I met Nina Hartley in December 2000 while she was on tour. We spoke
and hugged and exchanged contact information. In September 2001, I decided to
contact her to ask for an interview for MK Ultra Magazine.
Speaking to Nina, her realities are my dreams. However, after the
half hour of our interview, my existence was reinterpreted. I found peace and
the necessity to not only fight for myself to be expressed as a sexual being, but to give others this knowledge too. Helping them open up their minds first, then their bodies and spirit to be as beautiful
and incredible as Nina Hartley. I feel it is my destiny to spread a message of
sexuality and freedom - to tell people to not be afraid of their bodies and the capabilities for great sex and heretofore
a great existence. Nina lives this every day - and so can we all.
For those who are unfamiliar with Nina, she has a web site: http://www.nina.com/. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of California with Jewish Communist parents. Dancing naked in 1983 and acting in porn in 1984.
Graduating college with a degree in nursing in 1985. She has made about
575 adult movies, winning more awards for her acting by AVN (Adult Video News – equates to the Oscars of Porn) than
any other actor/actress. There are 12 episodes and counting in sex education
videos on Adam & Eve. Nina is one of the leaders of anti-censorship, speaking
out on issues of feminism and sexuality and free expression for nearly 20 years, and taking on Andrea Dworkin and the like. Her sexuality is constantly evolving and changing as her understanding continues to
grow. This includes her knowledge on anal sex and her personal enjoyment of it.
She and her partner involve vigorous, lusty anal play with nearly all
of their sexual encounters. She is able to totally revel in the joys of anal
eroticism on a regular basis. She moved from the Bay Area and now resides in
Los Angeles. Recently Nina came out of the leather sex and the BDSM community
closet.
LM:
What made you decide to make the “How To” videos?
I decided to make these videos out of my own teenage frustrations of
not having the possibility of receiving good, practical sexual information. There
were books like The Joy of Sex, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (but were afraid to ask), but there
wasn’t a home video in the pornography market. I wanted to provide a demonstration,
satisfy curiosities and not to make a value judgment from it. I wanted to leave
the sex and titillation out of it. When I do the tapes now they are a statement
of my feminism (which is for every woman to realize for herself). I also wanted
to reach out and help others and teach them. This comes from my upbringing –
for all people to receive equal treatment. It also comes from my desire to be
a nurse - to bring some kind of healing and balm to troubled souls. The sex in
our culture is sick and has been made sick. Sick people need to be nursed and
cared for. With my experience in the porn industry, and as someone who speaks out for issues of sexual freedom and expression,
as a swinger, as an exhibitionist and with my health professional background, my scientific lack of squeamishness, that I
could create these films. It’s also my desire. There were other people that were as serious as me to make these films and had the ability to make them,
but I was the one with the drive and passion to put the effort into seeing that the films were created.
I wanted to create something where people who were curious, but did
not have the time or inclinations to read the books to become knowledgeable partners, could watch. My byline on the “How To” movies is, “I’ve done all the fucking so you don’t
have to”. I put the information out there to people to make them more comfortable,
confident, relaxed, playful, open and experimental and to decrease fear. And
this is really important – the more knowledge and education someone has, the less fear they will have. Tell them different ways to have sex and that it’s okay to have certain feelings about sex and what
I’ve learned from doing these various things. I’m blessed with the
ability to have these experiences and talk to people about them in a way that’s not going to scare people off.
LM:
It has been my experience that people learn from most pornos that they can just stick it in your ass and it’s
smooth sailing. For me it took many years of being sexually active before I found
a partner that knew the first thing about using lube and lots of touching and playing with my asshole before attempting penetration.
You must earn butt. You cannot be just given butt.
When my fans and friends speak with me, asking for more information
about anal sex I refer them to Tristan Taormino’s The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women video and book (with the same name). It is hard for heterosexuals to find
a partner because of all of the hang-ups that people have about anal eroticism and being able to do it in the light.
Many guys (not all) still don’t want to take the time to learn
more about women’s body and reactions and they see the physiology, science and anatomy as boring. They don’t realize that to be a professional you have to learn to be a professional. What they don’t see in the movies is the time that is taken with the guy masturbating and getting
hard and the playing with a woman to get her ready and what all happens before for the action takes place. Most of what they do see is very rough and deliberately shown in a dominant way that I don’t see
as attractive and it’s not realistic how you at home with your partner is going to make it happen.
People have a hard time becoming humble with their ignorance and putting
their egos aside and saying ‘You know what, I don’t know’. A
lot of men (again not all) have a problem eroticizing their own anuses and relaxing enough to learn to receive pleasure that
way. They have to know this in order to understand the absolutely different psychology
between being with a butt rather than a pussy. Like Carol Queen, PhD says, “The
great thing about assholes is that everyone has one.” So every person that
wants to have anal sex must first make erotic friends with their own buttholes. You
have to let go of your own discomforts and fears and your own inability to feel that pleasure, face your own fears about letting
go and opening up and letting feelings course through your body.
