Tristan Taormino - Career

Career

Taormino is the author of seven books, including the Firecracker Book Award-winning The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women.

She has edited anthologies books including the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Best Lesbian Erotica, an annual anthology published by Cleis Press, for which she has collaborated with writers Heather Lewis, Jewelle Gomez, Jenifer Levin, Chrystos, Joan Nestle, Patrick Califia, Amber Hollibaugh, Cheryl Clarke, Michelle Tea, Eileen Myles, Ali Liebegott, Emma Donoghue, Felice Newman, and Joan Larkin.

She is a columnist for Taboo, and a former columnist for The Village Voice and Velvetpark. She is the former editor of On Our Backs, the nation's oldest lesbian-produced lesbian sex magazine.

Taormino has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, New York Magazine, Men's Health, and Playboy.

She has been named to several media lists, including Out magazine's 100 Gay Success Stories of the Year and The Advocate's Best and Brightest Gay & Lesbian People Under 30.

She teaches sex and relationship workshops around the world and lectures at top colleges and universities including Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, University of Toronto, Wesleyan, Vassar, University of Oregon, Swarthmore, and New York University, where she speaks on gay and lesbian issues, sexuality and gender, and feminism. Some of her college appearances have stirred controversy, as at University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2004, Princeton, and, most famously, Oregon State University in 2011, where administrators un-invited her as keynote speaker at the Modern Sex Conference. There was a huge uproar on the internet, and many accused OSU of anti-sex bias. The incident received national media attention. Eventually, students raised the funds and re-invited her themselves.

She hosted the 2001 television show "Sexology 101" on The Burly Bear Network, a college cable network owned by Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video. She was a regular expert and panelist on Ricki Lake for two seasons in 2002 and 2003. In 2003, she signed a development deal with MTV Networks. She served as host and executive producer on the pilot for "The Naughty Show," but the series was never picked up. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, HBO's Real Sex, NBC's The Other Half, The Howard Stern Show, Loveline, Ricki Lake, MTV, Oxygen Network, Fox News, The Discovery Channel, and on over 60 radio shows.

Taormino worked with Spike Lee as a script consultant and with the cast on the set of his 2004 movie "She Hate Me". In 2006 she appeared as a so-called "sextra" in John Cameron Mitchell's film, Shortbus, participating in an unsimulated orgy that was filmed for the movie. (Her presence is confirmed by the director on the DVD commentary.) She also appeared in Becky Goldberg's 2003 documentary Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography.

In addition to writing, speaking, and sex education, she considers herself a feminist pornographer. She made two videos based on her book The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. The first (1999) was co-directed by Buttman (John Stagliano) and Ernest Greene. The second (2001) was directed by Tristan herself. In both videos, she takes part in the on-screen sexual activities. Subsequently, she directed Tristan Taormino's House of Ass for Adam & Eve, which shows a number of "porn stars" (from famous to unknown) interacting without a script. This film could be called a full-length "behind-the-scenes" movie. In 2006, she directed Tristan Taormino's Chemistry, which is the first in a series of a full-length "behind the scenes" movies for Vivid Entertainment where the performers choose who they have sex with, what they do, where, and when. She continues to direct the Chemistry series as well as sex education films for Vivid Ed, Vivid Entertainment's sex ed line that she was instrumental in creating.