Alex Henderson

 

The La Vida Erótica 

CatalystCon: New West Coast Conference Promotes Sexual Awareness 



By Alex Henderson
RealmNoir, July 17, 2012

CatalystCon, a new sexuality conference organized by Dee Dennis of Momentum and Tied Up Events fame, will make its debut at the Long Beach Hilton in Southern California from September 14-16, 2012. And despite being a new event, CatalystCon boasts an impressive array of speakers ranging from adult entertainment heavyweights like Allison Vivas (president of porn company Pink Visual), film director/actor John Stagliano and porn star Jessica Drake to well-known sexperts such as Dr. Marty Klein and author Rachel Kramer Bussel.

Despite the presence of some people who work in the adult entertainment industry, CatalystCon is not an industry-oriented event (unlike the annual AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas or the annual XBIZ conventions in Los Angeles and London). Nor is CatalystCon an academic event. The purpose of CatalystCon, according to Dennis, is to promote a discussion of a variety of sex-related topics in a non-adult industry, non-academic setting—and having done that on the East Coast with the Momentum conference in Washington, DC, Dennis was ready to do the same thing on the West Coast with CatalystCon.

“People kept saying, ‘Bring Momentum to the West Coast. Bring Momentum to the West Coast.’ And I decided that maybe there was a market on the West Coast,” Dennis told SeXXXandPolitics.com. “I thought of Seattle, Portland, L.A. and San Francisco. Seattle, Portland and San Francisco have their sex-positive communities, but I settled on L.A. because L.A. didn’t have anything like Momentum. The porn industry is in L.A., and a lot of the adult novelty manufacturers are based out there. But when it comes to the type of thing I’m doing with Catalyst—which isn’t industry-oriented but isn’t academic either—L.A. doesn’t have anything else like it.” 

Dennis, who lives in the Greater New York City area, added: “Another reason I wanted to do an event on the West Coast is because there are a lot of speakers I wanted who lived out there and couldn’t afford to come east.”

Dennis’ history of bringing sex-related topics to the public goes back to late 2007, when she started a sex blog called Diva’s World. She went on to co-found Tied Up Events in 2009 and Momentum in 2011. The second annual Momentum conference was held in Washington, DC from March 30-April 1, 2012, and one of the participants was Dr. Jocelyn Elders (who served as surgeon general during part of Bill Clinton’s first term as president and was a keynote speaker at that conference).  Susie Bright, Tristan Taormino and other well-known sexperts were present at Momentum 2011.

Having made Momentum a success on the East Coast, Dennis had no problem finding sponsors for CalalystCon. “Basically, CalalystCon is like Momentum on the West Coast with a new name,” Dennis explained. “There are a few changes, but basically, it’s the same type of conference and format.”

A wide variety of topics will be addressed at CalalystCon, ranging from sex toys to BDSM to polyamory to gay rights to sex education. Dr. Marty Klein, a Northern California-based sex therapist/author who First Amendment attorney Lawrence G. Walters has used as an expert witness in court, will be speaking at a session titled “America’s War On Sex and the 2012 Election: Does It Matter Who Wins?” (in 2006, Klein wrote a book titled America’s War on Sex: The Attack on Law, Lust and Liberty).

Dennis noted that she is glad to be holding CatalystCon so close to a  presidential election, especially in light of all the sexual fear-mongering that has been coming from American politicians. Dennis said that whether it is gay-bashing, attacks on contraception, politicians calling for aggressive obscenity prosecutions of porn companies, or Lisa Brown (a Democrat who serves in Michigan’s House of Representatives) being chastised by Republicans for use of the word “vagina,” sexual fear-mongering has been inescapable during this election year.

“Look what is going on with the attacks on birth control and not being able to say the word ‘vagina’ on the House floor in Michigan,” Dennis asserted. “If you’d told me a year ago that we would be having a conversation about access to birth control and not being able to use the word ‘vagina,’ I’d have said ‘No way.’ But we’re having to fight sexual battles that have already been fought, and it’s scary.”

Dennis pointed to the prosecution of CatalystCon speaker John Stagliano as a prime example of how radical American politicians can be when it comes to sexual fear-mongering. In April 2008—back when George W. Bush was still president—Stagliano was indicted on federal obscenity charges by a grand jury in Washington, DC. Bush was more than happy to pander to the Christian Right, and federal obscenity prosecutions were a high priority for his administration. But when the Stagliano case went to trial in 2010, federal judge Richard Leon threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence against Stagliano was “woefully insufficient.” Stagliano, if convicted, could have been facing 30 years in prison.  

“It’s crazy what the government did with John Stagliano,” Dennis commented. “He didn’t go to jail, but it still took years of his life. And whether someone enjoys pornography or not, it’s a question of your right to not face censorship. If that can happen to John Stagliano, it can happen to anyone.”

Dennis continued: “There’s so much hypocrisy around sex. You have politicians speaking against gay people, and they get caught with rent boys. Or look at (former New York Governor) Eliot Spitzer. He was hardcore against prostitution and was for cracking down—and meanwhile, he was spending money on it. He was breaking the law. It’s mind-boggling.”

As Dennis sees is, many of the United States’ sexual problems are aggravated by the fact that so many Americans are afraid to talk about sex—and the philosophy of CatalystCon, she said, is that the more openly sex is discussed, the better off the country will be.

“When you keep sex hidden in the dark, that’s when bad things happen,” Dennis stressed. “But if we can enlighten enough people, then hopefully, we won’t be fighting about contraception or saying the word ‘vagina’ in the future.”

Alex Henderson is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in The L.A. Weekly, AlterNet, Billboard, Spin, XBIZ, Creem, Skin Two, The Pasadena Weekly, JazzTimes, Cash Box and a long list of other well-known publications. He can be followed on Twitter @alexvhenderson.

 



Sex therapist Marty Klein (above) and author Rachel Kramer Bussel (below) are among the speakers scheduled for CatalystCon, a new sexuality conference that debuts in Long Beach, California in September.