Audacia Ray

I am easily wooed into the gimme gimme now now world of Web 2.0. As such, my usual internet haunts include my blog Waking Vixen (which celebrates its 5th birthday in 2009); Twitter, where naturally I am @audaciaray; and the loathesome Facebook.

I’ve been busy and will give you a run down in just a sec – first though, a few events that if you’re in NYC you’ll be excited about but might be mad about if you don’t live nearby.

First up, a panel I’m part of on Tuesday, April 14 at Brooklyn Law School entitled, Porn, the 1st Amendment and the State of Obscenity Law in an Online Society.

The Internet has changed the face of pornography by allowing for unprecedented participation in the creation of explicit media. In addition, the internet has provided means for Web proprietors to promote sex-oriented services that have enabled people with HIV, minorities, and others to connect and explore their sexuality in a way that was once impossible. Within this framework, speakers will explore the current obscenity law, and its chilling effects on this new discourse.

And the details:

Brooklyn Law School
250 Joralemon Street
Student Lounge
Brooklyn, New York 11201
From 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Speaker(s): Featuring Prof. Derek Bambauer (BLS), Prof. Elizabeth Glazer (Hofstra) and activist and former sex worker Audacia Ray.

This weekend I’m teaching a full day workshop called Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker to a small group of sex workers here in New York. The workshop is being planned by Sex Work Awareness, the small non-profit that I co-founded last year. Speak up is made possible by a fundraiser we did last fall – the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar: http://sexbloggercalendar.wordpress.com. I’m pretty proud of the work we’ve done to make this media training happen, and we’ll be turning out 10 women thoroughly prepared to do activist battle, media-assault style. To celebrate, we’re having a bit of a cocktail hour after the conclusion of the workshop – and though the workshop is open to participants only, the cocktail hour is open to all. Come gawk at super-smart hookers, strippers, dommes, and porn stars – or just buy us drinks. We’ll be at XES, 157 West 24th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, starting at 5.30 pm on Saturday, April 18.

In other news, I’ll be attending Sex 2.0 for the second year – this time around it will be in DC on Saturday, May 9. I’m leading two sessions, “Revisiting Naked on the Internet” (my book is turning 2!) and the other is “Sex Work 2.0 in the Time of Obama” More info here: http://www.wakingvixen.com/blog/2009/04/09/sex-20-in-dc-may-9th/

Other big changes in my life:
I’m working in the non-profit world as an online strategist at the International Women’s Health Coalition, where among other things I’m running a blog called Akimbo at http://blog.iwhc.org, plus making videos about sexual health and rights: http://youtube.com/intlwomenshealth. I’ll also be doing my third semester as an Adjunct Professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University this summer (see, I told you I’d gone legit).

I’ve got lots of other stuff up my sleeves, which hopefully I’ll remember to tell you about. Feel free to look me up around these here Internets in the meantime!

xo
Dacia
Audacia Ray
Waking Vixen, Personal Projects and Blog: http://wakingvixen.com
International Women’s Health Coalition: http://iwhc.org
IWHC Blog, Akimbo: http://blog.iwhc.org
Sex Work 101: http://sexwork101.com
Speak Up! media training: http://speakup.sexworkawareness.org

Under the leadership and guidance of the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, an international Buddhist community and monastery was established on the 488 acre site. The City of Ten Thousand Buddhas as it is known today, is one of the first Chinese Zen Buddhist temples in the United States, and one of the largest Buddhist communities in the Western Hemisphere.

Into this pious realm, steps our heroes… Amara and Shyena, two westerners, lifelong students of eastern philosophy and yet advocates of the sensual life – ready to undertake a 7-day retreat, meditating and celebrating Guan Shi Yin, the Goddess/God who helps us cultivate compassion.

“I never imagined I would visit a Buddhist monastery, and to tell the truth, I often felt something too complex or grand in all of it for me,” Amara explains. “It took hearing Guan Yin’s name to lure me into the Dharma Realm, and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, after which, perhaps, nothing will ever be quite the same.”

Read all about her life-changing adventure in “How Lucky We Are… About the Guan Yin Retreat.”

Monks at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

It turns out that Amara has more secrets to reveal and what better place than at a Buddhist Monastery that was once an insane asylum to come back to one’s senses.

