PATTAYA, Thailand – This week on the Adult Site Broker Talk podcast, it’s the second part of the show’s interview with Ricci Levy, President and CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. The first part of the interview was released last week.
“Levy has long been a leader in the fight for sexual freedom,” the announcement noted. “In 2003, she co-founded the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to defending the right of every individual to personal autonomy and human dignity. For over twenty years, Ricci has guided Woodhull as Executive Director and later as President and CEO, steering the organization into a nationally recognized advocate for human rights and sexual freedom.”
Levy’s advocacy work includes “challenging censorship, pressing for the decriminalization of sex work, advancing reproductive and family justice, and working to end the shackling of incarcerated women during childbirth,” the announcement added. “Across all these efforts, Ricci has kept human rights at the center of the conversation.”
Her other affiliations over the years have included the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, the Sexuality and Aging Consortium at Widener University, the US Human Rights Network, the Free Expression Network, and the Council on Contemporary Families. Levy currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Free Expression Network.
“In part two, Ricci and I discussed the current political climate as well as the Supreme Court and how that impacts sexual freedom and all freedoms,” explained Bruce the adult site broker, host of the show and CEO of Adult Site Broker.
In talking about recent efforts by the governments of the United States, United Kingdom and other countries to impose censorship in the online space, Levy noted that in the beginning, censorship is “always about sex and sexuality.”
“That’s a large part of what the government is trying to suppress, to say nothing of personal autonomy,” Levy said. “So, if you look at the restrictions on the porn sites, age verification, you say, ‘Not about me, I don’t look at porn.’ But it didn’t stop there. It goes to books, It goes to literature. It goes to textbooks. It goes to sexual education.”
Noting that these censorious regulations inflict more harm on marginalized communities, Levy explained that such communities “lose income, they give up their safety.”
“And in many cases that may not have an ID,” Levy said, adding that “not everybody drives a car.”
“Not everybody has a driver’s license,” Levy observed. “For communities that rely on the internet to find community, you know, the one young person living in a restricted community in Utah, for example, who thinks that they’re the only person in the world and there’s something wrong with them, they can go online and they can find out that they’re not the only person in the world. And you know what? Maybe that saves them from suicide.”
You can listen to part two of the Adult Site Broker Talk interview with Ricci Levy now at AdultSiteBroker.com/podcast.
Adult Site Broker Talk has been nominated for the AVN award for Best Adult Podcast. You can show your support for the show by voting for it here.
