Tristan Taormino (born May 9, 1971) is an American feminist author, sex educator, and pornographic film director.

On her mother's side of the family, Taormino is a descendant of William Pynchon, an early English-American settler.

Taormino attended Sayville High School on Long Island and was salutatorian of her graduating class.

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Wesleyan University in 1993.

Taormino has lectured at many colleges and universities, where she speaks on gay and lesbian issues, sexuality and gender, and feminism.

[16][17] She has appeared as an expert on sex, relationships, feminism, pornography, non-monogamy, and LGBT issues on Melissa Harris-Perry, Joy Behar: Say Anything,[18] HBO's Real Sex, The Howard Stern Show, Ricki Lake, MTV, and other television shows.

[19] Taormino worked with Spike Lee as a script consultant and with the cast on the set of his 2004 movie She Hate Me.

Subsequently, she directed Tristan Taormino's House of Ass for Adam & Eve, which shows a number of "porn stars" (from famous to unknown) interacting without a script.

In 2006, she directed Tristan Taormino's Chemistry,[22] which is the first in a series of full-length "behind the scenes" movies for Vivid Entertainment where the performers choose who they have sex with, what they do, where and when.

[24] Rebecca Whisnant argues that Taormino work's represents a profit-based ‘‘feminist porn’’ within the mainstream pornography industry based upon thin conceptions of feminism and sexual ethics.