Dec 222015
 

ComeSeeMe
Come see Tristan at SHE Sexual Health Expo in Los Angeles  January 16-17, 2016. Featuring today’s leaders in sex, intimacy and romance, SHE will deliver a crash course in understanding modern sexual relationships with must-attend workshops and captivating intimacy product showcases — all with the chic backdrop of its stylish venues. Sex experts include Amy Jo Goddard, Elle Chase, Charlie Glickman, Mollena Williams, Allison Moon, Reid Mihalko, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Chris Donaghue, and many more.

Tristan’s appearances will all be on Saturday, January 16. Her schedule is:

4:30-5:20 pm Designing Your Open Relationship Workshop
Are you considering an open relationship? Does your current open relationship need some tweaking? There are few established scripts or visible role models for open relationships, so people in them can struggle without support and guidance. In this interactive workshop, relationship expert and author of Opening Up, Tristan Taormino gives practical advice on how to craft responsible, fulfilling nonmonogamous relationships. Tristan will explore common myths, real-life benefits and challenges, and how to decide if an open relationship is right for you. She will share some of the most common styles of open relationships-from partnered nonmonogamy to solo polyamory-and discuss how to customize them to meet your individual needs and wants. Through creative exercises, you’ll learn to articulate what you want, identify and negotiate limits and boundaries, communicate with your partner(s) in productive ways, and create relationships that work for you.

5:30-6:00 pm Booksigning
Tristan will be signing her books The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, Opening Up, The Ultimate Guide to Kink, 50 Shades of Kink, Anal Sex Position Guide, and Secrets of Great G-Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation. The books will be for sale from The Pleasure Chest booth.

6:00 pm Mix & Meet
Tristan will be on hand to meet with attendees, plus she’ll have her books and other products for sale.

Hilton Universal City Hotel, Los Angeles, CA
Admission: Tickets are $25 each, buy them at Eventbrite. Get 2-for-1 tickets when you use promotional code TRISTANT.

Oct 202015
 

Children holding hands

The LA Academy of Sex Education presents Opening Up: An Open Relationship Intensive Workshop with Tristan Taormino on Sunday, November 15 from 1:00-4:00 pm at The Stockroom in Los Angeles. How do people create nontraditional partnerships that are loving and fulfilling? There are few established scripts or visible role models for open relationships, so people in them can often struggle without support and guidance. In this four hour intensive program, sex and relationship educator Tristan Taormino shares some of the key principles that can help your open relationships succeed. She will review some of the most common styles of open relationships, from partnered nonmonogamy to solo polyamory, and discuss how to customize them to meet your individual needs and wants. She will share wisdom from the over 100 people she interviewed and profiled in her bestselling book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships. The workshop will address common issues and problems including: new relationship energy, time management, sexual and emotional safety, boundary setting, agreement violations, and coping with change. Through creative exercises, you’ll discover how to unpack all the different elements of jealousy and identify what triggers your jealousy and how it manifests for you; learn to develop coping strategies and find access points to the practice of compersion. Learn how to tackle challenges including: communicating about highly-charged topics, conflict resolution skills, the art of re-negotiation, roadblocks to fulfillment, and confronting fear. Whether you’re a newcomer or veteran to the world beyond monogamy, come discover strategies to help you nurture and grow your open relationships. Open to people in all kinds of relationship configurations as well as solos and singles of all genders and sexual orientations. Seating is limited and pre-registration is strongly encouraged.

Location: The Stockroom, 2809 1/2 Sunset Boulevard 
Los Angeles, CA 90026.
Admission:
Register at Eventbrite. Open to people in all kinds of relationship configurations as well as solos and singles of all genders and sexual orientations. Seating is limited and pre-registration is strongly encouraged.

We have several different ticket types available:

Regular $100
VIP $125: priority seating, personalized signed copy of Opening Up, gift bag
VIP + Dinner $200: priority seating, personalized signed copy of Opening Up, autographed DVD, luxury gift bag, dinner with Tristan after the workshop

 

Oct 042015
 

SDS
Tristan is headed to the Southeast in October, so catch her at one of these places:

