Annie M. Sprinkle is an American certified sexologist, performance artist, former sex worker, and advocate for sex work and health care. Sprinkle has worked as a prostitute, sex educator, feminist stripper, pornographic film actress, and sex film producer and director. In 1996, she became the first known porn star to get a doctoral degree, earning a PhD in human sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. Identifying as ecosexual, Sprinkle is best known for her self-help style of pornography, teaching individuals about pleasure, and for her conventional pornographic film Deep Inside Annie Sprinkle (1981). Through the production of content, Sprinkle has contributed to feminist pornography and the larger social movement of feminism; she is also known for contributing to the rise of the post-porn movement and lesbian pornography. Sprinkle, a member of the LGBTQ+ community, married her long-time partner Beth Stephens in Canada on January 14, 2007.
Susannah Bright is an American feminist, author and journalist, often on the subject of politics and sexuality.
Diane DiMassa is an American feminist artist, noted as creator of the alternative cartoon character Hothead Paisan, Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist, whose wild antics have been described as rage therapy for the marginalised. DiMassa is also active in oil painting and street art.
Tristan Taormino is an American feminist author, columnist, sex educator, activist, editor, speaker, radio host, and pornographic film director. She is most recently known for her book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, which is often recommended as a starter guide to polyamory and non-monogamy.
Cleis Press is an American independent publisher of books in the areas of sexuality, erotica, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, fiction, and human rights. The press was founded in 1980 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It later moved to San Francisco and was based out of Berkeley until its purchase by Start Media in 2014. It was founded by Frédérique Delacoste, Felice Newman and Mary Winfrey Trautmann who collectively financed wrote and published the press's first book Fight Back: Feminist Resistance to Male Violence in 1981. In 1987, they published Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry by Delacoste with Priscilla Alexander.
Felice Newman is an American author, publisher, sex educator, and coach of soma studies.
Connie Wilkins is an American author of lesbian themed science fiction and fantasy erotica published under the title Wild Flesh. Wilkins is based in Massachusetts.
Fucking Machines is a pornographic website founded in 2000 that features video and photographs of women engaged in autoerotic sexual stimulation with penetrative sex-machines and sex toys. Based in San Francisco, California, the site is operated by Kink.com. Web entrepreneur Peter Acworth launched Fucking Machines on September 25, 2000, as his company's second website after Kink.com. Devices shown on the site were created with the intent to bring women authentic orgasms. Performers were instructed to allow themselves to be recorded experiencing pleasure.
Carol Queen is an American author, editor, sociologist, and sexologist active in the sex-positive feminism movement. Queen is a two time Grand Marshal of San Francisco LGBTQ Pride. Queen has written on human sexuality in books such as Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. She has written a sex tutorial, Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot, as well as erotica, such as the novel The Leather Daddy and the Femme. Queen has produced adult movies, events, workshops and lectures. Queen was featured as an instructor and star in both installments of the Bend Over Boyfriend series about female-to-male anal sex, or pegging. She has also served as editor for compilations and anthologies. She is a sex-positive sex educator in the United States.
Gay pulp fiction, or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper; lesbian pulp fiction is similar work about women. Michael Bronski, the editor of an anthology of gay pulp writing, notes in his introduction, "Gay pulp is not an exact term, and it is used somewhat loosely to refer to a variety of books that had very different origins and markets". People often use the term to refer to the "classic" gay pulps that were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the gay erotica or pornography in paperback book or digest magazine form produced since that date.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author, columnist, and editor, specializing in erotica. She previously studied at the New York University School of Law and earned her bachelor's degree in political science and women's studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
Hanne Blank, also known as Hanne Blank Boyd, is an American historian, writer, and editor. Her written works include Virgin: The Untouched History, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, and The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts.
Pegging is an anal sex act in which a woman penetrates a man's anus with a strap-on dildo.
Alison Tyler is the pseudonym of an American author, editor and publisher of erotica living in Northern California. She has authored over 20 explicit novels, hundreds of short stories and has edited more than 60 erotic anthologies. She runs her own publishing company, Pretty Things Press . Tired of getting mixed up with the porn actress with the same name, she now blogs on Patreon as Alison Trollop.
A sex machine is a mechanical device used to simulate human sexual intercourse or other sexual activity.
Arse Elektronika is an annual conference organized by the Austrian arts and philosophy collective monochrom, focused on sex and technology. The festival presents talks, workshops, machines, presentations and films. The festival's curator is Johannes Grenzfurthner. Between 2007 and 2015, the event was held in San Francisco, but is now a traveling event in different countries.
Jayne Pupek was an American poet and fiction writer. She wrote and published two collections of poetry: The Livelihood of Crows and Forms of Intercession, and one novel, Tomato Girl, which was called a "wrenching, stunning, and pitch-perfect novel that captures the best of Southern literature's finest storytelling colors" by Library Journal and "an absorbing, unsettling debut" by Publishers Weekly. Writing for the Courier-Journal, critic L. Elisabeth Beattie notes: "Jayne Pupek's first novel puts her among the ranks of Southern masters like McCullers and O'Connor" Pupek's work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Tomato Girl was also published as an audio book by Recorded Books as part of their Southern Voices Audio Imprint.
Tess Danesi is an American sex educator, blogger, and writer of BDSM erotica who conducts workshops, courses, and events. She writes for the American erotica anthology market, has contributed to Time Out New York, and has been featured in Fleshbot, a sex-oriented weblog, founded by Gawker Media.
Shoshanna Evers / Shoshanna Gabriel is an American author of contemporary and erotic romance novels and novellas, and the editor and publisher of non-fiction books on writing and publishing. She is the co-founder of SelfPubBookCovers.com, the first website where authors could customize original pre-made book covers and instantly download them. Shoshanna Evers was also listed as one of the “Most Popular Authors in Erotica” on Amazon.com in 2013, and one of the "Most Popular Authors in Contemporary Romance," and "Most Popular Authors in Romance" on Amazon.com in 2014.
Jill Posener is a British photographer and playwright, known for her exploration of lesbian identity and erotica.
