Sex Worker Visions

February 28, 2006

3.29.06 from 6 to 9 pm - Sex Worker Visions exhibition opening at the LGBT Community Center

$pread magazine presents Sex Worker Visions, an art exhibition, gathering of sex workers and their allies, celebration of $pread’s first birthday and a collaboration with Sex Work Matters. The exhibition will commence with an opening reception on March 29th from 6-9 pm at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street and will remain open to the public until May. The show is curated by Audacia Ray, $pread executive editor and former assistant curator of the Museum of Sex, and will feature art work made by sex workers and/or about sex work.

Posted by Dacia at 12:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Porno party, NYC style

February 27, 2006

Update Ok, ok, a wee little bit of porno celebrity, me doing three things I’m good at: yammering about porn, wearing red (uh, it matches my eyes) and drinking whiskey. I’m being intervied by Cam, who is Luke Ford’s literary agent. The interview will probably show up on Luke is back sometime soon. end update

Last night I did not in the least feel like getting dressed and leaving the comfort of my home, especially to battle through the cold and go to a party alone – but I sucked it up, took some headache medicine, had some caffeine, and was on my way to Tristan Taormino’s release party for her new movie “House of Ass” and the second edition of her book, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a really kick-ass party – because I’m jaded and generally really hate parties, I was sort of expecting to be mildly uncomfortable, talk to the handful of people I know, and then go home and sulk. Lovely attitude, right?

My night wasn’t like that at all. I should’ve had faith in Tristan’s ability to throw a party – the event had the same sensibility as the Throb play parties that she used to co-produce. She made an excellent decision to make entrance for men possible only if they were accompanied by a woman, and as a result there was a really mellow, distinctly unporn-party feel to the evening. There were an awful lot of queers around the place and a distinct lack of balloon-titted blonde women.

Like I said, I was flying solo and a little concerned that I’d be hanging out in a corner by myself, but I forgot to remember that I’m a “celebrity” (Altporn.net says so!) so people were Interested in My Opinions (and by “opinions,” I mean “corseted cleavage”). When I first got there I chatted briefly with Tristan, who was looking all glowy and radiant, and then I ran into one of the organizers of Sex Work Matters, and I knew then that I really wasn’t going to be lacking in conversation partners for the evening. I then bounced into a conversation with the lovely and sharp as a tack Charges of Rollertrain, but was pulled away from her by Lex and Les, who wear sunglasses at night (fellow NYC sex blogger Selina, who has the sense not to wear sunglasses at night, was there as well). I grabbed Rachel Kramer Bussel as she passed by, and she was a little flustered: “Justine Joli and her boyfriend were hitting on me – she was sitting on my lap, and she’s so soft,” she reported.

“What are you doing over here talking to me then?”

“I thought they might be kidding.”

“What? You’re pretty, you’re wearing a short skirt and you write a sex column for the Village Voice – they’re not kidding. Go back there and talk to them!”

Next it was onto the lovely surprise of Eon McKai’s presence, and we did some shop talk, with lots of arm waving and laughing. I also finally connected with Joanna Angel – its retarded that our paths have never crossed. We mused on the virtues of being on Fleshbot’s Top Ten Hotties of 2005 list, and she asserted that her top position on the list was entirely due to her willingness to give blowjobs to the people with the power. I laughed that I’d gotten to number three without any strategic blowjob distribution, but merely on the merits of my disposition. She nodded sagely, “Blowjobs – that’s the way to the top.”

And let’s not forget the cute male talent! Zak Sabbath is freshly back in NYC from LA and shooting with Benny Profane for a new movie Benny has done for VCA called “Barbed Wire Kiss” – it’s an autobiographical porn flick, which is something that probably only Benny can pull off perfectly. Zak and I gushed over Benny for a good long while (“He doesn’t belong in LA!” we lament), until I was distracted by the presence of the very charming/funny/totally dorky Tommy Pistol. As the club started to close down, the horde of alt-porners (plus me) headed to Yaffa Cafe, my second time there in two days. We sat in a back corner of the restaurant, yapped about porn, and did some boob comparisons, you know how it is.

So yes, it was a good night, and once I got rolling I didn’t feel so painfully solo. It was generally just a good night to be in NYC and to be proud of what happens here. Porno Jim and Dicey wandered into conversations I was having throughout the night, and emphatically assisted in my quest to love NYC (it’s not much of quest, really). My scientific conclusion is that 10 out of 10 New Yorkers agree that NYC is way more awesome-o than LA. You know what’s even more awesome-o? Lots of name-dropping in my blog, to make me look cool.

Posted by Dacia at 11:29 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Dinner and talk with the smart and sexy

February 25, 2006

On Thursday night, after our respective long days, I had dinner with Rachel Kramer Bussel and Heather Corinna, who was in town to give a deposition for the ACLU. As crazed as I’ve been getting with my work, and as many bleary-eyed hours as I’ve been spending in front of my computer, 42 documents open on my desktop, phone ringing off the hook and barely able to keep up with it all, it was really awesome to meet up with these women and remember why I’m doing this and that I’m not alone (and I’m especially not alone in being frazzled, over worked and unable to say no to good projects).

