Tristan and Kirk sexual revolutionaries.

About a month ago I saw Kirk Read's "So this is the thing" performance in San Francisco. The day after coming back from shooting for sex educator and activist Tristan Taormino.

I had an amazing time at Tristan's shoot. She is directing videos for Vivid's educational line and I was featured in her Guide to Sensual Bondage. Sensual is the key word, it was challenging and fun at the same time to hold back from playing as rough as I would have liked. But there was something naughty in all it's innocence. Revisiting a time when I first started bdsm and would put on furry leather cuffs and a hand on the ass was all I needed, not the touch of a 2x4 :)

It was so amazing being in LA but still being surrounded by intelligent queer sex positive community that was nuturing and educating the public's sexual interest with hot sexual performances and under the guidance of excellent bondage rigger Midori.

We were guiding couples through taking those first steps in to the sometimes intimidating world of bdsm. And at the same time Tristan was countering the LA porn normative by portraying honest sexual connection, talking with the talent about who they would like to work with, making sure everyone was comfortable, hydrated, and that dietary needs were taken care of. These may seem like simple things but to have an environment created where the performers basic needs are taken care of and that their desires are heard, well this is empowering. And this is an act of revolutionary porn.

The next evening my partner and I joined fellow writer and bondage model Lorelei Lee and her partner for dinner and theater where we enjoyed Kirk Read's "This is the Thing". This is the Thing is Kirk Read's multi media performance which explores his apocalyptic fantasies and sex work. Kirk's performances are always innovative, compelling and keep me captivated from the moment he walks onto stage to the moment he exits. His gentleness and honesty and ability to love and open his self up to the audience with in his stories is truly beautiful. He delves into his history as an evangelist and goes into a story regarding a protest outside of the Sex Workers Art Show. Crowds of press and mobs surrounding the venue in which they were about to perform. Evangelists were singing and lighting candles and Kirk decides to join them in song. It was really touching and beautiful. I recall at a previous SWAS hearing a piece Kirk performed about the last night that a historical gay sex club in SF was open. The end of something beautiful. He is able to capture the magic of the evening along with the depth,history and lineage behind sex culture. He captures this sense of compassion with his work with in the sex world that reminds me of Annie Sprinkle. He can be talking about something so dirty and raunchy and hot but at the same time there is something magical, historical, groundbreaking and compassionate in his words. Something wholesome and gentle and disturbed and innocent and brilliant. Yes. I am a fan and Kirk Read is most certainly one of today's great sexual revolutionaries which is evident in the name of his non-profit organization Army of Lovers.

Viva la Porn Revolution

I'm sick and bed ridden, sore throat and dizzy with fever but I can't escape the thoughts floating around my head. Thoughts of the porn revolution. Thoughts of our growing forces and increasing visibility.

I've directed scenes for 3 different queer porns this month. And time and time again I'm wowed by the amazing dedication of my fellow performers and crew. Hiking up hills in San Francisco weather to get naked and have hot sex under a tree in a park. Spending long days on set studying lines, researching characters,connecting with performers and crew not only on set but in queer activism, in artistic collaborations, in fundraising, in building a community around sex positive activists,artists,queers who are coming together in porn. This world, this community is so completly different from that which I have come to know in LA where it truly feels like everyone is only there for a pay check and where I feel isolated from any kind of real community. The performances generated from community members incorporates depth and genuine connection and orgasms rather than just a hollow image of sex.

In my latest film "Art House" sexual revolutionaries such as Sadie Lune, Trouble Royale of NoFauxxx.com and Twincest (www.twincest.net) all were in attendance and collaborating on a major level. Twincest offered up a hot sex scene that referenced 70s feminist performance artists Yoko Ono's "cut" piece and Carolee Schneemann's "Meat Joy". The performance art couple had sex over a bed of lunch meats while wearing long blonde wigs which they piece by piece cut locks of hair from as they jointly suckled on hot dogs and came in each other's mouths while being sploshed with tomato soup, a sexual act we have now coined as being the "warhol".

