Hopefully you have already heard of Violet Blue. You may have read one of her award winning sex books, clicked on her incredibly popular, entertaining, and informative blog Tiny Nibbles, or if you're lucky you may have attended a talk she's given. If you purchased anything from Good Vibrations in years past you certainly would have read some of the smart and sassy reviews of products she wrote as a writer for the company for many years.
If you haven't had any interaction with Violet Blue yet a recent video blog she posted offers a new reason to meet her (virtually at least) and confirms for me why she’s not only a lovely person, but one of the most important sexual voices of our generation.
A few months ago Violet had an article about women watching porn in O Magazine (the magazine Oprah built). Like all of Violet's writing the article was great. It was accessible to a wide range of people; it was funny, honest, and genuinely helpful to anyone interested in understanding pornography. It also managed to convey something of the complicated nature of sex without becoming too academic. One thing Violet never does is dumb sex down.
Not surprisingly the article also got Violet a lot of mainstream media attention. And this is how she found herself invited to be on the Tyra Banks show. Unfortunately the rest of the story isn't quite so funny and it’s a whole lot more dumb.
You can get the whole story directly from Violet via this intense and highly recommended video blog post (watching it will also explain the title of this blog post).
Having worked in mainstream media for ten years, behind the camera more than in front of it, I've encountered stories like Violet's before. I'm fortunate enough to work for programs with sexual integrity, but these are few and far between. Sadly sex for most mainstream media is a throw away topic; something to be twisted to your own devices or offered as a brief distraction.
One result of this is that many of the best sex minds get burned so often that eventually they refuse to participate. I hope this won’t happen with Violet Blue. We need more people like her who are willing to fight not only for their right to represent their own unique sexual perspective, but to represent many perspectives at once. This is something Violet does everyday and we all need to see more of it.
thanks for posting this! violet blue is such an inspiration to me, and to see her struggle with tyra breaks my heart. she is the voice of today’s sexual revolutionaries!
I think it is important to remember organizations like the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF) for defending our sexual rights against an overly conservative government.
It is disturbing just how much the media goes out of their way to please the conservatives in this country. I’m saddened that real diversity is never shown except on shows geared toward “freaky behavior” instead of healthy loving participants.