Audacia Ray's Blog, page 38

The Johns (an excerpt)

For John - I bend the rules. Again: he isn't my john, though he is a john. "Our relationship" evolved into this thing in the room between us through lunchtime hookups in hourly hotels with no comforters on the beds; a practical measure that is so symbolic as to be absurd. Our relationship is fluid, which sounds nice but in practice means that it conforms to the containers it is put in, like in middle school science when you're learning about the different kinds of matter. We could shape these flasks and beakers ourselves, being creative and theoretically freethinking people. However, our containers are the shape of hooker and john, slightly remixed to look like a relationship.

And though I have lots of rules that protect me from the lurking harms and humiliations a sex worker can be subjected to by johns as a matter of course, I throw these rules out for John and others like him who aren't paying me for my time.

We misbehave, and we misbehave at each other. I let him do things to me that I would never let a john do. And I don't even mean anal. I mean the real messy stuff: no call, no show. Share me with friends. Snort coke off my toes. And in turn, I'm a lazy lover. I'm frequently not in the mood. Sometimes I fake it, and, worse yet, sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm faking it or not.

Some sex workers say that their johns made them hate men, but I like my johns a lot more than I like other men. My johns don't ever disrespect me the way John does. Or rather, they do, and I don't hesitate to show them the door, while in my so-called romantic life, the fluidity of our arrangement means that I can't get a handle on anything.

I'm reading the full piece, which was published in the anthology Coming & Crying, tonight at Titillating Tongues: NYC Erotica in Poetry & Prose, which is sort of funny because there's nothing that's "erotic" about this piece of writing.

When is the job application due?

No deadline but we're probably starting to interview folks in about a week. So if you're going to apply send your stuff in ASAP!

Hi there, followers (and welcome new folks coming from Sex...

Hi there, followers (and welcome new folks coming from Sex Worker Problems!).

I was an editor at $pread (many issues pictured above!), a magazine by and for sex workers, for several years. The magazine recently ceased publication and I inherited hundreds of back issues. I would like to get those back issues into the hands of sex workers (especially!) and other folks who will love and appreciate them.

If you can provide a home for a stack of mags or get them into the hands of sex workers who you work with or otherwise have contact with, I am happy to send you a box of assorted issues (note: not a complete set) for the price of shipping. It's $10.95 for a box of 30, $14.95 for a box of 40. Message me for further details on how to make this happen. If you want mags but now isn't a good time, I'll re-post about this periodically. I have a lot of magazines in my apartment.

EDIT: I'm happy to ship internationally but the shipping costs above only apply to the US! International shipping costs more, depending on where you are.

Persephone Pioneers: Audacia Ray

Persephone Pioneers: Audacia Ray:

persephonemag:

From the article:

Audacia Ray is a woman I've admired from afar for a few years now. The writer, activist, and sex worker rights advocate first caught my attention with her top-notch book, Naked On The Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration, which explored women using the internet as a sexual space. I finally worked up the courage to speak to her, as well as attend her monthly storytelling series, The Red Umbrella Diaries, where "people who've tangled with the sex industry tell personal stories about the complications that arise when you mix sex and money." A former editor at $pread Magazine, as well as the program officer at the International Women's Health Coalition, Audacia now runs the Red Umbrella Project, aiming to make the voices of current and former sex workers heard. It's a humbling privilege to have been able to interview her. Persephone Magazine, please welcome Audacia Ray.

Read more at Persephone Magazine.

There's some stuff I said in this that I'm really proud of.

"The United States has just five per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of its..."

"The United States has just five per cent of the world's population, 25 per cent of its incarcerated people, and 50 per cent of its lawyers."

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Legal industrial complex?

Conrad Black: Prosecutors Gone Wild: How Many Wrongful Convictions Will the Public Stand For?

"Finding Fernanda is a true-crime page-turner about two mothers—Betsy Emanuel, an American, and..."

"Finding Fernanda is a true-crime page-turner about two mothers—Betsy Emanuel, an American, and Mildred Alvarado, a Guatemalan—accidentally united by a horrible adoption kidnapping. First-time author Erin Siegal uses the moving story to deliver investigative reportage at its finest, examining in tremendous detail exactly what happened to Betsy, to Mildred, and to the daughter that both of them lost. In doing so, Siegal writes the definitive book on the Guatemalan international adoption system's endemic difficulties. In documenting exactly how Mildred Alvarado's two youngest children were stolen, and by tracing Alvarado's desperate search to regain them, Siegal exposes how Guatemalan crime rings and official corruption enabled children to cross borders and change identities without their families' permission. And by showing how hard it was for Betsy Emanuel to find out what went wrong when she adopted Alvarado's children, and how impossible it was for Florida to shut down Emanuel's U.S. adoption agency, Celebrating Children—notorious for its involvement in suspect adoptions, and which Siegal definitively links to the Alvarado kidnapping—Siegal reveals the tremendous gaps in U.S. laws and regulations on international adoption.