It was awesome to meet Heather, whose work I’ve followed for years – her website Scarleteen is the site that a lot of sex positive over-18 websites (mine included) set their “exit” redirect to on their splash page, and for good reason. The site offers age-appropriate sexually explicit information for teens. And it’s this combination of things, “age-appropriate” and “sexually explicit” that brought her to New York to give deposition in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) case.

Sam Sugar and Sabrina both wrote a bit about COPA this week, noting that COPA hearings were happening a few years ago – well, this is true, but the damn feds keep appealing the case, so they were happening again this week, and the fucking thing is going to trial next fall.

Yes, we agree (and under that “we” I include pornographers whole-heartedly) that children need to be protected from the evils of the world as well as from things that they are not yet ready to process. However, there is a delicate balance to strike so that information about things like sexual health and pleasure is still available, not banished.

This means that there is a careful dance being done around the age-old questions “what is porn?” and “what is art?” and “what is education?” and “what is ‘merely’ prurient?” These questions are complicated – and also kind of stupid, because the answers will always be somewhat elusive. If nothing else, they provided the opportunity for Heather to gleefully testify to the fact the she masturbated to novels by the Brontë sisters when she was thirteen – that’s something worth having in the department of justice’s records.

In addition to the politics of the day, we talked a lot about the sort of things that sex people talk about: writing, community, fetishes, political correctness and the things we do to take ourselves away from thinking about sex all the damn time. Good stuff, I tell ya – the evening definitely re-energized me to take on the work I’m going to be facing in the next few months.

Posted by Dacia at 10:58 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

The Age of Ambivalence

February 23, 2006

Over a City Bakery hot chocolate with homemade marshmallow (holy mother of fuck, so awesome) this afternoon, I had an interesting conversation with an Italian journalist who is working on a chapter of a book I’m also writing for. We were swapping ideas and got to talking about the current state of scholarship and discourse around sex work and porn. I was talking a bit about an anthology I just read, Flesh for Fantasy, which is a collection of writings by people who have worked in or patronized strip clubs, the vast majority of whom are also academics. A lot of the pieces are “autoethnographies,” which is a sort of fancy bullshit word for self-reflexive personal essay, and a lot of them reveal a deep ambivalence about the sex industry. This is a fascinating new trend that falls under the rubric of third wave feminism, this exploration of the love/hate relationship people working in sex have with the whole business. It’s really not as simple as empowerment versus exploitation.

What’s more than that, it was never that simple, but as the march of history and activism goes (cuz you know, time moving forward always means progress – not), there was definitely a time when the pro- and anti- stances were all that there was to talk about. We’re not there anymore, we’re in a new place – one with equal but perhaps different challenges.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of $pread precisely in terms of ambivalence before – now it seems painfully obvious. My fellow $preadsters and I always talk about the necessity of the magazine being a forum for many perspectives on sex work, but perhaps the real meat of the matter is not making sure that both pro- and anti- voices are heard, but pushing ahead with much more complicated (blurry, irritatingly non-committal) ideas about the sex industry. I do believe we’ve been doing this (sometimes all in the same article), but I don’t know why it wasn’t clear to me before, and needed to be said to me by someone else. Maybe I just need more sleep. Nah, that can’t be it.

So, this is the age of ambivalence. That may sound like an invitation to roll over and die, but I don’t think ambivalence needs to be a stepping stone to apathy. Sex workers speaking to their ambivalence about their work is a good thing, even if it doesn’t make a good sound bite and the mainstream media will keep trying to coax hardline stances of out us (those cocksmokers).*

*no offense to people who enjoy cocksmoking

Posted by Dacia at 03:03 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Articles

February 20, 2006

Audacia Ray’s Comprehensive Safer Sex/Safer Sex for Sluts Workshops

NotForTourists.com
February 16, 2006

Whether you’re single or taken, sex educator Audacia Ray can teach you a thing or two. With her extensive background in all matters sexual (she is a sex worker rights advocate, alternative model, and the executive editor of $pread), she has developed two workshops for those delving in to the world of sexual exploration. Before masterminding a night of romance, flirtation, and mindblowing sex, consider attending either the Comprehensive Safer Sex or the Safer Sex for Sluts workshop. Taking into account monogamy, open relationships, and other alternative sexual practices, Ray teaches the down and dirty facts surrounding all sexually transmitted infections, and then leads disucssions of safer sex strategies, stressing the fact that everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to the risks they are willing to take in the name of pleasure. These workshops are reminiscent of our old high school sex ed classes, but who was paying attention back then anyway? Attend this much-needed refresher course and leave with a goody bag of condoms and a determination to have safer sex. Lots of it.
Click HERE for this and other sexy reviews.

