Where Mainstream Media and Queer Culture Collide

As a queer feminist pornographer and artist who considers my craft and career to be much more than a day/night job but an extension of who I am, my politics and the movement that I am a part of, I was hugely offended by HBO's politics that descended upon Madison Young Productions.

In being a sex positive feminist pornographer I strive to create a positive environment for my crew and talent. I feel like much of that environment and communication was compromised between me and my crew by having a mainstream network in our space and commanding and overriding decisions that should have been left up to me and my crew if they were interested in documenting our sex positive productions and practices. But instead we were all stripped of our power, left feeling exploited, and disempowered by a mainstream entity.

As the director, I own this experience. I brought in my sex positive comrades. People that I believe in. People that I want on my team and who I greatly admire their work and wanted to see them gain visibility. People like creative genius and revolutionary Shine Louise Houston and Syd Blakovich and fellow filmmakers, alternative thinkers, and performers Kimberly Kane and Daniel. These people are part of my team, my community, my family. And for any of these sexual revolutionaries to experience exploitation is not something that I want to be a part of.

The scenes with between Daniel and I and Kimberly and I were powerful, connected, communicative, aggressive, genuine and sex positive. I feel like the interview that I did after the scenes was informative and strong. But all of the world that buzzed around us. The mainstream world trying to grasp and capture a inkling of our culture was compromised of something completely different and I think it had the strongest effect on our crew.

This has deeply effected me. I thought about other sex positive heroes and mentors of mine such as Carol Queen and Annie Sprinkle. How has Annie tackled 4 Real Sex episodes? How has she created so much education around art and sex, sex positivity and sex? How has she tackled the mainstream? Over tears and pasta I looked up and I asked Mr Mogul "What would Annie do?" He suggested that I call her. And I did. I love Annie. She is my adopted mother and I don't know what I would do with out her guidance and strength.

Annie said that we need to go through with this, but do it our way. Don't be afraid to say no. To stand up for ourselves. So simple but so intimidating it seems. We need to create dialogue.

We can't hide. And we can't be exploited. So we must stand up for who we are and what we believe in. Tonight we will be filming at Femina Potens at around 6:30pm ,our art reception. We must stand up for ourselves. I want to hear from our community. This gallery is your space. It is our space. It is an honest reflection of who we are uncensored and I won't have it any other way. I encourage you all to make your voices heard. Organize protests outside the gallery, crash the party, show up and be yourself, bring signs, wear buttons, start conversations and dialogue there about queer mainstream visibility and how we can destroy their exploitation. Today will be about our community in all its diversity, in all of its politics, in all of our opinions. We need to respect one another and open communication. Join me. Tonight Femina Potens 6:30, 2199 Market - Femina Potens was created as a soapbox for our culture and community. The world is listening. What do we stand for? What do we have to say?

Please pass this blog entry along to all community members.

Femina Potens will be organizing several dialogues around Queer Visibility in mainstream media and I will be posting those this weekend.

Help Support Queer Sex Positive Artists.

Hello lovely people,

As you may or may not know, I not only perform in some of your favorite adult films and bondage sites but I'm also an artist and activist who runs a progressive art gallery in San Francisco, Femina Potens Art Gallery (www.feminapotens.org)

Femina Potens has provided hundreds or art exhbits, spoken word events, mulit-media programs, film screenings and educational work shops over the past 8 years that reflect the experiences of women,transgendered, kink, and sex worker communities. We need all of your support in order to continue to provide such resources to the community and create visibility for cutting edge artists.

With our new sustainer program you can donate as little as $10 a month, a tax deductible donation, and at the same time become part of a movement of artists pushing boundaries around identity, sex, feminism, public health, and queering how together as a community we engage with art.

Help support visibility and connection of the queer community through the arts. Nurture your community by sustaining the only non-profit art gallery in the Castro and the country's only queer public arts program.

Femina Potens is an all ages community funded gallery and is a reflection of all of us. We encourage you to become a member. Connecting Communities by Queering Concepts of Art and Sex.

Go to http://www.feminapotens.org to become a sustainer today. Sustainers also recieve such benefits as free tickets to Femina Potens events, VIP art events, and discounts on art purchases.

Thank you so much for your support.

xo
Madison Young

If our body is our temple and people are paying to visit..

Last month I had the great pleasure of making my way to Minneapolis. It was a perfect time to be flying back to the mid-west. The leaves were turning beautiful colors the air was crisp and the sex toys were a buzzing at Smitten Kitten where I was flown in to do a reading from my forthcoming book The Tail of a Bondage Model and a workshop on DIY Activism and Queer Porn. Usually trips back to the mid-west mean being unhinged from my queer community and implanted into a conservative town in Ohio where I was born and raised. But not this trip. I was pleasantly surprised and taken in by this city and the Smitten Kitten community.

