When I was in Grade 9, I had a fantastic science teacher named Mr. Ali, who I remember for his fabulous Indian accent (his rolled r’s in “ribonucleic acid” were unforgettably delicious), large ears, and small stature – and the fact that when we studied the menstrual cycle, he established a rule that only the boys would be called on to answer questions aloud in class. We girls all giggled and felt we were getting away with something, while the boys blushed and groaned; but Mr. Ali’s ploy worked, and the boys learned the science of menstrual cycles thoroughly while we girls sat back comfortably and enjoyed the show. I suspect Mr. Ali trusted that we young women would be interested enough in learning how our ovaries worked that we’d pay sufficient attention – and while I can’t speak for all of my classmates, that was certainly true for me. I was rather fascinated by the corpus lutem and the ebbs and flows of estrogen and progesterone.

It wasn’t the first time I showed an interest in human sexuality. Years earlier, in grade school, I remember bringing a book to school that my parents had given me to explain sex – so that the other kids could benefit from the knowledge I was pretty sure their parents weren’t sharing with them. (Thank you, lovely parents of mine, for your matter-of-fact willingness to answer my questions.)

And it wasn’t the last, either: Later, in first-year university, I vividly remember a day when Freud was up for discussion and a girl in my class raised her hand to ask what an erection was. Her naivete prompted shocked expressions on everyone’s faces. “Let’s grab coffee after class,” I offered – and was honoured to be the one to fill in the gaps left behind by her parents, who’d forbidden her to attend her high school’s sex ed classes.

All this to say: I’ve always been curious about sex, fascinated by the science of it, and confident about my depth of knowledge on the subject. I always thought I was one of the better-informed people on the planet when it came to things like ovulation, contraception, and so on.

There were known unknowns, of course, in my internal sexual-scientific encyclopedia: obscure fetishes and other things that didn’t particularly interest me. What I didn’t realize, of course – what no one realizes, by definition – was that there were also unknown unknowns: things I had no idea were missing. Moreover, those unknown unknowns were hugely significant – and are significant to huge numbers of women.

No one ever teaches us this stuff in sex ed class. And I really, really wish they would. It would save so much heartache and confusion.

There are four open secrets that no one ever tells most women:

1. It is a myth that women ovulate on Day 14 of their cycle (that is, 14 days after the first day of their period). That number is an average, not a law, with most women ovulating anywhere from Day 8 to Day 20.
2. Because an ovum lives only 12-24 hours after ovulation, while sperm can live up to 5 days inside the vagina, your greatest chance of getting pregnant is in the 4 days leading up to ovulation, and the 24 hours immediately following it. (Most people – even some doctors – will tell you, incorrectly, that your most fertile days follow ovulation.)
3. The best way to learn your personal pattern of fertile and infertile days is to learn how to chart your fertility signs, by tracking two pieces of data: Your basal body temperature (which fluctuates with your progesterone levels), and your cervical fluid (which correlates to estrogen).
4. Once you learn how to chart your fertility (and assuming you are in the majority of women who don’t have a fertility problem), you can plan pregnancies, and/or avoid them, with far greater accuracy than you will otherwise.

I learned all this by reading Toni Weschler’s wonderful book, Taking Charge of Your Fertility, which I passionately believe should be taught to every girl when she reaches puberty. I didn’t read it until I was a grown woman, and it is not an overstatement to say that I was outraged at the misinformation I had received at the hands of medical professionals, sex ed teachers, and mass media up until that point.

The key realization for me was that I couldn’t rely on averages or statistics to figure out what was going on in my body (and neither can any of us). If I wanted to understand my cycle, I would have to learn to pay close attention. And because I’m geeky, I found I enjoyed the process of recording the data my body provided for me.

I started charting when I decided, around age thirty, to go off the pill and give my body a break from artificial hormones. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t consider beforehand that I hadn’t had a normal menstrual cycle in ten years – so I didn’t recognize the signs my body was giving me now that I was ovulating again. Charting helped me learn what the heck those signs meant. I learned to identify my fertile days so I could be extra-careful with contraception – and my non-fertile days when there was effectively zero chance of conception, so I could afford to be a little more relaxed.

And years later, when my partner and I decided to try and have a baby, my charts provided me with very solid data that helped us plan our sex schedule (or GOFing, my new favourite term) – which, you know, sounds clinical and un-fun, but was particularly helpful for us since my partner travels a ton for work. My cycles are pretty predictable, so I put a recurring 5-day flag in his work calendar (“Green light: Go!”) that helped him plan his home-and-away schedule.