The Cogs of Porn
Photographs by Brad Nelson
Time Out New York
October 6-12, 2005

They work hard for the money: writing, shooting, performing and promoting. Meet the folks who help keep New York’s smut factory in business.

Waking Vixen
Review by Sara at Jane’s Guide
May 30, 2005

Audacia Ray is no Sleeping Beauty. That�s her tag line, and it is perfect. This poly-slut-sex-activist-model-writer makes her home in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing is fresh, real, and very, very hot. She seems to be as at home describing anal masturbation, female ejaculation, her new boyfriend�s first foray into a sex party, or her wardrobe dilemmas. For extras, there are fabulous photos of our heroine scattered throughout the blog, and links to websites that are actually meaningful to her. This blog is definitely a keeper � Audacia is that rare mix of bright, sexy and interesting that definitely makes me damp! Click here to check out Jane’s Guide

Meet Audacia Ray
Fleshbot
May 18, 2005

If there�s such a thing as an alt porn renaissance woman, it�s the proudly silicone-free Audacia Ray: not only does she share her thoughts on a variety of sex topics (including genital piercing, female ejaculation, and wrestling around in fake blood for charity) on her well-written and entertaining blog, she also puts her money where her, er, mouth is via an active nude modeling career and her upcoming hardcore debut in the next volume of Profane Pirate�s �Psychocandy� series. (All that, and she wears glasses too. We think we�re in love.) Click here to read the Fleshbot original

Sex Worker Blogs, Sacred Whores, and $pread
by William Dean in Clean Sheets
April 6, 2005

Before the World Wide Web, few sex workers had what might be called a “public voice.” The most usual historical form was the tell-all autobiography, such as A House is Not a Home, by Polly Adler, published in 1953, and Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker, in 1972. More recently, we have seen Michelle Tea’s illustrated and autobiographical book, Rent Girl, Nelly Arcan’s novel Whore, and Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Novel. These books garnered both public acclaim and pseudo-scandalized reactions from media book panderers.

For more cogent and gritty information, these days, however, interested readers turn to those formidable WWW inventions, the blog and the e-zine. Why are sex workers becoming web-columnists, and what are they achieving? Click here to read the rest of the article

Whore Pride: Young, Empowered Sex Workers Want Respect Along With Your Dollars
by Rachel Kramer Bussel / Village Voice column “Lusty Lady”
January 13th, 2005

When I tell a new acquaintance about my experience masturbating for HBO’s Real Sex, he asks, “So, you jerked off on TV and got paid for it�doesn’t that make you a prostitute?” No, but there are plenty of happy whores working the city. Click here to read the rest of the article

Posted by Dacia at 06:55 PM

Little things

February 17, 2006

Little thing #1: Today in my internet travels I came across the grossest euphemism for penis that I’ve seen in a long time: “blue veiner.” As in “They rubbed their throbbing blue veiners together.” It made me say “ewwww” out loud, and I’m a big fan of penises being rubbed together.

Little thing #2: when I neglect to hit the spacebar between “Audacia” and “Ray” my spell check tells me that the resulting word should be “judiciary.” This amuses me to no end.

This week has been crazy, and as I look at my calendar I see that life is going to be unrelentingly crazy for the next few months. I’m excited about this and all, but also a little bewildered. I seem to be getting more social and also getting more giant heaps of (fun! interesting!) work, so we’ll see how that works out.

I had brunch with the girl formerly known as Lux Nightmare this week, wherein we ate giant plates of breakfast food, gossiped about alt porn and had a hearty laugh about our mutual ex-boyfriend. She and I should have been friends years ago, but weren’t mainly because of said ex-boyfriend. Who has the last laugh now, eh?

This week I’ve been pretty thoroughly steeped in lots of writing and research, not a bad thing at all, but I feel like I’ve got the fever: can’t think and write fast enough. Lots of good stuff in the works, some hush hush, some not. Sometime soon, all (some?) will be revealed.

One thing I can spill about is a collaborative project that I’ve been working on for a while and am getting more excited about by the day. Well, actually, two projects at once (cuz I need more of that). On March 30, folks from CUNY and the New School are putting on a one day conference called Sex Work Matters, which “aims to provide a forum for dialogue among scholars, activists and analysts involved in issues surrounding sex work.” I’m doing a roundtable with the esteemed Melissa Gira, with whom I’m really excited to be working (and, you know, meeting). Our roundtable is called “Multiple Roles: Sex Workers, Activists and Academics” and we’ve got a truly interesting group of people in the mix:
Moderators:
Melissa Gira, Board of Directors Member, Lusty Lady/SEIU Local 790
Audacia Ray, Executive Editor, $pread Magazine
Invited Participants:
R. Danielle Egan, St. Lawrence University, coeditor of Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance
Robyn Few, Executive Director, Sex Workers Outreach Project
Jessica Melusine, boa (a journal of new whore culture)
Elizabeth Nanas, Wayne State University

$pread is also organizing a party the night before the conference, which we’ve envisioned as an art exhibition and silent auction featuring artwork made by and/or about sex workers. I’m excited to flex my curatorial muscles a bit on that one, it should be really fascinating. If there are any sex workers/artists out amongst my readers who might be interested in submitting pieces to the show or at least learning more about it, email me at audacia@spreadmagazine.org.

