Tristan Taormino—sex-positive trailblazer

In this dynamic interview with award-winning author and sex educator Tristan Taormino, she discusses her memoir, A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten, recounting her queer youth and relationship with her gay dad, making feminist porn, being a femme dyke, and why people aren’t having sex now.

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In this episode:

• Author and sex educator Tristan Taormino
• Host, sex educator, and energy worker Karen Yates 
•  A Part of the Heart Can’t Be Eaten –buy on Bookshop and support Wild & Sublime

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Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

Tristan Taormino  0:02  
My dad had gay friends. My mom had gay friends. They were I was around them all the time. I knew gay people. I lived in a town where you had to get the ferry to go to the gay part of Fire Island. So it was like, Yeah, gay people they exist. I wasn't, you know, isolated in a rural area somewhere. And yet, no one told me my dad was gay.

Karen Yates  0:26  
Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation, or relationship style. Based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy. You'll hear meaningful conversations, dialogues that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I'm sex educator Karen Yates. Our monthly Patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive Wild & Sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com forward slash Wild & Sublime. 

Karen Yates  1:22  
Hey folks, now that summer is on the horizon, I'll be doing several author interviews in case you'd like to pack a few books on any vacation you might be taking. Today I'm happy to present a recent interview I did with Tristan Taomino, award-winning author, sex educator, speaker and queer and trans health consultant. She is the author of many books, including the seminal "opening up," a guide to creating and sustaining open relationships as well as the "ultimate guide to anal sex for women." And we will be talking a bit today about the movies Tristan made based on that book. She edited "on our backs," the women-run erotica magazine from 1998 to 2002, and the anthology "best lesbian erotica," which she created and edited from the mid 90s to 2009. She was also a regular columnist for The Village Voice from 1999 to 2008, where she wrote the biweekly sex column "pucker up," which appeared opposite Dan savage's column "savage love." Today we'll be talking about her new memoir, "a part of the heart can't be eaten." The book chronicles her childhood and early adulthood as a queer person, and follows how she became a forerunner in the early sex positive movement. The memoir also recounts her relationship with her gay father who died of AIDS in 1995. In addition, we'll also be discussing the lesbian Butch femme dynamic in the face of newly fluid gender roles, and the state of the world and sex today. And joy. Welcome Tristan Taormino.

Tristan Taormino  3:05  
Thanks for having me.

Karen Yates  3:07  
I am so excited. I have followed your career for a while. And I was super stoked when your memoir came out. And I thought, Ah, I'm gonna have her on the show. So this is this is quite awesome. Your book, as I mentioned in the introduction, covers a very specific time period from your childhood up until the late 90s. 

Tristan Taormino  3:32  
Correct. 

Karen Yates  3:35  
You began you took over editor editorship or you became the editor of "on our backs." Let's put it that way. The major groundbreaking lesbian magazine with erotica and feminist focused content, which I picked up as a 25 year old like we can talk about that.

Tristan Taormino  3:58  
Oh, yes. Let's talk about the first "On our backs" we ever saw. 

Karen Yates  4:01  
Let's talk about it right now. Oh, my God. So I was exploring my sexuality. This was this was before you took over as editor. This was in the early 90s. 

Tristan Taormino  4:11  
Yeah. 

Karen Yates  4:11  
And I bought, I don't even know where I was. I was I wasn't, I was living in upstate New York, but I might have picked up a copy. I don't know Poughkeepsie or something. And I remember opening up to the centerfold. And it was a butch dyke with a strap on. I remember dildos back then. Were not pretty, right.

Tristan Taormino  4:34  
They were right. They Yes. It was.

Karen Yates  4:38  
It was a white kind of penile shaped like strap and let's just say and there was another person sucking off the butch. And I was just like, What is going on? And no one had large breasts. No one was wearing anything fancy. See, and my little mind, my little heteronormative mind just started melting down like I, I don't understand this on any level. And then there was this article about kink, a dominatrix had written course I called them dominatrixes, then I didn't call them anything else, or dominants, or they were talking about how kink could be a trauma resolver that you could resolve trauma through kink. And again, I was like, What is going on here? And I've just closed the magazine. Put it away, because I just couldn't handle it. I could not handle it on any level back then. Yes. Thoughts?

Tristan Taormino  5:46  
I mean, I that's just that's, to me, that's like a great issue to pick out like also, but also my brain would explode. I saw my first copy of honor backs in 1991, my girlfriend in college had a subscription. On the cover was a butch dyke in an army uniform, in the desert, who and she had actually served. So it wasn't like costume play. It was like she actually was in the military. And this is way before gay people could be in the military. 

Karen Yates  6:24  
Yeah. 

Tristan Taormino  6:25  
And I just remember, I remember reading it from cover to cover. I mean, like Suzy Bright had an article in it. And and there were just all these like, erotic stories about women having sex with women and about kink. And I was like, here for it. Like one of the things I say in my book is, this wasn't for me, just about like, media representation, like that part was was really good. And we're always kind of searching for ourselves in the media, especially marginalized folks. To me, it was a roadmap to the life I want it. And the life I got, quite frankly. 

Karen Yates  7:02  
The life you got. I mean, what I really, I don't know, there was so much I enjoyed in your book, but I I really loved seeing the incubation of, you know, baby dyke to full fledged kinkster then, then you know, all of your work, which we'll talk about later, because I really want to go in depth with your anal movie, "ultimate guide to anal 

Tristan Taormino  7:29  
sex for women, "

Karen Yates  7:30  
Anal sex for women. Yeah. Which was so delicious to read about, like, I looooved your recounting because I know a little bit about film. And I worked in the film industry for a while. And so I was tracking pretty closely. But I loved just seeing all of the seeds that were coming to you and how it just bloomed and how things just led one thing led to another and I don't know, I'm just gonna start I'll start there. We'll talk about your dad in a moment. But you were... I hate to use the word pioneer because obviously you know, there were pioneers before you. Right? That's just the way it is in the sex lineage. Or any any lineage there's, there's there's people before us and then there's people before them. And we we could go all the way back to Oscar Wilde for crying out loud and, 

Tristan Taormino  8:20  
and Radclyffe Hall. 

