Archive for 'Workshops and Events'

How Do You Plan to Celebrate National Nude Day? …on July 14

Posted on 04. Jul, 2012 by .

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National Nude Day, aka International Nude Day since it went global, originated in New Zealand when former rugby star and TV celebrity Marc Ellis dared people to streak in front of Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Oblation Run at University of the Philippines Los Banos

Oblation Run at University of the Philippines Los Banos

The term, streaking was first popularized by a reporter for a local Washington, D.C. news station in 1973, Wikipedia informs, ”…as he watched a mass nude run taking place at the University of Maryland. That nude run had 533 participants. As the collected mass of nude students exited Bel Air dorm, the reporter, whose voice was broadcast live over the station via a pay phone connection exclaimed… ‘They are streaking past me right now. It’s an incredible sight!’ The next day it was out on the Associated Press wire as ‘streaking’ and had nationwide coverage.

So, if you missed World Naked Gardening Day (May 14), World Naked Bike Ride Day (June 11) or World Naturist Day (June 19) there’s still a chance to “officially” streak for relief from the summer heat!

On Saturday, July 14, 2012 the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) will honor the art of body painting and the body as a living canvas as part of their 37th Annual Nude Recreation Week celebrations (July 9-15) at participating member parties, clubs, resorts and officially designated nude beaches across North America.

Think this is a flash in the pan fad? Think again. Body painting with clay and other natural pigments existed in tribal cultures for millennia and still survives in this ancient form among the indigenous people of Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and parts of Africa. In fact scholars believe body painting actually predates the first cave paintings by tens or possibly hundred of thousands of the years.

More recently however, since the 1960s, body painting has enjoyed a revival, or Renaissance of sorts throughout Western Society. Remember the Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover of August 1992, multiple Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues featuring models in spray paint bikinis or the Super Bowl XLVI GoDaddy commercial?

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Audacia Ray’s “Speak Up! Media Training for the Empowered Sex Worker” NYC, Apr 18

Posted on 13. Apr, 2009 by .

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Audacia sends the following…

Audacia Ray

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

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