No, sorry, that’s not the title of a girl-girl porno extravaganza.

It is, however, a hint at a very exciting new chapter in the life and times of Waking Vixen Productions. Though I keep most of my bitching and moaning (well, the impulsive and less articulate bits anyway) off of my blog, I do a fair amount of bitching, moaning and stressing over on Twitter. One day not too long ago, as I was launching the new long format Live Girl Review, I was Tweeting my stress about doing the publicity for the show, and I got an @ message from Catalina. I’ve read her blogs for a while and she recently asked me to be a part of her latest project, a group blog called Best Sex Bloggers.

We started talking about the possibility of Quid Pro Quo, the public relations and marketing company she runs with her husband, representing me and my work, and I’m happy to announce that she’s now part of Team Waking Vixen. Which, if you haven’t figured out by now, has always been just me. But now when people approach me and act as though my business is more than me in front of my laptop, their assumption will be accurate!

There are some parts of my business that have become too much for me - and publicity is one big one. I’m in the process of reorganizing my priorities and trying to work smarter, run my business more efficiently and with a better plan. I’m well on the way to identifying what is most important for me to focus on - Live Girl Review and my writing are high on the list, as is organizing my WVP work so that I can work full time on a project that’s fulfilling and intellectually stimulating. Over the four years that I’ve been doing Waking Vixen stuff, I’ve learned a lot and its grown bigger than I expected way more quickly than I expected. I’ve been crazily devoted to making and promoting cool stuff - and that’s moved me along in the world. But I’m also reaching a crossroads with it all - I need support to make my work move and grow but I also need to devote time and energy to other projects. Bringing Catalina into the fold is a step in the right direction.

So yay! A big welcome to Catalina, who even has her very own Waking Vixen email address - catalina[at]wakingvixen.com. It’s still a little weird for me to see someone else’s name attached to my baby, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually. Until then, Catalina will have to put up with slightly control freaky emails from me. We’ll be rolling out some cool stuff over the next month, I promise - so stay tuned for that!

And in the meantime, check out the bazillion blogs that Catalina does: Catalina Loves, Catalina Says, Mr and Mrs Kink, Tru Fetish, and The Femme’s Guide.

For my second weekly Fleshbot feature about fashion, I wrote up some dos and don’ts about stockings, including snark and helpful suggestions about garter belts, body stockings, white stockings, stockings and open-toed shoes, knee highs, and the trick of up-sizing.

Over on Baby Sinead’s very awesome and brilliant blog (with frequent nudity to boot), she answers a question from a reader about whether she thinks porn sites like hellfiresex.com and meatholes.com are a degradation of female sexuality.

Her responses are awesome and spot on:

Now Meatholes.com is about obviously about pushing their stars limits. This video has made the rounds of course and enforced the idea that the site is abusive to it’s stars to the point of making them snap. I don’t really know Meatholes or the people behind so I can’t say if it’s awful. It does seem degrading in the viral video but on the first video of the site is a girl talking about how hard she can take things and what she will take. I can not really speak on this site.

(emphasis mine)

She’s talking about labor, not images. And that’s hugely important - and it’s the future of discussions about porn and exploitation, even if there’s still a lot of obsessing about the sex acts happening on screen.

It’s often hard to tell just from looking at a visual representation whether or not the performers are being placed under duress or if their working conditions are bad. Can you tell by looking at a tee shirt whether it was made by workers in ethical working conditions? Nope. Not unless you look at the label and then do your homework on the company.

Sometimes when I present the idea that its not the aggressive anal/choking/cum splattering that makes porn unethical or unfeminist, but the conditions under which the performers are doing said acts, people say things like, “its impossible to know what the working conditions are.” It isn’t impossible - it just requires some research. Just as people research textile factory conditions and then put pressure on corporations to have better practices - the same could happen with porn.

After taking a two month break from my Hot Movies For Her column, I’ve got a new one up this morning, about porn, age, and attractiveness.

