Tristan Taormino's line of Vivid Ed films for Vivid Entertainment are nothing if not... vivid. Titles in the line to date include Taormino's expert guides to fellatio, cunnilingus, threesomes, the G-spot, anal sex, and anal pleasure for men. Make no mistake: These are explicit adult films. They're also highly educational for adult couples looking to expand their sexual repertoires.
Her latest, Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide to Female Orgasms (click through to order the DVD from Babeland, Best Boutique winner at the 2011 AVN Awards) is the must-have of the collection, replacing that old porn money shot with a steadfast emphasis on real and intense female pleasure, which, as several of the male performers featured put it, is at least as rewarding for the male partner as his own orgasm.
The film begins with Taormino's Orgasm Workshop, an indespensible anatomy lesson full of franker discussion of the female arousal cycle and the biomechanics involved than you're likely to have had in any other Sex Ed class. Taormino even breaks out a giant plush vagina puppet to illustrate her points, which include primers on oral, manual, and vibrator stimulation, vaginal intercourse, anal stimulation, and, most importantly, communication.
There's a refreshing emphasis on the fact that every woman's sexual response -- and every individual orgasm, for that matter -- is unique, and Taormino addresses both male and female partners, including lesbian and bisexual partners throughout.
"Just like every woman's personality is different, our orgasms are incredibly diverese," says Taormino. "How we get there, how it feels, how long it lasts, how many we can have, and our physical and emotional process varies wildly."
To illustrate just how wildly, Taormino invited a diverse handful of her favorite female performers to discuss their own arousal cycles and orgasmic needs at length, and then to have sex on camera with the partners of their choice. Taormino's intro lecture cuts to clips from those longer interviews and sex secenes (featured in full later in the film), providing explicit context for what is otherwise a fairly academic discussion.
The interviews with some of the male performers featured in the film are as enlightening as the women's comments, and Evan Stone gets it right when he says, "The best way to make a woman come is to ask her what she likes."
That quote ends up as the central organizing principle for the scenes to follow, in which interviews with each woman and couple are followed by extended sex scenes in which each woman's chosen partner responds directly to her comments.
The sex secenes feature pairs Evanni Solei and Evan Stone, Katie St. Ives and Sean Michaels, Adrianna Nicole and James Deen, Madison Young and Jiz Lee, and Dylan Ryan and Mr. Marcus. Each scene features multiple positions, techniques, and toys, building to female orgasm as the main objective. Since I can't go into great detail here, I called Taormino in the middle of her mess with Oregon State University and its Modern Sex conference, to ask for something like an artist's statement for her work.
"The process of making a movie is important to me and it’ s really about collaboration with the performer," says Taormino, whose credentials as a "pornographer" apparently trump her sex expertise in the eyes of OSU officials concerned about improper use of the university's public funds.
"I want to challenge this idea that all porn performers are simply exploited and objectified and used," says Taormino. "I want my performers to participate in the representation of their sexuality and they do, I cast people who want to be part of this process. It’ s important to me to say 'Hey, what kindd of things would you like to do?' I have no interest in saying to a woman, You’ re gonna f*** this guy over there on the kitchen counter in these five positions and then we’ ll go home.' I actually want to know who she’ d like to work with, where she’ d like to have sex, what kinds of things she likes and doesn’ t like to do, because I’ m not interested in filming stuff just for the sake of filming it. If you don’ t like that position, if that’ s not pleasurable for you, then I'm not interested. I don’ t need to fulfill some kind of formula. And so the creative process is really about collaboration and empowering these performers to be a huge part of the final film that gets made.
Another thing that sets her work apart and has helped her earn recent honors like Trailblazer of the Year at the 2010 Feminist Porn Awards and Best Educational Release at the 2011 AVN Awards (for Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide to Advanced Fellatio): She's as interested in talking about sex as she is in filming it or watching it.
"In all my films I create space for interviews of the performers, to let them speak for themselves," she says. "In the mainstream world other people speak a lot for sex workers and porn performers, but don’ t often let those people speak for themselves. They talk about their own sex lives, their own sexuality, what they like about their jobs, what they don’ t like about their jobs, and really reflect on what they’ re doing. These people are really conscious and aware of their work and how it’ s perceived in the world and in society and they have a lot of really interesting things to say, and I want to give them the space to say it. I also want to respond to some mainstream representations in porn and show a diversity of ways to have sex besides penis-vagina intercourse. I want to show real female pleasure captured on film, authentic female orgasms, you know? Things that historically are not the focus of a lot of porn that’s out there."
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