Smitten Kitten is a small women run sex toy store in Minneapolis that holds educational workshops, carries fabulous sex positive porn, and educates the public on toxic toys.

They have started a non profit organization,coalition against toxic toys and a web site, www.badvibes.org. Coalition Against Toxic Toys or CATT aims to educate the public about the toys that they are using and how to detect safe toys that are not full of unsafe chemicals that shouldn't be in contact with mucous membranes and intimate areas.

Things to watch out for include toys that have a chemical or plastic like scent. Also toys that are made of materials that are not hypo-allergenic such as "jelly" toys. Looking for non-porous sex toys, as porous sex toys can harbor bacteria and fungus that can lead to infections. Non-porous toys that are "good vibes" are made of materials such as silicone,glass,surgical steel,ceramic and medical grade plastics. Avoid toys that are marketed as "novelties".

I remember being in LA for the first time and educating a fellow model about toy safety. I explained to her if the director was going to use a porous dildo that I wanted to use a condom over it because it could easily spread bacteria and lead to infections. I believe what she told me was the director doesn't even shoot real cocks with condoms he is going to laugh in your face if you ask him to put a condom on the dildo.

After that shoot I made sure to come with my own arsenal of dildos and insisted on either using my own or dildos with condoms.

If you've ever had a bacterial infection in your "who ha" you understand my concern. And why shouldn't we be concerned? The biological cocks and cunts that we are exchanging fluid with that are entering into our bodies are tested..so why shouldn't our toys be at least that safe?

I'm currently working with Smitten Kitten to get a psa for CATT on my dvds and to get their dvd psa to AIM medical clinics, to performers, agents, and producers..as well as the toy buyer for production companies.

Since my discussion with the wonderful people at Smitten Kitten, my mind has been on overdrive on how to get women and men in the industry the information they need regarding their health - physical,mental,spiritual well being. Many girls enter into the industry at 18 or 19 and no very little about their sex or sexuality. They are unaware of what stds they are at risk for. They aren't thinking about a career path. I'm interested in building a web site that can act as a resource to models entering the business that assists with everything from FAQs on how to prepare for an anal scene, how to avoid dehydration when shooting in the heat and doing multiple enemas a day,financial planning, sex tips on ways they can tap into their sexual power, ways to communicate on set to assert there sexuality and presence, therapists and doctors that are sex positive and sex worker friendly, bulletin boards in which to post questions, mentorships available by porn performers who have asserted themselves and been in the business for a while. Meditation, tools for mental processing and stress relief. Harm reduction, tools for how to deal with addiction, and a whole section on career counseling and how performers can figure out where they would like to go from here. I'm hoping to collaborate with Sharon Mitchell and the AIM Clinics on this project to bring the greatest awareness and use of the site by performers.

I'm constantly surprised at how as performers we are given so little information on how to care for our mind and body when those are the materials we are working with, sharing intimately with our collaborators and making our livelihood from. I hope to change that.

PS... If you visit Smitten Kitten you should grab some amazing vegan chow at Bryant Lake Bowl across the street after you get some hot porn and fabulous sex toys.

Infiltrating the Mainstream with underground subversive feminist art

A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from the Independent Film Channel. They were interested in filming performance art performances around blood play at Femina Potens for Dave Navarro's upcoming tv show "Deeper". "Deeper" involves Dave diving into different edgy subcultures acting as both a voyeur and participant in some way. I feel like gaining larger wide spread exposure for queer and feminist art work is essential to destroying stigmas around different subcultures that lack visibility in the mainstream media such as queer culture and the sex worker community. IFC had come across Twincest's performances online and were interested in focusing on their work with some additional performances that also referenced the use of blood in performance and art. Enter performance artist Sadie Lune, who did some wonderfully creative blood portraits of the evening's performers. Dave also requested a portrait of himself which was painted using a combination of both Sadie's blood and Dave's blood.

I also contributed to the evening along with my dear friend and rope artist/collaborator, Lochai. Together we orchestrated a bloody rope suspension performance involving a ritual of dirt, cleansing in water and my body bound to the central post of the gallery and becoming drunken on rope in a beautiful suspension.

Twincest started off the evening by performing a very intimate piece involving the two artists drawing one another's blood filling up shot glasses with their fluid and swallowing in one big gulp. The air was thick with tension,fear, anxiety,eroticism and at the same time a sense of playfulness as Jez (who is actually afraid of both needles and blood) was instructed by her partner on how to find Shawn's veins and how to draw the blood and stick the needle. And then we watched as Shawn stuck the woozy Jez and filled the viles full of her blood.

