Sometimes I get hit with a flurry of media attention all at once – and sometimes I understand where it’s coming from and why it’s hitting all at once. Other times I have no idea why it’s converging all at the same time. Yesterday was the latter.
The virginity-for-sale madness continues, and CNN.com asked my opinion about the whole Natalie Dylan thing. Usually when I speak to press I try and speak from this authoritative sex worker advocate standpoint – but I think this sound bite is much more “I’m a cranky retired hooker and long-time non-virgin.”
Audacia Ray, a 28-year-old former sex worker from New York and author of “Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration,” is skeptical. She views Dylan’s auction as a publicity stunt and doesn’t anticipate she’ll “continue in the industry.”
The importance of a woman’s virginity may vary in different cultures, but generally there’s not the high value there used to be, Ray said.
“It begins to be viewed more as a burden over time — a burden in that losing virginity is an event, so that it has to somehow mean something, which is part of the reason why people are all up in arms about Natalie,” she said.
Violet Blue wrote her column this week about Twittersexuality, and produced a big ole laundry list of folks on Twitter who tweet sex stuff. Not only did she list me, but she also screen capped a tweet from earlier this week, in which I reveal the dirty geekery of my subconscious:
Also, Bonnie Ruberg wrote up the sex blogger calendar in her Village Voice column Click Me. She had this to say about me:
One of many sex professionals featured in the calendar, Audacia Ray has a long history of working in the world of the erotic—both as an author and an activist. Having recently started teaching as a professor at Rutgers, she has also been a curator at the Museum of Sex and the editor of $pread magazine. Her blog is mostly all business (example post: “Liabilities and Assetsâ€) but if you follow her on Twitter (@audaciaray) you can listen in on the dirty secrets of her every day life—like preparing to talk her class about porn.
