Alternative fundraising solutions empower communities to hold businesses accountable for their impact.

As part of our Future of Sex Expert Series, Lips‘ community manager shares her insights on equity crowdfunding for sex tech products. In November 2021, the social media platform raised over $87,000 through a WeFunder campaign.

Equity crowdfunding has proven to be a viable solution to the challenges of fundraising that many sex tech companies face as a result of venture capital (VC) sexism and stigma against sex and sex work by investors, banks, payment processors, and all throughout the financial community.

However, I think the irony is that equity crowdfunding campaigns—while extremely time and energy-consuming in the short term—actually boost, expand, and support businesses more in the long term than just receiving fewer larger institutional or singular angel investments.

I would even go as far as to say that over the next 3-5 years, we’ll see that businesses (across industries) that raised money through equity crowdfunding will turn out to be more profitable and successful. The best part being that the community members who contributed investments will be the ones seeing those returns in their bank accounts as opposed to already wealthy outside investors.

Also, because of the financial industry biases, I anticipate that sex tech companies will continue to pioneer alternative fundraising avenues out of sheer necessity—i.e., crypto, grants, co-ops, and capped returns.

But again, these routes will ultimately strengthen our businesses.

Alternative fundraising avenues can strengthen sex tech businesses

Equity crowdfunding strengthens business because it strengthens community.

“Community” has become such a big buzzword in the tech ecosystem for a reason. It is extraordinarily powerful, but it is so often superficially thrown around to describe what is really just a disjointed, loosely-defined base of customers.

But equity crowdfunding forces business leaders to actually cultivate real communities, almost practicing a form of community organizing. They must spend time understanding their customer community on a deeper level, communicating with them meaningfully, and figuring out how they can best meet their real needs.

This work is not easy. It requires business leaders to ask tough, deep, even spiritual questions of not only their community but of themselves, like:

“What exactly do people need, and how badly do they really need it?” 

Equity crowdfunding empowers communities to hold businesses accountable

In the past, the egos of mostly cishet white male business leaders and their easy access to capital allowed them to build products without ever asking these types of questions.

This has resulted in the proliferation of businesses and business models that have caused major harm to individuals’ mental and physical health, our democratic institutions, and the planet. Community-centered businesses are probably our only hope for the future of capitalism.

So, to the extent that equity crowdfunding empowers communities to hold businesses accountable for their impact, I hope we see a lot more of it in the future.

Image sources: Unsplash

The post How Equity Crowdfunding Campaigns Actually Give Voice to the Community appeared first on Future of Sex.

Speaking with Jet Setting Jasmine about the newly launched virtual BIPOC Adult Industry Collective.

This article is the second in a series that explores Collectives, or decentralized social/political organizations that have transformed the sextech industry into what it is today. You can read the first, which covered the Sisters of Sexuality Collective, here.

Understanding ‘A Taste for Brown Sugar’

Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) have historically faced racism in the adult entertainment industry, resulting in lower wages than their white counterparts, lack of representation in leadership, fetishization and blatant mistreatment on sets.

However, Dr. Mireille Miller-Young, a professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, authored a book called “A Taste for Brown Sugar” which presented a more intersectional approach to understanding and addressing race in the industry. The seductive power of a black woman’s sexuality, she demonstrates, enables her to “intervene in representation, to assert varied sexual subjectivities, and to make a living.” 

By sharing first-hand voices from within the community, Miller-Young highlighted the complicated ways in which black women were navigating both standing up against race discrimination in the industry as well as creatively embracing race in empowering, self-determining ways that would help them economically.

These complicated, nuanced conversations have been occurring within the industry for decades, but the recent establishment of the BIPOC Adult Industry Collective has created an official space from which to carry on these conversations, launch anti-racist initiatives, and finally hold those in power accountable.

Turning to technology: Building inclusion in digital space

The Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color Adult Industry Collective (or BIPOC AIC, for short) was officially founded this June by Sinnamon Love, a sex worker activist and retired adultstar, with help from fellow founding members including Jet Setting Jasmine, King Noire, Misty Stone, Natassia Dreams, Lotus Lain, and various other BIPOC sex workers. 