Karen Yates  8:21  
I was just gonna say at Radclyffe Hal!, right. Yeah. So but for our purposes, let's call you a pioneer in that particular timeframe. You were like this bridge between the Suzy Brights and the Annie Sprinkles. I feel like you were the next kind of person that bridged the beginning that the the the infant moments of sex positivity as we know them now. But you're really clear to say there were people that came before you and what did it feel like? Then you were moving yourself? i To me, it was like you were you were growing. And in your individual growth you naturally moved into this expression of leadership. I don't know if I'm making assumptions. I want you to talk. No,

Tristan Taormino  9:09  
I'm absolutely I consider Suzy Bright, Annie sprinkle,. Carole Queen, Deborah Sundahl, the OG Betty Dodson. I consider them all for mothers, right? They they paved the way I stand on their shoulders. And now people stand on my shoulders, which is amazing. It was again, I feel like I had all of these different influences. I was I grew up with gay people in my life. I grew up with gender variant people in my life and drag queens and and then I was exposed to "On our backs" and sort of sex positive San Francisco. I mean, it's any wonder I turned out like I turned that, you know, the conditions were made it quite possible for me to then take this path of sex positivity. And I think that, you know, this has always been true of my career and my life is that people will tell me things like, "You want to do what?? That that hasn't been done before?" Or "That's...No. No, people aren't ready for that. No, no, no, that's gonna that's gonna really like pigeonhole you." Right? 

Tristan Taormino  9:11  
So, so I had I mean, I had lots of notes knows about my book, "The Ultimate Guide to anal sex for women," people, like all scared about it, Cleis, this great feminist publisher willing to publish it about my movie people saying, "you know, this idea you have no one will buy into it." And so there were, there were just times where I, I knew what I wanted to do. It was a new idea, or an idea that had been built on other ideas. But I was bringing something unique to it. And I was like, "full steam ahead. I believe in this. And so I'm going to make it happen." And, and for the most part, I did I mean, I'm thinking back to when I started "Best Lesbian Erotica, " which was a series started in 1996. And still continues to this day. 

Karen Yates  10:28  
Yes. 

Tristan Taormino  10:28  
Which is amazing how, you know, there's a legacy there. And, you know, at the time there were like a handful of erotic books, some anthologies, short stories, right. It wasn't a section in the bookstore. It wasn't a section on online bookstores, right? It just wasn't. And then that really led to more erotica, more sex writing. So I feel like I was at the beginning of a bunch of things, but it was just stuff I wanted to do, stuff I wanted to see in the world. And I refuse to listen to people who told me no.

Karen Yates  12:01  
I was just stunned. Okay, so you went from Adventure Girl? 

Tristan Taormino  12:06  
Mmhmm.

Karen Yates  12:07  
Which was a column, right? 

Tristan Taormino  12:08  
Yeah. A column in "on our backs." 

Karen Yates  12:10  
Yes. And then you went to editing... "Best lesbian erotica." Was that what happened? 

Tristan Taormino  12:16  
Best Lesbian Eroitca was a few years, two years before that. 

Karen Yates  12:18  
Okay. All right. So that came first, then adventure girl, and then the Village Voice. I mean, that was the moment writing a column in the Village Voice. That was the moment that my jaw just kind of hit the floor about how, man I mean, do you ever marvel at your trajectory? Do you ever marvel at it? Do you ever say Holy shit? I did that! 

Tristan Taormino  12:39  
Oh, absolutely! I mean, that was the... I remember the editor and the publisher were in the meeting. And they said  "we were brainstorming with the staff of writers. And someone said, 'Tristan Taoromino, I know her from On our Backs'. And someone else said, 'Oh, she wrote a book on anal sex. And someone else said, I've seen a video version of that book.'" And so in some ways, like I put myself on the map, but again, on the map of a pretty underground alternative world, which the Village Voice also, you know, was populated by, 

Karen Yates  13:16  
Right. Yeah. 

Tristan Taormino  13:17  
So yeah, I mean, I think that I've had, like, tremendous opportunities in my life. And I've taken risks, and I've followed my instincts, and they've gotten me this far. So I feel like, but I also feel like I, I made things happen. I, you know, I don't feel like anyone handed anything to me.

Karen Yates  13:42  
Oh, for sure. For sure. And that's pretty evident in the book. I... do think also part of it is the hubris of youth?

Tristan Taormino  13:49  
[laughs] Well, you know, it's so funny, because now when I see, you know, when I speak at college campuses and see people in their 20s online, I just think, was I that self righteous?? And yeah, I was! When I was that age, I absolutely was. It sort of, it was sort of like, "I can do anything" kind of kind of attitude, right? "I can do anything. Let's, let's just let's do it." And, yeah, I had a tremendous amount of like, confidence in myself and my ideas. And if someone hadn't done it before, I was like, "Well, I'm gonna figure it out."

Karen Yates  14:31  
I know. And so let's just, it's so funny. I was like, planning on talking about this later, as sort of the money shot of my podcast-- if that's a thing, but let's talk about let's talk about the making of this of "the ultimate guide to anal sex for women." So you made this movie, right? 

Tristan Taormino  14:52  
I wrote a book. 

Karen Yates  14:53  
You wrote the book, and then you made this movie and you directed it. You wrote it and you starred in it. 

Tristan Taormino  14:59  
Yes. 

