5 ms·

IMHO the problem is not that men "don't appreciate a woman's pleasure" - that is some serious bullshit in my opinion. Most men love it when their SO enjoys sex.

IMHO the problem is not that men "don't appreciate a woman's pleasure" - that is some serious bullshit in my opinion. Most men love it when their SO enjoys sex. The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Just think about what kind of outrage it would cause if Stripe had a single prostitute or porn website use their service to receive payments. (For the sake of argument assume the prostitute is located in a jurisdiction that does not prohibit the practice, IIRC it is allowed in parts of Nevada) Now Stripe gets flack for being overly cautious - there's just no way to do this without provoking a shit storm from one group.

sudokent 12y ago
As someone who is trying to a create a new, unique, non-janky, adult website I have learned a lot in the last 10 months. And I have never worked in this industry so it has been a serious learning experience. The biggest issue for me has been the banks. My assumption is that Stripe and other players would be "ok" accepting payments from "High Risk" merchants. But they cannot, their partner bank will not allow it. I later found an article by Cindy Gallop raging against this. http://www.inc.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.inc.com/chris-beier-and-daniel-wolfman/venture-capital-cindy-gallop-make-love-not-porn.html http://www.inc.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.inc.c... "A whole range of banks turned us down, including the startup banks, Silicon Valley Bank, Square 1 Bank. We finally got a banking account at CHASE, and we were extremely relieved, thrilled to get a check book that said Make Love Not Porn on it. And so, when... I began encountering enormous problems putting a payments infrastructure into place, because we are what the world deems adult content, we couldn't work with PayPal, couldn't work with Amazon, couldn't work with Google Checkout, couldn't work with any of the main merchant partner gateways. So, we thought, let's go back to CHASE, we have a business banking account there, let's apply for a commercial account. Unfortunately, that application surfaced the nature of our business within higher levels at CHASE. And it resulted in a meeting with a more senior guy, who essentially said to us, not only can we not give you a commercial account, but you now need to close your business bank account and take your business away, because we can't handle it." I had a conversation about this over on Reddit that was fairly interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2co0r6/anyone_need_a_stripe_or_balancedpayments_but_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2co0r6/anyone...
- tiagotalbuquerq 12y ago
  she would stop crying and use cryptocurrency.
  - sudokent 12y ago
    I don't believe that BTC has enough market penetration to solve her problem. When I've interviewed potential users concerning my product, the response has been "Isn't Bitcoin a scam? I saw on the news it is a scam" "I want to just use my CC" "What is Bitcoin?" That said, I still will launch with BTC support. Because I believed the hype and coded the solution before doing interviews...sigh
    - kordless 12y ago
      I've been in the crypto-currency scene for a year now and I can say definitively that early adopter passion is giving way to healthy (and normal) market skepticism as the market becomes more aware of the technologies. It's atypical of the way any market evolves and how it evolves over time. Not sure why we keep expecting Bitcoin to go from zero use to global use in a matter of a few years... The porn industry has, time and time again, used new technologies to overcome limitations of the medium by which they do business. I do think crypto-currencies play a part in that, especially when considering the opportunities presented by a global marketplace. Better you can sell to anyone anywhere with no fees, instead of being locked to a given region because of credit card number, or cost structure because of higher risk transactions.
    - tormeh 12y ago
      BTC is an investment pyramid scheme, but an entirely legit transaction technology. Just be sure to exchange the BTC back into normal money fairly quickly, as it's neither a secure nor stable store of value.
    - cassgames 12y ago
      My experience of accepting donations over 3 months on my site: a handful of donations via Paypal, zero donations with BTC. UPD: doesn't matter though, I'd still implement BTC if I had to do it again. It didn't take much time and was a really interesting experiment. I do believe it's the future of Internet payments.
rcfox 12y ago
> The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Porn is illegal in the US?
- durkie 12y ago
  It's not ouright illegal, but it's becoming more and more onerous to work in the adult industry because of things like this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-banks-war-on-porn.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-banks-w...
- JetSpiegel 12y ago
  IANAL(hehehe), but prostitution is illegal, but if you film it and sell it for profit than it's legal.
- itengelhardt 12y ago
  You are right. I should have said "stigmatization".
  - cindygallop 12y ago
    We at MakeLoveNotPorn are working to change that. My piece for the UK Independent on 'It's Not That Porn Degrades Women, It's That Business Degrades Porn': http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-not-that-porn-degrades-women-its-that-business-degrades-porn-8475620.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-not-that-por...
srybchin 12y ago
You are rare because most men don't understand the first thing about a woman's pleasure. Regardless, as an adult retailer, we don't have anything to do with porn or prostitution. Stripe and their bank shouldn't put all adult businesses into 1 box.

