women and porn: on Oprah

Here I am, talking to Oprah about porn. Yay! She’s really fun to talk to. I just found the above segment with my appearance on the show via Twitter.

A little over a week ago I was delighted to be a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show to talk about female porn consumers, and much much more. To say that I had a great time would be a massive understatement: as I wrote on my Facebook page, I’ve never been treated with such respect, and shared excitement for the subject matter. Oprah has a dream team of very passionate people who love their jobs and love who they work for — that’s obvious. They’re also funny and have a great sense of humor about everything. Recently I’ve had to deal with a lesser entity that is sex-negative; it’s amazing to contrast my experience working for and with Oprah. To say they treated me well would be an understatement. I was treasured and the subject of women and sex was explored in such an honest, unflinching way. Look closely at this show and you’ll notice that Oprah has reframed the entire conversation: we women are not ‘tolerated’ or marginalized for exploring our inhibitions, voicing our desires, or owning our sexual agency — we are embraced. The 1 in 3 consumers of adult material online — women — were finally acknowledged, and with respect for a change. And interest! We’re all checking this stuff out together, and talking to each other about it — as we have for years, starting with my old forum The Smart Girl’s Porn Club (circa 2003).

Myths and stereotypes: smashed! We live in a world where women are more sexually powerful and articulate than any other time in history because of the internet and emergent communicative technologies. Oprah’s hip to it. You’re soaking in it. And that’s really, outrageously exciting for all of us.

Like I said in last week’s column; I wonder how much sexual research has been flawed because researchers forgot the crucial ingredient of female sexual pleasure (and female sexual freedom)?

There was a *lot* of media about the episode, but my faves are here:

* What kind of woman watches porn? Three pages of my writing and research on Oprah.com.
* Oprah – Violet Blue on Porn vs. Erotica (oprah.com)
* Movieline calls me “Oprah’s mouthpiece” (and I loved it, movieline.com)

Images by my dear longtime friend Scott Beale / Laughing Squid (laughingsquid.com), who also shot the bio photo of me for Oprah Magazine back in 2007: