From now on, I will require all performers I work with to test for STIs according to industry standards[1] and to use condoms in their scenes. Until now, I have adhered to industry standard STI testing and my sets have been condom optional, which, for me means that performers truly can choose to use condoms or not and I always have condoms available. I’ve shot several scenes with condoms (and other safer sex barriers), but the majority of the scenes have been condom-free. Because I want to empower performers to make decisions about all aspects of the work they do, I have respected their decisions in the past not to use condoms. I still want performers to have choices, and they can choose not to work with me if they don’t want to use condoms.
As a feminist pornographer, part of my mission is to support fair labor practices and create a positive work environment on my sets. The health, well being, and safety of the performers is my priority, and I believe that using condoms in addition to rigorous testing is the best way to prevent STI transmission. In the past, I have publicly spoken out against Measure B (as in this piece for The Huffington Post). I am still against mandatory condoms and government regulation of the adult industry. I still believe that the current fight is all about politics, not workers’ safety and rights. But my position on the use of condoms in my own productions has changed. I am not leveling judgment against producers, directors, or performers who choose not to use condoms. I am making the best decision I can based on my dedication to feminist and ethical production practices.
Read more:
http://puckerup.com/2013/09/20/porn-feminist-labor-practices-and-the-condom-debate/
Tristan was also interviewed on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/health/porn-industry-condoms-hiv/
Tagged as:
health,
porn,
Tristan Taormino
- L.A.’s porn Mistake | Lorelei Lee (Salon.com) – What performers like Hartley and I are equally opposed to is being condescended to by hypocritical zealots like Weinstein and Lubben who are obviously motivated by a concern for something other than our health and safety. Who have, in fact, shown a “blatant disregard” for the health and safety of industry workers by making it more difficult for us to use the protections we already have in place when their actions led to the closure of AIM.
- Making a Fist of It: The Law and Obscenity | Freedom in a Puritan age – On Friday 6 January 2012, a historic case came to a conclusion in Courtroom 7 of Southwark Crown Court. Michael Peacock was unanimously acquitted, after a four-day trial that saw the outdated obscenity law of England and Wales in the dock…Peacock had been charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for allegedly distributing ‘obscene’ ‘gay’ DVDs, which featured fisting, urolagnia (‘watersports’) and BDSM.
- Ask Tristan: Sex Toys and the Law • Pucker Up – [Ed. note: For this question, I turned it over to my legal expert, Davis from Sexquire.] So what does all of this litigation mean to sex shop clerks? First, unless you are in Alabama, you have no reason to fear being arrested on obscenity charges for providing sex education about or selling these products as other than novelties.
- Porn Star Activist Jiz Lee Talks About When and How Sex Workers Can Give Consent – San Francisco Art – The Exhibitionist – The ethics of consent is becoming a hot, vital topic of discussion in alternative sexuality communities. While talking about consent is something that never quite goes away, especially in BDSM communities, a lot of the dialogue doesn’t stray much beyond making sure that everyone is over 18 and knows his or her safeword. A few months ago, local activist bad-asses Maggie Mayhem and Kitty Stryker talked to us about their attempts to speak openly about abuse in BDSM and build “consent culture.” As they prepare to take those ideas on a cross-country tour, plenty of other people are continuing the conversation here in the Bay Area.
- Kate Bornstein reading excerpt from her new book, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger”
- The Case of Loving v. Bigotry – Slide Show – NYTimes.com – “In 1958, Richard & Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings…were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. The International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965 (January 20-May 6, 2012).
- Eric Holder Expands FBI’s Narrow, Outdated Definition Of Rape- MANCHESTER, N.H. — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has revised the way the FBI defines rape, the first update to the federal definition in nearly a century.The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report has defined rape as the “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” This definition was narrower than the one used by many police departments around the country, and women’s rights advocates said it led to the under-counting of thousands of sexual assaults each year.
- Rape definition broadened to include men | CNN – The crime of rape will now be defined as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” the Justice Department said.
Tagged as:
Beyond+Visibility,
britain,
consent,
crime,
health,
Jiz,
jiz+lee,
Kate+Bornstein,
kink,
legal,
legis,
legisl,
legislation,
loving+virginia,
marriage,
memoir,
obscenity,
porno,
pornography,
racism,
rape,
sex,
Sexquire,
sextoys,
supreme,
supreme+court,
transgender
- Sexual Obituaries 2011 (Cory Silverberg) – People who choose to work around sexuality and gender often don’t get the acknowledgment from the mainstream media or from society as a whole that they would if their work was in another field. Every year, I feel this absence when I read the lists of famous people who died. Since 2006, I’ve tried to change that by sharing some of the sex and gender activists, educators, artists, and outlaws we lost in the year that is ending. Here is a list of sexual losses in 2011.
- Director Dee Rees And Star Adepero Oduye Talk Coming Out & Coming Of Age In ‘Pariah’ | indieWIRE – Pariah is the story of Alike (Oduye), a black lesbian teenager living in Fort Greene and navigating between the aggressive gay nightclub scene preferred by her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) and a closeted life at home, where her tightly wound mother Audrey (Kim Wayans) tries to dress her in pink cardigans and quizzes her about who she’s taking to the school dance.