The Collective was created in response to industry leaders’ acknowledgments of historical issues with racism and expressed intentions of instituting changes.

In a statement released in June, the Collective detailed its requests which came from conversations with performers from impacted communities.

The statement asks for “the elimination of wage disparity based solely on race,” more inclusive language, performer autonomy, and a real commitment change by asking fellow industry members and allies to sign their petition.

“These were discussions many of us had been having for many years but very much in a silo or in small pockets,” Jasmine says. “We took this uprising that was happening in the global community to take a really strong look at how Black, Brown, and Indigenous people have been mistreated by the industry at every level and decided it’s time to hold the industry as a whole accountable.”

For Jasmine, this was not her first experience with collective organizing. In fact, like Taylor, Jasmine realized her calling through traveling and having conversations with professional women about how there were not enough spaces where women could express themselves authentically, personally and sexually.

“And specifically for women of color, there was not enough representation in the adult industry, in the lifestyle industry—even travel,” she says. “Even if they had the money to engage in these different activities, they just didn’t have the product that spoke to them or was marketed to them. So I started creating these spaces.”

She connected with women such as Nerissa Nefeteri, a pelvic floor coach, herbalist, and the owner of Nene FemHealth, a wellness shop selling feminine care products developed with help from POC scientists. She met Taylor, and joined the Sisters of Sexuality Collective through which she also met and began collaborating with Tyomi Morgan, a sexologist and pleasure coach, who was using digital space to create an online sex-positive church.

“We’re expanding access to information about our bodies and our functional abilities that we can’t find in the spaces we occupy outside of online… like colleges, universities, grade schools, and even medical spaces,” Jasmine describes. “I’ve been able to connect with sex-positive physicians, not by going into my primary care practices, but by finding them through collectives such as Sisters of Sexuality.”

Looking forward with the BIPOC Adult Industry Collective

The BIPOC Adult Industry Collective was established in June, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and therefore launched entirely online. It started with an “incredibly emotional” first virtual meeting and has since evolved into a multifaceted and growing digital platform with important industry information, virtual events and educational workshops, mutual aid fundraisers, partnerships with mental health resources like Pineapple Support, petitions, and even an area on the platform where sex workers can promote eachother’s work.

Using technology, the members of BIPOC AIC are working to accomplish their goal: to “make the adult entertainment industry a safe space for everyone who chooses this labor.” But they’re more than just your ordinary technologists; they go above and beyond when it comes to accessibility and also always have to be ready and equipped with tools necessary to face various threats and obstacles along the way.

At a recently held virtual event, a talk with Dr. Miller-Young in fact, an uninvited “Zoombomber” entered the call and tried to disrupt the conversation. The situation had to be quickly and effectively resolved with the participants prompt removal.

The BIPOC AIC is continuing to host virtual events. You can get involved online or by following them on Instagram at @bipoccollective. ​​

Image source: Jet Setting Jasmine, Duke University Press

The post A Taste for Brown Sugar: The Sexual Power of Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) appeared first on Future of Sex.

Part 1: Taylor Sparks inspires sex goddesses and the Sisters of Sexuality Collective.

This article is the first in a series that explores Collectives, or decentralized social/political organizations that have transformed the sextech industry into what it is today. 

Traditionally, technology industries—including sextech—have been dominated by cis, heterosexual, white men. However, powerful network-building and collective organizing among female*, Black, Indigenous, and/or POC, and LGBTQIA+ entrepreneurs have elevated the needs of previously underserved communities and spurred rapid, expansive technological innovation within the industry.

For this series, I interviewed a few of the womxn who started these influential Collectives with the hopes of learning why they started them, understanding how they operate and expand them, and further illuminating the kinds of technological innovation that derives from them.

This article focuses on The Sisters of Sexuality Collective started by Taylor Sparks of Organic Loven.

‘We should all do this thing together’

The Sisters of Sexuality Collective officially launched in 2018, but the sexuality professionals who are members of the network have been meeting up, communicating, and collaborating for almost a decade.

Taylor’s idea to start the Collective came out of her personal journey within the industry. She had been traveling with her husband to sex-positive resorts and environments such as Hedonism Resort in Jamaica, Desire Resort in Mexico, and on various couples and swingers cruises.