Its the little things, like meals with friends and masturbation and ham sandwich breaks (but not masturbation with ham sandwiches) that keep me energized. And now, back to the so-called grind.

Posted by Dacia at 09:28 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

WYSIWYG’s Worst.Sex.Ever

February 16, 2006

So, yesterday I put on my extra-awesome leopard print dress, boots and red lipstick and headed on over to PS 122 to read at the annual anti-Valentine’s Day Worst.Sex.Ever. The WYSIWYG blogger reading series has been hosted for the past two years by Chris Hampton and Andy Horowitz and they do a fabulous job of coming up with different themes and encouraging bloggers to emerge from behind their screens and humiliate themselves live and in the flesh. Jane met Chris at a lesbian knitting circle last spring and subsequently read at the Pride installment of WYSIWYG, at which a good time was had by all and I promised Chris I’d read at some future WYSIWYG. And so: last night.

I was delighted to find cupcakes and a communal bottle of Southern Comfort backstage when I arrived. Right before the show started all the performers passed the bottle around and took some hearty swigs. Very professional-like. I also scarfed down two cupcakes, a decision which I regretted immediately. I didn’t learn my lesson however, because I had another one later. Sigh.

A lot of the stories were told with huge dollops of humor – Greg Walloch kicked things off with a trio of stories about sexual misadventures, including one in which his partner took some condescending pity on him because of his disability, to which Greg could only respond, “Come on, just suck it!” Desiree Burch offered up her entire sexual history to the bad sex gods, Emily Deprang told a story of lesbian whoring for $60, Hanne Blank told a fantastic story about being a phone sex operator and having to take a call from a man who fancied himself to be Jacques Cousteau (though he lost the accent when he got close to coming), The Assimilated Negro read about “The Time I had Sex on Mushrooms,” and Todd Levin presented several short scenes (with scripts and audience volunteers, including my upstairs neighbor) re-enacting the dialogue from his worst sex ever. This leaves me and Fleshbot editor Jonno.

About halfway through the show (I was to read second to last, and Jonno was last), Jonno squeezed my leg and with a panicky look in his eye said, “They’re all funny. Mine’s not funny; I mean parts are, but it’s not really - funny. It’s bad sex.” I whispered back, “It’ll be fine, mine’s only partly funny too.”

It’s an interesting thing actually – when I first sat down to write my piece, I wanted it to be at least a little funny so people would be able to talk afterwards, but the first draft came out more bitter than funny. There’s something to be said for both bitterness and humor (and the combination). Sex and comedy go hand in hand – there’s something inherently funny about sex, or at least there’s something inherently funny about the way our culture deals with sex (titter titter). Humor, after all, is a great coping mechanism. I know that’s reading into things a tiny bit much – being funny, after all, is way more entertaining than being a one-person mopefest (I speak from experience, as an ex-goth and high school poetry writer). But still, even if humor is a preferred mode of entertainment, there’s still something interesting in the choice to make bad shit hilarious, especially when its sex.

The piece I read is one I’ve been working and reworking for the last few months called “Forgiving Myself: Bad Sex Secrets of a Sexpert” (I initially was using the word “sexpert” ironically, because I hate it, but I now I like it in the flow of the title. So shoot me). Yes, I will share it sometime soon, though most likely as a podcast and not ye olde written word. Many of the performances were video taped (mine included), so I’m sure that will be coming soon to an internet near you. The piece has its funny moments – though the parts I thought were funny didn’t get laughs, while others did – but ultimately it’s a kind of sobering and self-reflective piece. (And how’s that for a cock tease? I swear, once I get technology on my side, you’ll be hearing it.)

Jonno closed the show in a really awesome way, with a piece about slightly scary/bad sex with a model who turned out to be a bit strung out, demanding and intense, making a forcible ejection from Jonno’s apartment necessary. Definitely an excellent way to round out the night – there weren’t any curve balls throw in this piece, no ironic little twists. The sex was just bad in a way that perhaps shouldn’t be made funny.

After the show my boyfriend and I headed out to do some celebratory drinking, and I just had to tell him, “Thanks for being a sport and coming to my big show and listening to me read about bad sex with other people.”

He laughed and said, “No problem, it was enlightening. I mean, we don’t really have what you’d call a ‘conventional relationship,’ so its all good.”

I recycled one of his lines back at him, “We’re just two kids who like to fuck, trying to keep it honest.”