Karen Yates  15:00  
Okay, like I was, I was laughing in amazement and like, yes, go girl. I mean, because I know, I didn't know anything about the movie. I mean, I knew you were pornographer, but I didn't know anything about it. Okay, so talk about why this movie was groundbreaking.

Tristan Taormino  15:26  
Right. Um, the way that I conceived of this movie was that it would be both educational and super sexy. Right? So let's get rid of the white coats. Let's get rid of like the, the sort of anatomy, the kind of medicalization of sex, which was happening in most How-to videos, except for Nina Hartley who paved the way in that genre for me. Um, and I want to, I want to make this a hot movie, so that people are like learning things, but then they're also turned on, and they're also like, 'Hey, maybe I can do this.' And, um, and at that point, there wasn't really a name for that. It was kind of a hybrid of sex ed and Gonzo, which was really big and popular in you know, in the late 90s, and 2000s, which is when I was making my movie. And, you know, I made it with John Stagliano, who was considered one of the most important people in porn. It was like, being tutored by Steven Spielberg. And having never taken a film class. You know, I mean, he, he, he's why he was wildly successful, his company still is. And, and I, you know, I learned from the best. 

Tristan Taormino  16:52  
And I also had this co director, Ernest Green, who'd also been in the industry for a long time. I just, I think that people were surprised when it came out. First that it actually... they actually did learn things from it. And some people picked it up because they were like, 'I love John's work. So this is another hot anal sex video." They get it home. And then they're like, oh, wait, this is something else. So it's kind of like a Trojan horse, which I really loved that idea that I was not just going to reach like folks who went to Good Vibrations, right and rented videos, I was going to reach more of a mass audience who's going to their local video store and they just go to the anal section. That's their favorite thing. Because remember, this came out on VHS everyone. V H. S.! Which is just wild to me. And and then the idea that I was going to be in the video that was gonna have sex in the video as someone who hadn't performed, who wasn't in the porn industry, who was entirely outside of it. Not only was I gonna have sex, but I was gonna have anal sex and I was gonna have sex with 12 people, all of my cast members in what I call the "feminist gang bang" in my in my book. So that also kind of turned heads and they were a little bit like, what is going on here?

Karen Yates  18:19  
Now wait. At that moment, had you even done photo shoots? Because you have been... You've been like, in photoshoots nude? 

Tristan Taormino  18:29  
Yeah-- 

Karen Yates  18:29  
--having sex. But have you even done that yet?

Tristan Taormino  18:32  
I mean, yes. I mean, I posed in "on our backs" by then. 

Karen Yates  18:37  
Right. 

Tristan Taormino  18:37  
I, I used to model for the very well known fetish photographer Richard Kern, who and I, one of my photos ended up in his book, New York Girls. So I did, I did modeling with him. Not all of it was like for publication. And then I had this Ron Merio, who works for a bunch of porn magazines. And he was like, let's do some Polaroids and get you in, like, Hustler. So I was in Hustler with a blonde wig very just wow. And it was just one Polaroid and it was like, these are amateurs basically. Right? 

Karen Yates  19:15  
Yeah. 

Tristan Taormino  19:16  
So I would I never, I'd never done anything on camera like live right? Live sex. And I, you know, I just wasn't in that industry. Like, you have to remember these folks like, so that when people are we're like, oh my god, she's a porn star. I'm like, I feel like that devalues the work of people who are doing this every day and who actually have achieved a level of accomplishment and fame. Like I made three movies total in my career, so I don't I don't think porn star is the bytes or just porn performer, Director, you know? 

Tristan Taormino  19:53  
Yeah. 

Tristan Taormino  19:54  
And they so so Evil Angel, which is the company that put it out recently remastered. or the video, 

Karen Yates  20:01  
I was going to ask 

Tristan Taormino  20:02  
For the 20th...25th anniversary. And so I watched it, you know. I haven't watched it in a while. I don't know how long it's been, but I have it on DVD and I have a DVD player. And so I wanted to rewatch it. And just first of all, to write the to write the the chapter about it, right. Like I have a, you know, talking about fact checking, like, there it is. So, I want to watch it for that, and then watch it so that John and I could talk about, okay, like what, you know, what do we want to do? And I was impressed with myself, quite frankly. I was like WOW, I mean, wow, Tristan, like you...Wow. You had sex with all those people. It was like hours long, even though I've been the scene itself was probably a half hour long, but I think we were like, going on for like, two hours. 

Karen Yates  20:56  
Sure. 

Tristan Taormino  20:57  
There were a lot of very big things put my ass. A lot! And into my pussy. But most, you know, in my ass. It's uh, yeah, I was actually impressed by myself. I was a little bit like, Who's that girl? 

Karen Yates  21:09  
Yeah, yeah. But the the other thing I really loved about your recounting is that that you introduced things like vibrators and lube, and all sorts of things that the performers wanted. You know, the cisgendered female performers wanted but they weren't given those things prior. And you brought them in, right?

Tristan Taormino  21:34  
Well, everyone uses lube, right? But, ya know, not on camera.

Karen Yates  21:40  
 Exactly. 

Tristan Taormino  21:40  
It's hidden. It's like a trick. And and you never see it. You never see it visibly. And I I wanted to show it so that people at home knew this is an integral part of of great anal sex. You need lube, you can't do without it. I also used condoms in that movie. And John had never shot a movie with condoms. I actually had latex gloves in that movie, which to me is like, straight out of, you know, queer, safer sex movements of the 80s. I mean, so I slipped a bunch of stuff in there. That was, yeah, that just hadn't been done in mainstream porn, right? And I think now there's a different relationship with sex toys, but back then, no one was using vibrators. 

Karen Yates  22:30  
Right?

Tristan Taormino  22:30  
Not they weren't shooting it at all. 

Karen Yates  22:32  
Right. 

