Nina Hartley Is Your Sexual Guru

Nina Hartley has had a lot of sex. At 47, she has been in the porn industry for 22 years and appeared in more than 600 movies. Her on- and offscreen fucking (she’s also been an active swinger) has given her experience and insight beyond what most everyday women could achieve, and lucky for us, she likes to share. (In fact, she has been not only a role model, but a personal friend and mentor to me.)

For nearly two decades, she has used the knowledge gleaned from her unconventional life and career to teach others through her line of sex-instruction videos. The first two, Nina Hartley’s Guide to Better Cunnilingus and Nina Hartley’s Guide to Better Fellatio, were instant hits when they debuted in 1994, and they remain bestsellers today.

The video series, which is distributed by Adam & Eve, has produced 32 titles and sold more than 500,000 copies. She is a one-woman sex-education empire, and she recently expanded her territory with the publication of her first book, Nina Hartley’s Guide to Total Sex.

The book was inspired by and follows many of the topics of her how-to videos; it covers a buffet of activities from masturbation and oral sex to threesomes to dominance and submission. Her distinctive voice—sex-positive, non-judgmental, and encouraging—echoes on each page. While her sense of sexual playfulness and sex-for-sex’s-sake is evident, she manages to also be incredibly political, always discussing issues in a social and cultural context, mindful of the meanings we attach to sex.

In the introduction, Nina writes, “You are entitled to know your sexual self, express your sexual self, and satisfy your sexual self.” They may seem like simple concepts, but I know from my own work that they are profoundly difficult for people to achieve.

Unlike what you might expect from a blond porn star turned author, Nina’s book is not the literary equivalent of a bag of Doritos (tasty, mildly spicy, no nutritional value). Rather, it’s honest, thoughtful, direct, and jam-packed with useful tips. She articulately describes her life as a porn star in an unlikely way: as a personal journey of sexual experimentation, self-discovery, and acceptance.

She refers to it as fieldwork, and one gets the sense that it’s just that: she doesn’t just fuck, she pays attention when she fucks, she’s 100 percent there—and she’s taking notes. She has translated those notes from her remarkable career into a handbook for sexual empowerment. One could assume that so much fucking has made her bored and tired of all things erotic, but it’s quite the opposite.

She’s perpetually enthusiastic to talk about her vocation: ask her a question, and she’ll give you more than a mouthful of an answer: “I want people to understand the importance of developing sexual agency. To understand our own sexual nature and to accept it wholly so that we can express it in a healthy manner. To learn that any one of us can, at any time, choose to become sexually sane, and that it’s incumbent upon us, as adults, to do so.”