[Images from apollonia666’s Flickr page that I’m apparently not smart enough to link to the proper way. Whatever.]

Posted by Dacia at 01:05 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Building blocks, activism, and sides of the fence

February 14, 2006

I find myself getting more involved in and more obsessed with communities built around sexuality – actually, it would be more accurate to say that I’m getting more and more obsessed with/saddened by the fact that such communities are hard to come by, the links between and among them scant, so many people seemingly suspicious of one another. Actually, it really just depends where you are standing: sometimes it appears communities are thriving, other times it seems they aren’t there at all. This past Thursday (had to stop and think about what day is when) I jumped in the car with one of my fellow $preadsters to go to Philadelphia for a party the City Paper was throwing for their newly re-launched website, Sexadelphia.com, an advertising site for escorts and other sex workers in Philly. We really weren’t sure what to expect from the evening and thought it might be a client/provider mixer, a new experience for us both. It turned out to be a rather small party (though not intentionally) and we met some really fantastic people from the Sex Worker Action Team and Passional (if you’re in Philly, you can get copies of $pread issues 1 & 2 for free at Passional until they run out).

It was really interesting to see how things are done Philly style (uh, last call isn’t at 4 am, what’s up with that?) and a little jolting to realize that I know nothing about what’s happening in Philly, what issues affect sex workers there, the different ways the law works against them, the organizing that happens there, in a city two hours south. I know it’s all a matter of time and energy, this building of solidarity and dareIsay a sex workers movement (a little premature to say that here on the East Coast maybe), but at the same time there’s an impatient part of me saying – why hasn’t it happened yet?

Friday, after returning form Philly and spending a few hours feverishly writing, I had dinner with my fellow $pread editors, and we reflected on what a year it’s been for us, for $pread, for these burgeoning friendships. “This project has really changed my life,” one editor mused. And it has for all of us, and not just in terms of less-sleep more-anxiety. It’s a pretty powerful thing – of course it’s wonderful to see how people are responding to the magazine (go Utne Reader “Best New Title” award!) but it’s also good to reflect on the personal impact of it all. And then there’s the community stuff – I do believe community can be built with and through the printed word, but I wonder how far reaching it is, how inclusive, and if its ever enough.

I’m also starting to write a piece about alt porn and community that will wind up in a very academic anthology about porn. It isn’t due for another few months, but I keep thinking about how to do it well and avoid the oddly passionless academic style of writing, but also how I can be passionate about but critical of alt porn. So far the preparation to write this piece is an interesting intellectual exercise – being critical of altporn and engaged with it (naked, as a site member, as a fan) is one thing, but writing something critical about it for an audience that isn’t engaged in it and sees it as a peculiar cultural phenomenon, one of many “others,” is something else entirely.

Though I’ve always had the prurient interest, my subject position with regards to sexual cultures (and arguably, culture in general, as I used to be much more of a chicken-shit outsider, lurker, and hands-off researcher) has shifted from that of an outsider to more of a “participant observer,” more than seduced by it all. I know I’ve grown protective of sex workers, sexual deviants and other misfits in a new and intense way over the last several years. Though I’ve always been wary of academic intentions when it comes to people as objects of study, this has been heightened the more deeply involved I get in these worlds – I feel that my primary allegiance is with these communities, and academia is secondary.

Okay, to switch gears almost entirely – a link to an interesting webzine, Dragonfire, a publication from Drexel University. Their sex issue is up, and it’s a kind of interesting interface – you have to explore the image to find the content. Jane and I both have short pieces in the “Why I Choose…” section (hint: its in the top right hand drawer of the desk). Mine’s on polyamory, hers is on blogging her sex life.

And, in “you snooze, you lose” news, I’m reading at PS 122 on Valentine’s Day, in WYSIWYG’s annual Worst.Sex.Ever. reading. Full info is in the sidebar at right, but online tickets are totally sold out.

UPDATE Although tickets are technically sold out, rumor has it that there are still 45 left, and you can acquire them by calling or stopping by the box office - (212) 477-5829 (I think it’s ext 301) at 4pm Tuesday when they open.

Posted by Dacia at 01:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

Bloody pussy porn

February 08, 2006

One of the last taboos in porn is not ATOGM (ass to other girl’s mouth), quadruple anal or paint enemas - its porn made while a woman is on her period. While there are some menstrual fetish sites, they often cater to an interest in “feminine hygiene products” (I get all air-quotey because I hate the assumption that menstruation is un-hygienic), especially pictures of blood-sodden pads, tampons and underwear. However, there are a teensy tiny handful of sites that feature women enjoying their periods - though these sites have had difficulty with finding online billing companies that will accept them (Bloody Trixie was down for a while because of this).

Bella Vendetta (her site features menstruation and blood play among many other fetishes) recently found a billing company that will accept bloody content, and soooo… here we go!

Erotic Red, a new site by Furry Girl, has just been launched, and it features alternative models enjoying their period on a beautiful and well-designed site.

