LOS ANGELES — Grooby's longtime Marketing and Creative Director Kristel Penn will be the featured speaker Thursday at University of California, Santa Barbara, as a guest of professor Constance Penley for her course, "Teaching Porn in a Pandemic 2.0."
“My students and I are delighted that Kristel has accepted our invitation to visit my UC Santa Barbara class on Pornographic Cultures, now retitled as ‘Teaching Porn in a Pandemic 2.0,’” Penley said. “Over its 28 years, the course has featured an extraordinary range of creatives and other experts from the adult industry. As the creative and editorial director of Grooby, an activist, humanitarian and entrepreneur, Kristel will generously share her knowledge gained as an industry pioneer in trans erotica and as a prominent advocate for visibility and empowerment through sex-positivity.”
“The students especially want to hear from Kristel about her work on de-stigmatizing the industry and porn consumption,” the professor added. “They also want to learn more about her commitment to creating sex-worker affirming mental health services for the adult industry. My students feel they have much to learn from the adult industry about unashamedly realizing their desires for creative freedom and political expression. None could speak to those desires better than Kristel.”
Penn won the 2021 XBIZ Exec Award for “Community Figure of the Year” in January, and recently spoke to XBIZ about The Sad But Rad Club, an initiative she created to empower and advocate for her community, particularly in regards to mental health and wellness.
“This has been a longtime professional dream of mine to speak in Professor Penley’s class,” noted Penn. “I sincerely admire the work Professor Penley does to elevate the discussion of sex work and the adult industry in a way that holds the complexities of our community. Professor Penley’s class gives the outside world a really valuable opportunity to learn about an industry that is often villainized and oversimplified in mainstream media."
"I’m honored by the opportunity to speak to the UCSB students about my career at Grooby," Penn said, "and how it has given me a unique platform to speak on topics that are personally important to me, such as de-stigmatizing porn and its consumption, LGBTQ representation and changing the narrative of mental health and wellness."
Constance Penley is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at UC Santa Barbara, and co-edited “The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure” with Tristan Taormino, Mirelle Miller-Young and Celine Parreñas Shimizu.
Follow Kristel Penn on Twitter.
