Monthly: December 2007

Thanks to a lovely review package chock-full of DVDs, I’m deep in the world of Tristan Taormino at the moment, as you may have guessed from my various posts. I’m having a great time watching the vids (which doesn’t happen that often, I have to say) and I’m very much admiring her philosophy too.

And I’m not alone. Over at Sex In The Public Square they’ve got a great interview with Tristan about her work and she’s even answered questions from readers.

Here’s an excerpt:

EW: One critique of porn is that it is all about men’s pleasure and not about women’s. A different critique that I’d love to explore is that, at least in terms of visual representation, porn is not about men’s pleasure at all. It makes sex look like a lot of work for men, where it makes sex look like lots of pleasure for women. What’s your sense of how your porn portrays sex and pleasure for men and for women?

TT: I feel like lots of porn represents male sexuality as hard, aggressive, and robot-like, and female sexuality as merely a vehicle/receptacle for men’s pleasure. To me, a lot of porn does a disservice to men and women, and I want my porn to be different. The first thing is that in my movies, you can *see* the men. I try to give them equal space in the frame—literally. Visually, in the majority of porn, men are literally CUT OUT of the frame, and they are reduced to an erection only. We never see the rest of their bodies, let alone their faces while they are fucking. I love to see an expression wash over someone’s face as they experience pleasure, and for men, those images are never included in scenes. We also never hear from them. Men are rarely allowed to speak, some are even told to not speak; in my movies, I give them equal “talk” time in the interview segments. One of the complaints I hear a lot from female performers is that they are not given time to reach orgasm, because when things start to heat up for them, the director calls for them to change what they are doing. I let performers pace themselves and never tell them to stop what they are doing, and I find that it leads to more real female orgasms, which are still lacking in a lot of porn.

See? No wonder I like what she’s doing.

For The Girls also has an interview with Tristan as our December feature.