Anal eroticism opens up a huge Pandora’s box of esteem, pleasure,
abuse and fear issues. The butt is so emotional.
It is more emotional that the dick. I personally have my own issues about
being with anyone sexually who has not become erotic friends with their butt. For
a person to be at the level for me to play with, they would have to be someone who is at least comfortable with receiving
anal pleasure. It doesn’t have to be about receiving penetration. It’s about wanting to feel that good.
It’s about wanting to feel that intensely. It’s about opening
up to that issue and understanding your own and your partner’s vulnerability.
It is absolutely impossible for a person to enjoy anal sex unless they feel safe, secure, comfortable, respected, listened
to and appreciated. You can’t fake those emotions and your body knows that.
As often as I have sex with my main partner, there is butt action,
whether it is just touching or having a half an hour of intense penetration. You
learn how to relax into the feeling, through the sensation and it’s a mental meditative practice. It’s like surfing – it’s an intense feeling to be able to use the surfboard, this tiny
surface on the broad expanse and power of the ocean and to ride upon it. People
learn how to surf this intensity. It takes time and desire and the understanding
that it cannot be rushed or coerced. I totally recommend doing it sober.
LM: I have had people come to me saying they don’t want to eroticize their
partner’s anus because it’s not picture perfect; that there is a lot of hair or the fact that it might be dirty
or the idea is just plain gross. What kind of tips or advice do you give them
to become more accepting of their partner’s body?
That is more personal. If you have a hang-up about your partner’s physiological or biological aspects that they can’t
help any more than the color of their hair, then you have issues of your own that need to be addressed. However, if your partner wants to please you so you pay more positive attention to that area, perhaps
they could begin adding to their sex play by asking them to remove the hair to where it pleases them or remove it yourself.
I keep my vulva groomed a specific
way because my partner has told me, that more of this equals more of that, so because we’ve communicated about this,
then it’s not an issue. The appearance of the genitals, however, is unchangeable.
Realize that any type of hang-up
is your hang-up and not your partner’s problem. A mature couple will talk
about this and find ways to remedy the issue so that pleasure can mutual and more understood.
Or it could mean that the relationship needs to end. If you’re not
attracted to your partner’s body then it’s very hard to generate sexual arousal and you need to find someone else
who will be attracted to you or more accepting and open. That is an issue to
take very seriously.
LM:
Another issue is the idea of a man with impotence problems receiving prostate stimulation and anal play. Many men don’t realize that they can have an orgasm by having their prostate stimulated and do not
need their penis to be erect. Do you recommend this so that they don’t
rely solely on the performance of their penis for pleasure?
Oh absolutely. Don’t
forget that a flaccid penis can have an orgasm and be sexually pleased. Of course
something that is more engorged with blood is going to receive more pleasure. It’s
like when you sprain your ankle and the area becomes swollen, the feeling is more intense.
Engorgement creates a greater sensitivity to the area. For men who are
impotent or not, prostate play is a world of fun.
A good sign of a good partner that can acknowledge that pleasurable
sensation knows no shame or morality. What you and your partner do together willingly
is absolutely okay. If you are a heterosexual couple and you have homophobic
feelings, get over it, you’re with a girl, you are being turned on by a girl, your lover, touching your ass. It has nothing to do with becoming or being homosexual. It
is a part of your anatomy to feel pleasure there.
LM:
With this kind of play may also come into practice the use of strap-ons.
Very popular these days. At
Good Vibrations, the most popular movies are Carol Queen’s Bend Over Boyfriend Part 1 and Part 2. I think it’s a wonderful trend. If
you really like your partner and they know what they’re doing then butt sex is the best.
It’s so intensely pleasurable. There is so much intimacy. It can also work with a dominant/submissive relationship. The
dominant can tell the sub to fuck them anyway that they want to be fucked, no matter who’s doing the fucking, it’s
still by the dominant’s command or order.
LM: I have to say
that you and Annie Sprinkle are my heroes for bringing so many issues of sex and sexuality to the public’s attention. I have dreams of being able to talk about all kinds of sex in a public forum and it
not be shocking and for this to be able to happen anywhere in the world. The
problem is too many people want sex to be a pretty, candy-coated package sealed behind bedroom doors and left under the covers
with the lights off. How can we begin to change the public’s perception
and bring all forms of sex and sexuality to light? What do you think the biggest
obstacle is to this? How do you see others displaying positive, healthy, beautiful
displays of sex and sexuality?
