Attending Sex 2.0 gave me lots of things to think about, and I’ve been mulling these things over in my brain a lot since April 12th. The first session I attended was Melissa Gira’s Sex Styles of the Internet Famous, in which there were a number of cute role plays around issues that arise from dating within the web 2.0 culture. Such as: what happens when you Twitter about sex with one partner but not another? What if one person demands a recognition of relationship status on Facebook but the other prefers these things to stay private? What if one person in a group outing doesn’t want their name and face on Flickr?
During the session, Melissa joked that maybe the only way to work around these questions is to date someone who doesn’t give a shit about the internet. That’s pretty much what I’ve done. Sure, my guy uses the internet to send email, check out porn, and lurk on a few messageboards, but he could care less about the world of social media. This resistance to social media is simultaneously cute, relieving, and slightly annoying. If there’s something I want him to have a look at, I still have to do the old fashioned thing where I email him a link. I don’t do that with anyone else, except my family.
We’re preparing to send our first fully collaborative project off to the Paris and Berlin Porn Film Festivals (technically, I should be writing a press release instead of this blog post). It should be interesting to see the ways my sweetie’s relationship with Web 2.0 changes as he becomes more fully and visibly a part of the Audacia Ray media machine story. He’ll probably still think it’s all pretty silly.
And yeah, this is a cock-teasing way to let you all know that I’ve been working on a short film. It’s not porn, but it is adult in nature. More info and a trailer to come.
Many people seem to be interested in having a weekly wrap up of my doings, so I’m going to start doing that on Saturdays… though of course it took me two weeks to actually sit down and do this. I’ve been busy, as you’ll see below! I’m planning to use these posts to pull together the stuff I do online - and in the otherwise recorded world - every week.
The big news (and big reason why it’s so quiet around here) is that I’ve got a new job! I’m now the editor of Naked City, a new sexuality blog from the Village Voice. I’m responsible for 25 posts a week there, many of which I’m writing, though I’ve also got a few terrific columnists, and I’m producing a weekly video show called Naked City TV (links below in the video section).
Before I unfurl the links, I just wanted to say that I’m always on the lookout for people and events to feature on Naked City. Please drop me a line if you have suggestions for people to feature in my 4 question interviews (they don’t have to be in NYC) and people or events to feature in my Naked City TV shows (they DO have to be in NYC).
Live Action Adventures
I went to Atlanta last weekend for Sex 2.0, an unconference about the intersection of feminism, sexuality, and social media. It was really terrific, and there were a lot of interesting conversations happening, in ways that are actually only possible in person. Though there was some liveblogging and a hell of a lot of Twittering, there was a lot of face to face interaction that wasn’t captured, which for me was actually the coolest part of the day. I posted the text of my keynote speech here and you can watch the video of the keynote here (and then tell me that they’re different).
I talked with Jamillah Knowles on BBC Radio’s Pods and Blogs about making sex media - my segment starts 5 minutes into the show. Click to see the show notes for Sex online and Rise and Shine
The Nerve Scanner named the first episode of Naked City TV “Video of the Day” on Wednesday, April 10th.
A pair of Columbia Journalism school students interviewed me and some other NYC pornographers for a piece on HD Porn for the website NYC Interactive.
The Naughty American did a piece on Sex 2.0, and they couldn’t resist a play on words for the title: Web Conference Erects Web 2.0. The piece also compares Amber Rhea to Martin Luther King, Jr. (seriously).
On Naked City, you’ll find a whole range of posts, from short posts about fashion - Dressed for Sex, posted twice a week, to moderately ridiculous lists, to four question interviews. I’m also doing a four-part series every month so I can go a little more in depth about a variety of topics without writing obnoxiously long posts. This month, I’m examining the religion and the sex industry in a series called Sexiness, Next To Godliness. The first installment is an introduction, called Religion and the Sex Industry. The second piece is called God Loves Sex Workers and Doesn’t Require Them to Repent.
Videos I’ve Produced
On Live Girl Review, I reviewed The Porn Report, an Australian book about a research study on porn, and the G Pilot, a strange little purple device designed to help guide men’s penises towards their lady’s g spot.
Since I wrote my book “Naked on the Internet,” one of the questions I get asked in just about every interview is: how did you get interested in this topic? And sometimes I draw a total blank when I try to respond, or I just want to say, “duh – cuz it’s awesome.”
But the answer I give is that I’m interested in sexuality and the internet in both the personal sense – I use it to find people to fuck and to entertain my horny little eyeballs – and the professional sense – when I was a sex worker, it brought me clients, and as a lapsed academic and a new media professional it’s brought me research “subjects,” community and a variety of jobs.
