Naked on the Internet Live Action and Blog Tours

Live Action Tour
June 2: C*lick Me netporn conference & European debut of The Bi Apple, at Paradiso in Amsterdam
June 4: SMUT reading, Galapagos Art Space, 8 pm at 70 North 6th street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
June 5: Bluestockings Bookstore, 7 pm at 172 Allen Street, NYC
June 6: McNally Robinson Booksellers Seal Authors Event with Jessica Valenti
and Helen Boyd, 7 pm at 53 Prince St, NYC
June 7: Brookline Booksmith, 7 pm at 279 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA

June 11: Museum of Sex panel discussion with Lux Nightmare, Ellen Friedrichs, Madeline Glass and Marie Lyn Bernard, 7 pm at 233 5th Avenue, NYC
June 12: KGB Bar $pread celebrates Naked on the Internet, 7 pm at 85 East 4th, NYC

June 18: The Wooden Shoe, 7 pm at 508 S 5th St Philadelphia, PA
June 19: Red Emma’s Infoshop, 7 pm at 800 St. Paul St Baltimore, MD
June 21: Internationalist Books, 7 pm at 405 W Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC
June 22: Passional, 6 pm at 704 S. 5th St. Philadelphia, PA

July 10: Audacia Ray and Violet Blue discuss sex, tech and mutual awesomeness at an event sponsored by the Center for Sex and Culture, 7 pm at the Center for Sex and Culture, 290 Division Suite 405 (cross 10th and Brannan), San Francisco
July 11: Modern Times Bookstore, 7.30 pm at 888 Valencia Street, San Francisco
July 14: Writers with Drinks with Ben Fong-Torres, Lynn Peril, Deborah Ross, Jimmy Chen, Kaya Oakes at The Make-Out Room, 7.30 pm at 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco
July 17: Freddy & Eddy, 8 pm at 12613 Venice Blvd, Los Angeles

Blog Tour
June 1: Madeline in the Mirror, Audacia Ray’s Virtual Book Tour of Awesomeness: “This is not a “you’ve read the blog, now read the book” phenomenon. Ray uses her academic prowess to amass the real life experiences of women across the Internet and then makes them accessible to the reader. Naked on the Internet is not the personal story of Audacia Ray, though in a way, it is. She has the fortune of being present at this stage of the Internet and the shifting paradigm of sexuality in America, and of having been involved in so many aspects of Internet sexuality.”

June 4: Ms Naughty, Me and Everyone I Know, Naked on the Internet: “In Chapter 4, which is entitled I Am Woman, See Me Nude, the book discusses For The Girls with comments from me. Audacia focuses on the fact that most of the visual content at FTG is sourced from existing adult content (in essence, we choose existing videos and pics that we think are hot) and suggests that using porn originally made for men may philosophically clash with our desire to cater to women. FTG is also contrasted with other female webmistresses such as Tasty Trixie who are the stars of their own sites and who create their own pics and movies.

I’ve long held that context is vital when it comes to porn. The basic physical act of sex is always the same, but how it’s presented makes all the difference. The majority of pornographic representations of sex are depicted in a way that prioritises the male viewer and the male experience, and the majority of language used is derogatory toward women (and toward sex).”

June 5: Molly Crabapple:
“Somehow, while editing a magazine and producing a porno and getting her masters, Dacia wrote a very important book. It’s the first serious study of women and the internet- of Craigslist pickups and camgirls, softcore fetish models and online daters. In a land of non-books, with bullet point lists and plenty o’ filler, it’s serious, scholarly, filled with a staggering amount of research. It’s also funny. Dacia writes from expeiance. If you’re reading LJ, you’ll probably see a lot of yourself in it.”

June 8: Sugarbutch Chronicles: “For me, the most interesting content were the chapters on online dating and also the sex blogging, partly because that is where I am the most connected, and also because (it seems) that is where Dacia has the most knowledge and presence as well. Other parts of the book were much more of an observed subculture then organized and reproduced for the sake of recording the various aspects of sex online.”

June 9: Gray Lily: “If you are at all tantalized, titillated, or thrilled by women, sex, the internet or more importantly all three, this book is a must-have. With enough humor to keep a touchy subject from getting out of bounds, and enough research to satisfy any academic committee, this book highlights where we have been as well as offering important insight into where we might be headed. Instead of seeing my place as an anonymous sex blogger as an end, I might have to start thinking about it as a beginning.”

