LONG BEACH, Calif.-The inaugural edition of CatalystCon saw experts from a variety of sex- and sexuality-based backgrounds gather for a weekend of seminars and discussions designed to spark open communication.
Held Sept. 14-16 at the Hilton Long Beach and Executive Meeting Center, CatalystCon focused on "reaching out and stimulating the activist within everyone to help transform the way our friends, neighbors, and politicians approach and discuss one of the single most important aspects of humanity," according to organizer Dee Dennis.
Saturday morning began with family therapist Dr. Marty Klein giving his audience a run-down on "America's War on Sex," not coincidentally the title of his recently-updated landmark analysis of how the government, both under Democrats and Republicans, has worked to keep Americans ignorant about sex and sexual subjects while also working to stop them from enjoying sexual pleasures. His talk covered several of the same topics about which he lectured at the Center for Inquiry-LA in June—except this time, he was hampered by the lack of a projector for his PowerPoint display. However, is descriptions of what the audience would have seen raised chuckles from the early morning crowd.
Among the problems Klein highlighted in his talk were the "moral panic" about sex promoted by what Klein calls the "sexual disaster industry," which includes various religious and political groups, and the concept of "dangerism," such as the outrage directed at Texas several years ago for approving the anti-HPV Gardasil vaccination program. In that case, "dangerists" claimed the vaccination would make school kids much more promiscuous than they already were. Klein also mentioned the case histories of several people who spent (and are spending) years in prison for engaging in consensual sexual acts. In sum, Klein said, sexuality is religion's "worst nightmare" because it encourages people to seek "maximum sexual autonomy" while the mainstream churches do their best to keep their adherents' sexuality not only in check, but sometimes under lock and key.
For more, see Klein's Center for Inquiry lecture here.
The panel "Sex Education: Out of the Classroom, Into the Streets!" brought together a diverse group of educators, including its moderator, Carol Queen; her partner Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence; decade-long adult performer Jessica Drake, who's recently made a splash in the sex ed field with her series of educational videos; Sssh.com's resident sexpert Ava Mir-Ausziehen; and Sandra Daugherty aka SexNerd Sandra, who creates humorous sex-positive podcasts using whichever comedians she can convince to join her on-air.
Each of the panelists told the audience of some of their exploits in promoting sexual pleasure through sexual health, including Queen's and Lawrence's cross-country training missions in the mid- to late-'70s, and the dawn of Drake's sex ed "awakening" when fans would come up to her during personal appearances and ask her advice on a variety of sexual subjects. She noted how Wicked Pictures, to which she is under contract, has been "always behind" her in creating her video series, but lamented that, as a porn star entering the sex ed field, "to be taken seriously is a challenge sometimes."
The "Media Risks: Who Wins?" panel brought together three of the adult industry's most prolific publicists—Adella Curry, Dusty Marie and Brian Gross—with one writer/blogger (and former AVN webmaster) Gram Ponante, and AVN Senior Editor for Pleasure Products Sherri L. Shaulis. The discussion was fairly unfocused, but did spend quite a bit of time assessing the impact of E.L. James' Fifty Shades trilogy on the general public and the adult industry, and in general, how society's view of sexuality and sexual subjects has grown more liberal over the past 20-30 years, to the point where even subjects like bondage and domination are being discussed in "polite circles," and the views of adult performers are not automatically dismissed when they comment on political and social issues of the day.
The "Toxic Toys" panel featured Jennifer Pritchett, owner of the Smitten Kitten retails stores in Minnesota who refuses to sell anything but toys she considers safe in her stores; Metis Black, founder and president of Tantus Inc., a company that manufactures toys made of 100 percent silicone; and Ducky Doolittle, author and sex expert. The panel focused on everything from the unregulated industry of manufacturing sex toys, problems with using Chinese companies when it comes to quality control and how consumers are able to change the industry by refusing to purchase toys they feel are unsafe.
Good Vibrations' Charlie Glickman led a discussion on "Act Like A Man: Masculinity & Gender in the 21st Century," where he discussed how people should remember that not everyone is experienced at talking about their emotions, so to think about it in a primary colors sort of way. Instead of using colors/words like cerise/nervous, crimson/anxious or burgundy/uptight, try red/fear, he said. He noted that men are taught not to express emotions, while it's expected of women, so it's no wonder when people are in relationships they have difficulties communicating their feelings because one might be at an advanced level, while another is just starting out.
Saturday afternoon kicked off with "Teaching Porn," a topic ably handled by the four Ph.D. panelists: UC-Santa Barbara's Constance Penley, University of Nevada's Lynn Comella, UC-Long Beach's Shira Tarrant, and SMU-Meadows School of the Arts' Kevin Heffernan. The discussion began with moderator Penley noting the dismissal of a tenured professor at Appalachian State University for having shown to his class the anti-porn "documentary" The Price of Pleasure, and asking the rest of the panel whether professors should show explicit movies in class, and if so, what warnings they should give students in advance of the showing? Each prof had an opinion, and that generally led to each describing the courses she or he teaches that relate to adult content. Penley, for instance, is well-known for her course in Pornographic Films, while Comella teaches what she described as a "hybrid" course that includes both adult movies and a history of the adult industry. Tarrant, on the other hand, is a Political Science professor in the Women's Studies division of her university, and teaches a course in "pop culture" that includes porn—she described The Price of Pleasure as both "traumatizing and silencing"—while Heffernan told of how he had had trouble getting his course "Feminism and the Moving Pornographic Image" approved by his colleagues in the Women's Studies Department. The group also discussed the topic of how to handle students who come into the courses believing that pornography is evil, and Comella described how she managed to convert one student's attitude from outright hostility to acceptance of adult content as a valid life choice.