And not to speak for everyone here, but I think this covers a lot of our interests. Furthermore, what’s so cool about Web 2.0 – and the way Sex 2.0 “the movement” is taking shape – is the transparency, the wearing down of the lines between the personal and the professional. Sexuality online is a really intriguing site for all this. When I watch other new media people struggle with how much “social” content they should put on their Facebook accounts and stress about seeming unprofessional, we sex media makers are a hot mess of tangled emotions and media, and have been for years. They’re thinking about this stuff – we’re doing the messy, sticky exploration. This is not to say what we’re doing is seamless or that we’re so brave. Sometimes we – ok, I’ll totally own this and say I – do stupid things online, reveal too much, give away things we should keep for ourselves. These are growing pains, though sometimes the price to pay looms large.
Today is our chance to bridge the gap between the words and images on the screen and our in the flesh existences. That’s not to say that the two things are totally separate or unrelated, just to remind you all that we’re privileged to be able to step into three fleshy dimensions. And if that sounds a little naughty - that’s not a bad thing either.
Today is also a chance to tangle with some of the peculiar and hilarious intersections of our lives – we all have multiple facets and some of us have multiple identities. Many of us juggle and try to maintain so-called “secret” lives, sometimes trying to balance more than one job where people know us under different names, while others balance multiple relationships, multiple blogs – we’re busy people.
And though the people in this room represent many different interests, abilities and degrees of involvement online, we are all struggling to find our places within the awesome world of Sex 2.0 – which is not just a place to check stuff out, but to make cool stuff and meet cool people.
But - the main challenge I want to throw out to you for today and beyond is to think about not just your immediate community – the cool people in this room and the people who couldn’t be here who are playing along at home - but also people who don’t quite know that they need what we do. That sounds almost like I’m charging you with a missionary task - but I’m not asking you to go out and convert people to our cause, because that’s creepy and I’m not so sure “we” have one cause anyway. But what I’m saying is that it’s important to build community, but it’s also important to reach outside of our communities – spend some time in non-sexual spaces online, learn as much as you can about new media – and if you’re feeling feisty, challenge people’s assumptions about what sex and Sex 2.0 are all about.
So welcome – mix and mingle, learn and have fun, and make some sex media, for now and the future.
[I also have video that I’ll be posting shortly - and then you can compare and contrast the written with the spoken, if you’re into that kind of thing]
This is a rough edit without fancy title cards or a sound edit. The sound gets a little low towards the end, you’ll have to turn up your speakers, sorry - because I just ran out of time!!
I’ll post the final version of this video after I return from Atlanta on April 13.
Speaking of… I’m headed for LGA and my flight to Atlanta for Sex 2.0 (plus hanging out with Amber and Rusty and making them take me to delicious restaurants) in an hour and a half. Agggh!
I am newly gainfully employed, and it’s pretty much my dream job: I’m editing a brand spanking new sexuality blog for Village Voice Media. It’s called Naked City, and it went live this morning.
I know it seems like I have a hundred million different projects - and I do. Naked City, however, takes top billing (though at the moment it’s part time so I have some room for other stuff). Because it’s a paid gig, it will give me the opportunity to cover sexuality in a much more in depth, consistent, and wide-ranging way than I do through my other outlets. It also means that my coverage in other places will be a little more sparse, but I’m excited to deliver cool stuff on Naked City that will complement the other sex media that is already online.
Naked City’s main beat is New York, as that’s the home of the Village Voice and I’m shamelessly New York-centric, but I’ll also be taking it with me when I travel to far away (and not so far away) lands. For instance, I’ll be reporting on Sex 2.0 in Atlanta this coming weekend.
So far I’ve got four posts up, and over the next week I’ll be adding a variety of columns and features to the blog. We figured that leaping in and sorting it out while the blog is live isn’t the worst thing in the world. Feedback is welcome.
One of the things I’m most excited about doing is Naked City TV, a weekly video show which will document and explore the personal and professional lives of people for whom sexuality is central. I’ve got some interesting stuff shot, some interesting stuff planned, and I’m also totally open to suggestions. I’m producing, shooting, and editing the show as well as doing the interviews, and I take issues around media representations of sexuality very seriously (as you probably know if you’ve read my blog for more than a day or two).
Sex 2.0 will focus on the intersection of social media, feminism, and sexuality. How is social media enabling people to learn, grow, and connect sexually? How is sexual expression tied to social activism? Does the concept of transparency online offer new opportunities or present new roadblocks — or both? These questions, and many more, will be addressed within a safe, welcoming, sex-positive space.
Respecting the confidentiality and protecting the identities of participants who wish to maintain a degree of anonymity will be a top priority at Sex 2.0.
I will be delivering the keynote talk for Sex 2.0 bright and early in the morning - at 9.15 (roughly) on the nose.