At 28, I’m not “old” by any standards - except the standards set by the porn industry. Twenty eight is full on MILF territory, even though I don’t have any children. I started working in sex when I was 21 and all the models were essentially my peers, but as I’ve hung around the biz over the years and gotten older, porn performers suddenly seem freakishly young to me.

It’s possible that I’m getting conservative in my old age, but these days I find myself attracted to women and men who are in my peer age group or older. I mean, it’s true that I’m also something of a chubby chaser but I like the fuller shapes that come with age, and while I’m not lusty over granny porn (yet?), I appreciate the mature look. Maybe I was naive when I was younger, but despite knowing that sexuality is fluid and can change over time blah blah blah, I didn’t necessarily think about how age factors into that equation.

I go on to write about my personal feelings of squickness about young women in porn, contextualized with some words from porn legend Seka, who like other porn stars of the 1970s and 1980s was in her late twenties when she entered the industry. Barely Legal has not always been the reigning norm of hotness in porn. I also have an interesting quote from the always smart, always dirty minded Tasty Trixie, who feels totally different about the subject.

Read the whole piece here.

Click to play

My second long form episode of Live Girl Review went up on Friday, so I thought I’d cross post it here and tell you all about it.

Here what’s in the show this week!
Reviews
Book: John Holmes, a Life Measured in Inches
Sex Toy: Sliquid Organics line of lubes
Movie: Erika Lust’s Barcelona Sex Project — that link takes you to Hot Movies for Her, where you can pay per view instead of paying international shipping for the DVD.

One Hot Minute
Sex educator Jamye Waxman gives a tip on how to make a blowjob extra nice with a little help from your fingers.

Bad Press
This episode’s bad press is more an encouragement to be critical of how sex toys are sold and less of a total slam. I share my opinions about the rabbits vibrators, in response to a comment left by Gustav

Fan Girl Moment
I am having fan girl moment over Rachel Kramer Bussel and her new anthology Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica, so as part of her month-long blog tour, I interviewed her about erotica, plus quizzed her on her personal interest in spanking.

Goodies! - in every episode I offer up free stuff for commenters on Live Girl Review. I pick one of the first TEN commenters as the winner, and that person receives the following:
Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica - the latest erotica anthology edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Kelly Payne’s The Judge’s Chamber - yup, a dvd of spanking smut
A bottle of Sliquid Organics lube

[you’ve missed the boat on this, the comments fill up quick - if you want to be in the running for future episodes, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or you can subscribe over at iTunes]

Magma Toys is also making several of their Phoenix vibes, which I reviewed in episode one, available for my viewers. If you’re interested in giving one a try, comment on this post or email me at dacia[at]livegirlreview.com and tell me in 50 words or less why you’re interested in this toy and what you intend to do with it. These are still available!

The next long episode goes up on September 10th, but I’ll also be doing a few quickies throughout September.

Again, thanks for all your comments, emails, and iTunes reviews - keep ‘em coming!

I’m now writing a weekly Fleshbot Fashion Police feature, and this week I kicked it off with a comparison between the box cover outfits of Jenna Haze and Courtney Cummz. It was fun to do; if nothing else, I crack myself up.

On Monday evening I spent an hour making text chat music with Victor, who blogs about gay porn and race at Men of Color. He’s pretty amazing and over the last few years he’s delivered a lot of interesting and critical posts about the gay porn biz and its relationship to race. On a less philosophical note, he posts pictures of hot dudes with fat cocks. And I can’t get enough of that. Here’s our little interview.

And after several years of resistance, I’ve finally participated in a Sugasm round up. Actually, two of my posts are in this round-up - I reposted the piece about Citibank over on Best Sex Bloggers and it’s become the Editor’s Choice. I’m trying to participate a bit more whole heartedly in the world of bloggy goodness on the social level. I’m generally very focused on creating content and more content, and I think I need to spend more time hanging out and talking to people. Though that still doesn’t mean I’ll be signing on to any instant messenger program with any kind of frequency.

Sugasm #144
The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #145? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.

This Week’s Picks
Bush Rides Again: Birth Control Defined as “Abortion”?
“The reason you tweak laws, redefining them or broadening their definitions, is to create the opportunity for a legal climate in which challenges may better succeed.”

