Being Amber Rhea

Last night I finished reading Audacia Ray’s Naked on the Internet. I was motivated to read it fast because I’d promised to write this review on the June 10, but once I started reading, I knew I would’ve devoured it the way I did no matter what.

I was totally blown away by this book. I had high expectations anyway, because Dacia is super smart and a kick-ass writer, and because the topic is fascinating and basically uncharted territory as far as books go. (Oh, and because I love to see my name in print, and there’s plenty of it in chapter three.) But the finished product was even more amazing than I’d expected. Just… damn.

Instead of spending the entire post gushing about the book’s awesomeness, I want to focus on a few specific things that really stood out for me.

In chapter one, while talking about the differences and similarities between lifecams and other types of webcam projects, Dacia writes:

The degree to which women who operate lifecams have had to be on the defensive about their choice to keep their cams uncensored (hence the entries in their FAQs and blogs that speak to the issue) is indicative of the fact that many people feel conflicted about seeing sexuality as part and parcel of the scope of a woman’s life.

I had a bit of an “a-ha!” moment when I read that - not because it’s some completely new concept that I’d never considered, but because it’s something I’ve long seen as a fundamental, pervasive societal problem with how we understand sexuality, but I’ve struggled to put it into words.

Society has a need to compartmentalize women’s sexuality, and even though I understand the historical “whys” and “wherefores” behind it, ultimately whenever I pursue this train of thought I’m left with a big WTF. I think this compartmentalization - whether forced onto women by others, or by women feeling that they have to conform to it - is the unifying feature behind countless pieces of the Bullshit Puzzle, and we can’t successfully solve problems on a piece-by-piece basis until we undertake the radical task of addressing this compartmentalization.

A little later in chapter one, while talking about Ana Voog’s pregnancy, Dacia writes:

[B]ring a baby into the picture, and suddenly people are up in arms about whether a woman who’s making homemade porn (even if that’s not what the women themselves choose to call it) is fit to be a parent.

I was talking about this with Figleaf when he was visiting last week. I asked him if he ever worries about being “outed” because he has children. He was pretty confident, almost to the point of seeming dismissive, in his answer that no, he doesn’t worry, and why should he? Of course, this is how it should be - a foregone conclusion. The fact that adults have sex lives - which they experience and express in myriad ways - and raise children should be ridiculously mundane. And yet, unfortunately, in the minds of many, it’s not - and especially when the parents in question are women. For some reason, female sexuality seems to be a much bigger threat - to whom or to what, is the part I can’t figure out.

One other thing that stood out to me was this bit in chapter three:

[T]hough many women have the potential and the drive to be freer, they still feel the sharpness of societal constraints when they’re moving around the world outside the blogosphere.

I can relate to that so, so much. Even though I have a ton of ideals wrt sexuality and I try to live as authentically as possible - because anything else feels destructive - the reality is that I still live in a larger world that, for the most part, is very sex-negative. My personal feelings about sexuality and sexual empowerment don’t negate the power of the double standard, the madonna/whore dichotomy, or a society that has legal buy-in to the idea that (for example) a woman who goes to swinger parties is an unfit parent. And on a smaller scale, sometimes even hanging out with local bloggers, many of whom I’ve come to consider close friends, I feel like I have to “tone down” my interest in and enthusiasm for sexuality. I try to actively fight against these kinds of inner reactions, but old lessons die hard.

I could go on writing about every part of the book I underlined or drew exclamation points next to, but if I did that, we’d be here all night. So in conclusion, I’ll just say, flat-out: READ THIS BOOK. I am in awe of it, and I guarantee you will be, too.