Tristan Taormino  22:33  
And they weren't using toys that much. Like, you know, I would I would be on the set of a movie and I would see girls warming up, right? They'd like kind of, you know, take a butt plug put up their ass like talk talk talk, maybe like, do another butt plug that was bigger, right? And then again, like lubing it blah, blah, blah, and then they go on to set. Right. So all but all that stuff gets lost. And then, it looks unrealistic because they look really ready. And they look like they're having a time of their lives. They are, they are really ready. And they are having a good time. But you didn't see what led to that. And I wanted to show what led to that.

Karen Yates  23:11  
And you won...You want to be won several awards, right?

Tristan Taormino  23:14  
I did. I was the first female director to win. Best Anal Movie. 

Karen Yates  23:20  
Wow. 

Tristan Taormino  23:22  
So yeah, so there were like a lot of firsts with that. Yes.

Karen Yates  23:25  
So terrific. And then what did you do after that? Like, did you do other? Did you direct other porn? That's the thing I'm not particularly clear on.

Tristan Taormino  23:32  
Yeah. Okay. So right after that everyone was like, This is so successful, and it's sold so well that in porn, the thing you do when something is really good is you make a sequel. Even though it's the ultimate guide to anal sex for women, and that means ultimate. I did the ultimate guide to anal sex for women, too,

Karen Yates  23:52  
of course.

Tristan Taormino  23:55  
Because that's what you're doing born. And then I kind of went back to my life, my life as a writer, I wrote a new book, I wrote a couple new books I wrote for The Village Voice. And then in 2005, I returned to the industry with a pretty clear mission. I felt like, we still didn't have enough women in positions of power. We still did not have enough women behind the camera, who were directing and who were producing movies. And so I wasn't seeing the kind of stuff I wanted to see. And so I came back to porn and then I so from 2005 to 2013 I you know, I wasn't a full time pornographer because like, I'm always doing like 10 things at once, because I'm overachiever. But, but I made like about 25 films.

Karen Yates  24:57  
Oh, wow. Oh, wow. I didn't realize it was that many. 

Tristan Taormino  25:00  
Yeah. 

Karen Yates  25:00  
Oh my gosh. Okay. Okay. Are they available now? Or is it only the 

Tristan Taormino  25:04  
Yeah, if you go to streaming sites pay for your horn people public service announcement. If you go to streaming sites, you can just search by my name and you can see, okay. Yeah, absolutely.

Karen Yates  25:17  
Great. So let's get back to the more of the origin story here of Tristan Taormino. Your, your dad obviously figures incredibly prominently in this memoir, and your dad was gay, but you did not really...and got divorced from your mom. But when talk about when you realized he was gay, this is kind of interesting to me.

Tristan Taormino  25:43  
Yeah, this is amazing, actually, because I knew I had gay people in my life. My dad had gay friends. My mom had gay friends. They were I was around them all the time. I knew gay people. I lived in a town where you had to get the ferry to go to the gay part of Fire Island. So it was like, Yeah, gay people. They exist. I wasn't, you know, isolated in a rural area somewhere. And yet, no one told me my dad was gay, in fact. So at that, at this point, he was living in Provincetown, the gay capital of the world, some might say, or maybe it's one of the gay capitals of the world. And there were gay people everywhere, but like, it doesn't occur to you that your dad's gay, you know, it just like it doesn't even even though I was like, smart. For my age, I just couldn't see it at all. And so I'm one. So he was seeing this Jesuit priest. And the priests brother, came to stay with him for the summer. And he was a few years younger than me. But they thought, oh, they should meet and maybe they'll hang out. Maybe they'll hit it off. His name was Boomer. They call them Boomer. And so yeah, so we hung out. I liked him. He was really fun. And one day we were alone at my dad's condo, we were making lunch and, and Boomer just said, like, "what's it like to have a gay dad?" And I mean, my mind exploded, exploded. And of course, he was not trying to like out my father, nothing like that. He had a gay brother. He was trying to like bond with Me, you know, again, we are we are in the 80s. Right. So it's not like there's collage and all these support groups and PFLAG and all that stuff. Like there. No one, you know, people we didn't know who was gay and people weren't out. So so his, like, he just said it very matter of factly. And I, you know, I like, freaked out and then like, just saw the film of my dad's life. It was like, this makes a lot of sense. Wow. Oh, wow. Oh, drag queens. His friends are gay. He's never remarried. Like, oh, this. Yeah. This makes sense. Now, I played it off as very cool as if I had known all along. But it's, I mean, in hindsight, it is. It's a hysterical story. Like, it's very, very funny. And people love that story. But at the time, it was shocking. It was shocking. 

Karen Yates  28:30  
Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, because I had, my dad was, let's just say I strongly suspect he was a closeted bisexual. And, but when it really dawned on me, like, much later in my life, it was the film The film going, like, suddenly all of these, like, if there was a movie, it would be like things popping out at your face, and like, montage clips of dialogue... memories. Which leads me to the next question: He had a memoir, but yet-- an unpublished memoir, manuscript and there was a lot of drama around that in the book, but you actually did not sit down and read the memoir until very recently. Why? 

Tristan Taormino  29:17  
Yeah, so he gave me a copy of his memoir, like a hardcopy in 1991. I was spending the summer with him. At that point, he lived in Seattle. And I, I didn't read it right away. And he got really, really angry, out of proportion angry. I mean, my dad had episodes of mania. I didn't call them that then but he did. And I was often on the receiving end of him freaking out. So he freaked out and that sort of scared me because I was like, you know, I was like, 20 years old. I didn't know I didn't know anything really, what do you know when you're 20? And so then I, we, you know, we continue to relationship, and I just didn't read it. And so I sat down to read, I'd read some chapters of it. He had published some stories that were chapters of it in, in magazine. So I had read those. But I didn't read it from cover to cover until I began a second draft of my memoir. Why didn't I read it? Um, it's a great question. I, you know, I knew some of the stories, I did not know all the stories. I, I just think I, I mean, while he was living, I just felt like, I was avoiding it, for some reason, not not clear. And then after he died, I felt like it'd be way too painful. Because that his death was very traumatic for me. And so some people would be like, Oh, he made a thing, like, you'd want to, like, get into that thing, or read it like five times and listen to his voice. And that will bring you like, great memories, or closer to him. But, but that wasn't the case for me. 

