Audacia Ray's Blog, page 68

Blog Carnival: Coworkers and Co-conspirators

Welcome to the first Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival! I haven't decided yet which one I'll read, but I'm going to perform and record one of the following stories at the July 1st event.

Stay tuned for the line-up of the the live Coworkers and Co-conspirators event happening in NYC on July 1!

The relationship between the busboy and dancers is ridiculous. The dancers make way more money than the busboy, who happens to be an undocumented immigrant. They send him out for smokes and dinners...

Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival Call for Posts: Coworkers and Co-conspirators

Behold, new project roll out number one!

Since I started doing the Sex Worker Literati events a year ago, lots of people have been bummed out that they aren't in NYC and able to attend. And now I have an answer. The Red Umbrella Diaries Blog Carnival is a way for sex workers and their allies to participate in the Red Umbrella Diaries from afar. Every month, I'll do a carnival of pieces of writing on the upcoming event's theme.

For the next event, which takes place on July 1, the theme is...

Picking Your Battles, Going the Distance: Pro-porn and Anti-porn Feminisms

There's an annual conference happening in Massachusetts this coming weekend called Stop Porn Culture – the aim of the meeting is in the name. The conference is organized by notorious anti-porn feminists and women's studies professors Gail Dines and Donna Hughes (there's plenty about them online, google to find it because I don't want to link to them). Violet Blue has rallied the pro-porn troupes to speak out against the conference with a website, video, and contest: check out her Our Porn...

Sex Worker Culture: NYC and Vegas

It's amazing and inspiring to me that there is so much sex worker culture being produced. Three things below: the last Sex Worker Literati before I start doing my solo-hosted Red Umbrella Diaries is tomorrow, the Sex Worker Cabaret extravanganza happening this Sunday evening at the Slipper Room in NYC, and a call for Kickstarter funding for a performance art project happening during the Desiree Alliance conference next month in Las Vegas.

Hosted by Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry
Happy...

The Red Umbrella Diaries (change is coming to Sex Worker Literati)

In the just under one year that I have been co-hosting Sex Worker Literati at Happy Ending Lounge, we've had some amazing experiences (many of which are captured on video here). Since August 2009, we have featured more than 50 sex workers from around the country – and even some international guests – who have read, monologued, performed, and shimmied their ways into our hearts, minds, and naughty bits. We've also built a fundraising component into the evening, donating a percentage of the b...

In The Interest of "Equality," Malawian Woman's Identity Is Erased

This post originally appeared on the International Women's Health Coalition blog, Akimbo.

With the ongoing interest in Uganda's state-sponsored homophobia and a bill in the country that would make homosexual acts punishable by death, there's been more press than usual about sexuality throughout the African continent. Uganda has been getting most of the ink, but the fact remains that 37 countries in Africa have a variety of laws against homosexuality.

Early this week a story broke about a "gay m...

Uncommon exhibitionism (aka, a few new pics of me)

For a good chunk of my life, especially the formative years of working in the sex industry, I related to the world and to how I'm perceived in the world through pictures of me. There's a lot of venn diagramming of being a "public woman" and sex work and having a proliferation of images of oneself out in the world. From 2004-2006 I did multiple photo shoots a month in various stages of undress. Back when I debuted the Official Waking Vixen logo with the curvy wings of the W, most of my...

Sex Worker Literati Stories on Video

I've been putting in some time editing videos from my Sex Worker Literati reading series. There's a lot of backlog. Even simple videos take a lot of time to process. Complaints aside, I think it's really important to have these stories accessible to people beyond the folks that are in the room during the events. You can check out our episode archives for the thirty plus videos, or you can subscribe to the show via iTunes or Miro. I've got an announcement to make about the series that's...

Sex Worker Literati on May 6: Embarrassing Things I've Done For Money

Hosted by Audacia Ray and David Henry Sterry

Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, in New York City

Thursday, May 6. Doors open at 7 pm, reading from 8-10

Stick around after the reading to dance and party with hos, hookers, and ne'er do wells!

21 and up – FREE

15% of the bar goes to support Adult Industry Medical Health Foundation

Our readers this month:

Candida Royalle began her long and colorful career in sex work as a porn star before pioneering the genre of...

Sex Worker Storytelling, Activism, and Dominant Narratives

Over the past few months, I've been working really hard and not taking the time to write about it here (or anywhere else for that matter). The days when I structured my time around writing and thinking and pondering what was going on with me appear to have become a thing of the past (oh navel gazing, how I miss you… kind of).

A lot of my personal storytelling on the internet (er, I mean, blogging) has been about finding myself – not just finding but also locating myself in the greater context ...