One of the final Saturday sessions featured sex educator Megan Andelloux, whose announced topic was "When is an Orgasm a Political Act? When is Lube a Tool of the Revolution?" Neither of those questions was directly answered, but Andelloux kept the audience enthralled with a variety of "fun facts" surrounding sex education, such as that most medical students today are not taught to do rectal examinations; that even the World Health Organization (WHO) affirms that sexual pleasure is a part of sexual health; that there are many reasons to engage in masturbation including health/stress relief and as a sleeping aid, and that the act itself is part of "owning one's sexuality." She also showed a clip of people reaching orgasm in the film Faces of Ecstasy, and stated, "Without the inclusion of sexual pleasure and happiness, we cannot fully understand sexual dysfunction."
Sunday morning's sessions included a discussion of "Sex and the Media: What's Right, What's Wrong [and] Why It Matters," moderated by Dr. Lynn Comella, with panelists Dr. Shira Tarrant and Good Vibrations sex educator/blogger Dr. Charlie Glickman. Comella began by describing how she began writing a column on sexuality for the Las Vegas Weekly after having read a series of articles by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert on the dangers of prostitution, which drew largely on a book by anti-prostitution activist Melissa Farley and contained many serious misstatements of fact. She described several of her interactions with Las Vegas media, including with a reporter who wanted to cover the story of a woman who intended to make money by losing her virginity at a Nevada brothel, and with contacts at public radio station KNPR which occasionally does sex-positive reports.
Of course, Fifty Shades of Grey was bound to come into the discussion at some point, with Glickman noting that the book was badly written, but nonetheless encouraged people to discuss sex more openly. His advice to those who want to discuss sex? "If you have something to say, start saying it!" Tarrant followed that up by noting how many articles have used the book as a starting point to muse on sexuality in general—and how so many such writers such as Katie Roiphe and Hanna Rosin just get it wrong.
Sunday also saw a more intimate discussion, "When Someone You Love Is A Sex Worker," moderated by Sex Worker Outreach Project co-founder Stacey Swimme, whose objective was to allow sex workers to express pleasures and concerns about their profession. Roughly a dozen sex workers attended, and several told of the difficulty of "coming out" about their profession to their families and loved ones, of how they kept their professional and personal lives separate, and of how ex-lovers and spouses have sometimes tried to use sex work against their partner in order to gain custody of the couple's children.
One of the convention's final panels was sexologist (and MamaSutra.com's) Lanae St. John's "Talking to Your Kids About Sex," which engaged the many parents in the audience in a discussion of why it's a good talk to have. St. John elicited reasons from the audience, which listed such positive reasons as increased communication, trust, respect, compassion and empathy. The group also discussed at what age it's appropriate to begin discussions about sex, with several noting that their kids sometimes knew more about sex than their parents suspected. The discussion also included respecting children's boundaries, understanding that all parents will have to deal with the topic at some point, and guiding kids so that in facing sexual realities, they don't lose the ability to appreciate fantasy.
The "blow-off" for the event, however, was its one legal panel, billed as "Defending Pornography: United States v. John Stagliano," with not only Stagliano himself participating, but also one of his several attorneys, Allan Gelbard, and the woman who was almost his expert witness, Dr. Constance Penley. AVN attended the trial, held in Washington, D.C., and published reports at least once per day on its progress, but this panel was more of a "down and dirty" dissection of the case, from Judge Richard Leon's early antagonism towards the defendants to his final dismissal of all charges under Federal Rule 29, which meant that the prosecution had presented such poor evidence that no jury could possibly have used it to arrive at a verdict.
Stagliano left most of the dissection to Gelbard and Penley, and along the way, the audience learned that even before the trial, the U.S. Department of Justice had tried to subpoena the sales records of various adult companies to see from what states customers were ordering adult videos, with an eye toward the DOJ filing obscenity indictments against those companies in some of the country's more conservative areas.
The discussion proceeded somewhat randomly, with Gelbard and Penley often interrupting each other to amplify or clarify a statement, or to provide information related to the issue under discussion. Gelbard noted that obscenity defenses can now cost defendants "six or seven figures," and told the audience that, "This shit can happen to you," and "It's important to get your message out, that sex is a positive thing."
Penley added that Stagliano faced more than 32 years in prison if convicted of all charges, one of which, Gelbard noted, was "making sexually explicit materials accessible to minors," a charge that prosecutors couldn't possibly sustain—Evil Angel's website, which contained one charged trailer, is not accessible to children—but which he opined was included in an attempt to prejudice the jury. He also told of how the prosecution had offered in evidence a DVD recording of the trailer to Fetish Fanatic 5, but when it came time to play it for the jury, the recording malfunctioned, leading Judge Leon to throw out the charges related to it.
Penley reported that the students in her pornographic film class often "can't get their minds around" the concept of obscenity, and she opined that there should be an "Innocence Project for porn." She also said, having seen all of the charged videos—Fetish Fanatic 5, Storm Squirters 2: Target Practice and Milk Nymphos—that had she been allowed to testify, she would have affirmed that the movies had artistic value, and also that the movies were consistent with popular culture. She also gave the audience some background regarding how the government sought information about her background that she felt would be used to discredit her, which led to Gelbard explain what a "Daubert hearing" is—a method to determine which experts will be allowed to testify—and how its result, which is almost entirely at the judge's discretion, could impact the entire course of the trial.
Gelbard also used the platform to urge attendees to vote in the upcoming election, since it's the president who nominates candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court, and opined that, "Obscenity laws are used for political gain and nothing else." And what is "obscenity"? Stagliano got the last word on that, describing it as anything sexual that "disgusts" the viewer.
Dee Dennis has already announced that CatalystCon will continue with an East Coast version slated for March 15-17 in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit CatalystCon.com.