October 13  
Florida Atlantic University
, Boca Raton, FL

October 15-17
Sex Down South, Atlanta, GA

October 18
Sex Educator Boot Camp 1.5, Washington DC

October 19  
Anal Sex for Everyone at Sugar, Baltimore, MD

May 252012
 


June 5, doors 7:00 pm, pre-show 7:30 pm, show 8:00 pm
She Bop Presents The Feminist Porn Show with Tristan Taormino
“The Feminist Porn Show” is a special evening curated and hosted by Tristan Taormino to showcase feminist porn, a genre of adult film and a growing movement. Tristan will introduce the audience to the concept of feminist porn and discuss its history, then she’ll screen a curated selection of short clips from filmmakers around the world. The clip show features the work of both pioneers and newcomers, including Fatale Video, Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Nina Hartley, Jackie Strano and Shar Rednour, Petra Joy, Erika Lust, Shine Louise Houston, Anna Brownfield, Carlos Batts, N. Maxwell Lander, Emilie Jouvet, Louise Lush, Jaiya, Maria Beatty, Buck Angel, Madison Young, Nenna, Courtney Trouble, Morty Diamond, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Kelly Shibari, Loree Erickson and more. The screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion, where we’ll explore some of the current issues surrounding feminist porn. The pre-show will include a sexy performance from Felice Shays. Afterward, She Bop will be selling DVDs from the featured filmmakers, including Tristan’s films, and she will stick around to sign books and videos. And the party can continue at the adjoining Bar Bar! This event is general admission, so get there early for a good seat. Tickets are available in person at She Bop and Mississippi Studios, where there will be a $1 box office fee. If you buy tickets online, there is a $4.40 service charge.
Location: This special event is presented by She Bop, but will not be held at the store, it will be held at Mississippi Studios, 3939 N. Mississippi, Portland OR 97227
Admission: $25, buy tickets at She Bop (909 N. Beech Street, Portland, OR 97227), at Mississippi Studios (3939 N. Mississippi, Portland OR 97227, $1 box office fee), or online via Ticket Biscuit ($4.40 service charge)
Info: info at sheboptheshop.com and 503-473-8018, Twitter: @SheBopTheShop

ALSO: TICKETS STILL AVAILABLE FOR TRISTAN’S OPEN RELATIONSHIP WORKSHOP ON JUNE 3:

June 3, 7:30 pm
She Bop Presents: Making Open Relationships Work
Do open relationships really work? How do people create nontraditional partnerships that are loving and lasting? Tristan Taormino, relationship expert and author of Opening Up, shares some of the key principles that can help your open relationship(s) succeed. She’ll discuss common issues and problems-from “new relationship energy” and time management to jealousy and agreement violations -and ways to address and resolve them. Tristan will offer tips on communication, negotiation, and boundary setting, as well as how to cope with change. Learn how to get to the root of jealous feelings and transform them by embracing the concept of compersion. Whether you’re a newcomer or veteran to the world beyond monogamy, come discover strategies to help you nurture and grow your open relationship(s).
Location: This workshop is presented by She Bop, but will not be held at the store, it will be held at the Q Center, which is 3 blocks up the street from She Bop at the corner of Mississippi and Mason (4115 N. Mississippi).
Admission: $25, buy tickets at the store (909 N. Beech Street, Portland, OR 97227), by phone 503-473-8018 or online
Info: info at sheboptheshop.com and 503-473-8018, Twitter: @SheBopTheShop

Apr 262012
 

Sunrise out our back window, Maianbar, New South Wales

I recently traveled to Australia for the first time in April and will be blogging about my experiences there over the next few weeks. First up is Sydney. Our hosts were C & C, a lovely couple active in the poly communities in Sydney. They picked us up at the airport and drove us to their place; they live in Maianbar, a small town in the Royal National Park (the world’s second oldest national park) about 75 minutes outside the city. It’s a little piece of paradise. The house sits right on Fisherman’s Bay/ Port Hacking which leads to the Tasman Sea, and the first thing we did when we arrived was jump in the water and wade/swim to a small island. Amazing! There were a ton of birds, especially magpies and kookaburras who we could feed from the back patio. Our hosts were warm, generous, and lots of fun to hang out with; in fact, we became fast friends and cannot wait to visit them again! Pretty soon, it was clear that the time change was hitting me like a ton of bricks. I resisted taking an afternoon nap, but to no avail. We went to Symbio Wildlife Gardens, a zoo where we saw koala bears, dingos, monkeys, a red panda, a Tasmanian devil, and we got to hand feed kangaroos! That was pretty cool. That night, I did a phone interview with Dean Beck on his show “Hide and Seek” on JOY 94.9 to promote my Melbourne events the next week. Dean is sharp, witty, and smart!

Koala bear at the zoo

We woke up the next morning and headed to the first of many events. This one holds a special place in my heart: it’s a kink/sex/Tantra festival called Xplore Sydney. It based on Xplore Berlin, where I taught in 2004. I finally got to meet its co-creator Peter Banki, who I’d been corresponding with for months. My first impression was that there was a diverse group of attendees and really cool offerings like Tantric Dominance and Submission and Full Body Orgasm. I sat in on The Kissing Whip with delta®, then taught my class on Female Ejaculation. The crowd for my class was very big and really engaged with lots of questions and comments. Jacqueline Hellyer, a local well-known sex therapist and also a presenter, told an especially entertaining story about her pussy! Then came the hands-on portion of the workshop and people got right down to it. One participant told me later that she ejaculated at the hands of someone she met in the class, and it was only her second time squirting! That stuff makes me smile. I was insanely exhausted, so we left as the Bondage Competition was well under way.

