Prostitution–and today’s Internet iteration of the business–is a perennially popular issue for politicians to crack down on because elected officials get the opportunity to speak up for supposedly voiceless and exploited people (13 of the 17 attorneys general making the fuss right now are up for re-election this year). However, people in the sex industry are not voiceless, and we must be consulted when policies that directly affect our safety and well-being are under consideration. There are many different kinds of work experiences in the sex industry, and targeting a single website as a means of combating sex trafficking is not only highly ineffective, but puts people who are not coerced into sex work at risk.

There are thousands of both illegally and legally working sex workers – prostitutes, dominatrices, body workers, exotic dancers, webcam performers, and many others – who utilize websites like Craigslist to advertise their services in an independent capacity. The Internet has now made it more possible than ever for individual sex workers to take control of their businesses instead of relying on agencies, pimps, gentleman’s clubs, and brothels, which are frequently the sources and sites of grievously exploitative labor practices that include but are not limited to trafficking. Individuals who work indoors and advertise online, as I did, are safer than street workers because we frequently rely on online networks to screen clients, maintain bad date lists, and share information about best practices for health and safety. Removing online spaces for this community building, which often starts with advertising, drives independent workers underground and forces them to rely on groups that do not have their best interests at heart.

The attorneys general are right to combat sex trafficking. Coerced labor and coerced sex are clear evils. However, ending sex trafficking takes careful strategy, and what the Federal and State governments are doing to combat trafficking is not working. The federal Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (link starts auto-download of PDF) has resulted in just over 400 sex trafficking convictions in the last decade, and very few survivors of sex trafficking are receiving aid from state and federal agencies. Furthermore, sex trafficking is over-represented in media coverage of human trafficking. The International Labour Organization estimates that for every person trafficked into prostitution, nine people are trafficked into forced labor situations that include agricultural work, domestic labor, and many others. Furthermore, though public debate conflates sex trafficking and sex work, they are not the same thing. The 10th Edition of the Trafficking in Persons Report released by the Department of State in June clearly states that, “prostitution by willing adults is not human trafficking regardless of whether it is legalized, decriminalized, or criminalized.”

Until it censored adult services, Craigslist was exploring ways to better combat trafficking and exploitative labor practices within the sex industry, and was discussing best practices for this with Craigslist. Losing this avenue for advertising also means that law enforcement officials and social services that strive to improve the health and well-being of people in the sex industry are less able to identify and do outreach to such persons.

It’s true that many forms of sex work are criminalized, but prohibition is not an effective means of halting a practice, especially an income-generating one. Instead of shutting down Craigslist, the attorneys general should engage in conversations with people who work in the sex industry about how to identify sex trafficking and differentiate it from sex work. Instead of arresting individual trafficking survivors or consenting sex workers, we must support individuals who do not want to be in the sex industry in securing safe housing, accessing health services including mental health and addiction treatment when needed, and obtaining the education and training needed to find jobs that pay a living wage that is comparable to or better than earnings in the sex industry.

Well, shit. That’s a horrendous situation for anyone and their family to be in, but I have to admit that I’ve been feeling a bit conflicted about the whole thing, and especially the way it’s being painted by the FOJ. I have struggled a lot with how to write this post – even whether I should write it, and why I should bring these issues up now, why I’ve publicly kept my trap shut about this stuff (for years, in some cases), and to what degree it’s a shitty thing to kick someone while they are down. And also – what does it mean to stir the pot within the sex positive community instead of being supportive – can I do both at once? Furthermore, how do we manage criticism of one of our own?

It would be simpler if this case was just about the issue of Jefferson’s bisexuality. But it isn’t.

I’ve known Jefferson for going on six years (yes, predating both of our blogs by a while), and after a lot of careful thought and discussion with close friends, I think it’s important that I speak my piece.

On the blog post being circulated about the issue, it says this:

This case is of concern to anyone whose sexuality does not fit the standard mold—because it could happen to you. This case is of concern to all writers, because Jefferson’s blog is being used as evidence against him—and that could have repercussions for our First Amendment rights.

There is an amount of risk that you assume when you choose to blog about your sex life, especially if you have children and a vindictive ex. One of the things I was surprised by when I did the research and interviews for my book Naked on the Internet was that so so many bloggers acknowledged not only that discovery of their sex blog would be catastrophic for job/family/life, but also that they knew other people who had been outed and didn’t think it would happen to them, despite all common sense type evidence to the contrary.

The SFLDEF has a page with seventeen Do’s and Don’t's to Avoid Custody Challenges. Number 3 on the list reads Keep your sex life off the Internet. Don’t blog, create webpages, or post to open or archived lists about sexually explicit material. Number 15 reads Keep your sex life separate from your parenting. Jefferson crossed both of these lines, big time: he kept a blog that was about both his sex life and parenting. Both in intimate and identifying detail with a thin veil of anonymity. Beyond the blog, this included telling his story to a weekly publication in NYC with a huge readership, in which he listed his kids’ genders and exact ages. I very much believe that people should be able to blog and write freely about their sexual lives as well as their family lives, and I don’t want to take part in shaming people into not telling their personal truths, but there’s also the realities of the world, and those realities are frightening. Combining blogging about family and non-conventional sexuality is still very much a liability, and I feel sad that this is being proven in such a scary way for one of our own.

But the bisexuality and the blogging is just a piece of the puzzle. Anyone who reads his blog knows Jefferson’s affinity for bourbon – and though he has a flip way of writing about it, his drinking is a real problem that I personally have seen unfold in embarrassing and fucked up ways. Although I am all for freedom of sexual expression (um, hi?) I do think that sometimes Jefferson abuses this freedom and exercises poor judgment when it comes to the often young, often insecure women he chooses to make a part of his life – as has been documented and then sometimes deleted from those women’s blogs. I feel like his behavior has not only gone unchecked but in fact has been enabled by the women who pay for his booze, rent, and other amenities. This is one of the dirty secrets of the sex blogging community, and I can’t turn away from it anymore.

I don’t exactly feel like a weight has lifted by me writing these things, but I think it’s important as a member of this community and someone who has known Jefferson for many years. There is, of course, more to the story than what’s on the internet – there’s legal paperwork that we’ll never see (and shouldn’t, its private information) and events that happen offline that don’t get represented online. But even with the knowledge that there is a lot more to this story, this is dramatic warfare that will be largely staged online both by people who know Jefferson IRL and those who don’t, both by people who are honest with him and themselves and those who aren’t. This is a big and important thing for the sex blogging community to talk about, both online and off.

With all those things acknowledged: if you want to donate to Jefferson’s legal fund, go to the Sexual Freedom Legal Defense and Education League website and click on the Paypal button – be sure to make a note that your donation is for Jefferson. I personally am not sure that I feel right putting money up for him, knowing what I know and feeling how I feel about the whole big mess.

Though for years I’ve played around in the weird space of being an Interesting Person Worthy of Media Attention and a media maker, this little dance has gotten increasingly interesting since I’ve become editor of the Village Voice sexuality blog.

I’ve been writing the blog in the first person – none of that editorial we stuff – and I haven’t been afraid to express my opinions. After all, the Voice hired me for me and my whole thing (I’m gesticulating wildly, FYI). However, I’ve also been leaving myself out of the picture more often than not. Though you’ll hear my voice overs in the weekly Naked City TV episodes, I haven’t yet done an on camera appearance. I like being in the spotlight sometimes, and I’m good at doing the media thing. But I don’t want it to be overkill, I want other people’s voices to come to the forefront, in a way that isn’t totally mediated by the Word of Audacia. I know that all media I produced is tainted with my perspective (tainted I say!), which is fine, cool even – but it doesn’t all need to be about me.

While I don’t want Naked City to be all fangirly posts about people I think are awesome, I’m also acutely aware of the stresses of being interviewed and trusting someone else to represent you. I’ve been asking thinky and sometimes tough questions in my Four on the Floor interviews, but I also strive to represent people at their best. Shooting and editing weekly video episodes has been challenging in this regard – sometimes people are bad on camera. Sometimes they say dumb things or things that make them look crazy. I edit that stuff away as an attempt at paying it forward.

I hope this doesn’t make me a less critical member of the media – I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. But there are still some stories I cringe away from. For example, in my first week of blogging at Naked City, I was offered a set of nude photos of a reality show star. These images had been made a few years ago, and would be upsetting to the star if they were leaked. Part of me was excited about the potential for breaking a story, getting lots of traffic, etc. Overwhelmingly, though, I had a sense of dread with pangs of creepiness. That’s not at all the kind of editor I want to be. I didn’t have to make this tough choice since there weren’t any releases for the images and I wasn’t going to tangle with that. I’m sure other stuff like this will come up. I do love me some gossip – but I like to hear it, not publish it. Is it even possible to maintain that party line and have a successful blog? Time will tell, I suppose.

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.

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]

I could see that he was frustrated that I was being standoffish (he was saying that he thought we had a lot in common) – and he said several times, “I am willing to tell you anything you want to know.” I just don’t know how to respond to this – interacting with someone online who thinks we have things in common but has no discernible digital trail just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t even know where to begin asking questions of that person, even if there’s an open invitation for that, when I’ve got my roots in so many online communities, a presence all over the place, a honed identity, and there’s just nothing for me to go on to learn about that other person.

This is not to say that anytime I get a random email from someone I google them and then won’t speak to them if they don’t have a digital trail. And if I meet someone out in meatspace, I don’t avoid them if I find that they aren’t totally hip to the internet (my charming boyfriend is one such person who is adverse to myspace, etc). It’s just that social networking implies something social going on – someone who signs up for a site where pics are standard but doesn’t post one (even a cute avatar, anything) raises a red flag for me, someone who messages a lot but hasn’t added friends – they just don’t get it.

The thing is, I do want to keep the “social” in social media, and I do enjoy random messaging, especially if it’s somewhat witty and insightful. I’m not opposed to flirting either, but I’m not easy, and my life is pretty full – I’m definitely not jumping to meet new suitors. That said, it’s nice to actually find new people on different social networks instead of re-establishing the same batch of folks on a new site. I do sometimes feel like I’m being bitchy if I shut someone down quickly, but on the other hand – you gotta do as the Romans do. Explaining who you are in messages while leaving your profile blank just isn’t how it works.

After some prodding from Amber Rhea I joined Twitter back in June and have been really into it. I use it to let people know what I’m working on, but also to give snippets of info about more intimate stuff that I don’t necessarily have the time/energy/inclination to blog: from the naughty, to the mundane, to the sad.

I created a Facebook profile after following along with Susan Mernit’s experiences. I haven’t entirely figured out what purpose it will serve for me personally, though I suspect that I’ll try and maintain my page as a kind of inner circle way of finding out what people I’m keen on are working on. This contrasts with the approach I take to MySpace, which is essentially that I’ll add anyone whose page doesn’t make my browser crash and who doesn’t sexually harass me after I’ve said no thanks (these are actually kind of lofty standards for MySpace). So far my favorite thing about Facebook is all the applications, especially that I can add apps in a way that effectively makes my page an aggregator of the social media stuff I’m up to: Twitter, Stumbleupon, and Del.icio.us – plus the iRead book app makes me happy in the learny parts.

MySpace, on the other hand – ugh, it’s such a clusterfuck, and I feel like I’ve had a page there forever. But I do feel like it’s a necessary evil for promoting my shit and connecting with people. Although for me Google is the go-to place when I want to cyberstalk, er, I mean research a person, I’ve been surprised by how many people seem to use MySpace as the first go-to place to find me (and other people, I assume). There is a decent number of folks who message me after searching for me on the site, and then myprofile becomes an intro to all the other webaction I’m rocking. This alone has convinced me not to shut down my profile, and makes it almost worth dealing with messages that ask me to chat or are from guys who want to drink my bath water (true story). I pretty much never get email messages like that anymore, it only seems to happen on MySpace. Maybe I should just start writing back things like “Don’t you know who I am? I am (in)famous and you are like the buzzing of flies to me!”

I’m also messing around a bit with the whole social recommendation thing, which I think I’m just beginning to understand a little better. I signed up for a Digg account about a year ago, and this week I’ve tried to muster some interest in it. The thing is, I just don’t like Digg. I think it sucks, it’s totally a boy’s club (and I am pretty comfortable in boy’s club situations, having worked in the sex biz for 6 years), and it’s ultra competitive. The race to post something first, to comment quickly, all that stuff… it’s stressful and lame and I just don’t really care. Also, reactions to sexually related material tend to be not awesome. That’s not just sex stuff though, it’s really everything – I mean, I like a like dose of snark (even a heavy dose), but the whole mean-ness thing just doesn’t fly with me.

Stumbleupon, however, I just adore. Part of this is because it’s got a basic bloggy format that makes sense to me, and it’s got an easy-to-use tool bar so I can thumbs-up thumbs-down stuff without surfing over to the site to do anything, plus when I discover sites there’s a pop-up for me to write a review in. In a way, Stumbleupon is kind of a personalized BoingBoing, but I think the thing I’m most fascinated by is the fact that it seems much more international than a lot of other sites I’ve played with. That probably has something to do with the structure of the site, but it’s cool to look in my visitors sidebar and see that recently people who live in Wales, Serbia, and a dozen other faraway places have dropped in on my page.

There are also two (maybe more) porn-specific social recommendation sites, Stumbleporn and Socialporn, which I haven’t amply explored. But they are on my list.

In my own blogging life, I just haven’t really cared about landing my posts on social recommendation sites, though I know the lust for diggs is what drives a lot of blogging content. This just seems ridiculous to me, partly because I know that people who like top ten lists or blow job tips or vapid sexiness aren’t going to be down with my overly-analytical self. And I don’t really care. I certainly don’t feel sad that I’m missing out on all the abuse that is par for the course with that kind of traffic. I would prefer that the right eyes see my website – the search term “audacia ray” has for months been the #1 search term that brings people here. I much prefer a relatively low-traffic blog with a quality readership I like interacting with to bursts of hits from people who don’t really care or get it. Also, I see my blog as a piece of the puzzle, and I don’t want to transform it into a money making machine – it’s my thinking/talking place, a supplement to my book writing, movie directing, art show curating, magazine editing, appearance making, and event organizing.

That said, I do think a presence on these various social media sites is valuable – I can already see a slight increase in traffic from my Stumbleupon page, and I know that traffic is going to the PEEQ as well. I’m not totally shy about marketing myself and my employer – these things are important, I need to be noticed, the PEEQ needs to get visited and engaged with. But there has to be some social value to the whole operation as well. I know I can’t be totally selfish with the links I recommend, that’s pretty transparent. So, I write/post/link to a lot of stuff that isn’t self serving, and it’s not a chore, because I really am engaged with this stuff, I really am obsessively clicking around the dirty parts of the Internet.