In another scene Shawn of Twincest distracts me by performing sexual acts as I'm being asked personal and prying questions by a Warhol like character who appears off camera played by the remarkable Sadie Lune. This scene references the Warhol film "Beauty #2" which you can check out on You Tube if you are unfamiliar. Photos from the scene are now available at www.NoFauxxx.com. And Art House will be available in early September.

Daily Acts of Sexual Activism

Peeing in Public and/or semi - public places

On Friday night after the San Francisco Trans March I marched my way into San Francisco's premier dyke bar, The Lexington, with my friends Donna and Lorelei. We proceeded to lend our selves to debauchery and a cocktail which we slurped in the corner of the bar. But what does a girl do when it is time to visit the little ladies room and there are 25 ladies standing in line all trying to do the same? My solution - grab two plastic cup which have been discarded after the consumption of alcohol, walk into the ladies room, stand in the corner, unzip your pants, squat as needed, and release urine. I was amazed at how many girls in line were amazed by my action. It seemed quite practical to me. Why is it that we think we must pee behind closed doors? That we must pee in a porcelain receptacle and not a portable plastic one? Men feel confident in their bodies and genitals and pee in front of one another on a daily basis. Their sex hangs outside of them on display to be viewed by all while women's sex is hidden under jeans or dresses and we squat over toilets barely making contact with our genitals - if at all - in this ritual which we perform every time our bladders fill. The women's jaws dropped, some of them smiled, a couple girls said I was their hero, and one woman said "I thought I had seen everything in San Francisco." All this over exposing myself in a ladies room to urinate.

At the Trans march Donna pulled down her panties as she squatted in the grass like a perfectly manicured spaniel and her friends circled around her to shade her from the public gaze. It was a friendship circle. A circle of protection and love that supported her in her decision to make her private act public.

At the AVN Porn Awards Annette Schwartz sits next to me talking to our agent while she casually hikes up her evening gown and pees into a plastic cup. Her confidence in her body and sexuality fills a room. She is powerful and in control of her body and in know way afraid of her fluids.

Perhaps as porn stars dealing with fluids,fluid exchange, bodies and sexuality on a daily basis have made us immune to the social commentary on where our fluids belong and just how we should dispose of them. So much of the private has become public and we have come to embrace our bodies and fluids and not fear them. Instead we roll around in them in celebration or in the very least we capture in a cup.

Being the other half

It takes a strong being to hold our hands, to hold our hearts and hold our bodies close after we come home from our day at the office. As porn stars we open ourselves up to those around us, giving part of ourselves to the scene, connecting with new individuals on a physical and sexual level. Yes we all know it is work when the camera is rolling and for the most part everyone is very professional, but that doesn't mean that we remain mechanical creatures and that we aren't emotionally exposed as we are connecting with these individuals on a very personal level for your enjoyment. So how do we create that boundary? That boundary that lies between our personal and business relationships. This is the constant struggle that exists internally for adult performers.

Sex work is part of my sexual identity. It is a part of who I am. I had no idea how my professional life would impact who my personal partners would be. Some partners find it novel at first that there girlfriend is desired by millions of fans. But that can quickly wear off and be replaced with overwhelming jealousy. I had just begun my career as a porn star when I fell in love with my last girlfriend, Gauge. And although Gauge seemed supportive at first, when the constant travel kicked in and letters from fans, interviews, media and photos all over the internet of other people giving me orgasms, it was no longer something that she could handle. She felt that she was losing me to them. And although my love for her never faltered she was unable to handle being the partner of a sex worker. At the time we would scoure the internet looking for partners of sex workers support groups. And we found nothing. We were never able to find her the support she needed in order to deal with the emotions that she was having as a result of my career. One of my first porns that I produced is entitled The Tail of a Bondage Model and it is the story of the internal struggles of a sex worker and maintaining a lover in your life while you are working.

