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