When I told people that I was going to be writing for a blog-zine that profiled the Sexiest Geeks Alive, a couple of them mentioned Audacia Ray as both someone I should contact for advice on blogging and sexy geekdom, and also as someone that would be perfect to profile on such a site.
I contacted Audacia, and she was very helpful, pointing out several sites to browse for information on gatherings of Sexy Geeks in NYC. However, she was unsure whether or not she qualified as a “Sexy Geek” because, although she says she is very geeky about sex, she does not not think of herself as a particularly technical person.
This seemed odd to me, as Audacia uses quite an array of computer tools to publish her writings about sex and the sex industry. I found myself wondering, “How could someone who writes regularly for internet publication not consider themselves to be a tech geek?” Then it hit me. She doesn’t think of herself as being particularly skilled technically, because the Internet is mainstream now, and these skills are common (at least among the people she knows).
One of the weird things about my life is that I have had knowledge of fringe computer technical things from a very early age. My mother taught college computer courses while I was growing up, and two of my aunts worked with computers, one at a university, and one at IBM. I have been sending electronic messages to friends and relatives for over 30 years now, and have been called a computer geek since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. So my perceptions have lagged behind social reality. Where at one time, anyone who even knew what email was could be considered a tech geek, now days people who regularly play around with HTML, CSS, and maybe even a little Javascript and/or PHP, just to get their personal blogs to look cool, may consider themselves to have only the minimal required computer skills to get by in modern western culture.
In a previous post (What is a sexy geek?) I took a serious look at the concept of “geek” and concluded that what had started as a derogatory term aimed at people with obscure technical knowledge had been embraced and turned into a positive word. It now occurs to me that one of the things that allowed this to happen, is that those bizzare technical ideas eventually won people over - they created useful technology that became mainstream. And this is what Sexy Geeks always do - they have ideas about how the world could be better, and they pursue them, even in the face of some level of social disapproval, eventually making the world a better place. They prove that they are right and the world is wrong.
So Audacia is not a tech geek - at least not by her own standards - but she is absolutely a Sexy Geek. One who just coincidentally happens to be geeky about sex. Specifically, she is geeky about communicating on the topic of Sex. She does not believe that something that has the potential to make people very happy should be a taboo subject. She believes that a world in which people share information about sex (and how sex can be better) is a better world to live in. So she is boldly going out there and increasing the level of existing communications on a topic that some people might feel should be talked about less.
Many people in the world might wish to suppress what she has to say about sex, sexuality, and ending the feelings of shame that various cultures tell us we should have about our bodies and the things we like to do with them. But she is right, and they are wrong - and the world will be a better place as soon as everyone finally realizes it.
And that is what makes Audicia Ray one of the Sexiest Geeks Alive.
Of course it certainly doesn’t hurt that she is also realy realy hot…
Furthermore, one has to wonder, if self described “computer nerds” are well known for being extremely competent with their computer skills, what then must a self described “sex nerd” be like in bed?
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Check out Audacia’s blogs, Waking Vixen and Naked City.
Also her recent book, “Naked on the Internet - Hookups, Downloads. and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration.”