I now find myself on both sides of the fence. I'm still an adult performer and so is my partner. We have learned to communicate honestly about what are boundaries are, what we know that we can handle and what we know that we can't. We have learned to create sacred sexual activities that are only meant to be between the two of us and that are not for sale for entertainment. And we have learned to negotiate and that nothing is ever in stone, that people change, boundaries change and that we must allow for that. And although this may sound all well and good and perfectly healthy it has taken plenty of therapy and fights to get us to this point. And it would have been so nice to have tapped into a community of dialouge around this subject while in my relationships me and my partners are grappling to create some sort of language that works for communicating around a relationship in which sex work is added to the equation. And now there is.

Sexual revolutionary and artist Sadie Lune has been creating dialouge,art and activism around just this subject. Her new blog Working Hearts
is addressing issues such as how does your personal life effect your work and if my partner fucks or uses sexual energy at work will they have enough left for me at home? These are questions that run through our minds as partners of sex workers. She discusses the creation of emotional and physical boundaries around sex work. And gives a voice to both partners of sex workers that she holds dialouge with and gives voice to a myriad of different sex workers. Having these voices illustrated for us on her blog gives birth to a community of sex workers and their partners and lets us know that we are not alone. Sadie Lune is building connection amongst partners that can often feel isolated and ashamed of their insecurity, jealousy, and frustration.

Not only is Sadie writing about the boundaries between personal and work but she will also be exhibiting a site specific installation examining tokens of affection from lovers and clients, during the month of September in the windows of Madison Young's Femina Potens.

I Touch Myself - To Know Myself

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Love is Revolutionary

In a world where we are handed toy guns and sent off to war to create "peace" we have forgotten one of the most revolutionary tools that exists, Love. Galleries have become overcrowded with artists who create art from a place of pain,agony,fear, or anger. So when I attended Annie Sprinkle's and Elizabeth Stephen's 4th wedding ceremony/performance art celebration this weekend it really hit me how transformative and radical their art really is. Annie and Beth have taken on a 7 year art piece - based on Linda Montano's living life as art. For seven years Annie and Beth have vowed to live life in art and love through a vehicle they have created called The Love Art Laboratory. Every year the two artists' love and art coincides with a different color and a different chakra. And every year to celebrate their coming into a new color and chakra they engage in a wedding in which they invite their friends,performers, artists, and activists to offer something to the performance, to open themselves up to love and art and share that with the couple and the rest of the world. This years green wedding found the two nestled in a glen of redwood trees at UC Santa Cruz where a couple hundred of their closest friends came to wittness their radical openess and dedication to their art, love, and enviroment. This year Annie and Beth not only made their vows to one another but to the earth who they are no longer taking on as a mother but as a lover. The ceremony was set in a beautiful plot of land surrounded by towering red wood trees. The ceremony and procession was full of beautiful green nymph like creatures. There were around 20 performances including that which I offered up to the couple and amazing performances from Linda Montano, Sadie Lune, which were mc'd by Veronica Heart. Sexual revolutionaries Carol Queen , Robert Lawrence, and Sharon Mitchell were all in attendance and wearing their finest green. Performances included an erotic striptease while an enchanting girl sang opera(quite beautifully I might add), an experimental painting performance, a comedy routine that left the woman covered in borsche, and I performed a piece entitled SOIL in which I stripped down and handed Annie and Beth two green bowls of soil in which to cover my body, my vessel. Open hearted they both gave of their erotic energy as I gave them of mine. Coating my flesh in wet earth,over my head, my face, my breasts, my thighs, my feet. And then I reached inside of my cunt and pulled out a scroll in which I'd written my blessings for Annie and Beth's wedding. I don't think I've ever come across two people who exude more love and sexual energy and openess than Annie and Beth and I believe that their presence and art work is creating change, that artists that feed positve energy into the world can leave an everlasting imprint in the Soil that they have touched.

Notes from a kinky pornstar

Hi I'm Madison Young and this is my blog. I wanted to create a space for my daily activism as a sexual revolutionary and highlighting the sexual and artistic activism of other amazing artists and activists that are making a difference in the way that we approach sex and the way that we express pleasure. Sex is an exploration of ourselves and others, of erotic tissue,power play, energy and connection. So join me in this journey of daily pleasure activism.
xo
Madison Young
Making Waves in Feminism One Anal Scene at a Time