sudokent 12y ago

As someone who is trying to a create a new, unique, non-janky, adult website I have learned a lot in the last 10 months. And I have never worked in this industry so it has been a serious learning experience. The biggest issue for me has been the banks. My assumption is that Stripe and other players would be "ok" accepting payments from "High Risk" merchants. But they cannot, their partner bank will not allow it. I later found an article by Cindy Gallop raging against this. http://www.inc.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.inc.com/chris-beier-and-daniel-wolfman/venture-capital-cindy-gallop-make-love-not-porn.html http://www.inc.com/welcome.html?destination=http://www.inc.c... "A whole range of banks turned us down, including the startup banks, Silicon Valley Bank, Square 1 Bank. We finally got a banking account at CHASE, and we were extremely relieved, thrilled to get a check book that said Make Love Not Porn on it. And so, when... I began encountering enormous problems putting a payments infrastructure into place, because we are what the world deems adult content, we couldn't work with PayPal, couldn't work with Amazon, couldn't work with Google Checkout, couldn't work with any of the main merchant partner gateways. So, we thought, let's go back to CHASE, we have a business banking account there, let's apply for a commercial account. Unfortunately, that application surfaced the nature of our business within higher levels at CHASE. And it resulted in a meeting with a more senior guy, who essentially said to us, not only can we not give you a commercial account, but you now need to close your business bank account and take your business away, because we can't handle it." I had a conversation about this over on Reddit that was fairly interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2co0r6/anyone_need_a_stripe_or_balancedpayments_but_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2co0r6/anyone...

tiagotalbuquerq 12y ago
she would stop crying and use cryptocurrency.
- sudokent 12y ago
  I don't believe that BTC has enough market penetration to solve her problem. When I've interviewed potential users concerning my product, the response has been "Isn't Bitcoin a scam? I saw on the news it is a scam" "I want to just use my CC" "What is Bitcoin?" That said, I still will launch with BTC support. Because I believed the hype and coded the solution before doing interviews...sigh
  - kordless 12y ago
    I've been in the crypto-currency scene for a year now and I can say definitively that early adopter passion is giving way to healthy (and normal) market skepticism as the market becomes more aware of the technologies. It's atypical of the way any market evolves and how it evolves over time. Not sure why we keep expecting Bitcoin to go from zero use to global use in a matter of a few years... The porn industry has, time and time again, used new technologies to overcome limitations of the medium by which they do business. I do think crypto-currencies play a part in that, especially when considering the opportunities presented by a global marketplace. Better you can sell to anyone anywhere with no fees, instead of being locked to a given region because of credit card number, or cost structure because of higher risk transactions.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    BTC is an investment pyramid scheme, but an entirely legit transaction technology. Just be sure to exchange the BTC back into normal money fairly quickly, as it's neither a secure nor stable store of value.
  - cassgames 12y ago
    My experience of accepting donations over 3 months on my site: a handful of donations via Paypal, zero donations with BTC. UPD: doesn't matter though, I'd still implement BTC if I had to do it again. It didn't take much time and was a really interesting experiment. I do believe it's the future of Internet payments.

rcfox 12y ago

> The problem (to me) is the criminalization of porn and prostitution in the US. Porn is illegal in the US?

durkie 12y ago
It's not ouright illegal, but it's becoming more and more onerous to work in the adult industry because of things like this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-banks-war-on-porn.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/07/the-banks-w...
JetSpiegel 12y ago
IANAL(hehehe), but prostitution is illegal, but if you film it and sell it for profit than it's legal.
itengelhardt 12y ago
You are right. I should have said "stigmatization".
- cindygallop 12y ago
  We at MakeLoveNotPorn are working to change that. My piece for the UK Independent on 'It's Not That Porn Degrades Women, It's That Business Degrades Porn': http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-not-that-porn-degrades-women-its-that-business-degrades-porn-8475620.html http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/its-not-that-por...

srybchin 12y ago

You are rare because most men don't understand the first thing about a woman's pleasure. Regardless, as an adult retailer, we don't have anything to do with porn or prostitution. Stripe and their bank shouldn't put all adult businesses into 1 box.