Their incubation period is usually one to six months, but they can grow more rapidly if you are pregnant or have a compromised immune system. Remember, in many cases, someone with HPV may have no visible symptoms at all; in these cases, a physician will be able to see them during a rectal exam with an anoscope. Genital warts can go away on their own; or, they can be removed from the skin by applying chemicals to them (usually acids), burning them with an electric needle (electrocautery), freezing them with liquid nitrogen (cryotherapy) or with laser treatment. Even after visible warts are removed, HPV remains in your body, and the warts can recur.

The strains of HPV that can cause precancerous lesions on the cervix can be detected through a pelvic exam and PAP test. If you have HPV in your ass, it’s less common to have treatable precancerous lesions present since there is no cervix or cervix-like place for them to develop, though it’s still possible to have pre-cancerous cells which precede rectal cancer. To test for the presence of HPV in the ass when there are no warts, a physician takes a swab of the rectum and sends it for laboratory analysis (similar to a vaginal PAP test). If you regularly engage in unprotected anal penetration and think you have been exposed to HPV, you can request a rectal exam and an anal papilloma screening (also known as an anal PAP test). If the PAP results come back abnormal, then you should have an HPV test which tests the cells for the HPV virus. If the HPV virus is detected, you can have a colposcopy where they take a biopsy and can look closer at the cells. You can spread HPV from your ass to your vagina and vice versa, so if it has been discovered in one place, it’s advisable to get the other place checked. People diagnosed with HPV should have regular exams to monitor recurrences and prevent complications.

In 2006, a vaccine for girls and women was released that can prevent four strains of HPV: two of the strains account for 90% of cases of genital warts and two account for 70% of cervical cancer cases. The vaccine, currently marketed under the name Gardasil is recommended by the FDA for girls and women aged 9-26. However, women over 26 who have never been exposed to one or more of the strains of HPV can also benefit from the vaccine. Researchers still know much less about HPV infection in boys and men, including its long term effects, risk of cancer, early detection, and potential treatments, although several drug companies are (including Merck, makers of Gardasil) are conducting clinical trials on the vaccination of boys and men.

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Mar 29: Janet Hardy on Telling Life Stories Through Sex and Musicals

This Friday, March 29th at 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET on Sex Out Loud, I will be LIVE with internationally famed author Janet W. Hardy. You may know Hardy as one of the authors of bestselling book, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures, and her most recent book was just nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Girlfag: A Life Told in Sex and Musicals is a memoir that weaves personal stories of gender and orientation with showtunes and floodlights. Hardy will explain what exactly a ‘girlfag’ is, how gender and relationships are shifting to more nuanced categories, and what makes Sondheim sexy.

This week’s show is live, so find out all the ways to listen here and you can call in with questions at 1-866-472-5788, join the discussion on Facebook or Twitter, or even e-mail me via tristan(at)puckerup.com and I’ll read them live on the air!

Janet W. Hardy is the author or co-author of 11 books about alternative sexualities, including the underground bestseller “The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures” (Random House, 2009), and her new memoir “Girlfag: A Life Told In Sex and Musicals” (Beyond Binary Books, 2012). She lives, writes and cooks with her spouse, dogs, cat and chickens in Eugene, Oregon.

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This post, Mar 29: Janet Hardy on Telling Life Stories Through Sex and Musicals originally appeared on Pucker Up on March 25, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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HEELS ON WHEELS GLITTER ROADSHOW QUEERS FEMME ART ON THE WEST COAST MARCH 22 – APRIL 7

Heels on Wheels is a NYC-based queer punk art extravaganza touring from L.A to Vancouver March 22-April 7, 2013. The Roadshow combines multi-media, literary and performing arts, music, puppetry, participatory art, and fierce looks onstage to trouble the question: what is a femme? The show itself consists of five performers, local acts–and a dance party if you’re lucky.  The fearless artists rampage from hi-femme to femmedrogyny, dandy darling to ladybeast in a wild revue of visceral, poetic, performance, emotional escape plans in wild workout gear, dark whimsical puppetry, innovative intersectionality, and rocknroll you can sink your heels into!

Heels on Wheels emerges from an active anti-oppression, intersectional, liberatory standpoint boldy asserting: art can change our world. The people presenting art onstage and community organizing in their home city of Brooklyn all build power for traditionally-marginalized LGBTQ stories and people. The tour is working class-led and multi-racial, and includes cisgendered and trans folks, QPOC, mixed race folks, sex workers, immigrants: all fiercely political feminist queer artists whose work weaves punk herstories, survival strategies, and wild costuming into escape artistry. These are stories that do not have enough outlets on a regular basis and that’s one reason this tour is important!

The 2013 tour is the fourth, and features Damien Luxe, Adelaide Windsome, Heather Acs, The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins and Shomi Noise, with wrangler/visual artist Lizxnn Disaster. The Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow tours the US annually with a dazzling, diverse cabaret of performance art works and acts of resistance by queer folks of femme-inine spectrum genders.

Shomi Noise plays guitar and reads from her zine series “Building Up Emotional Muscle,” the story of her journey as a Bolivian immigrant navigating U.S. culture and finding herself through alternative music scenes. Damien Luxe invites the audience to participate in a satirical and sincere aerobics session for all bodies about dissociation and survival (complete with spandex and sparkle!). Heather Acs uses theatrical storytelling and scientific theory to explore the formation of stars and her working-class, Appalachian roots. Adelaide Windsome is a fabulist storyteller and puppeteer who queer-ifies fairy-tale structures into trans-narratives.The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins uses dance, movement, and performance drawing from traditional burlesque techniques to explore herstories of her working class, femme, sexworker ancestors, while interrogating the exotification of feminine bodies, race, and of exotic dance itself.

Heels on Wheels is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists who create performance-based cultural works and community events that have a feminist and radical agenda, are produced from sites of femme/inine-positive queer embodiment, and reveal the power in under-represented communities by including local acts, facilitating discussions on activist art, and touring social justice and anti-oppressive cultural works. By actively complicating what it looks like, sounds like, IS like to shamelessly and lovingly  represent femininity, dandyness, fey, femme and queer lady, this work confronts misogyny and sexism and uses cultural works to sabotage the status quo of gender, sexuality, and “feminine” appearance, replacing it with many visions and ideas of what thriving and surviving as femme folks can be.

Stillettos fly, gender justice prevails, and fairytales fracture as they travel through space, time, and stardust to the West Coast!

Connect with the Heels! Tour Calendar, Artist Bios, Glamour shots: http://www.heelsonwheelsroadshow.com // facebook.com/heelsonwheelsroadshow // @HOWroadshow

“The Heels on Wheels Roadshow is a glorious campaign to put femininity in the spotlight. I totally applaud and approve. It is a delicious combination touring glitterati and local sparkle that showcases some serious queer talent. Don’t let them pass you by!”

– Lois Weaver, Obie-Award Winning Performer, Lecturer Queen Mary University of London

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This post, HEELS ON WHEELS GLITTER ROADSHOW QUEERS FEMME ART ON THE WEST COAST MARCH 22 – APRIL 7 originally appeared on Pucker Up on March 22, 2013. Tweet This Post!

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