Sex is very primal and people need to start accepting and getting used
to the fact that it is sticky, raw and messy. In the words of the great anal
queen, Chloe, “If you’re going to have anal sex, you have to get over your fear of shit.” But that’s true with all kinds of sex; you have to get over your fear of mess. Sex is not for the tidy or the squeamish.
LM:
How can we get the public to get over being squeamish and see sex for the beautiful thing that it is?
What worked for me is to acknowledge people’s fear about it, and realize and understand
that when you’re talking to the public about sex, you’re talking to a bunch of 13 year olds. And they need be told that their desires, curiosities and ignorance is okay and their desire to be better
at it is okay. Wherever they’re at is okay, what matters is they’re
here now and that’s good. You have to start where you are. If they’re scared, start with it’s okay to be scared.
Scared is normal. In this culture how can they be anything but scared
about sex? Fear can be alleviated by the alleviation of ignorance. Tell them it’s okay to not know.
People come up to me and say, “Oh, Nina, what I wouldn’t do to me more like you!”. I don’t want them to be like me, I want them to be themselves. For me to be me, was acknowledging my exhibitionism, was on the way to appreciate that and making that
work and being a public servant all at the same time. If I wasn’t an exhibitionist,
then I’d be the happiest swinger you ever knew and if I wasn’t a swinger I’d be the happiest monogamous,
sexually aware person you knew.
Sex is being good to yourself, is a way to love yourself and a very precious thing. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. Once you learn
who you are sexually then everything else in your life falls into place. You
have to get centered. How our culture keeps people away from learning their center
is to teach them to not like their own bodies, to not be satisfied with their appearance or personality. This culture robs them of knowing their bodies and feeling comfortable and isolating them from their genitalia.
One of the greatest victories of my life was acknowledging that my pussy is no more special than
say the bottom of my foot. It’s not that the sensations are any different,
it’s that it’s all just anatomy. This is very difficult road for
people to learn. The road to your body is through sexual activity, even if it
is solo. The road to yourself is through your genitals, pleasure and orgasming. It is in our nature that pleasure brings us to an altered state of consciousness. Sexual pleasure is meditative. Annie
Sprinkle and Betty Dodson teach us this too. The hard part is that there is no
shortcut and personal individual work that they have to do is by yourself, for yourself and nobody else.
LM: Another thing
about is society is getting hung up on ageism and thinking that things have to be accomplished by a certain age, or that once
a certain age is reached that pleasure changes or isn’t available to them.
A good person to read for insight about self-loathing issues is Cheri Huber. She has a wonderful set of books. If you are denying yourself
pleasure then you have to take responsibility for where you are right now. When
you get to a place where you are happy then love comes into your life. When you
begin to love yourself then people recognize that and you can start receiving it. Self-pity
will get you nowhere.
Our society is sexist, racist, ageist, but I am a biological creature with all these amazing gifts
of orgasm and I cannot wait for the world out there to change for me to be happy. I
have all the happiness I need inside myself and I’m keeping it. I have
denied it and avoided it for myself for too long. I have waited around for other
things to be arranged before I gave myself happiness and I’m not going to do that anymore.
It wasn’t until I stopped wallowing in all that self-pity and took matters into my own hands
then things started to change for me. I’m not saying that it’s not
more difficult if you are differently-abled and don’t fit societal stereotypes, but we all have sex and we all have
an ability to have an orgasm. Don’t wait around for another person to give
that to you, give it to yourself. Don’t do it with resentment or self-pity,
loathing or frustration, but as much as you can, each time, practice, practice, practice give more body pleasure to yourself
and reinforce that you deserve more. Every time you do it, it gets a little bit
easier.
We have been taught to not like ourselves and it takes a lot to unteach that to ourselves. There is a lot of conditioning and everyone has their own kind of conditioning that
they have to unlearn. I’m not saying anything new here and certainly, I’m
not particularly with it, the only thing that separate me from anyone else in this area is that I was particularly motivated
and you sound motivated too. All I can tell people about myself is that I give
it to myself just as I can. My area just happens to be sex, while others have
art, painting or public health or whatever. I’m just as true to myself
as I can be.
LM: I got from John Hawkes book, The Blood Oranges, he says, ‘I’m
a Sex Aesthetician” and I like to use that for myself. I like how it says
I find beauty in all things sexual and want to create beautiful things with sex. I
see this with you too.
Exactly, I take it upon myself, to do every sexual partner with as
much love, respect and openness as I can muster at that moment.
LM: How do respond to people who think that you are a sex addict or that you
have a problem with being obsessed with sex and this is a fairly new concept or phrase at least. I personally see sex addiction as something as similar as drug and alcohol addiction and that if it interferes
with your daily life then you may have a problem.
I have sex because it makes me happy.
