Posts Tagged ‘tristan taormino’
Comments and entries to win Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica edited by Tristan Taormino are now closed! The winners are:
bifemmefatale, whose favorite erotica “of all time is Pat Califia’s “Macho Sluts”. It’s female-centric but includes men as well, it’s unabashedly kinky, the Tops are racially diverse, butch and femme, and there’s a wide variety of styles of kink. … The only problem I have with the book is that it raised my expectations too high—I have yet to meet a real-life Top quite as hot as those in its pages!”
And the second copy goes to Irene, who said “I want this book so bad I can’t even think of a coherent comment.”
Will be emailing you both individually, and sending it out to you within a week or so.
And I hope those of you who didn’t win will check out this book, and pick it up! More details about the book here, or order it on Amazon, or from your local feminist queer indy bookstore.
Here’s the screenshot from Random.org:
Back when Sugarbutch was a little baby new blog (did you know it will turn 4 in April?!), I used to write a Sunday Scribblings prompt often. This week’s prompt was “the book that changed everything” and I already happened to have a halfway done list in my drafts, so I figured I’d go back to it and finish it up.
It was going to be a “new year, new you” type of post, which gives away that I started it in January, and which kind of explains the self-help-y list. But of course I couldn’t make a list and show it off here without adding some of my favorite sex books, too!
But first, the stuff to enhance your renaissance-man (regardless of gender!) fabulous self. In alphabetical order:
- The Art of Civilized Conversation: A Guide to Expressing Yourself With Style and Grace by Margaret Shepherd. Excellent for dating, deepening relationships with people you already know and like, and generally elevating the discussion around you. I especially remember the part about how conversations between two people should start with facts, move to opinions, and then and only then should you discuss emotions.
- How to Cook Everything (Vegetarian) by Mark Bittman. Whether or not you know how to cook, this is a fantastic resource. I got a copy of the vegetarian version over the holidays. Though Bittman isn’t famous for his desserts (pastries aren’t really his strong point, or, let’s be honest, so says Kristen) he has a little bit of everything in here and chances are, it’ll be a great starting point, if not an excellent recipe. Lots of great tips for technique, too.
- The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manners, Savvy and Vice by Phineas Mollod and Jason Tesauro. I have dreams of writing a butch equivalent, but shh that’s a secret. This contains excellent thoughts about conducting oneself socially, manners, conversation, style, how to tie ties, how to order drinks, how to be suave on a date, all sorts of things that a gentleman would want to know. Not impressed with the sex part (cheesy!) but hey you can’t win ‘em all. Along with Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Style, this is one of the books about masculinity that I recommend most.
- The Power of Less: The 6 Essential Productivity Principles That Will Change Your Life by Leo Babauta. You probably already read Zen Habits, so you know Babauta’s style and simplicity. This book is a lovely collection of philosophies on productivity, minimalism, moving on, getting shit done, and focusing on what you really want to do. Along with The Four-Hour Work Week, this really changed my attitude about my time (a non-renewable resource!) and how I make decisions.
- There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate by Cheri Huber. Huber is a buddhist monk, founded two zen monasteries in California, has written about twenty books, and travels widely. I found her writing when I was in high school and have been reading and re-reading ever since. It’s kind of self-help-y, yes, but there’s a lot of spirituality, philosophy, and psychology in it too, which the best self-help books contain. She has many other titles that I’d also recommend, The Depression Book: Depression as an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth literally changed my life when I first read it, and Be the Person You Want To Find: Relationships and Self-Discovery is a great book for those of us seeking long-term valuable love relationships. Speaking of love relationships, I can’t not mention If the Buddha Dated and If the Buddha Married by Charlotte Kasl. Both were very life-changing and eye-opening to my own patterns and tendencies, and very useful. Kasl is a buddhist quaker feminist psychotherapist, and her perspective is so full of lovingkindness and sweetness and understanding that you can’t not be drawn in, only to learn about yourself and your tendencies. Though it’s pretty hetero-focused in its example couples, I tend to change the pronouns (or pretend it’s a butch going by him/her and a femme). Kristen and I have been reading through it aloud and discussing it, which can be intense but has been great.