Karen Yates  31:24  
Yeah. It actually makes perfect sense to me about why you wouldn't. I mean, yeah, there's this. I don't know, for me at least. Because in some regards, I feel like I've had a similar experience on my, with my mother around a book that recounted areas of her life and what she had experienced at that time, but there's almost like you have your vision of your parent. I'm not gonna say sacred, but it's almost like self preservation. You don't want some other massive viewpoint, to shatter your your view. You can do it with other people, but I don't know parental.

Tristan Taormino  32:09  
Yeah, and I think I'm reading it cover to cover really revealed, like, patterns, patterns that I've repeated patterns that I've tried to break pattern patterns that I didn't, I wasn't really aware of until it was like sort of spelled out. Um, my grandmother was bipolar. And she was abusive, both physically and psychologically to my dad. My dad was diagnosed with depression, later in life, and also had bouts of mania. I deal with major depressive disorder I have for more of my life than I haven't. And so there's, they're like, there's a way in which all of a sudden, you see, like, you see these lines being formed that you never really, totally saw clearly. In the kind of, like, generational trauma, and genetics of it all.

Karen Yates  33:19  
right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think about like, my, when I was growing up, my grandmother, we recognized and just called her crazy. 

Tristan Taormino  33:29  
Yes, right. 

Karen Yates  33:30  
Nice, like uninformed word. By all only was it but I remember even as a child or a young person, I was like, But how is she crazy? I like couldn't... like, she wasn't bipolar. She wasn't depressive. There was something else. And it wasn't until just really like a year ago, I'm like, she suffered from intense PTSD, like, the rageful.. like, the rage and the kind of, and it was like, Oh, right. And then my mother, same thing, and it just like this, when you can get suddenly a big picture. It can be comforting. I don't know. Did you find it comforting?

Tristan Taormino  34:09  
Yeah, no, that's a really interesting piece too. Because, you know, I had a very, I had a very fraught relationship with my mom until I was about in my 40s. So this this book, which goes until I'm about 31, yeah, the whole relationship with my mom is quite fraught. And I just, I feel like, you know, the original wound that I have from being mothered by her was that she wasn't emotionally attuned with me. And she couldn't really understand my emotions because she couldn't understand her own. And so she offered no support or coping mechanisms or anything, like I just didn't know I didn't learn how to self soothe until I was like, well into my 30s Um, and you know, that could have just been a little class for elementary school students, that would have been great. And we're doing that now. But um, you know, but I, but then when you trace it back, my grandmother, her mother died when she was three. And so she was semi parented by her grandmother, who didn't sound like a very compassionate kind person. And so she was kind of raised by relatives. And so a motherless mother raised my mother. 

Tristan Taormino  35:35  
And when you look at it like that, you I have more compassion and understanding. Like, she just didn't have the skills and she just didn't have a model. Right? You know, my grandmother was not like warm and compassionate. And she was quite stoic and very waspy. And so that's what my mom saw. And she internalized that. And it really, like I said, wasn't until my 40s that I let go of love stuff. And you know had a to come-to-Jesus moment with her. And we built this relationship that is, you know, the best it's ever been in my life right now is we have the best relationship that we

Karen Yates  36:19  
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Karen Yates  36:42  
 Your dad was diagnosed with AIDS and then subsequently died of AIDS. And it was... what I really admired about the book, as I remember those times, which seems they seem to have receded in the American consciousness, which blows my mind, it's like, almost never happened. I'd like you to talk a little bit about that phenomenon. But also, like you'd like for you to talk about. You were in the midst of the AIDS crisis as a young person, and there were many sick men around you. And then now your dad gets diagnosed. So yeah, if you could talk about those two aspects of this collective amnesia, but then take us back to what it was like for you.

Tristan Taormino  37:29  
I mean, I'll take us back first and say that, that's one of the things that I feel like I was trying to do with this book, which is to say, here's this queer father daughter relationship. First of all, we just don't have that much writing about, you know, a second generation queer person, right. So that is unique, but also, it's against a backdrop of queer history, queer history period, not just our personal histories, there are a lot going on that is directly affecting our lives. That is part of the history of, of queer people in the United States. Right. And so there's not it's, it's like a personal story, but it also feels bigger than that, because we have to document our history. And I think, I think the 90s are, are we're just starting to get some really great accounts of the 90s, Sarah Schulman wrote a book called Let the record show which is about AIDS activism and act up. And it's this, like tome, and it's incredibly well researched. And it's just, it's like, you know, it's it's a, it's an amazing book. And so we're starting now to see more and more books, which track that time, which is after the 80s, after the sort of 1984 to 96, when everyone was like what's going on, although there was still a lot of what's going on. And it was, you know, it affected every area of my life. I mean, people are still shocked about this, but I still use oral barriers for oral sex with with people that I don't know their sexual history or I don't know them or it's like a one time hookup right. And people are like, What are you talking about? And I say, Listen, in the 90s, I was brought up gloves, condoms, don't share toys, dental dams. Now luckily, there's some stuff better than dental dams now great, super excited about that. The technology has changed, but this was part of my sexuality. I didn't have to like relearn anything. It was simultaneous to my sexual revolution. And so it has always been a part of my sexuality. And I think nowadays we got we got more tools, you know, we've got prep. We've got pap, we have, you know, you equals you, which is that your viral load can be so low that you are undetectable. And therefore it's on the viruses on transmissible. Right? So we've got a lot of did that the landscape has changed dramatically. And it does feel like younger generations have no idea. Like, have no idea how people were turned away from getting health care, how people discriminated against them, how they would go into hospitals, and people would put, like, hazmat suits on them just to walk in and take a history. Um, and, and how also in the midst of all this, we just didn't know that much. Right, it was a pandemic. And they were all still trying to figure out what happened. I mean, I think one of the most tragic things about my dad's life is that they think he was positive for about 10 years, because he was diagnosed with like, 15 T cells and in advanced aids, okay. And he died in 1995. And so, and there are people who were diagnosed in 1995, who are alive and quite well. It was right on the brink of this, this drug cocktail, which kind of changed everything, because the medications they were using, then were also killing people, like you could also the cause of death could be side effects from just the medication, right. And all of that has improved dramatically. But but there was already some good stuff happening in 95. And it's like, maybe if he could have hung on longer, he would literally be alive as I know, men from 1995 are. So that's off. That's an awful feeling that the timing of it was so bad. Yeah. And that he, you know, he didn't live to this moment when AIDS is, of course, it's still stigmatized, but it's a manageable, chronic condition, that for which we've got prevention and treatment.