And while you’re at it, you should check out See Candy Bleed (she’s also a model on Bella’s site).

This, kids, is altporn at its finest - the sites I’ve linked are all run by bright businesswomen who also care deeply about good smut. They show things that the mainstream porn industry turns away from, and they do it in a way -good clear design and straight forward, literate but not pretentious text- that doesn’t insult their audience.

Even if you’re not “into” bloody pussy, you’ve got to admit - these women are a force to be reckoned with. I have all kinds of respect for women not afraid to put their pussies into their politics.

Posted by Dacia at 11:26 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

Photoset > Body Aglow

February 07, 2006

Typically, I hate shooting in the studio. It just gets boring because there’s nothing to climb on or break and its hard to stand around and try to look pretty. However, this studio shoot I did with Logan Grendel is a different story. I really got into being in my (baby oil slick) skin, and I think the results are prety awesome.

Posted by Dacia at 09:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Request for cock pics

February 06, 2006

I cannot believe I am writing this: if you have a penis, would you email me a picture of it? This is not for my personal edification (though if I am edified in the process, I suppose thats ok), I am going to pass the images along to a friend who is working on a project that involves a cock lineup. So, yes, eyes other than my own will see them; these pics will in fact appear in some form online media, though they will be anonymous.

General specs, if you will, are: -Flaccid -Any and all sizes -Caucasian -No red-heads -Approximately 800 pixels wide

The image should be framed like this:

Help a buddy out!

Posted by Dacia at 06:19 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Housekeeping

February 05, 2006

I’ve been doing some serious housekeeping on some of the pages of my website. On the “I jerk off to” page, I added a nice long list for NYC Porn companies. I did a hell of a lot of work on the “I learn from” page as well, and added a list of Brilliant Women who inspire me, as well as lists of Sex Positive Shops, and Sex Worker Rights and Support. These aren’t just link lists though, because I wrote a little bit about everything I’m linking to and why it’s awesome. Have a look-see and support these lovely people.

Also, I have a set up at the incomparable NoFauxxx, of pictures taken a full year ago by Logan Grendel. Check it out:

And last but not least, some entertainment! The Wet Spots, who I fell in love with at the New York Burlesque Festival last year, recently made a video with Kirby Ferguson of Goodie Bag TV. It’s for their most terrific song, “Do You Take It?”

Posted by Dacia at 12:46 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Brilliant Women

February 04, 2006

Annalee Newitz She’s a nerd, she’s a geek, she’s a raging polyamorous queer. She does lots of insightful and often hilarious writing about sex and technology.

Carly Milne Fomerly of the fabulous Pornblography. I am hooked on Carly’s writing and can’t wait to see what she does next.

Carol Queen When I first started to think about the fluidity of my sexuality, Carol’s writings made me feel less alone. A pansexual pervert and sex radical through-and-through, her work is a major inspiration.

Ducky Doolittle Fabulous NYC sex educator who has her first book coming out in spring 2006: Sex with the Lights On.

Ellen Friedrichs A brilliant and awesome New York City-based sex educator who I’m proud to call my friend (and former MoSex co-worker). She spends a lot of time shuffling from borough to borough, teaching the gospel of sex education and answering any sex question that falls from the sky.

Hanne Blank The grand madame of body positive sexuality and feminism who deftly straddles the lines of historian, erotica writer and activist.

Heather Corinna Founder of Scarleteen, the incredible sexuality resource for teens. She’s also an artist, writer, and model who dances to the beat of her own brand of feminism.

Jamye Waxman Sex educator, writer and all-around awesome lady.

Melissa Gira Web and digital artist, sex worker and deep thinking busy grrl. Editor of Sexerati, erotic intelligence for a hotter tomorrow.

Rachel Kramer Bussel Writer, cupcake-lover, and bag-carrier – I met Rachel when I was working at the Museum of Sex, and she’s been an immense supporter of the work I’ve done over the past few years.

Regina Lynn Sure, technology and sex go great together. But they go even better with brains.

Susie Bright Erotica writer and editor, sex educator and cultural critic, Susie sets the precedent for a lot of the sex writing and education that’s happening now.

Tristan Taormino Anal sex guru and sex ed dynamo, Tristan has passion for her work in spades.

Violet Blue She may be last on the this list (it’s an alphabet thing) but she is not the least amazing, for sures. Her books on sexuality are some of the best, most fun and most accessible books out there. Also, she’s always saying nice things about me.

Posted by Dacia at 03:17 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

NYC Porn

I’m trying to compile a list of links to companies (straight, gay, fetish, whatever) that make porn in New York - if you work for one or know of one that I haven’t listed, email me and let me know!

Black Mirror Productions
Porn auteur, Illuminated musician and ne�er do well Joe Gallant has been making sex magick against corporate kulture for the last handful of years, with some sleazy results. Though he rants at me and pisses me off on occasion, Joe is fighting the good fight. Plus he made a movie called Bong Water Butt Babes, forever the errant star of my porn collection.

