Violet Blue is an American journalist, author, editor, advisor, and sex educator whose byline has long sat at the intersection of fetish literacy, oral-sex technique, porn criticism, and digital privacy. She wrote a weekly sex column for the San Francisco Chronicle until 2010. Her podcast Open Source Sex mixes erotic readings with frank talk on fetishes, oral sex, and couple exploration. For kink-curious and sex-positive readers she is a practical public intellectual: how-to books with ISBN lists, erotica anthologies, and a public record of fights over name, platform, and reputation.
Recognition and the Name Itself
In January 2007 Forbes named her one of The Web Celeb 25. In 2013 the San Francisco Weekly named her Best Sex Educator. Violet Blue is the author’s legal name. She has stated online that it is the name on her passport, Social Security card, and all ID—not a stage invention invented for column branding. On 19 August 2011 her Google+ account was suspended for failing Google+’s real-name policy; the suspension was reversed three days later. That episode is a small chapter in a larger career theme: who gets to own a sex-positive public identity online, and who gets to police it.
Trademark Fight with Adult Performer “Violet Blue”
In October 2007 Blue sued adult actress Ada Mae Johnson, who had performed as “Violet Blue” since 2000. Blue alleged that Johnson had adopted her persona and her recently trademarked (2007) name “Violet Blue,” which she said she had used in writing since 1999. Claims included trademark violation and dilution plus unfair business practices. Under a 2007 preliminary injunction and court order to stop using names, trademarks, and internet domains confusingly similar or identical to the trademark VIOLET BLUE, Johnson changed her stage name to Noname Jane. The suit settled in October 2008. For adult-industry and kink-media readers the case is a reminder that erotic brand names are property as well as persona—and that two people in sex work and sex writing can collide hard over the same three syllables.
Restraining Orders and Boing Boing
In July 2008 Blue sought restraining orders against online critics David Burch (also known as Ben Burch) and Nina Alter, seeking to stop them from emailing her, editing her Wikipedia page, or writing unkindly about her online. Both motions were dismissed, though she retained the right to file again. Around June 2008 she wrote on her blog that Boing Boing had removed every post referring to her—estimated by a Los Angeles Times blogger at at least seventy items. Boing Boing answered that “Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her,” framing the purge as an editorial choice. Editor Xeni Jardin said she hoped she would not have to make the reasons public. The deletion fight became a lasting case study in how sex-positive women writers and tech-culture blogs can break publicly without a clean public record of the underlying dispute.
vb.ly and the Sex-Positive Shortener
In August 2009 Blue and Ben Metcalfe launched vb.ly, marketed as “the Internet’s first and only sex-positive URL shortener,” on Libya’s .ly top-level domain. The homepage showed Blue holding a beer bottle. In October 2010 Libya Telecom & Technology shut the service after a letter calling the imagery contrary to Sharia principles and not “decent or family friendly.” Metcalfe pushed back that the site did not host porn and that a registry should not regulate website content by policing the domain. The episode is pure kink-and-tech culture history: a sex-positive infrastructure experiment killed by morality politics at the DNS layer.
Books Authored: Technique, Toys, Fetish, Privacy
Blue’s solo and co-authored how-to shelf is dense and deliberately practical. Core Cleis Press titles include The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus and The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio (2002 first editions; 2010 second editions with ISBNs 1-57344-387-5 and 1-57344-398-0), The Ultimate Guide to Adult Videos (2003, 1-57344-172-4), The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasy (2004, 1-57344-190-2), The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn (2006, 1-57344-247-X; IPPY Bronze for erotica), The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys (2006, 1-57344-254-2), Fetish Sex: An Erotic Guide for Couples with Thomas Roche (Daedalus, 2006, 1-881943-23-2), The Smart Girl’s Guide to the G-Spot (2007, 1-57344-273-9), and The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Strap-On Sex (2007, 1-57344-278-X). Later work shifts toward digital autonomy and memoir: The Smart Girls Guide to Privacy (Digita, 2014, 0-9799019-9-5), self-published How to Be a Digital Revolutionary (2017, 978-1-52133-828-5), and A Fish Has No Word For Water: A Punk Homeless San Francisco Memoir (Digita, 2023, 978-0-9862266-7-0). For couples who want strap-ons, G-spot maps, porn literacy, or fetish negotiation without shame, her Cleis era remains a bookshelf staple on this site’s map of sex education that treats kink as skill, not pathology. The privacy and revolutionary titles mark a second career phase: surviving the open web as a sexual public figure.
Edited Anthologies and Digital Releases
As editor she built a long run of couple- and women-centered erotica and yearbooks for Cleis Press: Sweet Life: Erotic Fantasies for Couples (2001) and Sweet Life 2 (2003), Taboo: Forbidden Fantasies for Couples (2004), Best Sex Writing 2005, then a multi-year Best Women’s Erotica run (2006–2011), including the IPPY-winning 2006 volume and the IPPY Gold 2007 volume, plus Lust: Erotic Fantasies for Women, Lips Like Sugar, and Girls on Top: Explicit Erotica for Women (2009). Digita Publications issued audio and ebook titles such as Sweet Heat (2008 audiobook), Erotic Role Play: A Guide For Couples (2007), How To Kiss (2007, including Kindle), The Modern Safer Sex Guide (2007), Creatures of the Night (2007 erotica), and Pleasure Zone Basics (2007 audiobook). The editorial through-line is consistent: fantasy as usable script, safer sex as non-negotiable, erotic role play as couple skill, and women’s erotic voice as market force rather than niche afterthought. For BDSM-curious readers the role-play and fetish couple guides are the bridge from “vanilla improvement” shelves into negotiated power exchange without requiring a full dungeon education first.
Why She Matters for Fetish and BDSM Readers
Blue is not a dungeon-scene leather titleholder; she is a sex-positive media figure who put oral technique, strap-on play, couple fetish guides, and porn criticism into mass-market nonfiction while fighting trademark, platform, and reputation wars in public. Open Source Sex, the Chronicle column years, the Cleis shelf, and the privacy books form a continuum: pleasure literacy plus digital self-defense. Read her when you want concrete how-to language about going down, pegging, toys, or fantasy enactment. Remember the Johnson trademark case when stage names collide. Remember vb.ly when domain politics erase sex-positive tools. File her with educators and writers who treat SM-adjacent and fetish curiosity as adult competence—messy internet history included—rather than as a dirty secret that never gets an ISBN.