The audience was all personally invited by the gallery and included local artists and friends such as Susan Forbes and performance artist and activist, Keith Hennessy as well as the fabulous writer and blogger, Violet Blue. All in all the evening could have been mistaken for any other performance evening at Femina Potens with the exception of the camera's and lights and producers running around making sure that we were all ready for Dave and that we continue to act natural when Dave entered the gallery. It was rather funny. They were a joy to work with but it's just the nature of inviting a little bit of Hollywood into our Queerdom of San Francisco.

Regardless of my feelings toward evil that is Hollywood, when it comes down to it we are choosing to create visibility for women and trans artists. If Hollywood is interested in helping us to further that visibility and getting queer performance art out not only to the mainstream but also to all of the emerging queers who are stuck in the suburbs of the midwest with only the tv as a window to civilization that exists outside of their small town, then maybe I'll believe in Hollywood this once. When queer youth are having a hard time finding communities to relate to, are failing to find resources in their small town, at least they can turn on the television to IFC and find a little bit of queer San Francisco in their living room, and that might just get them through the high school years.

Anal Health education at Folsom St Fair

Every September in San Francisco in a public celebration of community,leather culture, and every thing Kinky people gather from all over the world for the Folsom Street Fair. Kinks that are normally kept behind closed doors are invited in to the gated off streets. I feel like I have come home surrounded by fellow puppies, ponies, rope sluts, masochists, queers, slaves and owners. It is a family reunion of sorts. I split my time between a booth that Center for Sex and Culture shared with my gallery,Femina Potens and doing a suspension performance for Kink.com. I peddled my porn in exchange for getting fliers out regarding my feminist art space and a couple of bucks to put toward the gallery rent. Sitting at the gallery booth I was able to chat with passersby, fans, and community members. I met a beautiful Dominant woman and her very well behaved submissive who acknowledged me but was obviously in protocol. It made me tingle all over to see her behaving, to see her being the good girl that I so love to be. One gentleman came by to get his photograph taken with me and an autographed dvd. He later came back with a question. He was hesitant to ask. But he said he didn't know who else to talk to.

"So do you enjoy anal sex?"

Yes. I love it. I can orgasm more easily from anal sex than vaginal. Often in vaginal sex I feel like my cervix is being pounded but in anal sex I receive immense pleasure and can even receive g spot stimulation from my anus.

He had been wanting to engage in anal sex with his girlfriend but was worried about hurting her or causing an infection. He was too embarrassed to talk to anyone about it and didn't know who else to talk to. I feel like as sex workers we have an obligation to be educators. To educate ourselves, our clients, our customers, our web site members, our fans, our friends, our public.

We talked about cleanliness, the use of lube, ways to warm up a woman or man for anal play, different toys that can be incorporated. And that anal sex can be a very pleasurable experience for women and men.

It felt incredibly rewarding directly educating the public around anal pleasure. Below are a couple great web sites and tips on having pleasurable and safe anal play.

xo
madison

- Anal Tips from Madison Young

If you are having anal sex later in the evening have a light dinner and skip the alcohol,caffeine,burritos or anything that goes through your system quickly. Protein and carbs is a good bet.

Before sex prepare with an anal douche of luke warm water to rinse away any trace amounts of feces that might be in your rectum.

Get hot and bothered. Before any penetration it is nice to have some warm up. Do what ever you like to do that gets you hot. Make out. Oral Sex. Spanking. Flogging. Use a vibrator.

Lube is your friend. Use lube on your butt hole and on your fingers. Warm up with a finger then two, then three. I like to use my whole fist to warm up and I also have found a very nice lucite toy that works well for me. Experiment with what toys are your best warm up. Sometimes the toys are all I need. Sometimes there is a cock involved. Make sure to continue to use lube through out your anal adventures. Just because you had plenty of lube when you started fucking doesn't mean that you have plenty once you have been penetrated. My philosophy is that you can never have two much lube. I prefer silicone. Eros is an excellent brand.

Always make sure that fingers,toys,fists,cocks do not enter the vagina after entering your anus as you will be spreading bacteria. And bacterial infections aren't very fun. Condoms are a great way to keep things clean. Also latex gloves can be helpful for keeping hands clean so if you want to go back to the pussy after warming up with fingers you can just remove your glove.

• Tristan Taormino the Official Anal Advisor -
  

http://www.puckerup.com

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.