Burning Angel
Burning Angel is all trouble, what with the naked girls showing their goods and all. BA has caused a bit of hoopla with their zombie porno film from hell, Re-penetrator, which is rife with both gore and fucking.

Candida Royalle
Candida Royalle has been forging new ground in the adult industry with her lush, plot-driven, female-friendly films since the mid-1980s. She continues to produce films and has also developed a line of sex toys, Natural Contours.

Gotham Gold
A mainstay of fetish film production in NYC, Gotham Gold has video lines that include smothering, foot fetish, dominance, bondage, and much more.

Comstock Films
Nothing could make anti-sex crusader Anthony Comstock spin in his grave faster than a porn company named after him. Comstock Films used that as a jumping off point, and then started making gorgeous films featuring the sexualities of very real couples.

LucasFilms
On of the premier producers of gay porn, LucasFilms has a variety of lines, all featuring ridiculously hot men fucking each other silly. What more could you ask for?

RedLight TV
I worked for RedLight for almost 2 years and even after seeing some of their videos a bajillion times, they still make me feel the fever. Their videos, downloadable on their website, feature great stories and even better nakedness. RLTV�s epic foot fetish film, Alice in Footland, premiered at the CineKink Film Festival this past fall (I�m in a wee little role and a colonial wig).

Rick Savage
Though Rick’s most recent stuff (intense bondage and discipline, tit torture and the like) isn’t really my cup of tea, I am a huge fan of the series that he and Neville Chambers directed, produced and acted in starting in the mid-1990s, NY Taxi Tales and Streets of NY – both feature lots of NYC sleaze and outrageous public sex in taxis, parking lots, abandoned lots, and sometimes even inside apartments.

Stella Films
Good plots, pretty people (which includes very hot men), great sex – it’s a winning combination. They’ve produced six films since 2004 and have more in the works. Owner/producer Estelle Josephs strives to create porn that appeals to women and couples.

Posted by Dacia at 01:44 PM

Almost media darling

Last week, I got a phone call from a major TV news network that was doing a story on sex work and Craigslist, and they were interested in interviewing me. The problem was that they really wanted to interview me about my personal experience, and that is not going to happen – not because it’s a huge secret, but it is really not their story to tell, it is mine. This is the interesting thing I’ve realized about media in the past year of press action, interviews and minor fiascoes: yes, media networks have access to a bigger audience than I do, and they can potentially deliver their audience to me – however, though its to a more limited audience, I am more than capable of telling my story all by my damn self. So yes, sometimes exposure is good – but sometimes I just don’t need what they have to give, and furthermore, I’ve realized that the press will persist in being interested in me, so I don’t have a fatalistic “now or never” view about press – I am going to be around, doing what I’m doing, for some time to come.

That said, when the news channel came to me with their idea, I counter-pitched my idea of them interviewing me as an expert and including information about $pread magazine – if I am going to be seen blathering about sex work by 4 million people, I need it to benefit me. Though they offered to disguise my identity, I decided that I really didn’t want that – I would show my face (more visually interesting) but no way in hell would I talk about my personal pussy. This is the conundrum around sex worker activism – I tout the value of destigmatizing the work, but when it comes down to it, that means putting myself personally on the line, an immensely scary (and basically inadvisable) thing to do. So, it’s complex. Probably too complex for the mainstream media.

I thought I had gotten them interested in dealing with the story the way I wanted to, but I was clearly naïve about that. We set up everything – arranged for a car to whisk me away to their studios, told them I didn’t want anyone touching my hair but makeup touch ups were ok, frantically asked my friends what I should wear, and got advice from a good friend who works at the Daily Show about how to not look stupid on TV.

And then it got interesting – they called to clarify details about the piece, and got hostile about my unwillingness to spill my personal story. It was clear and should have been from the beginning that they weren’t really interested in ME, they were interested in casting for a role in a story that they already had set in stone. They knew what they wanted to say about sex work and the internet, and I was to be a prop. But I was being obstinate. They actually accused me of “having an agenda,” at which I laughed because, well, no shit. And a national news channel doesn’t have an agenda? Please.

So: fuck that. Yes, its shocking, I won’t bend over backwards to be on TV. Sure, the press for me and for $pread would have been great, but I’m not interested in playing into someone else’s little story about sex workers, rife with assumptions and bad consequences for me. I don’t care that much about being on TV, and even if they try to buddy up to get the story they want, major TV networks are not my friend. I had been psyching myself up to treat the correspondent something like an enemy combatant in the interview (uh, but no fisticuffs, unless she was a major bitch), but I ended up fighting my battle off screen and opting out.