The next morning, I went to Marina Kronkvist’s class “A Journey Into Breath.” Marina is a really good teacher with an interesting approach to breath work. We all laid on the floor of the dance studio where the festival was being held, and pretty quickly I got very cold (it was a cement floor with a thin covering). I started to do the breathing exercise with the group and I heard people around me begin to vocalize and really get into it. I was freezing, but tried hard to stay present and go with it, then all of a sudden, I got the hiccups. Classic. So I am lying there, shivering and hiccuping, and decided I should probably bow out of this one since I seemed to be fighting the tide. I went out to the social area and met some cool people chilling out on the couches. Lots of nice queer eye candy to admire there. It turns out that most of them weren’t actually from Sydney (!), but had traveled there for Xplore. I met a fantastic woman named Zahra Stardust; she’s a queer, feminist sex worker, a former NSW Senate candidate for the Australian Sex Party (yes, an actual political party), and a pole dance champion! Very smart. I also spoke briefly with Gala Vanting who has appeared on I Shot Myself and Beautiful Agony, among other places, and was featured in the article about feminist porn in The Age. We also met J, E, XI, Sam, and Ana. Next, C and I attended Feasting the Body with Annetta Luce. The thing that struck me about Xplore is that many of the classes are participatory, and most people are willing to jump right in and do it. I don’t know that I can say the same about Americans. The Xplore folks are ready to stand up, move their bodies, look silly, and just go with it. After a quick lunch at a pub down the street (it was Easter so many places were closed), I taught my Anal Play class. Again I had an awesome crowd, and some butt play—with givers and receivers of different genders and sexual orientations—was the climax of the class. I needed to wind down afterwards, so we swung by the famed Sydney Opera House, got a bite to eat at a cool restaurant, then made the long drive home to paradise.

The Sydney Opera House

On Sunday, we headed back to Xplore. My class was at the same time as one that I really wanted to go to on blood play with AnA Wojak. That always happens to presenters! Next time, I hope. I premiered a brand new presentation: The Feminist Porn Clip Show, where I screened about 70 minutes of clips of porn by Candida Royalle, Erika Lust, Petra Joy, Louise Lush, Buck Angel, Courtney Trouble, Jaiya, Nina Hartley, Joanna Angel, Maria Beatty, Madison Young, Shine Louise Houston, and me, while I narrated it live. There was a great discussion afterwards and people really responded to the different clips. (I am expanding this presentation and will do an even better version, The Feminist Porn Show, presented by She Bop in Portland, OR in June; details will be on my Tour page soon). After my presentation, I sat in on Hajime Kinoko’s class Using Shibari for Therapeutic Purposes. It was fascinating. He is from Japan and brought a translator with him, a young woman who also happened to be his demo bottom. They had a wonderful chemistry, with him tying her up while explaining his techniques and thoughts in Japanese and her translating into English as she got further into bondage. Talk about a power dynamic! In the last class slot, I taught Making Open Relationships Work. About ten minutes into the class, a dramatic rainstorm began. The roof of the building was tin, and the rain was pounding so hard that no one could hear what I was saying. In the next room, presenter Mistress Tokyo was having the same experience. I ended up moving to the other room, where it was much less noisy. Again, a great, engaged crowd with lots to share.

Our hosts, who had generously been driving our American asses all around town, were headed to a concert that night. C and I wanted to go to Xplore’s play party. So a few of the local dykes we met, E, XI, and A, said they’d drive us to their place, where we could eat dinner and change for the party. We picked up take out on the way. When we got to where they were staying (they, too, were just in town for the festival), my body just shut down. I went to lay down in the bedroom, and I nearly passed out. All the jet lag, a full teaching schedule, and long days caught up with me. Periodically, one or more of them would come into the bedroom to get something as they dressed in their finest uniform/genderfuck/high femme fetishwear. It was taking quite a long time, and the booze was flowing. I thought we’d never make it to the party (we were supposed to arrive before 11 when doors close). I was dead tired, not sure I could even wake up, but they carefully eased me into a vintage polka dotted dress with a crinoline underneath and pronounced me ready. When they finally called a cab and specifically asked for a van because there were five of us, a regular-sized cab showed up and refused to take all of us. So, we had to call another cab, and, well, you see how this is going to be one of those nights. The whole scene felt like I was back in college, trying to get friends to focus and leave the house with everything working against that happening. But it was also wonderful: we were in Australia, hanging with hot Australian queers, getting ready to go to a play party at some illegal Australian playspace. Alas, my brain could go there, but my body could not. It was after midnight, and I needed to go home. I was very bummed that we missed the party. I want to thank Peter Banki, delta®, and all the teachers, participants, and volunteers who made Xplore Sydney possible—it’s a really unique, important event. The people it attracts are bold, courageous, inquisitive, and charming. We need more spaces like the one Peter created in Sydney.