First Time For Everything: A Polyamorous Relationship
“The only real trouble with being a triad came from the world around us.”

Sex Work And Compassion: Panty Tree
“I will never feel shame for being a sex worker.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Sugar Bank

Editor’s Choice
I Meet the Business End of Citibank’s Anti-Adult Business Policy

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

The last week has been rough and weird and confusing in big messy handfuls of ways, one of which I wrote about last week, but others that I’m not ready to write about. Plus that, I’ve been thinking about and suffering from the weird distance and solitary life that the internet can lend itself to. Though I’ve always appreciated my solitude and do very much like working on my own, in a quiet little bubble of my clutter and my laptop, since leaving $pread back in January (wow, I can’t believe its been almost nine months), I’ve begun to realize how much I miss collaborative work. Though I trust myself and my judgment on various issues (like I think I did a good job dealing with what was thrown at me during Spitzergate back in March) all by my lonesome, I need to reach out more too. And I need to leave my house and/or pick up the phone, both of which are sometimes harder than they should be.

This week I feel like I’ve been veering into the realm of questionable sanity, so I’ve been trying to remedy this with the whole socializing thing. And tonight as I rode the subway home, I was thinking about the many amazing women I have in my life, and how radically different that is now than my social circle when I was younger. As a teenager, I disliked women in general. Though I had a few tight relationships with women, they were tinged with sex and violence - weirdly competitive eating disorders, self injury, drugs, being slutty in the bad way, and being romantically and savagely cruel to one another. My first real female friend of my adult life, who was a roommate of mine when I first moved to NYC, now refers to me as her arch nemesis. So me and the ladies - not so good.

But today, virtually all the people I feel intense kinship with are women. And hopefully I’m not now and won’t become arch nemeses with any of them. I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that the majority of them are also women who’ve spent a good amount of time in and around the sex industry. There are a few exceptions, but not a lot.

This week I feel like its important to me to pay homage to the ladies I’m hanging out with, eating with, talking with and gathering strength from. They’re a pretty amazing bunch, and I’m glad I’ve pushed myself to reach out, get social and get talkative.

Over the weekend, I spent a solid few hours on the phone with the very lovely and sadly geographically distant Madeline, after having gotten a sweet voicemail from Jamye Waxman, who is out in the desert at Burning Man. Libby has frequently been sending ass-kicking, helpful and encouraging emails. I’ve been getting to know and appreciate Catalina over the past few weeks. Today I spent a helpful and awesome hour on the phone with Lia and then went out for the evening with Eliyanna, my once co-executive editor at $pread and now superb friend and travel buddy. Tomorrow I’ll get to spend a few hours getting tattooed by the amazing Joy, and then catch up with a bunch of ladies who used to work at AbbyWinters.com. Thursday evening I’m planning to go drinking with ex-pat tattoo nerd Marisa and I might just get to top the week off with a dinner with Tess. And I desperately need to catch up with Ms. Bella Vendetta, who I described in the acknowledgments to my book as “the toughest, hardest-working, and biggest-hearted woman I know.”

I am lucky - and these women are incredible.

Do It Yourself Sexy Media at eXXXotica NY on Saturday, September 13th. At the Meadowlands Convention Center in Secaucus (I know I know, its in NJ). 3:30-4:30 pm. Day passes start at $35.00.
In this crash course, sex media professional Audacia Ray will guide you through the ins and outs of making sexy media, whether for yourself and your partners, or to show the whole world. Blogging, podcasting, video blogging, and homemade porn will be addressed. We will examine the how to’s, including equipment selection, software and online platforms to promote your work, as well as privacy and anonymity issues for those who don’t want to be totally revealed to the world.

I’m not going to post my round up of Naked City links this evening, because as of a few hours ago, I am no longer writing the blog. At the moment, it’s still live, but my login has been disabled, it’s not branded Village Voice anymore, and the RSS feed has been deleted from villagevoice.com/sex. I’m not really sure what’s going to happen to the site, but I was told that in a recent budget meeting they decided that it wasn’t getting enough traffic to justify the expense, so they had to drop me.