Karen Yates  42:20  
Yeah. Do you think I mean, when a thought suddenly popped up into my head as you were talking about how the young people don't really understand. And we were also talking about lineage? You know, right now, and you've probably read the stories about how like, Gen Z. There's a lot of folks in Gen Z, who does not who do not want to have sex? I find this fascinating. I would love your take on this in a second. But I also wonder, is there a collective like, unrecognized trauma from the AIDS years?

Tristan Taormino  42:56  
No, I think that trauma from the AIDS years, really hit Gen X Boomers and Gen X. I think by the time you were a millennial, it was pretty manageable. So I think it hit the Gen Xers the hardest. Now, some of those Gen Xers then went on to raise children, right. And so we could we could talk about sort of generational trauma, but it is fascinating that people are having less sex, young people are having less sex, because in you know, we've got the data to show that each generation, you know, spreads their wings becomes more fluid, sexual identity expands, you know, what was taboo in one generation is just totally normal in terms of sexual activities and practices. Right. And so we kind of were expecting that trajectory. Right. And in fact, now we've got some research that says, No, that's, that's not it. And I actually attribute this to the amount of collective anxiety that is happening in our world. I'm not saying millennials and Gen Xers and Boomers don't have anxiety, we all have anxiety. But I think the conditions under which Gen Z has grown up, which is entirely electronic, entirely online. Some of them are having relationships online, only. They don't, they don't have to make small talk at a bar. They don't have to be awkward at a party. Right? They can wait and like compose a text and then not send it and then rewrite it. You couldn't rewrite what you said at a lesbian potluck in 1999. You just You just said it. And so I feel like this. I feel like there's This whole anxiety that we're all living with, and then there's this sort of strange social shift in not having to interact with each other in real life. And then also the, you know, the pandemic has dramatically shifted. I mean, that entire generation, it's like, they didn't have high school graduation. Now they're not having college graduation. They they missed in person college classes, which, you know, to me was like, one of the most formative times of my life. I can't even imagine just like going on Zoom. How do you like flirt with the other queer people? How do you like try to tell who's queer? Like, how do you go all the weird dance parties? You can't. So I think there's a setup here for Gen X, a kind of a store a perfect storm of elements. And I think there's so much social anxiety among them. Like, I remember and this was recently like, within the last year, I went to teach a class at a university in the Midwest, to the queer to queer students. And I basically talked to the person who advises the queer group and said, like, what are the kinds of things you know, they're coming to you about what, you know, what do they need? And she was like, I think they'd be interested in in dirty talk, like, you have this dirty top workshop. I was like, Oh, great, dirty talk. So fun. And so when I got in the workshop, I very quickly realized that no, they don't need to talk. They need sexual communication skills, they literally don't know how to communicate with one another about their desires about what kinds of relationships they want, how they want to interact, what their needs are. consent, what they're, they want to say yes to what they feel uncomfortable with, but go along with, I mean, to me that that that is Gen Z, I think there's just so much social anxiety, that's getting in the way of people exploring their sexuality, you know, fumbling, hooking up with the wrong person, like all the things, you know, we did, right, right. We're learning experiences, and it wasn't all great. But there was a sense of experimentation. And I don't feel like I was the only like, fearless person out there doing it. Right. I felt like my peers were doing it too. So I think it's a kind of a perfect storm.

Karen Yates  47:35  
And also, when you think about the fact that a lot of people have trouble with sexual communication, I mean, this is, right, and so like, then it gets, then you have the youth on top of it, and then not getting really any conversation from the elders, because everyone's sort of uncomfortable with it.

Tristan Taormino  47:53  
Right? Yeah, that's the other thing. You know, there's a generation of people my age and maybe slightly younger, who say to me, I don't want to raise my kids the way my parents did, which is like, there was no talking about sex, or there was 115 minute talk that offered no support or information. They had abstinence only sex education in schools. And they say, you know, I mean, I want to break the cycle. I want to be a sex positive parent. Okay, that sounds great. But then we need to train the parents, they actually don't have the background. Unless they pursued it deliberately. As adults, they don't have the information. They don't have the sort of comfort talking about sex. No one was comfortable talking about sex with them. Yeah. So were we like, actually need to, like, create resources for parents, if they want to shift the cultural conversation with kids?

Karen Yates  48:51  
Absolutely. Absolutely. I see, I see some sex educators doing it. But it's a drop in the bucket. It's basically a drop in the bucket.