And because I can’t make a book list without having sex books on it:
- Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex by Rachel Venning and Claire Cavanah, founders of Babeland. I’ve already mentioned this book on Sugarbutch recently, but it’s worth mentioning again. Modern, fun, wide-ranging, inclusive, sexy, kinky, open, welcoming. And the design is just so damn cute. If I had coffee table books, this would be one of them.
- The Topping Book and The Bottoming Book by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy. I recommend these books constantly to folks who want to get more involved in power play or topping and bottoming roles in their sex lives. So many of my philosophies come from these books, and they are incredibly full of useful tips and ideas about aftercare, safewords, top drop, negotiations.
- Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Carrellas. Tantra books are usually way too cheesy for me to even get through, and I have some experience with tantra. But this one is different. Carrellas (@urbantantrika) is as grounded as she is woo-woo, as queer and kinky as she is accessible and open. If you’ve always been curious about tantra, this is a great place to start.
- Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino. There are very few smart books written about polyamory and open relationships (The Ethical Slut, now in a new edition, by the authors of the Topping/Bottoming Books, being the classic cannon), and this is the most recent. I’ve admired Taormino’s work for a long time, since her sex column at the Village Voice (collected into a book called True Lust), and she’s done some pretty amazing things in mainstream porn since then. I love that she’s bringing and underground queer feminist perspective to the things she’s doing, it makes her work even more complex and fantastic. Her most recent book (aside from Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica!) is The Big Book of Sex Toys, which I don’t have my hands on yet but will be reporting all about when I do.
- Exhibitionism For the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot! by Carol Queen. The Amazon description says “[e]xhibitionism as a consensual erotic pleasure and a means to overcome shyness and body image issues” and I LOVE that idea! I’m not actually sure where my copy of this has escaped to, perhaps I lost it in a break-up, but there’s a relatively new edition from 2009 that I should get my hands on regardless. Want to feel more sexy, show off, but feel self-conscious? Pick up this book. In case you don’t already know Carol Queen, she’s the owner of the Good Vibrations toy shops and director of The Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. She also wrote one of my favorite erotica books, The Leather Daddy and the Femme.
Whew! Okay, that should keep you busy for the next few months, hm? I hope at least one of these is interesting and might enhance your life in some way. Books can be so magical like that.
I’ve included the links to Amazon, and while if you click through those links I do get a teeny tiny kickback from your purchases, I still encourage you to visit your local independent bookstore and support them by ordering these books through them. If you want them to be around next year, that means spending your money in their shop. I know they aren’t as cheap as Amazon, and probably not quite as convenient, but you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Or at least, I will. A lot.
So? What books changed YOUR life?
Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica Edited by Tristan Taormino is due out February 16th, and I have a story in it! (I believe it is The Diner on the Corner, also published in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009.)
There are very few books exclusively focused on butch/femme erotica—Back to Basics edited by Therese Szymanski is the only one I can think of—and I’m thrilled to see another one come into print. Cannot wait to get my hands on it!
“Butch/femme is erotic iconography. Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heals, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s a sexual electricity and power exchange. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.” — from the introduction by Tristan Taormino
From Cleis Press’s page about the new book:
Does the swagger of a confident butch make you swoon? Do your knees go weak when you see a femme straighten her stockings? In Sometimes She Lets Me, Tristan Taormino chooses her favorite butch/femme stories from the Best Lesbian Erotica series.
Even if you think you know what goes on in the bedroom between femmes and butches, these 22 stories will delight you with erotic surprises. In Joy Parks’ delicious “Sweet Thing,” the recently arrived town librarian shows a butch baker some new tricks in bed. On a chase through the woods, the stud in “Tag!”, by D. Alexandria, find her baby girl by scent alone. And the girl in a pleated skirt gets exactly what she wants from her Daddy in Peggy Munson’s “The Rock Wall.”
Includes contributions by Alison L. Smith, Joy Parks, S. Bear Bergman, Amie M. Evans, Samiya A. Bashir, Rosalind Christine Lloyd, Kristen Porter, Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, D. Alexandria, Anna Watson, Shannon Cummings, A. Lizbeth Babcock, Sparky, Elaine Miller, Isa Coffey, Skian McGuire, Jera Star, Toni Amato, Peggy Munson, Sandra Lee Golvin, and Sinclair Sexsmith.
Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator. She is the editor of Hot Lesbian Erotica and fourteen editions of Best Lesbian Erotica series as well as the author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. Tristan is a former columnist for the Village Voice and currently has a column in Taboo; her writing has appeared in Velvet Park, Vibe, Spectator,The Advocate, and more than 15 anthologies. She has been featured in more than 200 publications, including the New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, New York magazine, Men’s Health, and Playboy. She has also appeared on CNN, MTV, Oxygen, the Discovery Channel, The Howard Stern Show, Real Sex, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, Scarborough Country, and over 50 radio shows. Tristan directed the adult videos the Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, Tristan Taormino’s House of Ass, and the Chemistry series. She lives in upstate New York. Visit Tristan at www.puckerup.com.
Midori’s Expert Guide to Sensual Bondage DVD is directed by Tristan Taormino and written & hosted by sex expert and author Midori, and I am familiar with both of them in general, so I knew I would probably enjoy it. When it arrived, though, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t a video version of her Art of Japanese Bondage book – I don’t have a copy of it, but I’ve been eyeing it in Babeland for years. I was hoping the DVD would be elaborate, beautiful rope bondage, but it’s not.
In fact, it might be better.
One of the things that has kept me from doing more bondage is that it seems difficult, elaborate, and highly skilled – but that’s really only one kind of bondage, the fancy rope artistry kind. And though I have a few moves (see: Crab Tie), I often just don’t even practice what I know because I feel like it’s time consuming and will interrupt what we’re doing.
Kristen, though, I know, really likes bondage. Really likes to be tied up and tied down and restrained. While she does not love much pain, as a bottom, she really gets into that submissive mindspace when restrained and bound. She has often requested it more frequently and though it is frequent in our play, I could do it more often I’m sure. She has said that every time would not be too often, in fact. And though I often restrain her with my hands, holding her down or holding her wrists or ankles or under her knees, I could do more.
This video very much inspired me to do so.
And, it gave me a whole lot of ideas of things to use aside from elaborate rope ties – in fact, very little rope is used in this film. They use the Under Bed Restraint System (which I highly recommend, I got one for Kristen’s house that I still need to write up and it’s fantastic), wrist cuffs, ankle cuffs, belts, scarves, and some great snap hooks to hold it all together.
Midori’s introduction was pretty basic, had some great solid concepts and guidelines for bondage play, though nothing I wasn’t already familiar with. When she started demonstrating with some pretty purple scarves, I thought, damn, where do I get some like that?! (Lucky for me, I have some Liberator Silk Sashes just begging for Kristen’s return from her holiday family visit.)
I thought this video would be for beginners, but I don’t consider myself a beginner with bondage, and I got a lot out of it. It has four basic scenes: Midori’s introductory instruction, a hands-on demo with Midori, Adrianna Nicole, and Mark Davis, a scene with Adrianna and Mark, and a scene with Madison Young and Danny Wylde. Midori has some comments throughout the two scenes, but it’s fun to see some of the bondage ‘in action,’ which is a good way to get familiar with putting bondage on and taking it off during an actual scene.
I was kind of waiting to watch this video so Kristen and I could watch it together, but now I’m kind of glad I watched it on my own – the tricks will be more mine and less like I copied them from an instructional video. (Not that she won’t know that’s where I got ‘em, she reads my posts. Still, she won’t have the visual of seeing someone else do it first.)
There’s a particular moment in Adrianna and Mark’s scene where Adrianna has wrist and ankle cuffs on, and they are cuffed wrist-to-ankle with a double snap ring (like a two-sided caribiner). She is on her back in bed with her head near the edge, he is fucking her mouth with his cock while he’s got his fingers in her pussy. It was nice – I am looking forward to testing that out.
Now I’ve just got to add some double snap rings and wrist cuffs to my toy box. Perhaps I’ll use some of that Christmas money from Grandma and invest in a few of those.
Pick up Midori’s Expert Guide to Sensual Bondage at Babeland, or your local feminist sex toy shop.
Really, this is a review of the Tristan butt plug for one of my favorite sex toy stores, but it’s also a shout-out to Tristan Taormino, who designed said butt plug, in celebration of her tenth anniversary in the biz. Babeland’s running a special sale on some of her goodies – get ‘em while they’re cheap!
Tristan Taormino is the acclaimed female director of sex-positive adult DVDs, award-winning author of how-to sex books, editrix of erotica, and designer of her own butt plug. To celebrate her 10th anniversary in the biz, we are introducing her new Anniversary Edition Plug (solo or in a Combo), plus her Expert Guide DVDs are on sale for 15% off.
