It's not that porn degrades women, it's that business degrades porn

Much that people find deplorable about porn is actually driven by its business problems as an industry

A man walks in front of a sex shop on January 12, 2011 in the Paris district of Pigalle. (Getty Images)

Porn has become so big it's become conventional, with its own norms and rules – the reason so much of it is so commodified and repetitive. It suffers from 'collaborative competition' - when everyone in a sector competes with everyone else in the sector by doing exactly the same thing everyone else in the sector is doing. And it’s tanking. Its old world order business model has been destroyed by the advent of free porn online, and it hasn't invented a new one.

Everything I’ve just cited is also true of music, television, publishing, journalism, advertising, and many other industries. But in porn, those dynamics manifest in ways that are much more controversial and distressing.

We all watch porn; we don’t acknowledge it. Porn exists in a parallel universe, a shadowy otherworld. When you force something – anything – into the shadows and underground, it’s a lot harder to stop bad things happening, that will, over time, have far-reaching social effects. And it’s a lot harder to make good things happen. This is an industry where there are not enough champions working on behalf of everyone in it, shining bright lights into dark corners to drive better working conditions, better talent treatment, better business practices. There is not enough encouragement to disrupt and innovate, nor to design and operate new business models; not enough people to mentor, coach, advise and finance individual creative visions that could drive a different and better future for porn.

I launched makelovenotporn.com [this site includes content not suitable for under 18s] four years ago. I’ve just launched, with co-founders Corey Innis and Oonie Chase and curator Sarah Beall, makelovenotporn.tv [this site includes content not suitable for under 18s]. It took me two years to get makelovenotporn.tv funded. No bank anywhere in the world will let us open a business bank account. Our biggest operational challenge has been taking payments, because PayPal, Amazon, mainstream payment processors refuse to work with ‘adult content’.

I believe you can change the world through sex. I would like to help make sex better for all of us. The business world is doing everything it possibly can to stop me.

That’s unfortunate because in the male-dominated world of business, more women = more innovation. Women challenge the status quo, because we are never it. And there is a huge amount of money to be made out of taking women seriously, especially in this area. Porn hasn’t even begun to leverage the female experience of desire, arousal and sex, through the female lens. (Men haven’t even begun to realise how hot they would actually find that.)

Make business services available to adult ventures on the same basis and terms as everyone else. Welcome, support and fund entrepreneurs who want to disrupt and innovate in porn. Especially welcome, support and fund women who want to invent the future of porn for both women and men. Then one day we’ll have a porn industry equally designed, managed and led by women and men, selling to and making money from both men and women. That’s the day porn no longer degrades anyone. (Unless, of course, you really want to be degraded.)

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