Tristan Taormino  49:01  
Oh, my goodness, how to do better. People want to do better. They need they need tools.

Karen Yates  49:09  
So I'd like to talk a little bit about, you know, you go into great depth about your relationship with Butch dykes in the, in your memoir, as well as your own flowering as a firm. And it was great to read, right? Because it was great to read what's great because it was just great to read. But, you know, I was in prepping for this interview. I was looking online and you know, I found an article like is the Butch femme dynamic dead? You know, you're nodding sagely, you know, in the face of, you know, changing gender roles and fluidity is that dad and I'm like, Okay, that sounds a little premature. I want I want your take on it. And I want also to know, like, how has it changed for you? You now like, where are you in your identity?

Tristan Taormino  50:03  
Yeah, so, um, you know, I paired up with witches kind of like, exclusively until, you know, there was this wave of folks who were challenging gender norms. And so, for a 15 or 20 year span, I was involved primarily with trans trans masculine or non binary people. So none of the people I was involved with identified as Butch, or which dice, they didn't. And I'm attracted to masculinity, I'm attracted to a complicated gender. So that worked for me, that totally worked for me. Um, but I have recently in the last year, found the butch dyke of my dream, right. I mean, there's, there's a thing at the very end the epilogue of my book, where I say, I'm sort of like still searching for that person. And to me, I I'm quite flexible. I'm queer. I have people I have sex with people of all genders, all genital configurations, all identities, like I'm very flexible. When it comes to that stuff. It's really, you know, it's just is there a connection right there. And so I wasn't necessarily like looking for like a butch dyke to partner with. But then when I did, when I found one, things came flooding back to me. And all of a sudden, I was like, this is home. For me. This is a dance. This is a dynamic. This is sexual expression. This is identity. And this is, wow, I have missed this in a way I didn't even know I missed it. I mean, I said to my girlfriend, like, pretty early on in our relationship. I said, um, I didn't know I was starving. Until you fed me. Wow.

Karen Yates  52:05  
Yeah, you know, and I can see now that you're saying that, and you're kind of explaining to me your journey. In thinking about the book. It was all there. Right? It makes sense. Yeah. Cuz you do get very explicit about the dynamic and it's, it's joyful. You know, it's joyful to read. And,

Tristan Taormino  52:24  
I mean, I feel like I maintained my fam identity. And certainly I maintained my queer identity. Even when I was paired with sis men, and sis straight identified man, I still was and have been a queer dyke and that and queer fam, and that, like, Is my identity, I don't feel like that's, that's changed or evolved. The way people read me changed when I was with trans men, and they read me as straight. They read us as Sis, sis, male, female couple. But I don't feel like internally, but then there is something about the counterpart that, like, kicks up my fan identity in like, brand new ways, in complicated ways, in ways I haven't accessed since, you know, decades for decades.

Karen Yates  53:15  
I want to hear you talk about this, what are the complex ways? What are the new ways? What does that mean?

Tristan Taormino  53:22  
Um, there is something very specific to me about that mutual admiration society of witches and fans. There is a sense of, like, I have a deep appreciation for who my partner is, and how she walks in the world, the challenges she faces being a differently gendered person, and a differently gendered woman, someone who identifies as a woman and she her and, and she has these like qualities because she's a little bit older than me. So she has these like old school Butch qualities of like, just intense appreciation and love for my feminists, and acknowledgement of it. And she sees it, she sees it in its complexities. And I see her in her complexities. So there's this there's this appreciation that I feel like almost it just it sort of transcends I know partners appreciate each other of course, but there's like a bunch a way of which appreciates a firm and a way that a firm appreciates a bunch that's like very, very powerful to me. And I feel like you know, gender is at is is always there. Right? You can't be in a bootstrap couple and not like think about gender on the daily I mean, you can of course, but but for me gender is like there and and then I I feel like I'm like, I feel like I'm growing and like, changing. And I didn't think I'd say that at that. 50. I'm 54 I didn't think my 5443 What you just said, I'm 53? Okay? No, I'm Yes, I'm 53 Okay, so I'm getting out of myself, I'm 53 years old. And I didn't know that there was so much to learn about myself, and about my partner, and about my sexuality and about my gender. And I feel like that has to do with the Butch femme dynamic. There is a particular kind of connection there. Where we are doing gender differently. We're doing it differently from the mainstream, and we're doing it differently from each other.

Karen Yates  55:59  
It sounds like security, like you have found a level of security in this connection. Would that be correct in? Would I be correct in that?

Tristan Taormino  56:08  
Yeah, I think it's, it's a sense of like, oh, this is right,

Karen Yates  56:15  
right. Yeah.

Tristan Taormino  56:16  
This is this is the ultimate. This is everything I want. And this feels like exactly what what I need and want. Yeah. Yeah, I'm super, you know, over the moon. And so I could go on about her for like an hour. I'm in love

Karen Yates  56:47  
Well, that may. That might be podcast number two. Right. We'll do the sequel. We'll do the sequel on that was

Tristan Taormino  56:54  
gonna be a sequel, you know, into my memoir. So

Karen Yates  56:58  
fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Oh, I'm excited about are you writing it as we speak. Yeah. And

Tristan Taormino  57:03  
so that's gonna span from my 30s to the present day. And a lot of stuff happened. For me, I'm thinking of making just like a trailer. I don't even know if it needs any images. But it's like, it's like a coming attraction. Like, here's what you'll read in the second memoir. just tease people and give them a sense of what it is. And, you know, I've lived a complex, joyful, painful, difficult, ecstatic life.

Karen Yates  57:39  
Well, on that note, I would like to end with, you know, one out so, you know, you wrote the book, opening up, was one of the first poly books I read. And then you did the prior, you did the anal movie. I was like, wow, you know, I was just thinking about the forefront you, you pushing ahead, right. And so, what do you make now, now that you have, you know, you have your angel under your belt?

