Campus controversy: Tristan Taormino presents 'My Life As a Feminist Pornographer' at Princeton U.

Tristan Taormino (center) presents "My Life As a Feminist Pornographer" at Princeton 4/29

This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting Tristan Taormino at the grand opening of Smitten Kitten's new sex shop in Denver, and students at Princeton University will have the same opportunity this Thursday thanks to the university's student organization Let's Talk Sex. The group is funded by the school's Undergraduate Student Government Senate.

Taormino has made a name for herself for her feminist and sex-positive take on adult entertainment and explicit sex education for adults (she picked up Lifetime Achievement, Trailblazer of the Year, and Smutty School Teacher awards earlier this month at the 5th Annual Feminist Porn Awards), with a series of sexy books, instructional videos, and explicit adult films made with women in mind (see slideshow below). She writes and directs the Vivid Ed series of films for Vivid Entertainment.

  Taormino's Vivid Ed series for Vivid Entertainment

This week the Smutty School Teacher is going back to school: On Thursday she'll be giving a "My Life As a Feminist Pornographer" presentation at Princeton Univeristy as part of the Let's Talk Sex series, the follow-up to Pamela Paul's April 8 "Why Porn Is Anti-Sex" lecture (Paul is the author of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families).

The lecture series, and specifically Taormino's plans to screen explicit clips of her work on campus, have been the subject of much controversy at the school, recalling last year's porn fracas at the University of Maryland over a screening of the Digital Playground film Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge. In March, after the $1,500 in USG Senate funding was approved for the Taormino event, a student group called The Anscombe Society protested and circulated a Change.org petition addressed to Princeton University's President Tilghman, Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson, Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan, and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne (as of this writing the petition had 274 signatures). The Anscombe Society is a student organization at Princeton University "dedicated to affirming the importance of the family, marriage, and a proper understanding for the role of sex and sexuality." For more on the protests, see The Daily Princetonian article Planned porn event stirs controversy.

Let's Talk Sex co-founder Amelia Thomson-Deveaux defended the lecture series in "Why we are screening pornography," a guest column for the student newspaper. Via DailyPrincetonian.com:

The group that I co-founded and co-lead, Let’s Talk Sex, will host a lecture by feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino. Her talk will end with the screening of a 10- to 15-minute clip of her films. Taormino, who spoke on campus last November to a packed lecture hall, will tackle what is admittedly a difficult question: Is feminist pornography a paradox, or can we really create sex-positive, empowering porn? The goal of the event is to spark a meaningful and intellectual discussion about whether such a thing as feminist pornography can exist, and, if it can, what that pornography actually looks like...

The reason that we have chosen to screen clips of Taormino’s porn (we will not show a full film) is simple: We’re an academic community, and porn is a visual medium that needs to be seen to be understood. Despite the fact that many students on campus may have encountered mainstream pornography, the point of Taormino’s lecture is that hers deviates radically from the norm. For us to judge it without seeing it defeats our group’s mission: to attempt to understand the perspectives of as many different people as possible and to learn from each other, even if we don’t agree.

For more on the campus controversy and other sides of the issue, check out The Daliy Princetonian's archives on the topic.

Taormino will speak and show clips from her Vivid Ed series Thursday April 29 at 7:30pm, at Princeton's McCosh 10 Lecture Hall. She's spoken at nearly 50 college campuses, presenting lectures like "Sexology 101," "Sexploration on College Campuses," "My Life As a Feminist Pornographer," "True Lust: Adventures in Sex, Porn, and Perversion," and "Queer Sexuality in the New Millennium." For more info and links to her books, videos, and tour dates, visit PuckerUp.com

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