TORONTO (January 24, 2014)—Building on a year of unprecedented media attention for the feminist porn movement, registration opens today for The 2014 Feminist Porn Conference, which takes place April 5 and 6, 2014 at the University of Toronto. The Feminist Porn Conference brings together academics, students, cultural critics, sex workers, activists, fans, performers, directors, and producers to explore the intersections between feminism and pornography as well as feminist porn as a genre, industry, and movement. It includes sessions devoted to both academic and non-academic presentations, film screenings, two keynote talks, and networking time. New this year, there is a business track featuring workshops on production and filmmaking, legal issues, marketing and branding, social media, and web-based technologies.
In addition, conference organizers announced the opening and closing keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Duggan and filmmaker/performer/artist Courtney Trouble.
Fresh from the red carpets of the AVN Awards and the XBIZ Awards, where she received multiple nominations, performer, director and artist Courtney Trouble will be the closing keynote speaker at the conference. Courtney Trouble is a porn star, photographer, award-winning pornographer, and founder of TROUBLEfilms, IndiePornRevolution.com, and QueerPorn.TV. The director and creative force behind over 22 queer porn films and endless online content, Courtney is the recipient of numerous Feminist Porn Awards and countless adult industry honors, including 8 XBIZ 2014 nods (a first in queer porn history), and won Director of the Year at the BBW Fan Fest Awards in 2013. “Courtney invokes that ’70s spirit of rebellious adult moviemaking while also being ahead of the trends when it comes to sexuality in art,” wrote AVN staffers in the feature “Game Changers: 30 Women Power Players in the Adult Industry.”
Courtney Trouble’s films speak to an extremely fluid, authentic, and hardcore version of graphic sexual imagery and feature queer, trans*, and genderqueer performers as well as performers of color and size. Her films have been screened at film festivals throughout North America and in Australia, The Netherlands, Mexico, Greece, France, Israel, Denmark, Spain, and the UK. Trouble contributed a piece to the first issue of the academic journal Porn Studies and directed “Chapter One” of Michelle Tea’s Valencia: The Movie/s, a film that consists of 21 directors’ unique takes on the legendary queer memoir. Most recently, Trouble released the boundary-breaking film Trans Grrrls: Revolution Porn Style Now, which brings porn and feminism together directly to center trans women in queer porn. Trans Grrrls is nominated for 2014 Trans Porn Award for Best Film.
“Courtney Trouble’s contributions to feminist porn cannot be understated; she sets the standard for DIY, radical, artistic movies that represent incredibly diverse performers and sexualities. Political and provocative, I’m confident that Courtney’s keynote speech will educate, challenge, and inspire everyone in the audience,” says Tristan Taormino, founder and producer of the conference.
Lisa Duggan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University, will give the opening keynote on April 5. Professor Duggan is a historian, journalist and activist who has published widely on feminist and queer sexual politics. She is the author of Sapphic Slashers: Sex Violence and American Modernity and The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy. She is co-author with Nan Hunter of the seminal collection Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture and co-editor with Lauren Berlant of Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and National Interest. She is also co-editor with Joseph DeFilippis, Kenyon Farrow and Richard Kim of A New Queer Agenda, a special e-book edition of The Scholar and the Feminist Online.
“Lisa Duggan is one of the most powerful voices for radical sexual politics of our time. A scholar, journalist, educator, and activist, Duggan is a leading authority on the feminist sex wars and queer politics. Her keynote will provide both the historical context and the call to arms we need as activists, academics, and artists working on the front lines of the new sex wars,” says Mireille Miller-Young, Professor of Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara and co-editor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure. Miller-Young and Professor Constance Penley, last year’s keynote speakers, will both present at the 2014 conference.
The Feminist Porn Conference is made possible by the generous sponsorship of The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, Good Vibrations, GoodVibrationsVOD.com, The Feminist Press, Good for Her, The 2014 Feminist Porn Awards, and Sex Out Loud. The conference is part of the largest gathering of feminist pornographers in the world, four days of feminist porn that includes The Public.Provocative.Porn Screening and Panel and The 2014 Feminist Awards and Gala, both presented by Good for Her.