Earlier this spring, feminist pornographer Madison Young stood on stage at the 9th Annual Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto, Canada holding a trophy topped with a handcrafted dildo. Young had just won the award for “Hottest Lesbian Vignette,” and her excitement was palpable.
By now you’ve probably heard about the Duke University freshman porn star who was recently outed by a male classmate after he learned about her porn alter ego. He shared the information with his fraternity brothers and the news spread like wildfire across campus, the Internet and, eventually, the world. “Lauren” (a pseudonym) was bullied and harassed online, called a “slut” and a “whore.”
Ask the average person on the street what they know about the porn industry and their responses are likely to consist of more fiction than truth. Yesterday at the Adult Entertainment Expo, a panel of industry insiders, including 2013 AVN Performer of the Year winners James Deen and Asa Akira, gathered to bust some myths.
Photographer Gabe Ginsberg takes a stroll around this year's Adult Entertainment Expo at the Hard Rock Hotel.
Peter Warren is the Price Waterhouse Coopers of the AVN Awards. Warren, the senior editor for DVD news at AVN Media Network, is one of only three people in the world who knows the names of all the winners that will be announced January 18.
Nothing captures the national imagination like a story about sex, and 2013 was no exception.
On a recent trip to San Francisco I did one of the things I always do: I paid a visit to Good Vibrations, the mother ship of progressive, women-oriented and queer-friendly vibrator shops. I browsed its selection of sex guides, scoped out the latest in sex toy technology, toured its antique vibrator museum and even […]
I first learned of Carol Leigh—aka Scarlot Harlot—more than 20 years ago when I picked up the book Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry. It was a groundbreaking collection of stories, poems and political tracts by sex workers—prostitutes, escorts, exotic dancers and workers in massage parlors—that challenged the idea that all sex workers were voiceless victims. With honesty and wit, Leigh chronicled her experiences working as a prostitute in “The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot,” which appeared in installations throughout the book.
“I love what I do,” sex educator Amanda Morgan says, as she reaches for a plush “vulva puppet,” a prop she uses to talk about female sexual anatomy.
Veronica grew up in a Catholic household where sex was never discussed except when her parents told her, “Don’t have it.” In 10th grade, while attending Vo-Tech (now known as Southeast Career Technical Academy), she had a semester-long health class taught by one of the school’s athletic coaches. “He was a very nice man, but he sat at his desk and put in videos,” says Veronica, one of a group of young women I interviewed about their experiences with sex education.
“Let’s get sexy!” the emcee boomed as sinewy models wearing lacy thongs, corsets, garters and bras strutted down the catwalk to the thumping beat of house music in a crowded ballroom at the Rio. The scene was part of the semiannual Las Vegas International Lingerie Show, one of the largest lingerie trade shows in the country. On this April night, the showstopper wasn’t a Kate Upton look-a-like spilling out of her corset, but a hunky male model wearing a sheer black panty and bra set made by HommeMystere, a lingerie label for men.