Naked on the Internet
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
I first became aware of Audicia Dacia when I began to see her blog, The Waking Vixen in our daily web-traffic reports. About Comstock Films Dacia wrote:
Nothing could make anti-sex crusader Anthony Comstock spin in his grave faster than a porn company named after him. Comstock Films used that as a jumping off point, and then started making gorgeous films featuring the sexualities of very real couples.
Having had all sorts of educated people, including a Pulitzer prize winning journalist ask me if I know about the anti-sex crusader Anthony Comstock, whether or a person gets the joke our name had become a fair indicator of how well we might get along. Immediately I knew Dacia and I were going to get along just fine!
Perhaps a year later, I found myself sitting across the table from Dacia Ray in a noodle shop on the Upper West Side. Dacia’s just come from her secret life as a Columbia University grad student, I’ve just from my secret life as a relief and development issues documentary filmmaker. Though we’ve talked on the phone a few times, this is the first time we’ve met in person. Dacia’s munching on a steamed dumpling. I’m (as usual) ranting.
“But when I started, one of the reasons I wanted to work with people who weren’t sex workers was because…”
“… because they’d show up on time!” Dacia blurts out, finishing my thought through a mouth full of dumpling. This is not the first time, nor the last, that Dacia and I will find ourselves, not only on the same page, but on the same sentence.
In the little more than a year since that first greet, Dacia has produced the widely acclaimed “Bi Apple”, (featuring notoriously marginalized male bisexuality,) received her masters from Columbia, and published her first book “Naked on the Internet”; all while tending her duties as $pread magazine’s executive editor, and being involved with (and often leading) a myriad of other events and activities. The phrase “force of nature” comes to mind.
NAKED ON THE INTERNET is far too wide-ranging for me try and summarize, and if you’ve been following this online book tour for the last several weeks, plenty of others have given a general idea of what’s to be found in it’s pages. So instead I’d like to take you to the last page, the last paragraph in fact (emphasis mine):
“As a researcher in the history of sexuality, I’ve spent hours in various libraries trying to piece together tiny yellowed fragments of throwaway culture from the nineteenth century that might give a better picture of the daily sex lives of people in that era. It’s hard to do, because until very recently, in the Western world, sexuality was not at all valued as an important key to human nature and nurture. Diaries of sexual behavior, if kept at all, were generally hidden or destroyed by family members; pornography and sexual heal information were often burned by agents of the state; surviving reports of sexual interactions are couched in obscure terms so as to rendered unintelligible to a modern audience. The Internet is changing all of this, and future generations will have a much clearer idea of what we were up to that we have about our great grandparents. Hopefully, the experience of the women whose stories shaped and informed this book will inspire other women to explore and think about all the possibilities the Internet offers and will empower women to challenge the ways female sexuality is represented.“
Dacia, you could have taken the words out of my mouth!
NAKED ON THE INTERNET, by Audacia Ray is published by Seal Press. It is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most other book sellers.
DAMOM AND HUNTER: DOING IT TOGETHER will have its US premiere at the 