The mangroves in Fisherman’s Bay

Monday morning, we planned to go hang gliding in Stanwell Park, which neither C nor I has ever done. Unfortunately, there was terrible wind and it got called off, which made us sad. Instead, we decided to go kayaking around Fisherman’s Bay. The water was beautiful and we glided around the mangroves. Then we did laundry and packed for Melbourne. That night, we went to Sydney for my female orgasms workshop at a store called Maxxx Black. Maxxx Black is beautiful and high-end, like the Good Vibrations of Sydney, with a glamorous aesthetic and an entire area dedicated to latex clothing. They sell top-quality, phthalate-free sex toys and accessories, including Australian-made floggers and canes that were gorgeous. When we arrived, they seriously rolled out the red carpet for me. There was champagne, sparkling cider, and cupcakes. A huge display of my books. Great promotion leading to fifty pre-sold tickets. A welcoming atmosphere with a smart, knowledgeable staff. In other words, the dream place to present! I know it all sounds so reasonable, but sometimes I arrive at a store and find the staff is blasé, they haven’t ordered any of my books (including the book on the topic I’m teaching), the room isn’t set up, etc., which makes me appreciate those shops that do it right even more! Heidi and her staff really know how to show a sex educator a good time and they have an absolutely beautiful store—a must-see for anyone traveling to Sydney!!

Next Up: Melbourne, which was so much fun it has to be split into multiple posts!

Dec 072011
 

Dossie Easton and Deobrah Taj Anapol will be giving a one-day workshop, Reclaiming Desire, on January 14, 2012 in San Rafael, CA. This is a great opportunity to engage with two amazing professionals and learn how to explore the power of your desires.  Details on the workshop and information on how to register below.

RECLAIMING DESIRE with Dossie Easton & Deborah Taj Anapol
January 14th, 2012, 11 am to 6 pm in San Rafael, CA

Dossie and Deborah have each been instrumental in creating today’s global shift toward embracing diversity in sexual relating. They now work to support people to create and maintain many varieties of healthy relationships. In this one-day workshop they will join forces to offer an extraordinary exploration of the power of sexual desire. Don’t miss this one-time collaboration of two powerful icons! While we need not act on every desire, when we deny what we feel we cast our disowned selves into the shadow along with our passion and our excitement. In this powerful experiential workshop we’ll journey through the obstacles and fears which can block our natural energy, and clear the path for amazing loving connections.

You can learn how to gracefully manage jealousy without stifling your feelings;
Be clear about who you are without getting stuck in a limiting identity; and
Know what you want and ask for it while honoring everyone’s relationships.

Cost: $108 per person. Register online here.

Deborah Taj Anapol, Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology is the author of Polyamory in the 21st Century, The Seven Natural Laws of Love and Love Without Limits. She now offers seminars, training, and sexual healing, tantra, and relationship coaching for partners & singles worldwide in person, via phone, & Skype. Visit her at www.lovewithoutlimits.com for complete schedule of upcoming workshops, books, free articles, and coaching formats.

Dossie Easton is a licensed psychotherapist working with individuals, couples and moresomes in her private practice in San Francisco. She is co-author with Janet Hardy of The Ethical Slut, Radical Ecstasy, and others, and she lectures and leads workshops on polyamory and ecstatic spiritual practices internationally. Dossie has been an active sex radical since 1961. Website: www.dossieeaston.com.

Dec 162001
 


Do you do actual demonstrations at your anal sex workshops? Do you take volunteers from the audience? How does it work?

—Willing Anal Volunteer

Most of my workshops are lecture-style only, and do not include live sex acts. However, sometimes I have the opportunity to do a demo, especially when I am presenting to a private members-only group. I don’t travel with a demoee, so I usually ask my hosts to find a suitable bottom for me to play with during my workshop. Lots of people volunteer, and most proclaim that they are wild exhibitionists and experienced anal sex lovers. But, a lot of people don’t take into account what it’s like to be demonstrated on. You have your ass in the air in front of a room full of people which can inhibit even the best exhibitionist. Plus, a demo is not like sex. I am talking, answering questions, and cannot focus 100% of my attention on the bottom, as I would if we were having a one-on-one encounter. So, while I am warming them up, it’s really up to the person to get themselves turned on. I have gotten inside some people’s asses, and realized quickly that nerves and excitement were working against getting something of size in their ass.

Recently at a workshop, the demoee was a cute, curly haired girl who I connected with right off the bat. I ended up fitting most of my hand in her ass, and it was a truly amazing experience. That was the best demo I have ever done, but, more often, I just try to make the best of the situation, and let the bottom take the lead in taking whatever he or she wants in their ass.