YNOT – Tristan Taormino has been uninvited to deliver a keynote address during Oregon State University’s Modern Sex conference after university officials decided the award-winning author, columnist, sex educator and adult director’s resume might be distasteful to conservative lawmakers. The conference is scheduled to take place Feb. 15-16 at the school’s main campus in Corvallis.
Conference organizers booked Taormino Oct. 28. On Jan. 18, Steven Leider, director of the Office of LGBT Outreach and Services contacted Taormino’s manager to say the conference had run short on funding and would not be able to pay the agreed-upon honorarium. When Taormino offered to give the speech anyway because her travel arrangements were set in stone, the truth came out.
“We have to cancel Ms. Taormino’s appearance due to a lack of funding,” Leider said. “It has been decided that OSU cannot pay Ms. Taormino with general fee dollars because of the content of her resume and website.”
Taormino never has been secretive about her resume, which includes seven books about sex and relationships, 18 anthologies, numerous television appearances everywhere from CNN to The Discovery Channel, and a growing number of award-winning educational and explicit, films. Additionally, she wrote a column for The Village Voice for nearly 10 years and has given more than 75 lectures at colleges and universities including Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Brown, New York University and Columbia.
“In my ten years of booking Tristan at colleges and universities, of course there has been some controversy,” said Colten Tognazzini, Taormino’s manager. “But I have never had a university cancel like this [at the] last minute. It’s not unusual for contract negotiations to drag on, [but] once they confirmed we should book her travel, I felt comfortable the event was a done deal. I continued to work with them in good faith that a signed contract would be forthcoming. I believe that the conference organizers’ hands are tied, and this decision came from much higher up.”
Tognazzini said he spoke to an OSU source who speculated the university feared the state legislature would use a pornographer’s appearance on campus as ammunition to decrease future funding. According to Tognazzini, the anonymous source opined, “I think they’re uninviting Tristan because they don’t want to have to defend her appearance to conservative legislators.”
“I’m extremely disappointed that OSU has decided to cancel my appearance,” Taormino said. “I am proud of all the work I do, including the sex education films and feminist pornography I make. The talk I planned to give at this conference, titled ‘Claiming Your Sexual Power,’ has nothing to do with porn, but the porn is such an easy target for anti-sex conservatives and censors.
“I find it ironic that one of the missions of the conference is to understand diverse perspectives of sexuality,” she added. “Apparently, my perspective — one of educating and empowering people around their sexuality — isn’t welcome at OSU.”
OSU students and others who want to hear her speak can catch Taormino teaching two workshops Feb. 13-14 at female-friendly sex toy boutique She Bop in nearby Portland.
“She Bop supports a healthy perspective on sex and sexuality, and we are proud to have Tristan Taormino present two years in a row at our shop in Portland,” co-owners Jeneen Doumitt and Evy Cowan said in a prepared statement. “Tristan is a leading educator paving the way for others to help break down the stigma around sex in this country. It is part of our mission as a female friendly adult shop to support sexual empowerment and growth.”