June 10: Being Amber Rhea: “Even though I have a ton of ideals wrt sexuality and I try to live as authentically as possible – because anything else feels destructive – the reality is that I still live in a larger world that, for the most part, is very sex-negative. My personal feelings about sexuality and sexual empowerment don’t negate the power of the double standard, the madonna/whore dichotomy, or a society that has legal buy-in to the idea that (for example) a woman who goes to swinger parties is an unfit parent. And on a smaller scale, sometimes even hanging out with local bloggers, many of whom I’ve come to consider close friends, I feel like I have to “tone down” my interest in and enthusiasm for sexuality. I try to actively fight against these kinds of inner reactions, but old lessons die hard.”

June 11: Tasty Trixie: “It is *thrilling* to hold a bundle of pages representing women’s history in my hands and know that our experiences have been fairly represented and intelligently preserved by someone who knows what she’s talking about and is part of this phenomenal webby wave of self-publishing, sexual agency, capitalism and more. It is *thrilling* to know that our friend wrote our stories in a way that is intimate, readable and entertaining in addition to being smart and informative. It is *thrilling* knowing this book can stand the test of time to continue telling our stories and marking our spots in history for generations to come — because of NOTI’s wide scope of coverage, Dacia’s deftness in developing context without getting bogged down in boring details with expiration dates (hard to avoid when you’re talking about technology), and her facility in introducing tons of people, projects and ideas in a way that breeds instant familiarity, this book is top drawer stuff for anyone now or in the future who gives even half a shit about women, our impact on the internet and its very personal impact on us.”

June 12: Gwen Masters: “Naked on the Internet is a masterful blend of facts and intimate experiences. Did you find anything that shocked you while you were researching for the book?
Initially, I stupidly set out with an outline of points I wanted to make and a list of interviewees I thought could help me make those points. I’ve spent enough years researching and writing that I should’ve known better, but I didn’t. So I was surprised by how much I didn’t know. I think overall I was surprised at the degree to which many women view their very publicly accessible online spaces and expressions as essentially private.

The advice I give to wannabe porn stars applies very well to wannabe Internet provocateurs: think about your worst case scenario – who is the last person you want to discover you online? Now think about what you’ll do WHEN they find out. Can you stomach it? Welcome to the Internet! Not so much? Keep your stuff offline.”

June 13: Jane Crowley

June 15: Desire X: “There is nothing on the pages of the book that smacks of misandry, no battle of the sexes. It is simply a collection of stories told by women of their own experiences with sex on the Internet. Some of the stories are of empowerment and some of them are cautionary tales; the world of on-line sex can be a place of cathartic healing and sexual awakening, it can also be a place where women expose their vulnerabilities to the harshness of the world outside their own bedrooms.”

June 16: One Life, Take Two: “I know these women, and so I could affirm that their thoughts were accurately conveyed and fairly reported. It can be awesome to see one’s life written into a public narrative, as my friends and lovers find when they appear in my blog or when they write their own. It can also be dreadful, as jealousy comes into play, commenters race to judgment and stalkers shove misery into inboxes.”

June 17: Mon Mouth: “You know that when the words “I wave my nerd flag high” appear on the first page of a book about getting naked and having sex, it’s got to be good.

Audacia Ray’s Naked on the Internet is an entertaining read – in the cool, funny style that’s made her blog Waking Vixen a fixture in my sidebar for the past 3 years or more. It’s not a book of the blog, which is good news for those of us who want to see more sides of Dacia’s talents. The bad news about that is that there are no nude photos of the author dressed only in tattoos and some fetching eyewear. The Dacia that you find here is a much more careful writer than in her blog, combining meticulous care for her sources and how she presents them with a sense of her own discovery and adventure. There are elements of Dacia’s own coming-of age story here, parallel with stories and insigths collected from interviews with bloggers and internet-active women of various kinds.”

June 18: Goose and Gander

June 19: Quare Dewd (formerly Bitch|Lab): “This book is a result of the warmth and connection she felt in that community of women, an attempt to ‘pay attention to the ways women are pursuing and devloping their sex lives both on- and offline.” She wants to avoid the hyper-paranoid fears of sex and the Internet, but without writing as if there are no dangers. She wants to avoid the super-hype about the Internet that will change human relationships in all kind of groovy ways — recognizing that the Internet can be “awesome” but it can also be just like every other medium — used to do dumb, harmful, idiotic things.”

June 20: Pretty Dumb Things: “This style makes Ray’s book highly readable and charming when you feel like it should be boring you to tears. Chapters that should go down like flat diet Fresca become easy to chug-a-lug because of the nearly visceral presence of the writer on the page. And Ray’s unapologetic employment of her own personality means that as I read the book, I absorbed a fantastic amount of information—remember the “obsessive” part—without really being aware of doing so. Which is, for me, always a plus when I’m reading something I might not be entirely engrossed by on its own merits, and I have to admit that the topic of this book did not inspire me to great eagerness.”