I’ve known about Tristan’s work for a long time. Even before I was out, I scoured the Best Lesbian Erotica series (I read 1998′s so many times that it practically crumbled in my hand and I had to replace it) and pored over her Village Voice sex advice column, Pucker Up (if you missed it, pick up her book True Lust which is a compilation of some of her best). I’ve had the privilege of working with Tristan in a rather minor way, as I’ve been published in three different Best Lesbian Erotica books that she has edited, and I’ve had the chance to chat with her (briefly!) at release readings. I’ve been so excited to have even a small part in the BLE books – to help contribute to the same series that helped me mold and shape my lesbian identity feels like coming full circle, which is such an honor and humbling.
Lately, though, Taormino has not just been writing – she’s been directing porn, too. Mainstream porn, one would probably call it, as it features some well-known porn stars and most of the content is straight. While I do wish more queers were making good queer porn, I’m also glad that there’s straight porn being made by queer folks – maybe some of our radical sexualities can seep in when they least expect it, muahahaha.
I have a copy of her Expert Guide to Cunnilingus, but I’ll be honest, I’ve never watched it. Anybody out there seen it? Maybe I should dust it off and see how it is.
Have you seen any of the Chemistry series of DVDs that Taormino has done? I’ve seen a few – I don’t usually care for straight porn, but I really did enjoy watching the interviews with the porn stars (no really!) about their experience in the industry. Honestly, it was Roxy in Chemistry 3 that sold me – I even looked up some of her other work after seeing her in this one, she was just so damn hot and cute.
And I have yet to see a better blowjob scene than the one in the beginning of Chemistry 3 with Derrick. I mean, yes, Dylan Ryan is quite impressive, don’t get me wrong, and a queer femme with a butch cock in her mouth wins, hands down – but, wow. Roxy, and her tongue. Wow.
But wait – this isn’t about blow jobs. This is about butt sex! Tristan used to be referred to constantly as the “anal queen,” ’cause she was all about the ass. I remember her saying something like, I know my asshole so well, I can shave it perfectly smooth without a mirror. Now that’s impressive.
I like ass-sex as much as the next guy, but honestly I don’t have as much experience with it as I do with other things (fingers, dick, mouth, fist). Nevertheless, I’ve always wanted to get my hands on the custom-designed butt-plug that Tristan created a few years back. It’s been on various sex toy wishlists of mine for literally years now.
And for this Tristan Taormino anniversary sale, Babeland’s got a special Anniversary Edition of the plug.
But wait! What could they possibly do to improve the famous Tristan butt plug? … Make it bigger, of course! The first edition of the plug is 3 1/4″ x 1 1/2″, and the Anniversary Edition is 3″ x 1-3/4″. Just a little more squat and stout, perfect.
The Tristan butt plug is uniquely designed with two things, in my opinion: one, the insertable part is kind of long, but more bulbous than most butt plugs, which means it stays in place better; and two, the base is narrow and rectangular, which means it kind of fits between your ass-cheeks easier. Brilliant!
To be totally honest, I haven’t used it yet. It’s a little … gulp … large. But I’ll be sure to report back when I do.
It is 100% high-quality silicone, which means it can be easily boiled. I know you’re dying to get your ass around one of these; high-tail to Babeland and pick it up – there’s even a special Anniversary Plug & Expert Guide Combo. Seriously, all of Tristan’s stuff is on sale – there’s got to be something in there that would be a great addition to your own collection.
Bet you didn’t even know that this woman is your hot queer sex mentor, but she is.
Jacks on 
Lenore on 
Shereen on 
Giveaway! Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica
Shall I mail you a copy of it? Just comment on this post and let me know what your favorite written erotica anthology is, or your favorite erotica writer, or that one erotica story that you always get out when you want to get your blood going. Bonus points if you describe what it is you love about the story. Or comment that you’ve never read erotica, or that you kind of hate it … or something else entirely, the point is just that you comment. I’ll pick two comments at random and notify you by email.
If you’re outside of the US, that’s fine, but I might ask you to kick me a few bucks for shipping. You just have to include a valid email address to enter.
Winners will be picked Friday morning, March 26th.
Thanks Cleis! Thanks Tristan!