I’m well aware that people gravitate towards different kinds of online content for different reasons - people who are friends on Flickr might not check out anything else I do online, while Twitter followers might just dip in to my more content-heavy stuff occasionally. Still others might want access to all my various outputs at once, but are annoyed by my stuff cropping up in so many different places with RSS feeds and logins to deal with. Or maybe no one thinks about this stuff other than me. Anyway, as my output of internetty fun grows, I’ve begun to wonder how much of that other stuff (Twitter, Tumblr, Live Girl Review, and now Sex Work 101) you’d like to see here on Waking Vixen - or if you think Waking Vixen should remain the place for more fleshed out posts, while the other stream-of-webbiness stuff stays in its rightful place.
And hence, a poll! I may end up doing more than one of the below if interest warrants it, and you’re also welcome to make suggestions by email: dacia[at]wakingvixen[dot]com.
Sex Work 101 was inspired by conversations that happened during the Women, Action and the Media 2008 conference held in Cambridge, MA from March 28-30, 2008.
I gave a talk at WAM called Sex Workers and Media Representation (click to see notes for the workshop), and questions during and after the talk made me realize that many people are curious about the sex industry and want to support sex workers in their struggle for rights, but they have no idea where to start. This site is an attempt to fill that gap in public education in an approachable, easy to understand, and engaging way - it’s also the first public education project from Sex Work Awareness, a new non-profit in NYC founded by four $pread staff members. Sex Work 101 is meant to add to public knowledge about sex work and to encourage discussion about the issues sex workers face.
Participate in Sex Work 101! I’m looking for questions non-sex working people want answered and their perceptions of/thoughts about the industry, as well as posts from sex workers who want to share stories about their work (a day in the life, how I got into the industry, reposts from personal blogs, etc)
The official email for the site is ask[at]sexwork101.com but people can also email me at dacia[at]wakingvixen.com. I’d also love to hear from people who want to help with the site - writing posts, answering questions, etc.
This weekend, as you may have notice from my obsessive live blogging and tweeting, I was at the Women, Action and the Media conference in Cambridge. As I’ve blogged about previously, I was pretty anxious about diving into the belly of the feminist beast. I identified myself as a feminist long before I was a sex worker, long before I had heard the phrase “sex positive” - but over the last few years I’ve felt ever more distance between myself and feminism. Well, not my personal relationship with feminism - I’m still very much a believer and definitely identify as a feminist - but my relationship with the movement has felt sadly strained. I’ve felt like it’s a club I’m often not welcome in, and that sucks. As I result, I was anxious about going to WAM and talking about sex work.
But guess what - it was awesome.
My talk on Saturday, Sex Workers and Media Representation (link goes to my talk notes), was really well attended (see photo!). What’s more than that, people were really supportive and really open to discussing sex work and media. I read my post Why sex workers aren’t represented in the media, which turns out to be a really intense piece when read aloud. Amber later said that she thought people were pretty much stunned into silence by it. That’s pretty awesome.
The silence, however, wasn’t pervasive. The session made me realize that there needs to be (or I and the organizations I work with need to do) a lot more public education around sex work. Many participants in the session expressed that they don’t really know where to begin with this issue - they aren’t sure where to turn for information, they don’t really know all the basics, but they want to help. There are so many similarities and points of intersectionality with reproductive rights, the LGBTQ struggles, et cetera.
My conversations at WAM inspired a new public education project, which I’ll announce in a few days when I’ve got the all clear. I feel a lot clearer on things after this weekend - it’s good for me to venture outside of the realm of sexuality, because I can reach out to more people, plus have my assumptions rattled. I need that. I shouldn’t get too comfortable within my world view. I need to make sure I listen up and let myself be challenged if I expect other people to do the same.
The other thing I realized in a big way is that because of my fears about being shunned and shamed (which are sometimes, but not always, unfounded), I’ve been painting myself into a corner. That is, the corner that is the pink ghetto. I find myself being apologetic, or preparing myself for rejection once I mention that I work in sexuality and start to reveal the depth of my involvement in the subject (in both personal and professional ways). As I was advising the ladies of Bitch Magazine to do in relation to new media - I just need to stop being afraid and give it a go, branch outside of my little corner, be less afraid of people being weird to me. It’s a vicious cycle, one that I help to move along and around. I do have a lot to offer - for instance, this weekend I realized that I do have a hell of a lot of knowledge about new media (especially making things go from a DIY perspective) and I’m happy to lend a hand with that. I need to stop worrying so much about the extent to which my work in the sex industry weirds people out - I will try not to inadvertently expose people to explicit stuff, because that’s not cool, but thinking about my background as an obstacle to overcome has got to stop.
[The photos in this post were taken by Amber Rhea - you can see other photos she took over the weekend on her Flickr.]
Presenters: Dean Jansen, Participatory Culture Foundation’s outreach director and project coordinator for Make Internet TV; Margaret Pickering, Participatory Culture Foundation volunteer, filmmaker, educator
This weekend, as you may have notice from my obsessive live blogging and tweeting, I was at the 