She had already developed a line of all-natural skincare and performance products for elite athletes when she became friends with a woman she met on one of her vacations. Together, they decided to collaborate on a new business idea.

“I started noticing how a lot of these places were selling a lot of chemical-based intimate body products such as lubricants, condoms, everything,” Taylor says. 

The woman, a two-time breast cancer survivor, owned an adult-only travel agency and asked her if she’d be interested in doing a line of body-safe, all-natural sensual massage oils and body washes for them. 

Taylor agreed, and set out on her mission to not only make healthier products more accessible, but also to make the information people need to make decisions about the products they buy more accessible as well. 

“Most standard condoms have casein, and if you are allergic to lactose/dairy and you put a condom with casein in your vagina, you could have a dangerous reaction,” Taylor explains.

I also look specifically for products that can help people that have disabilities.

Out of her initial project, an entire e-commerce site of the industry’s “safest and most nourishing pleasurable intimate products” called Organic Loven was born. 

Today, Taylor sells more than 900 products from over 75 brands, none with any known harmful chemicals. She also still travels around finding and creating experiences for folks to safely explore their sexualities. As both a retailer and an educator, her workshops focus on health and safety of various products and her welcoming approach aims to help folks overcome discomfort caused by stigmas and taboos.

“One of my seminars is called ‘How To Make Good Pussy, Better,’ and in it I introduce them to organic products and how they make good pussy—that’s already good—healthier and better. And better for their sex lives.”

Along her travels, Taylor continued to make strong connections and relationships with like-minded women such as Parish Michelle Blair, Marla Renee Stewart who runs Sex Down South Conference in Atlanta, and Jet Setting Jasmine who runs various companies in the adult industry.

“I couldn’t believe I was meeting these women—black women—standing in their truth in their area of sexuality,” she says. 

They do wholistic sexuality, sex coaching, lgbtq activists, master fetish trainers, porn and parenting, and I’m like ‘We should all do this thing together.

The Sisters of Sexuality Collective today

Through her own website, Facebook groups, and an Instagram account, Taylor Sparks has grown the Sisters of Sexuality community to over 50K members. She also started a radio show with her colleague and friend Parish Michelle Blair where they connect and converse with fellow sextech entrepreneurs.

Taylor invites entrepreneurs from all walks of life onto her show, but especially aims to use her platform to highlight the work of female founders of color. They’ve since moved the radio show over to the podcast platform anchor.fm and are available for streaming on multiple platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts. 

Founder of Private Packs Suzanne Sinatra, Sexologist Michelle Hope, Erotic Witch Devi Maisha, Attorney Nia Weeks, and Founder of Come & Gone Frances Tang have all been recent guests on the Sisters of Sexuality Podcast. They have accrued over 100,000 downloads from 600 cities worldwide. 

While the Sisters of Sexuality community has remained open to all sextech entrepreneurs, Taylor is soon to be launching soon a Sisters of Sexuality Pro Division, which is a private members only community where womxn of color specifically can have a safe space to collectively grow their businesses, gain access to coaching, mentors and mentees, webinars, and live events. 

Her hope is to help everyone “stand in their truth about their sexuality” and embrace their inner “Sex Goddess,” realizing the amazing, healing power that sex provides. She even sells t-shirts to support her mission.

Image source: presskithero, Sisters of Sexuality

The post How Womxn of Color-run Collectives Are Disrupting Sextech appeared first on Future of Sex.

Pandering to sex-negative social media sites can make brilliant ideas turn bland, says advertising powerhouse.

Growth estimates of the global sexual wellness market are on the rise. 

Most recently, a report by Stratistics MRC predicted the market to reach a valuation of $123 billion by 2026. Yet the businesses catering to its growing demands face incredible barriers as a result of unfair discrimination and biased censorship. 

Sex tech companies, a large sector within this market, are at the forefront of the fight against online censorship. Their businesses, merely by the nature of their products, face several issues when it comes to advertising, selling, and posting on most mainstream social media channels. 

But when and how certain regulations get applied is ambiguous and, according to many of the women-led sex tech companies, sexist.

