Audacia Ray's Blog, page 59

Lenny Waller talks to Efrain Gonzalez about the BDSM club scene...

Lenny Waller talks to Efrain Gonzalez about the BDSM club scene in NYC in the 1980s. Glad that Efrain captured this.

New Yorkers Use Interesting Words When Dating Online: Gothamist

New Yorkers Use Interesting Words When Dating Online: Gothamist:

Interesting map of neighborhoods with words that frequently appear in online dating profiles.

The main word for my neighborhood is "mythology." 

Another one that caught my eye is in Park Slope: one of the often-appearing words is "roses," aka "cash." OMG, sex work is all up in your personal ads!

You know how we talk about the start of the American sex worker...

You know how we talk about the start of the American sex worker rights movement being in the 1970s? Well, sex workers were getting pissed off and doing something about how we're treated long before then.

Episode 39 of the Red Umbrella Diaries podcast features Melissa Ditmore telling a story about the prostitutes' strike in Hawaii in the 1940s. This piece was recorded during the International Sex Worker Rights Day event on March 3, 2011.

Melissa Ditmore has written and edited three books and numerous reports about sex work. For more about the history of sex work, check out her most recent book, Prostitution and Sex Work.

On Thursday, April 7th from 8 to 10 pm at Happy Ending in...

On Thursday, April 7th from 8 to 10 pm at Happy Ending in New York's Lower East side (302 Broome Street between Eldridge and Forsyth), our bevy of Red Umbrella Diaries performers will get a chance to tell you all about the cycles of sex work: the Boom, and the Bust. Our headline performer, Zawadi Nyong'o, will read selections from When I Dare To Be Powerful, a collection of African Sex Worker Oral Herstories. Other featured story tellers include Ashly Lorenzana, who will read from her memoir about drug addiction and sex work, lesbian porn director Jincey
Lumpkin, Esq., and aspiring cook book writer Cayenne Doroshow. 15% of the bar tab will go towards the Speak Up! media training for sex workers, which will be held this weekend.

The Red Umbrella Diaries is a monthly storytelling series I host, where people who've tangled with the sex industry tell personal stories about the complications that arise when you mix sex and money. In addition to the live events in New York, the Red Umbrella Project includes a weekly podcast featuring stories from the live events as well as storytelling and media training for sex workers.

"We explore this phenomenon in Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World (just released by the..."

"We explore this phenomenon in Brand Aid: Shopping Well to Save the World (just released by the University of Minnesota Press). In the book, we examine what happens when aid celebrities unite with branded products and a cause. The resulting combination—what we call "Brand Aid"—is aid to brands because it helps sell products and builds the ethical profile of a brand. It is also a re-branding of aid as efficient and innovative, based on "commerce, not philanthropy." In the case study of Product (RED), a co-branding initiative launched in 2006 by Bono, we show how celebrities are trusted to guarantee that products are "good." Iconic brands such as Apple, Emporio Armani, Starbucks and Hallmark donate a proportion of profits from the sale of RED products to The Global Fund to finance HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa. In essence, aid celebrities are asking consumers to "do good" by buying iconic brands to help "distant others" —Africans affected by AIDS. This is very different from "helping Africa" by buying products actually made by Africans, in Africa, or by choosing products that claim to have been made under better social, labour and environmental conditions of production."

- Are celebrities good for development aid?

At SFO, with my plastic fork, on account of the risk of...

At SFO, with my plastic fork, on account of the risk of terrorism by butter knife.

"I can't believe it lasted this long," said "US Ambassador to the UN" Susan Rice, laughing, "Who..."

""I can't believe it lasted this long," said "US Ambassador to the UN" Susan Rice, laughing, "Who would really believe that there is this magical agency that would, like, be responsible for solving all the problems in the whole world? That nobody else can solve? Or even wants to?"

…

Ban [Ki Moon], who in real life is a much-loved writer for 30 Rock, also bet "UNCTAD Secretary-General" Supachai Panitchpakdi three shots of Glenlivet that he would never get more than 15 crisscrossing arrows into one UN diagram. He lost the bet."

-

UN Revealed to be Gigantic 66-year-old Hoax

Well played, UN policy wonks, well played.

Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the...

Queer (In)justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States  

by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, Kay Whitlock

This is, as far as I'm concerned, a must read.

It's a 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 writing is very concrete, with lots of stories and evidence to back up the authors' critiques. Really sharply written and thoroughly researched, and its obvious that the authors are activists who are working on these issues and interacting with queer communities directly, not studying them from afar.

The reason I'm only giving it four stars instead of five, however, is that there wasn't enough attention paid to the ways in which the, uh, gaystream has played a role in denying rights to criminalized people, especially trans women, people who do sex work, and immigrants. Although they touch on this a bit in the last chapter when comparing responses to the Matthew Shepard murder to responses to the Duanna Johnson beating and murder, it's a missed opportunity. The Duanna Johnson didn't get the kind of attention the Matthew Shepard case did not just because they media glommed onto the Shepard story, but also because LGB rights groups did not make enough noise about the Johnson case. 

I'll leave you with this quote, an important thing to chew on:

Yet as LGBT movements have institutionalized, visions of queer liberation have been tamed into a narrow rhetoric of equality within existing systems rahter than challenges to the systemic violence and oppression they produce. … Ruthann Robinson puts it bluntly: "LGBT rights" agendas are premised on an understanding that "distance from criminality is a necessary condition of equality."

My interview with Susie Bright!

My interview with Susie Bright!:

I'm bummed that I wasn't able to be at either of Susie's readings this week, but I'm really looking forward to reading her book. 

rkb:

I interviewed Big Sex Little Death author Susie Bright for SexIs Magazine (didn't write the headline though) - please check it out and if you like it, pass it on, and do check out her book and book tour, happening now - Sunday's closing Momentumcon event with Susie Bright and Tristan Taormino in Silver Spring, MD is now open to the public! If this link gives you problems, just go to sexismagazine.com.

The vitriol you faced seemed, at first, more unexpected than some of the opposition you got as a socialist organizer and like it took you by surprise. Was it more painful to face that kind of hostility from women you'd expected to be on your side?

I had never had a reasonable expectation that the monied, court-side feminist establishment would be on my side. Since when, historically, has there ever been any illusions about peace, love, and harmony in feminist movement? As a group, we've been fighting about "free love" since DAY ONE.

But, yes, it was still shocking to be the target of their infantry's violence. The sex war scene was all very "Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," where the charismatic professor gins her "special girls" up into a frenzy to go off and join Mussolini.

I wouldn't compare it as being worse or less than what I faced in the labor movement, or as a red. There were too many guns, knives, heavy objects and red-faced freakouts all the way around. I remember well the psycho in Kentucky who pulled up in his car as I handed out a flyer about frickin "maternity leave contract issues"?so wholesome!?in front of an auto plant employee parking lot. He pulled up close, lowered the window, and I drew near, 'cause he had a big grin in his face. When I was right up next to him, he drew a pistol, stuck it in my stomach, and said, "Get your nigger-loving communist ass off this lot."

Different style than the bomb-making, knife-wielding women's studies students. Everybody's got their personal nut on.

Read the whole thing

Faith

Earlier today I wrote a stressed out, tired thing about feeling suffocated by my commitments and overwhelmed by work. I still feel that way.

But tonight I have been digging in deep to the presentation I'm doing at the SWOP retreat on Saturday afternoon. Right. This is why I do what I do. I'm going to spread around my knowledge about dealing with the media, and it will help sex worker activists be stronger and more effective. And that's worth giving up sleep and relaxation for.