16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence: Day 10, Audacia Ray
For day 10 of 16 Days of Action Against Gender Violence, we would like to focus on former WAM! presenter, Audacia Ray, who is also the founder of The Red Umbrella Project. As a self-described “media maker and sex worker rights activist” her work is a perfect intersection between WAM!’s feminist approach to media and the 16 Days commitment to ending gender violence. In fact, you might remember her from WAM!’s series of interviews with feminist film creators where she discussed some ethical aspects of activism.
Audacia Ray on Making Ethical Activist Videos
As it says on RedUmbrellaProject.org:
The Red Umbrella Project amplifies the voices of people who have done transactional sex, through media, storytelling, and advocacy trainings, at our monthly storytelling series in New York City, and with support for advocacy projects and campaigns that promote the human rights of people who trade sex for something they need.
The Red Umbrella Project has several campaigns that seek to de-criminalize sex work and increase the safety of an often dangerous profession. This is done by emphasizing the fact that sex workers are human beings with rights. The “Protect, Don’t Prosecute” campaign, combined with the “I am a Sex Worker” video serves to counter the media’s tendency to criminalize and dehumanize the sex industry.
But Audacia Ray doesn’t stop there. Actually, she seems unstoppable. In addition to the work she does for the Red Umbrella Project, she adds:
I’m also the program officer for online communications at the International Women’s Health Coalition, where I edit the blog Akimbo. I’m a former sex worker, been blogging since 2004, and my book Naked on the Internet was published by Seal Press in 2007. I was an editor at $pread magazine from 2005-2008 and now do media and storytelling trainings with sex workers.
If you are interested in the her work, it might interest you to know that December 17th is International Day to end Violence Against Sex Workers.
The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers was first organized nearly a decade ago by sex workers in San Francisco to memorialize the people murdered by serial killer Gary Ridgway. Ridgway captured the attitude that cultivates violence towards sex workers: “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.” At the event, we create a space that challenges this assumption by demonstrating that we have a caring community.
If you’ll be in New York on December 17th, click here for event details. For more information about the Red Umbrella Project, visit RedUmbrellaProject.org, and follow Audacia Ray on Tumblr.