Posted by Dacia at 10:46 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

Whirlwind of awesomeness

February 03, 2006

This week has been one of those weeks during which I am so psyched about my life, my projects, the stuff I’m reading, the stuff I’m writing, and the possibilities of everything that I just cannot sleep like a normal person. This leads to 4 am phone calls to my boyfriend (not uncommon anyway, as he is my late night phone buddy) that start with me saying “Dude! How about this…” and a notebook full of exuberant scribbles on my bedside table.

I started my day yesterday with a conversation about my top secret porn project, then lunch with the very awesome Jamye Waxman, who I hadn’t met before but got along with famously. She has really impressive and sparkly eye shadow, in addition to being very smart about sex.

Then it was off to Bluestockings for a last-minute talk on radical feminist activism that I’d been asked to do for a college class, which turned out to be taught by my very own college and BA thesis advisor, who is the most fabulous of women. I’ve done quite a few talks for college classes about sex work, general sexuality and feminist issues, but yesterday was something else. I was reminded of how truly awesome my undergrad education was, because all the questions asked were heavy-hitting and critically engaged with radical thought in a way that no other group of college students I’ve taught ever has been. I stayed longer than I should have, and then had to run around a bit before the NYC sex blogger’s meetup at Viviane’s, though of course I had time to stop and fetch a dozen cupcakes.

The list of attendees for the meetup included Chelsea Girl of Pretty Dumb Things, Lex Konrad & Les of Naked Loft Party, Tony Comstock, Cherry Bomb of Queen of Cream, J of Male Slut, Selina of The Real Sex in the City, newcomer Charlie Bucket of Plain Bellied Sneetch, visitor Anakalia of Salacity and Madeline and Jefferson by cam. Also, Porno Jim weaseled his way into the lineup, and I spent the night being bratty to him (“you’re not even a real blogger!”) because I am, well, a brat.

Best dressed of the evening was definitely Chelsea Girl, who sported a t-shirt that read “No one cares about your blog” – but the t-shirt was outdone by her fabulous boobs.

The thing is: sex bloggers are really nice people. I don’t know why this wasn’t obvious to me already, since I am a nice person (haha), but damn. The other thing you should know about sex bloggers is: we walk among you and you don’t even know it – sex bloggers are foxy and confident, but also basically a pretty average looking and acting bunch of folks.

I won’t go into all the details of conversations, partly because there was so much of it that it was hard to keep track (though there were the note-takers among us), but it was really damned awesome, and surely not the last time we do this. It was really cool to come face to face with people whose words and innermost thoughts I’ve encountered (by which I mean, “masturbated to”) and in some cases folks who I’ve had ongoing email correspondence with. It was really clear that this event was the beginning of something, not just a one-time fluke. Take that, sexual secrecy and shame! I felt like part of a community of like-minded people last night, and that is a beautiful thing.

(Did I win the race to blog about last night? Dammit, Viviane did.)

Posted by Dacia at 11:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Phone sex mysteries

February 01, 2006

Like any good, obsessive researcher, I subscribe to a bunch of different Google alerts. One of them is for the phrase “phone sex.”

The links that I get as a result of this phrase are either A) about Howard Stern or 2) articles about phone number misprints for churches/preschools/restaurants/etc that end up being phone sex lines.

Technically, I think it’s bad when people get assaulted (yes, I do think that’s an appropriate word) by sexual stimulation when they aren’t looking for it, but I also can’t help but think this is kind of hilarious.

Furthermore, the number of instances of this situation lead me to believe that the same urban legend keeps getting written up as news in a million different ways, which is not unfathomable. The other possibility is that there are devious, potentially evil forces at work who have a damn good sense of humor.

Hilarious evil aside, the hijacking of attention is an interesting/irritating aspect of the sex industry that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. The notorious porn and penis growth spam plus this fishy phone sex stuff gives the sex industry such a bad name. Well, actually, the sex industry gives itself a bad name by being stupid. I’ve been spoiled by good experiences in and with the sex industry and have been blessed to be able to pick and choose my involvements with awesome people, and I forget (but I shouldn’t) that a whole lotta the industry is full of crappy bullshit, mostly because it can be. I do really believe that consumers in the sex industry are getting pickier and demanding better quality and better treatment, and more than that I think there are increasing numbers of people on the supply side who have a conscience. I want more of both, because I am a greedy bitch.

In the meantime, however, I will also laugh at the travails of church goers getting a phone sex line when they are trying to phone in to donate money to the good lord.

Posted by Dacia at 12:55 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Worst. Sex. Ever.

2.14.06 @ 7.30 pm - Worst.Sex.Ever. reading at PS 122

Spend your anti-Valentine’s day with me! I’m reading a previously unrevealed story at the WYSIWYG Talent Show’s Worst.Sex.Ever and it will be a good time, especially since I’ll be in the company of Fleshbot’s Jonno and Hanne Blank.

7.30 pm at PS 122 (150 1st Ave. at East 9th St.) - tickets are $7 and you should buy in advance (here) because this show will sell out! Check out all the performers bios here.

Posted by Dacia at 12:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack