Audacia Ray's Blog, page 73

Being a Powerful Advocate: The Rhode Island Case

I've been buried pretty deep in my work over the past week and change and haven't been able to give much brain space to what's happening in Rhode Island, but I just spent some time catching up with the details, plus thinking some of this stuff through with Eliyanna Kaiser - who, to give you a refresher course, shared my title of executive editor at $pread magazine for several years, is a co-founder of Sex Work Awareness, and is my co-creator and co-trainer for the Speak Up media training worksho

Taking the Erotic Out of Sexual Culture (Feministe crosspost)

This is crossposted from my stint as a guestblogger at Feministe. Click on over to read through the 20 + fascinating comments.

I've worked in and around sexuality for the past 8 years of my life, in capacities ranging from researching the history of gay bathhouses in nineteenth century New York to touching stranger's penises for money to editing and producing blogs and video podcasts about sexuality. I've been around the block and then some. This means, among other things, that thinking about sex

Sex Worker Literati Launch: The Importance of Storytelling

There was, of course, plenty of documenting of the inaugural Sex Worker Literati on Thursday. You wouldn't expect anything less from me, right?

The above video is a teaser, with short clips of each of the performers (with the exception of Damien Decker, who didn't want to be on camera). I'll be uploading one video a week, on Tuesdays, until the next reading on September 3rd. You can check out the videos as they go up on Blip, or you can subscribe to the feed on iTunes (or you should be able to s

Akimbo Week of 8/3 (International Women's Health Coalition)

Here's what we've been checking out online this week:

The summer issue of On the Issues magazine is called Our Genders Our Rights, and they've got a really interesting article about sex selective abortion.

At Global Voices Online, Jillian C. York has a great round up of blog posts about the culture clash over the possible banning of burqas in France.

On Unheard Voice, Delwar Hussain has an interesting post about queer identities in Bangladesh called Gay, straight or MSM?

On Feministe, I wrapped up

Sex Worker Literati Debuts Tomorrow!

Sex Worker Literati, the new free monthly reading series that I'm co-hosting with David Henry Sterry (who is rumored to be baking brownies for the occasion) kicks off tomorrow night at Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Eldridge and Forsyth, at 8 pm. If you're in NYC, you should be there, because it is going to be awesome.

The inaugural reading features five performers from all corners of the sex business. Blues diva and pinup girl Candye Kane, Times Square wild girl Jodi Sh. Doff, and Scan

Sex In Europe (a preview)

So I've got this blog post in my drafts that's called Sex in Europe. It's a more in depth post about my trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, and some thoughts about how sexuality and visual culture (yes, that's porn and stuff) combine and clash in different ways in Europe vs the United States. Uh, the post isn't up yet, and I've been back in NYC for two weeks. Such is the shape of my life these days.

But I thought I'd give a preview of the good stuff. No reason to keep this to myself.

First, this:

j'fa

Taking My Activism To the Next Level (or OMG, I still don't know what I'm doing!)

This thing has been happening recently, in which I've been realizing that I'm in this leadership role in my communities. I know this is probably not news to most of you. But it's sort of news to me. It's taken me a while to accept that role, and I'm not sure I'm quite flourishing in it yet. Growing pains and what have you.

The big thing that I've learned since starting my job at the International Women's Health Coalition last fall is that, really, I don't know a whole lot. It's said that that kn

2010 Sex Blogger Calender: A Tease

So far we've been hitting our fundraising goals with the 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar, which means that Sex Work Awareness is starting to plan our 2010 Speak Up(s?), media training for sex workers. We're definitely planning to do one next spring in NYC - it will last a whole weekend instead of just one day. We may travel too, or we may launch another project or two that we've been kicking around.

But, in the meantime there is the Sex Blogger Calendar, which is being produced by Tess and Diva. This

7 Key American Sex Worker Activist Projects

This week and next I am guest-blogging at Feministe. This post is cross-posted from there. So far I've written two other posts as well: Troubled Waters: Women on Waves Faces Many Challenges and The Urge to Help: International Feminisms and Advocacy.

A few weeks ago I gave a talk about with this title at an event called Interesting Amsterdam, and I thought it would be worth reproducing the bullet points and some examples here. The sex industry is big and weird and varied, and there are a lot of

Wood and Tin: Celebrating 5 Years of Blogging, 10 Years in NYC

Self portrait in bed, September 2004

Today is the 5th anniversary of Waking Vixen. At the end of August I will celebrate 10 years in New York. These are the two biggest, most defining things in my life. Without blogging and being in NYC, I really don't know what my life would look like now.

I'm not even going to try and sum up the past 5 and 10 years of these two life-defining experiences. Instead, a walk down memory lane, in pictures!

Let's start out with blog design nostalgia time, and then, get