I’m (obviously) pretty bummed about losing the job and the abrupt and slightly passive aggressive manner in which it happened. I was really enjoying doing the blog and its video show. So now that I’ve gotten and lost two sweet sex + internet dream jobs (The Peeq and Naked City) in less than a year, I’m feeling a bit discouraged, and I’m trying to figure out a better and more stable future for myself.

I have been thinking a lot recently about my dream job and what that might look like - and while editing Naked City has been nothing short of awesome and amazing, I also know that I can’t picture blog writing being my main livelihood in five to ten years. However, thinking long term when you’re working freelance at the frenetic pace of the internet is pretty tough stuff.

As much as I have been burned by working for start ups and making stuff with slightly amorphous web projects, I do really love that entrepreneurial thrill of organizing something from scratch - I can’t help it. But at the same time, I have started to think that maybe it might do me well to work with a more established organization (not just because I want something safe - please, safe is for baby boomers). Though freelance stuff has been my bread and butter for many years, I think I could learn a lot from working within a larger organization, and that the right organization could learn a lot from me.

So here’s the thing, dear reader - I’m open to suggestions about what you see me being capable of and any ideas you might have about possible folks to work with, both in terms of freelance work and bigger-picture full time jobs. I’m very interested in doing non-profit work around the sex industry, reproductive & sexual health, media activism, and feminist issues. I’m also open to working with adult businesses, and either way I’m looking for something intellectually engaging, with problem-solving fun, integration of media and human interaction, with occasional bouts of trying new and interesting things.

Over the last seven years I’ve been curator, blogger, writer, magazine editor, adjunct professor, public speaker, video producer and video editor. I’m comfortable on a lot of different content management and blogging systems; I’m a videographer with my own equipment and can edit with Final Cut Pro and iMovie; I’m becoming ever more adept at audio recording and editing with Digidesign Pro Tools; I have basic understanding of HTML; I’ve got basic competence with the Adobe Creative Suite; and I know a whole damn lot about the web and social media. Also, my brain is a steel trap. So, I’ve got skills, I just need to figure out how to use them all to my advantage.

I am also, as I’ve mentioned to some folks in person and hinted at/whined about on Twitter, very much looking to leave New York for the right opportunity. I’ve lived in this city for nine years and grew up in upstate New York, and though I very much consider it my home, I do really want to give something else a try. Because, why not - I’m nothing if not a risk taker, and why not do that with my living arrangements? I’m not limiting this to the US either - have laptop, will spontaneously uproot life for interesting adventures.

In addition to this website, I have a slightly more portfolio-like and to-the-point website at AudaciaRay.com with a clickable resume and all that good stuff. So, that’s my sales pitch. If you have any interesting ideas for me, drop me a line at dacia[at]wakingvixen[dot]com.

I know I’ll land on my feet, I just feel like I need to get more proactive about where I land, what that looks like, and what it spells for my future.

[Posting two days at once because I feel asleep at 10 pm on Monday like a jerk]

For Naked City TV, I paid a visit to my old stomping ground the Museum of Sex (I had my first sex related job there, as a researcher and assistant curator, from 2001-2003) to check out their new exhibit Sex Lives of Animals and get some insider info from curator Sarah Jacobs.

Sexy in NYC: Events for the Week of August 18th

Richard F. Barber’s Figurative Nudes [Daily Voyeur]

Three Hot Dead Porn Stars [Porn-o-rama] - another Mikey Mongol gem.

Vintage-Inspired Waist Cincher [Fashion]

More Designer Condom Packages: Vote for Your Fave

Pinhole Nude from Sweden [Daily Voyeur]

Citibank’s Anti-Adult Business Policy

Jollie Rider [Sex Toy]

The Penthouse Pet Handbook: All You Ever Needed to Know

Grande Dame Appearance: Georgina Spelvin at Book Soup in LA - by Mikey Mongol

A Walk on the Wild Side: Finding Street Workers in Manhattan [Gotham After Dark] - by Charlie Vazquez