I am not a sex addict because the more I do it, the happier, the more at peace and calm and fulfilled I am. I don’t do it when I’m drunk, I don’t do it to avoid other things, I do it to get to
me. A sex addict is someone who uses sex as an escape just like you can use alcohol
or shopping or whatever. An addict will abuse a substance to escape from the
pain of reality. I refuse to have sex with anyone who is incapacitated with drugs
or alcohol. I have not permitted myself to get into situations that are out of
control. I have scared the pants off myself sometimes and those times aren’t
as fun. I always learn something about myself every time I have sex.
LM: Some women don’t understand that they too can feel pleasure when having
anal sex. They are under the impression that it’s just going to feel good
for him because it’s tight. In Rebecca Chalker’s book, The Clitoral
Truth, a woman’s clitoris extends all the way down from the crown, down around the lips and then spirals around
the anus, extending those nerve endings to receive so much pleasure.
Oh, yes, it’s really incredible. The clitoris is just the tip of the iceberg.
The nerve endings are incredibly vascular there are just all set to go and become engorged. And, I will tell you that you don’t ever want to assume or presume anyone’s feelings. Don’t touch the anus until you are ready to have it touched. But, if you want to know what an orgasm from anal intercourse is like, take the sensation in your clit
and how it feels to be just on the verge of orgasming and you’re feeling incredible with all these sensations, take
that tingly rubbing sensation and elongate it and hollow out the middle and tickle it on the inside. It feels like you’re clit is being fucked, that’s what being fucked in the ass is like. It’s delirious and fabulous. And
you know how when you are being entered and need to breathe and relax the area, then you’re entered and begin to clench
and release and clench and release and because you’ve relaxed around it, it’s mind-blowing.
Anal sex should be pleasurable,
if it’s not it needs to stop. Anal pleasure doesn’t have to include
intercourse. You may never get past a finger or two, but once you can learn to
go there with your partner then you will realize that it is worthwhile sex to have.
The understanding that I’ve learned myself is to have trust in my partner and know that we’re both ready
for it. Anal sex is very intimate. It
may not be time in the relationship for that kind of stuff. It might never get
past a finger. It might never get to a finger.
It might just not be right for you. But, I tend to think, given the right
atmosphere that some kind of mutually anal erotic pleasure can be achieved with any couple that really wants it, plays around,
watches a few movies together and more importantly and difficultly, communicates together.
Having anal sex means sharing their
feelings, their fears, their experiences, judgments, attitudes and shame – it is very, very personal in a way that regular
intercourse just isn’t.
LM: I’m so happy to be able to talk to you about this. It seems that awareness is growing in more people and they want to learn more about themselves as sexual
beings. You are such an important person teaching people to become more aware. So, I’m wondering what you’ve been doing lately. Everyone saw you in the movie, Boogie Nights and thought you stole the show. What else are you up to? I know you had a radio talk show. Do you still do that?
I haven’t done the radio
show for about ten months now, as we were unable to get the program syndicated. That
was something that I like to do. But, Annie Sprinkle is the bomb for going out
there and teaching. And Betty Dodson too, her workshops for Viva La Vulva, etc.
are fantastic (www.bettydodson.com). Thank you for feeling so about me too. I’ve been coming out on camera as a leather player. I
made my debut in an uncredited cameo in a movie, Slit City and then I did a movie, an all-girl Dom movie, called Secret
Obsessions. The only person that I will have sex with on camera for now is
my partner. Any other excursions into fetish play that I do on camera will be
as a dominant. I identify being a switch (playing the role as either the dominant
or submissive). It works better for me that way.
I’ve really been getting into my life as a leather player and it is really expanding my sexuality into a new
area. My eleventh educational tape is out now and soon my twelfth will be released.
LM: I’ve just read the cover stories in the October 2, 2001 issue of the
Village Voice about new legislation being introduced that will limit our Constitutional rights for freedom of speech and expression
because of the terrorist attacks. What do you think about that?
I really don’t think that
will affect the pornography industry. I think it will be very low on the totem
pole. Can you imagine Ashcroft putting time and money into tracking down the
pornography industry when he has more important things to do? I would be surprised
that it will be affected. We’ll see, but I don’t think it will become
an issue.
LM:
Thanks so much Nina!
(Note: I taped this
interview with Nina’s permission from a speakerphone, so not all of her comments are exact quotes, thus the paragraph
form of her responses).
For more information about the How To’s of anal sex and anal
eroticism and other areas of sex and sexuality, please check out the following websites:
The
Society for Human Sexuality
http://www.sexuality.org
Good
Vibrations
http://www.goodvibes.com
If you would like someone to respond to your personal questions about
anal eroticism or other questions regarding sex and sexuality, please go to the following sites:
San
Francisco Sex Information
http://www.sfsi.org (Phone
415-989-SFSI)