June 21: Talk to Vanessa: “I suppose one could argue that the internet has completely devolved into a giant warehouse of debauchery. Or, you could look a little more objectively and notice that it has completely changed our attitudes about sex, relationships, and communication, and empowered us to be stronger, seek and take from it what we want/need and (eventually) disregard the rest.

It’s a meaty read (pardon the pun), because Audacia Ray is a writer with the education to back it up – she clearly knows her subject, both from personal and professional experience.”

June 22: Renegade Evolution: “I also liked that she focused on women and their role in the sex scene and sex industry, not just as performers, but as forces within the business itself…net savvy women with sites, artistic sorts who do their own thing their own way, women who do what they do for the love of doing it…proof that in truth, for some women, it isn’t always about the money, it’s about expression, sexuality, sensuality, exploration, creativity, and yeah, good old fashioned fun.”

June 23: Sex in the Public Square: “With Naked on the Internet, Audacia Ray has cracked open an extremely important sphere of inquiry and she has done so with a fearlessness that, all on its own, makes the book worth an important one. There is nothing that Ray shies away from because of controversy or stigma. She raises questions that touch on the involvement of children in 24/7 style webcamming (what do you do if you’re a cam girl with a kid?), on deeply ingrained cultural taboos (why did adult-oriented credit card billing services reject porn sites that featured menstruation when just about anything else failed to phase them?), on the politics of funding and providing sound sexual information to teenagers (how is Heather Corinna’s Scarleteen different from Planned Parenthood’s Teenwire?).”

June 24: The Gold Slut Standard: “Naked on the Internet is a highly readable work of cultural history and criticism that examines the avenues for sexual expression and experimentation that have been opened up for women by the Internet. She begins with a brief introduction to her own experiences of everything from Craigslist hookups to DIY porn to posing nude for alt porn websites. Her net credentials established, she moves briskly through an informative overview of women’s history with computers and the Internet.”

June 25: CineKink: “With a healthy dose of realism, Audacia paints an online world that is neither sensational menance nor utopian bliss. Detailing both potentials and pitfalls, she provides an engaging and balanced look at the particular vagaries – ie finding oneself oddly compelled to write in a somewhat stilted first-person plural voice? – of a slightly newish medium, along with the advances it might afford in realizing the progressive possibilities our mothers (literal and otherwise) put into motion.”

June 26: Lux Nightmare: “Though I’m consistently awed and impressed with all of Audacia’s achievements, the thing that really got me excited was hearing about the release of her book, Naked on the Internet. Just out this month, Naked on the Internet is a much needed analysis of female sexuality and the Internet (and how the two interact with and influence each other). Drawing from interviews with 80 women (including me!), Ray covers everything from online dating and flirtatious chat rooms to Internet porn and sex work to cyberdildonics. Taking a long hard look at the good, the bad, and the occasionally ugly of sex and the Internet, Ray offers up an intelligent critique of the ways the Internet has transformed our view of female sexuality — and the power it has to continue that work.”

June 27: Girl Inchoate: “Ray’s book runs the gamut from innocuous discussions / conversational exchanges online to porn to creating relationships (one-night-stands or long-term) offline. It is an interesting look into a woman’s perspective on relationships, sex, and love on the Internet.”

June 28: Tony Comstock: “Perhaps a year later, I found myself sitting across the table from Dacia Ray in a noodle shop on the Upper West Side. Dacia’s just come from her secret life as a Columbia University grad student, I’ve just from my secret life as a relief and development issues documentary filmmaker. Though we’ve talked on the phone a few times, this is the first time we’ve met in person. Dacia’s munching on a steamed dumpling. I’m (as usual) ranting.

“But when I started, one of the reasons I wanted to work with people who weren’t sex workers was because…”

“… because they’d show up on time!” Dacia blurts out, finishing my thought through a mouth full of dumpling. This is not the first time, nor the last, that Dacia and I will find ourselves, not only on the same page, but on the same sentence.”

June 29: Always Aroused Girl’s Jane’s Guide Review: “I found Audacia Ray’s discussion of the internet and sex-work to be especially interesting. This is a world that most of us will only see portrayed–unrealistically, of course–on television and the movies; as a former sex-worker and current executive editor of $pread Magazine, Ray can provide an honest look at how these workers use the internet both to screen prospective clients and punish misbehaving clients. I was fascinated to learn of the various ways sex-workers use the internet both to advertise their services and to keep themselves safe.”

June 30: Viviane’s Sex Carnival