YNOT – As a quick scan across the Internet will tell you, porn is changing. Alt.porn is just the beginning. The Playboy world of busty blonde babes belongs to yesterday – unless you’re into vintage porn.To look at how porn is changing, the Sexual Diversity Studies’ Student Union (SDSSU) at the University of Toronto is hosting the “Porn Reborn” conference. Scheduled for Friday March 12, 7-10 pm, at U of T’s Medical Sciences Building, Porn Reborn will feature top-quality panelists discussing new movements and markets in the vast and expanding industry of pornography.

And of course Porn Reborn has a website: www.sdssu.com.

Sherrie Quinn is SDSSU chair and a speaker at Porn Reborn. YNOT.com asked her why the conference is being held:

Quinn: We want to investigate new forms of pornography that have emerged in mainstream culture and consciousness in the past 10 years, and its relationship to contemporary society. I wish to focus on non-heteronormative, non-mainstream pornography to illustrate the breadth, evolution and growth of this industry. Topics that will be explored will be based on what the presenters discuss, as well as what questions the audience raises.

YNOT.com: Why focus on the idea of ‘the rebirth of porn’?

Quinn: I proposed this topic because of the extensive changes and evolutions I’ve seen in the pornography industry lately, and my own interest in how that is interrelated with changes occurring in our culture and society. I’ve been involved in every single conference the Sexual Diversity Studies’ Student Union has put on, and now, in my last year, I felt like there would be a lot with this topic that we could work with. There is so much potential with a topic like pornography; the interest, education, and discussion that could come from this is limitless.

YNOT.com: So what’s on the agenda?

Quinn: Some of the topics that come to mind are: Non-heteronormative/androcentric Genres: Alt Porn, Feminist Porn, Queer Porn, Niche Porn, why and how these are occurring; Current interests in pornography: Sex-Blogs, Cam-girls, Gossip Blogs that integrate pornography, memoirs, documentaries of the porn industry, amateur, and their relationship to broader cultural shift; Technology and Pornography: Internet as a technological vehicle for the mass proliferation and consumption of porn, pay-per-view, satellite, downloading, streaming, audio recordings, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, sensory technologies; The Mainstreaming Of Porn/Porn in mass culture: “Porn chic”, porn imagery used in advertising, the mainstreaming of hardcore pornography, the relationship between shifts pornography and patterns of economic change.

Ultimately, I’d like people to engage with these conversation topics and look at pornography beyond just a flat, medium for sexual arousal. There is so much to be explored with pornography, and it serves so many purposes beyond just sexual arousal (although that is very important!). More groups of people are entering this industry, and changing the way that mainstream and non-mainstream society look at porn.

YNOT.com: Tell us about your speakers:

Quinn: We were extremely fortunate to get our first speaker choices for this conference. We aimed for the best, and it happened!

Our keynote speaker is Tristan Toarmino [Smart Ass Productions]. We wanted her as a keynote because, besides personally loving her work, she is an award-winning author, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She has been in this industry for a long time, runs her own adult production company, and is an extremely savvy, intelligent, politically conscious woman who traverses the lines between mainstream and alternative. She makes HOT porn that reaches a wide audience, and she also says a lot of progressive, subversive ideas with her work, which is rare. As well, she has a lot of experience speaking at top academic institutions, and we felt like her experience, intelligence, and notoriety would be a unique contribution to the conference.

Our second speaker is Bruce LaBruce, a total rock star of a pornographer. He comes from a very different perspective than Tristan, and we wanted to include a variety of viewpoints for this event. Bruce is a Toronto based film-maker, writer, photographer, and artist. He began his career in the mid-eighties making a series of short experimental super 8 films and co-editing a punk fanzine called J.D.s, which begat the queercore movement. He does a lot of queer, homosexual porn that integrates and interrogates taboo topics, such as Nazi culture and drug culture.

Our other two speakers are myself and Brenda Cossman, who will both be representing wholly academic perspectives on pornography. I’m a 4th year Sexual Diversity Studies’ student, and just completed a fourth year thesis on “The Capitalization of Female Sexuality in Postmodernity”, exploring different aspects of how female sexuality has been commercialized and marketed in our contemporary society. My thesis included a section on the proliferation of hardcore pornography into mainstream culture, from which the foundation of my presentation stems.

Brenda Cossman is the Director of the Mark S.Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and professor of family law, gender and law, and law and film. She will be introducing the conference, and speaking to the various contentious topics of discussion in pornography today. She will also be moderating the panel.

YNOT.com: So what is the SDSSU, and why is it organizing this conference?

Quinn: The SDSSU is the undergraduate course union for everyone who has ever taken a Sexual Diversity Studies course at the University of Toronto. We represent the student body, and liaise with faculty and staff. We plan socials, we connect students, we host our own undergraduate journal, and we plan incredible conferences! We are all friends, and have lots of fun together.

In the past we have planned two extremely successful conferences, “$ex or $ale: Prostitution, Government, and Regulation” last year, and “Fetish: Working Out The Kinks” two years ago. We recently held an academic seminar entitled “SDSSU Presents: HIV/AIDS Criminalization – Public Health v. Human Rights: An academic discussion of the merits and drawbacks of turning a health issue into a legal issue”.

YNOT.com: What do you hope to achieve through staging Porn Reborn?

Quinn: I hope this conference will stir a lot of interest, questions, and personal investigation and reflection among our audience. There is no one argument any of us want to make; we merely want to provide a forum by which ideas on sexuality can be shared and explored in an academic setting, amongst academic peers, as well as members of the community. I have learned a million things along the way, and I hope others will as well. We want to create new types of discussions in academia, and hope that everyone can leave with some food for thought they wouldn’t be able to have anywhere else.