Tristan Taormino  58:12  
Yeah, I mean, I'm like, you know, when when someone's talking about Angel, they often call me,

Karen Yates  58:17  
right, and like, now, Angel is a thing. Angel has suddenly become a thing was a,

Tristan Taormino  58:23  
I was talking about men's health pegging. Oh, that's right. Just Tuesday's post for them. Right. And

Karen Yates  58:30  
so I was talking to Sarah dissect, sort of dissect them early to bed was on the show. We do a live show for five times a year. And she came on and I was like, so what, what you know what happened during the pandemic? She's like, anal happened during the pandemic. And I'm like, is is anal the big secret of the pandemic? She's like, Yeah, okay, so anal happen now. Aina. And now Polly is happening. Yes. How are you looking at all of this? How are you looking at all of this being one of the folks who were really kind of banging the drum for both of these things in for all of sex positivity. I mean, Jesus, not just these couple of things, but like, what are you thinking about society right now?

Tristan Taormino  59:14  
It's a that's a big question. Big question. You know, I feel like this, there's this duality, which is, things that were once taboo taboo to even discuss, not not even do just consider just discuss, just read about just teach about anal poly kink, right. Dad didn't even mention. Those things. Were, you know, were were pretty taboo. They were stigmatized, they were on the margins. And we've seen, you know, a great deal of change in those areas. We have media representation, which still is, I give it a D minor is just so you know, and all those things, thank you. Um, but we have communities, we have people finding each other, we have social networks just for kinky people. I mean, all of that is amazing. Right? And, and the idea that, you know, that, that there's like these limited, unlimited possibilities. Like, recently, I've been coaching couples who are just at the beginning of opening their relationship. And those couples are in their 40s and 50s, and have been together for like, 20 years. And it's so exciting to think, yes, you can change, you can grow, you can evolve, you can change your mind, you can explore a new relationship style, right? It's not, there's no age limit on that. And they're having a kind of each of them kind of Renaissance, a break through a, you know, a major thing in their lives, finding out about themselves finding out about their partners finding out about the new way they could construct this relationship. And so all of that is like super exciting, right? Of course, we just want people to not feel shame about gender, and sexuality and relationships that fall outside the norm. And we've just got way more information, community leadership models. That is, that's the world I want to live in, right? I want to live in the world where we have constantly new pronouns, and people's and there is some I know all the gender identities, and then I go out, and someone says, identify us, and I'm like, I, I haven't heard that. Tell me about that. Right, that that's, that is the world that like we were fighting for. Yeah, right. Um, so in that sense, we've made great strides. But on the other hand, when I speak on college campuses, and people ask anonymous questions, there is still a segment of the questions that are a sis woman saying, why can I have an orgasm from intercourse alone? A person saying, I've never had, I've never had an orgasm. Another person saying, I'm not sure how to communicate with my partner about what feels good, and what is actually really uncomfortable. For me. These are basics. These are these are college students from 1999. And then college students in 2024, asking these basic questions about how their body works, and about how to relate to people, especially sexually and romantically. So in that way, it's like, wow, that hasn't changed. There's still so much silence and dysfunction about sex. In in the United States. There's it and that's depressing. That's and then layered on to this is a war on women, LGBTQ folks, disabled people, trans and gender non conforming people. We our bodies, and our identities and our lives are being legislated against, are being trampled on, are being up for debate. All of a sudden, hello, op eds in the New York Times, like fuck you. There's some things that just aren't up for debate. Go figure. Um, and so, there's this there's like been a boomerang kind of effect, right that we are in. I'm gonna say we're in the scariest time in my lifetime. I would agree. I was born in 1971. Right after I was born, we got the pill. We got abortion codified. So you know, it was like, great. Like, this is okay, I came into the world that's exactly the right time. And I think it is terrifying. I think it's terrifying right now, to be queer to be trans to be a disabled person to be a person with a uterus. Full stop. There are people who want to control criminalize and and again legislate our lives. Our lives and that's, that's just scary. That's just scary. I mean, the political landscape it's not great. Yeah. So also if people of all ages are not wanting to have sex. That makes sense. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's so much going on in the world. And if you are awake to it, it's hard. It's hard to get up every day. I just go on acts or Instagram just for a second. Something like at school shooting, homicide, genocide. I mean, it's like, okay, and now I'm just supposed to like go on with my day. Right? Yeah. Right. It's hard. And so I feel like more than ever, I feel super invested in community, in being with my community, in mutual aid for my community, and mutual support and love for my community. My friends, my loved ones. Holding them real tight, holding the real fight, and then finding these like, moments of joy. Right where we can get them because there's so much despair. Yes. And for me, sex has I had a big dry spell, you'll read about that in a second memoir. And I kind of thought my sex drive was gone. And for me, like sex is now the vehicle for just joy and bliss and being completely present in the moment completely in my body. Connecting with another person on a physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual level. And I you know, I'm thankful for that. Like, I'm thankful that I have a thing that brings me so much joy. Tristan

Karen Yates  1:06:56  
tetromino your memoir, a part of the heart can't be eaten. I highly recommend it. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this very full conversation today. Me too. Well, that's it folks have a very pleasurable week. Wild & Sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, full color life therapy therapy for all of you at full color life. therapy.com Thank you for listening. Know someone who'd liked this episode, sent it to them. You can follow us on Facebook Tiktok and Instagram at Wild & Sublime, and sign up for newsletters at Wild & sublime.com. Got feedback or an inquiry, contact us at info at Wild & sublime.com And we'd love a review or a rating on your podcast player. I'd like to thank our design Guru Jean-François Gervais music by David Ben-Porat This episode was produced and edited at the Lincoln lodge podcast studio as part of the Lincoln lodge Podcast Network.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai