BY Lux Alptraum
June 26, 2007
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I met Audacia Ray years ago, through interesting circumstances (okay, we were dating the same boy). This was long before she was Audacia Ray, editor of $pread Magazine, or Audacia Ray, director of the award-winning porno “The Bi Apple,” or Audacia Ray, author of the insightful and brilliant Naked on the Internet (recently released by Seal Press). Today she is all those things, and I’m quite pleased, because it means more good porn and more smart writing about sex (and the Internet).

Though I’m consistently awed and impressed with all of Audacia’s achievements, the thing that really got me excited was hearing about the release of her book, Naked on the Internet. Just out this month, Naked on the Internet is a much needed analysis of female sexuality and the Internet (and how the two interact with and influence each other). Drawing from interviews with 80 women (including me!), Ray covers everything from online dating and flirtatious chat rooms to Internet porn and sex work to cyberdildonics. Taking a long hard look at the good, the bad, and the occasionally ugly of sex and the Internet, Ray offers up an intelligent critique of the ways the Internet has transformed our view of female sexuality — and the power it has to continue that work:

Female sexuality is traditionally contained and constrained by many cultural forces. The immediacy of the Internet and the urgency of the women using it is chipping away at these limitations in much-needed ways. Though I have no doubt that some women take this exploration… too far…, I also think that these first and second generations of female Internet users will help to create better and safer ways for this type of exploration and work to happen. And I believe (and hope) they’ll bend the larger culture to a greater acceptance of female sexuality.

(I hope so too.)

Naked on the Internet can be purchased online. To learn more about Audacia Ray, please visit her website.