- Bondage Sex And The Liberation Of Culture – ErosBlog: The Sex Blog – For anybody with an interest in cultural history — and especially, aspects of cultural history that have ever been covert or officially suppressed, like porn — it’s this “everything floats up to the surface and becomes visible, in time” aspect of the Internet that is most miraculous. It’s far from complete, mind you — we have many centuries of recorded culture that have yet to be digitized and brought up from their buried layers of stone and canvas and paper and cellulose and vinyl and magnetic tape.
- 2011 Top Ten Sex Questions (Cory Silverberg) – I don’t dig into my statistics all that often, but once a year I like to see which questions and answers were the most popular…These ten questions are from the 105 Sex Questions that I’ve answered on the About.com site.
- Navigating Love and Autism – NYTimes.com- Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling — a trait sometimes described as “mindblindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their nonautistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back. [via Violet Blue]
- When Will a Gay Pro Athlete Finally Come Out? — New York Magazine – “Something has happened in the last year,” says Jim Buzinski, co-founder of OutSports, an advocate for and chronicler of gay sports issues for more than a decade. “It’s almost like homophobia is no longer considered cool in sports.”
- Australian Passport Gender Options: ‘Transgender’ Will Be Included | HuffPo – Australian passports will now have three gender options – male, female and indeterminate – under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender people, the government said Thursday.
Tagged as:
activism,
African-American,
culture,
harassment,
health,
history,
lesbian,
movies,
politics,
sex,
sexuality,
sports,
statistics,
transgender,
women
- Michele Bachmann’s HPV Vaccine Safety and ‘Retardation’ Comments Misleading, Doctors Say – ABC News – The medical community issued swift criticism Tuesday after Rep. Michele Bachmann dragged the safety of the vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) into the political spotlight, reigniting the controversy over the risks and necessity of vaccinating children.
- When Sex Bloggers Get Slut Shamed | Charlie Glickman – It probably shouldn’t surprise to anyone that, in general, women in the blogosphere get a lot more harassment than men. After all, just walking down the street, women get a lot more harassment than men.
- Assistance Needed – A Call For Help « PassionAndSoul – As many of you may have heard by now, I have had severe health concerns since mid-July. These are connected to my long term health issues, but I am in the midst of a flare up. Between July and December, I have had to cancel 13 gigs related to my health. Folks have asked for some time how they can help. This post is the answer.
- Everyone Loses on Booberday Except Google+ – Technology – The Atlantic Wire – A breast cancer meme has broken out on Google+: Booberday. As the name suggests, it involves breasts, specifically, "posting photos of women's cleavage under the guise of fighting breast cancer," explains Jezebel's Margaret Hartmann. On the surface it's just boob shots, which some might call demeaning. But we're talking about breast cancer, so it's all good, right? Not really. Booberday is demeaning to women, makes men look bad, and doesn't help the cause. The only winner we see here: Google+.
- Contraceptive Comeback: The Maligned IUD Gets a Second Chance | Wired – When the Mirena first hit the US market, so few women were using IUDs that many doctors didn't even know how to insert them. Today, the devices are recognized as safe, and 2 million US women have a Mirena.
- Frank’s Story (Runner’s World) – Frank Shorter is the father of the modern running boom. An enduringly popular speaker, he spins a captivating narrative about winning the 1972 Olympic Marathon. The story he hasn't told is the dark truth about his own father.
Tagged as:
birth+control,
breast+cancer,
child+abuse,
contraception,
culture,
google,
harassment,
health,
leeharrington,
parenting,
socialmedia,
women
- Rules of Misbehavior – Benjamin J. Dueholm – Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
- Trve West Coast Fiction: Spoiled (or why I sometimes feel like a rapist) | Danny Wylde – Having sex with beautiful women for a living is fun – except when it’s not.
- ‘Game of Thrones’: Making Sense of All the Sex – Atlantic – Ultimately, Game of Thrones is about power, and the consequences of sex—both immediately and years down the line—can mean the difference between gaining and losing it. Westeros is not a modern or progressive world, and sex and violence remain its primary trades. Viewers who find either untenable should steer clear.
- Getting Away with Murder on Long Island – Some of those 10 people might be alive today if it hadn’t been for the lackluster response of law enforcement and the press coverage of the case — much of it sensationalist and dehumanizing — all because of the first victims’ sex-worker status.
- The Perversions of Campus Sexual Culture – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education – In other words, campus sexual culture in its dominant, heteronormative form is kinda f#%@ed up. Sexual desire is wrapped up in public humiliation, drunkenness, and yes, I’ll say the word, patriarchy. It’s not that I don’t get how such things can be sexy, how humiliation and domination in conditions of inequality can be turned into pleasure. But what is interesting is the very conflation of that pleasure with both profit and publicness, a visual pornification of power inequities so beautifully symbolized by the booty cam at Yale or the drunk college “chix” porn site.
Tagged as:
crime,
culture,
dan+savage,
danny+wylde,
health,
identity,
media,
porn,
sex,
sexwork,
women