….

Siegal can indeed tell a story, powerfully so. Finding Fernanda is an astonishing book, essential reading for anyone interested in Guatemala or in the ways international adoption can go wrong. She delivers clear, unsentimental, moving portraits of her real-life "characters.""

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International Adoption or Child Trafficking?

File under: former $preadster wrote an amazing book!

(January 5: $pread Magazine reading at Red Umbrella...

(January 5: $pread Magazine reading at Red Umbrella Diaries)

Join $pread magazine contributors, editors, readers, and fans to celebrate the five year run of this sex worker produced, all-volunteer, quarterly magazine. Though $pread is sadly shutting down, we are going out with a bang. Get copies of the gorgeous final issue of the magazine, which explores race and the sex industry, and hear contributors Violet Stonefish and Andrea Ritchie read their pieces from the issue. We'll also be joined by$pread editors and contributors who will read from the magazine and share stories about the project.

Hosted by Audacia Ray
Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City
Doors at 7 pm, event from 8-10
21 and up – FREE

The Red Umbrella Project (RedUP) has roots in $pread magazine – RedUP's founder, Audacia Ray, was a $pread editor from 2005 – 2008, and her involvement with the magazine laid the foundation for the work around media, advocacy, and personal storytelling that RedUP now does.

Best Books I Read in 2011

I *could* do an "everything sucks" wrap up for 2011, but instead of that, I'm going to tell you about the best books I read. I read 77 books in 2011, here's the full list. For the first time since probably high school, I'm tending toward reading fiction (and my first book purchases for 2012 are fiction, too). Here's to rampant bookwormism!

Here are my faves:

Fiction

The Call, by Yannick Murphy. Ridiculously beautiful book about a rural veterinarian, animals, love, death, family, and spaceships.

Rain Village, by Carolyn Turgeon. A re-read, as amazing the second time around. A girl, a library, the trapeze, running away with the circus.

Once Upon a River, by Bonnie Jo Campbell. After being deserted, raped, and then orphaned, a girl lives on the Stark River in Michigan.

The Blue Orchard, by Jackson Taylor. Story of a white woman in rural Pennsylvania who becomes a nurse for a black abortion doctor. Based on the life of the author's grandmother.

Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie. Beautiful story of two generations of interconnected families and three wars.

Non-Fiction

Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, by Kay Whitlock, Andrea Ritchie, Joey Mogul. Sharp analysis of the criminalization of sexual diversity and gender variance, and centers the experiences of people of color, people living in poverty, immigrants, and trans women and men.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. A real contribution to cultural understanding of the ugly history of ethics & science, particularly through the lens of race and class.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. Well-crafted narrative that illuminates a fascinating piece of American history.

Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade, by Justin Spring. Totally engrossing, a really interesting portrait of not just Samuel Steward, but the lives of gay men, tattoo artists, and writers in United States during the middle of the 20th century.

Memoir

Half a Life, by Darin Strauss. In which the author ruminates on the fact that he was involved in an accident which killed a girl on a bike when he was a senior in high school.

Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch. So much more than a survivor memoir. Gorgeously written.

Paying for It, by Chester Brown. A client's perspective on the sex industry, in graphic novel format.

"After looking at many storytelling websites, I decided to share the resources I'd amassed, and..."

"After looking at many storytelling websites, I decided to share the resources I'd amassed, and develop a toolkit that artists, oral historians, and cultural documentarians could use. Why? Because after crystallizing my vague sense that "stories are important" in the glass that holds my social-change activist spirit, and placing it under the burner of a final paper, the resulting alchemical mix was too exciting to keep to myself. May all your stories be lexical, hypertextual, and rhetorical."

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Storytelling || ITP Core 1 Final Project

Really just posting this for my own memory and future perusal, but thought I'd share!

"IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote "not guilty" — even if you..."

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IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote "not guilty" — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.

The information I have just provided — about a constitutional doctrine called "jury nullification" — is absolutely true. But if federal prosecutors in New York get their way, telling the truth to potential jurors could result in a six-month prison sentence.

"

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Jurors Can Say No - NYTimes.com

Great op ed on juror nullification by Paul Butler. I also very much recommend his book Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.