Cindy Gallop, an advertising expert and the woman who coined the term “sex tech”, has been confronting censorship issues for more than ten years as she’s tried to sell, advertise, and process payments for her own company, Make Love Not Porn [NSFW]. 

According to Gallop, these obstacles have far-reaching effects beyond just making business operations more difficult.

“People, founders, operating around anything having to do with sex will unconsciously internalize—without even realizing their doing it—society’s disapproval of what they’re doing in a way that negatively impacts your ability to do business and the kind of business that you want,” Gallop said.

Facebook’s oppressive shadow on female sex tech

Facebook’s ad policies, for example, prohibit “adult products or services” from advertising. But here is where the inequality lies: erectile dysfunction medications and male condoms get away with being considered products for “family planning” or “contraception,” two acceptable categories for advertisements. 

Products sold by female sexual wellness companies, on the other hand, are considered solely for sexual “pleasure” or “enhancement,” and so they are prohibited.

Instagram, owned by Facebook, is another battleground where sex tech businesses struggle to promote their products, educate, and connect with their customers.  And now, with the app’s new marketplace feature that launched last year, they are also facing difficulties selling their products. 

The latest Instagram Commerce Policies state, “Listings may not promote the buying, selling, or use of adult products or services” and “Listings may not position products or services in a sexually suggestive manner.” 

But what is unclear is exactly who decides what is considered “sexually suggestive,” an extremely subjective experience.

Examinations into Instagram’s algorithm also reveal how the process used to find and target accounts they deem in violation of their guidelines disproportionately target marginalized communities. 

Banning sexual expression and women’s sexuality

Using certain hashtags can also make it more likely that the algorithm flags your account or you get “shadowbanned,” which means your Instagram account won’t appear in searches. People will have to find your account from an external link in order to be discovered. 

Commonly targeted hashtags include #lesbian, #bi, #curvy, #bodylove, and even #women.

Artists, sex workers, sex educators, and even body-positive models are other folks who face censorship issues online and who rely heavily on technology and social media to run their businesses. 

Rebecca Crow (@riotsandcrows) is an artist and activist who staged a protest in late January outside of Instagram London’s headquarters and had her account with over 700K followers deleted just days afterward. 

Even the hugely popular indie erotic filmmaker Erika Lust (@erikalust) has had to overcome censorship and often speaks out against it. 

In an Instagram post, Lust wrote, “The threat of silencing and censoring of women online will have far-reaching and harmful repercussions on how women fully exercise their right to participate in offline, public life. We must continue to expose and defy the #biasedbanning from monopolistic private tech companies in order to make a change.”

How to combat censorship?

Overcoming censorship online is no easy feat, physically or emotionally. 

One approach a few early-stage businesses have taken is to concentrate on discreet design and obscure, minimalist aesthetics. 

For example, a company named Maude that provides sexual wellness products including condoms, lube, and vibrators, could appear to an uncareful eye as merely a candle company.

Disguising sex toys as “abstract paperweights” might be one way that sex tech companies can slide under social media’s censorship radar.  

But is that the best strategy for actually addressing the shame and stigma of sex and sexuality plaguing our society? 

Cindy Gallop warns sex tech industry leaders not to lose sight of their missions for the sake of ease or conforming to existing societal norms (if they are unjust). 

She has seen “brilliant ideas” turn “quite bland” for the sake of appeasing the masses or perhaps satisfying investors. But her favorite piece of advice to give founders is to “take yourself out of the shadows.”

“If you concept and design a venture around existing societal bias and prejudice, all you do is reinforce it. I refuse to bow to existing bias and prejudice because I’d rather change it,” Gallop said.

It is no doubt that the sex tech industry currently stands united opposite the big tech giants in the battle against online censorship. 

Now, it is just a matter of figuring out the best tactics to overcome efforts to muzzle healthy and diverse sexual representation.

Image sources: TechCrunch, CindyGallop/Twitter

The post Cindy Gallop Tells Sex Tech Brands to ‘Take Yourself Out of the Shadows’ Despite Threat of Online Censorship appeared first on Future of Sex.

