Condoms Required

It seems like a no-brainer to me after 3 porn stars tested positive for HIV and a recent outbreak of syphilis, but when Tristan Taormino recently announced she will have all male stars use condoms in her porn movies, all hell broke loose. Here’s a CNN clip about it, if you prefer video.

Here, she explains why she made the decision she did and also explains that she is still not for mandatory use of them for everyone. This is her own decision, for her films, and in keeping with her own (feminist) labor practices.

If you support her decision, do go like her Facebook page & post a message of support.

Pro Porn?

This is good stuff – a candid discussion about the role of porn in our real life, actual sex lives, and the amazing Nina Hartley is in it!

There’s a short, teaser version of the clip, too, if you don’t have time right now to watch the whole thing, but it’s a very worthwhile 20+ minutes.

(& I’m just going to add: the banana/nutella business is not only crass, it’s wrong. Anal does not necessarily involve fecal matter. See Tristan Taormino’s short clip about anal here.)

Keeping Up with Buck

I’ve always been a fan of Buck Angel’s – because he comes from an industry where genitals couldn’t be more important (porn) and yet he managed to make having a vagina work, and that as a person who is undoubtedly male. He also did the first trans-on-trans porn, with Alannah Starr, waaaaay back in 2005, and taught an entire porn crew how not to stutter when saying “her penis” and “his vagina”.

But the cool thing is that he’s now decided to do sex ed, as because he’s retiring from porn. Do also check out this interview with him by Tristan Taormino. Right now he’s down at Southern Comfort (oh, the irony of the name for a trans man with a famous vagina) which happens this fall weekend annually.

Gay Porn and Women

Okay, so I saw My Beautiful Launderette a dozen times in movie theaters. Really. It was the closest “gay porn” i could get my hands on at the time.

Apparently the lesbian couple in The Kids Are All Right watch gay porn, and people are confused.

The fantastic Tristan Taormino explains:

“Our feminism remains with us when we grab the remote,” said Tristan Taormino, a sex educator and producer of erotica. “So when there’s no women around, it… gives queer women the ability to get swept up in the action of the film without thinking, ‘Who is this woman? Is she having a good time? Is she coerced?’ With gay porn, for a second, we can go there and not think about politics and sexism… there’s something about removing women from the equation that’s freeing.”

She added: “You don’t have to want to have sex with a man to be attracted to masculinity in a specifically sexual context.”

& For (queer) women who like men, it’s just more of a good thing, no? (I’m beginning to think that penises and breasts are just universally interesting/attractive, no matter sexual orientation.)

Porn Is Good?

Milton Diamond, who is otherwise best known for being the person who exposed John Money’s failed “experiement” that was the life of David Reimer, has a new article in The Scientists on the cultural, societal value of porn.

Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn’t see those movies, and studies by other investigators—female as well as male—essentially found similarly that there was no detectable relationship between the amount of exposure to pornography and any measure of misogynist attitudes. No researcher or critic has found the opposite, that exposure to pornography—by any definition—has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women. There is no doubt that some people have claimed to suffer adverse effects from exposure to pornography—just look at testimony from women’s shelters, divorce courts and other venues. But there is no evidence it was the cause of the claimed abuse or harm.

I’ve always been a fan – mostly because I grew up in a family where we were born fully dressed, and where no one was going to show me photos of what a vagina actually looked like (which, if you’re a woman, is hard to see for yourself). It can also be a useful instruction manual that’s actually fun to watch.

That said, I know there are plenty of feminists, and non-feminists, who hate porn and will only ever see the side of it that degrades women. I think of it more like comedy – sure, a lot of it’s lousy and mean-spirited and serves no cultural function, but the cultural function it does serve can’t really be fulfilled in any other way.

Read more: Porn: Good for us?