Talk Dirty to Me

October 3, 1994
Tisdale, who stirred controversy with her 1992 essay on pornography in Harper's, combines simplistic thinking and provocative insight in this freewheeling but tiresome meditation on female desire, sexual jealousy, orgasm, horniness, adult sex shows and much else. She argues that ``alternative sexuality''-everything that is taboo, from homosexuality to masturbation-is punished because it is nonreproductive. Recounting her own enjoyment of pornographic films, Tisdale contends that pornography, though often crude and adolescent, is nevertheless a positive force because it emphasizes a broad view of what is erotic, and separates sex from reproduction, marriage and the heterosexual relationship, ``which most feminists would agree have been oppressive to women.'' Seeking to dispel stereotypes surrounding prostitutes, she cites a study that concludes that whores and their customers are happy and healthy; she also advocates decriminalization of prostitution. Her embrace of sexuality is sprinkled with allusions to Plato, James Joyce, Nietzsche, Freud and Wilhelm Reich. First serial to Esquire and Elle; author tour.