It’s time for more diversity—on both sides of the lens. 

Hey ladies, ever get tired of scrolling through video after video on mainstream adult sites, yearning to find some steamy content you can relate to?

Or are you a producer or director, eager to share erotic videos that challenge sexual norms and stereotypes with a wider audience? Well, there may be no need to look further.

xHamster, the popular adult streaming site, wants to make your wishes come true with its $25,000 “Porn for Women” development fund. Launched last month, the program intends to encourage the creation of adult content for and by women and will offer grants to both new and established filmmakers

“Women enjoy porn as much as men do, but have a much harder time finding stuff they like,” said xHamnster Vice President Alex Hawkins.

We see the future of porn being heavily influenced by female viewers and we want to be at the forefront.

Women are not a ‘niche’ audience

According to a recent xHamster study, a huge gap exists between the supply and demand for female-focused erotica.

In the past two years, page views by women on xHamster have climbed 25.1% worldwide and 24.2% in the United States. Yet content catered to women audiences remains sparse.

This gap represents an untapped and potentially very lucrative market.

“While women are growing as an audience, they don’t always purchase because there’s very little for them and they are treated with disrespect,” Hawkins said.

It’s circular. Since there are little made for women, women don’t buy, and companies assume women just don’t like porn, and neglect the audience altogether.

Another part of the problem is content for women is often considered a subgenre.

For example, when you visit adult sites you are likely to find a “porn for women” button along the sidebar—alphabetically listed somewhere between “footjob” and “swingers.”

By treating women as a niche group, these sites are implying that videos not in this listing are made mainly with men in mind.

But when women constitute almost exactly 50% of the world’s population—and are responsible for more than 80% of US. consumer spending—focusing almost exclusively on the male perspective is not just insufficient in terms of representing the wide range of human sexuality, it’s bad business strategy.

But what defines and differentiates pornography for women? Necking and smooching to an acoustic love song gently playing in the background? That’s maybe what the straight, male producers think women want to see, but let’s dig deeper and look at the stats.

Some like it hot

As the map below illustrates, women in the United States have extremely diverse preferences when it comes to the adult content. In only three states, Maine, Vermont, and Kansas do women prefer the “Porn for women” category over all others.

This suggests that, for the most part, women are stuck watching porn intended for male viewership.

Further examination uncovered the sexual acts women search for most frequently.
“We’ve also come to understand, through porn, that women’s sexuality isn’t some delicate flower. Women actually search for hardcore material as much as men, and in some cases (like ‘rough sex’” or ‘spanking’ they do so in greater relative volume),” Hawkins said.

Sharing these statistics is a crucial first step toward expanding the type of content available on mainstream porn sites.

xHamster’s work is one example of how treating pornography as a legitimate topic of investigation and engaging critically with it as a site for change can have a major impact on how our society understands sex. After all, the pornography industry is worth about $97 billion, so it’s about time we take it seriously.

“While it can get a bad rap, porn has been an important driver for understanding women’s sexuality, and for sexuality in general,” Hawkins said.

For example, people joke about fake orgasms, but early porn was one of the first places that represented female pleasure, and gave men the idea that women should actually be enjoying sex.

What a concept.

Pornography for women, pornography for everyone

It is ironic that our society directly operates by hyper-sexualizing everything we say and do but simultaneously shames us for the sex we have or watch. Navigating this system can be challenging for anyone.

But as we become more comfortable confronting and critiquing the aspects of our sexual culture that have the most major impact on us, we can begin to isolate routes for change.

Pornography is a great place to start. The videos that are most readily available barely scratch the surface when it comes to portraying the complexity of human sexuality. In fact, they arguably do the heterosexual man a great disservice when they depict limited and performative fantasy scenarios—particularly when sex education is lacking in many countries including the United States.

It’s time to give the camera to someone else.

“We hope by encouraging more women filmmakers, we can help teach MEN what women actually want, and what needs to be done,” Hawkins said.

This can help enact a radical shift in how future sexuality is understood and practiced.

Image sources: xHamster/Twitter

The post ‘Porn for Women’: xHamster’s $25K Fund Set to Grow Underserved Category appeared first on Future of Sex.