“Returning to our room after an entire day of recitation I am dying for a cigarette,” she reveals. “Of course there is no smoking permitted within the place, so I must go outside to sneak one. This is day one of seven. I’m thinking, God, this is awful. Ridiculous! I can’t do this here.”

Find out how she beat back the Nicotine Demons and rekindled her love of film making while you enjoy her latest online video production, a  glimpse within the walls of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in “Two Confessions… on the making of this video.”

Seems like a theme is developing here because I just stumbled across the Japanese solution… the Tenga. Maybe Louis CK should buy himself a few of these and maybe equip his wife with one, two, a dozen. But then, maybe she’s busy.

What we are really seeking is genuine answers. Our first broadcast on the BlogTalkRadio Quantum Sexuality Call-in Show was s debate on male ejaculation, “To Come or not to Come… That is the Question.”
I admit I am still a greenhorn as a radio host, but the content was meaningful and thought-provoking as Dagny and Amara squared of with diametrically opposing viewpoints. Each week the shows get noticeably better so tune in and call in live each Thursday evening!

Our next featured guest on Quantum Sexuality Magazine’s weekly Thursday evening show on December 4 is Sunyata, a Daka, Sacred Intimate, Certified Tantric Healer and educator of sacred sexuality and consciousness expansion. The subject will be “Sexual Healing,” how couples can restore the love and trust and return to a state of bliss with each other. Sunyata is also a fine art photographer, creating “Goddess Imagery” in devotion to the feminine divine (a.k.a. Bruce E. Brown: Fine Light Photography). Find out more about him at: Lotus Heart Tantra.

Sunyata will be joined by his partner, Kali Devi, an accomplished dakini with a depth of Tantric knowledge and experience received through both neo-Tantra and a “traditional” Tantric lineage.

Join us if you can, starting at 10 pm EST, 9 pm CST, 8 pm RMT and 7 pm PST for this one-hour live discussion with chat on BlogTalkRadio at www.blogtalkradio.com/Quantum-Sexuality or call-in by phone at: 646.929.0049.

And… if you can’t make it, don’t worry. The shows archive, remain free, as downloadable podcasts afterward:

Dancer and educator, Annetta Luce spent several weeks living with a Maasai family while teaching in Kenya recently. What she experienced as “traditional” African tribal practices will be vividly remembered for the rest of her life. Jane Kamuasi is a Maasai woman here in America seeking amnesty, a mother determined to protect her 12-year old daughter who remains in Kenya, from the traditional Maasai rite of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Because I live in a Global Village I have clients all over the world… and the Web keeps extending. Amara Charles and Anna Venice are two such people, teachers of Daoist Tantra in Arizona. They filmed a video interview and sent it to me for production. I got so involved in learning about the Maasai people and FGM as it is known at WHO and the UN – where November 25 is remembered each year as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – that I am now knee-deep in producing a 30-minute documentary on the subject.

Here is my 3-minute intro, a director’s cut that I have rushed to the Web because of the timely nature of the subject and the season for giving thanks. I know it will take a generation or more to possibly eliminate FGM and educate people bound by religious tradition in a culture far distant from my own but… if everybody just throws a few bucks in the kitty we can make a profound difference in one young girl’s entire life.

Annetta Luce

Join us on Thanksgiving evening for our regular, weekly, late-night, call-in discussion… this week with erotic dance performance artist and teacher Annetta Luce. Her works explores the sensual, sexual and erotic within the context of the performing arts. She returned to  the USA after living and working in Sydney, Australia where she most recently taught tribal dance at the Sydney Dance Company Studios for 6 years. She incorporates: body-mind centering, NLP, Iyengar Yoga, contact improvisation, Capoeira and shamanic practices in her work. Annetta is redefining modern perceptions of dance, creating a new attitude and aesthetic toward the body.

So please…
Call in with your live questions each Thursday evening starting at 10 pm EST, 9 pm CST, 8 pm RMT and 7 pm PST for this one-hour live discussion with chat on our weekly BlogTalkRadio Show at BlogTalkRadio.com/Quantum-Sexuality. Talk with our featured guests live by calling in throughout the hour at: 646.929.0049. We look forward to adding you to the conversation throughout the hour.

But, if you can’t make it…
All of our shows are recorded, archived and play at: blogtalkradio.com/Quantum-Sexuality.