We were fortunate: I got pregnant right away, and carried the baby to term. Not everyone has that experience, I know – and a lot of factors went into that, including genetics & good old-fashioned luck. But I also know that my odds of getting pregnant when I wanted to were way higher because I understood my fertility signs, knew my cycle, and had tracked my data.

I know my story isn’t universal. I know lots of women who have wildly irregular cycles that simply cannot be predicted. I know lots of women who have charted the hell out of everything and been unable to get pregnant. I know women who are on the pill for lots of good reasons and have no interest in going off it. And so on.

But I want women to understand the fundamentals of how this works, because it is powerful. I don’t care if you never chart a cycle in your life – I still want you to learn the basics of what your cycle looks like, the ebbs and flows of cervical fluid (which, yes, needs a new name), the ups and downs of your cervix, and how those things relate to your fertility. Learn it. Own it. Know what your body is telling you. And make the most informed, empowered decisions you can.

And if you know anyone who’s in charge of designing sex ed curriculum, send them my way.

Disclosure: I am currently an advisor to Kindara Fertility, a company that makes the best fertility charting app I’ve seen. My passion for charting, as should be clear from this article, predates my relationship with Kindara by a long, long while. In fact, I connected with them precisely because a friend sent me a link to their app, knowing I would freak out with joy that someone had finally designed a beautiful, easy-to-use, and scientifically sound charting app. I did (freak out with joy, that is), and I ended up coming on as an advisor because I believe so strongly in what they’re doing. I don’t get any kickbacks for you downloading or using their app, although I have a little bit of stock in the company and am doing my best to help them take over the world. That said, at the end of the day, I am not attached to how you choose to chart, so long as your system gives you reliable information and helps you understand your body. 

A couple weeks back, The New York Times profiled MakeLoveNotPorn.tv and its founder, Cindy Gallop, describing the site as an “effort to promote ‘real,’ not porn-fed, sex.” The site, which is still in beta, allows visitors to upload videos of themselves having sex, and to watch those uploaded by others. The difference between this and any other porn site is that, according to Ms. Gallop and the NYT, all of the videos are vetted by editors who are looking for examples of people having “nonperformance-like sex.” Gallop’s vision is to counterbalance the effects of widespread porn consumption, which has influenced a generation of people to carry unrealistic – and often limiting – expectations into the bedroom.

There are a bunch of things about this that interest me – as a feminist, an entrepreneur, and someone who thinks raising the profile of “nonperformance-like sex” is a very good thing.

I also have a few questions – all of which are likely to remain unanswered, at least until the site comes out of beta. (A few are likely never to have definitive answers.)

A Brief Aside: Nerves

Before I jump into the body of this post, a confession. I’m nervous posting this, because:

a) It feels risky to write about porn. There was a time in my life when I wrote about sex, porn, and feminism semi-regularly, but it’s been a while, and those articles aren’t online anymore (at least, as far as I know). I’m not sure who I think I’m going to offend, here, but if it’s you, then hey, feel free to stop reading this and go enjoy something more wholesome. I’ll be back to my regular programming soon enough.

b) I have all kinds of respect for Cindy Gallop, and I don’t want to come across like I have a better solution to the problems she’s trying to address. I’ve had the good fortune to witness Ms. Gallop’s unending support of other women – and particularly other women entrepreneurs – and that’s just one of the qualities I admire in her. I do have some questions about Make Love Not Porn, though, and Ms. Gallop, if you’re reading this, I would love to hear your thoughts on them. Here’s my big fear about how this post will be read: When women critique the work of other women, too often it is perceived (sometimes correctly) as the worst kind of competitiveness – the kind that doesn’t allow room for everyone to succeed on their own terms. I want to be clear: I think Ms. Gallop is ten kinds of kick-ass. I think what she’s doing has huge potential to make the world a better place. On no planet do I want my questions about her project taken to mean that I think the project itself is not worth doing, or that she is not amazing. Okay? Okay.

c) I’m writing about a site that’s in beta, and I haven’t got beta access, so all of this is pretty theoretical.

All right, enough with the caveats. Let’s get on with it.

How Do We Define “Not Porn?”

The MLNP mission, as I understand it, is to disrupt the mainstream porn industry by calling into question the porn conventions that have become so commonplace as to be expected. Ms. Gallop has said that it was inspired by dating men in their 20s, whose bedroom moves are apparently significantly influenced by porn; she wanted to set the record straight about what “real” sex looks like, and how “porn world” and “real world” differ.

It’s a solid & worthwhile mission. She started the very basic & straightforward MakeLoveNotPorn.com website to address it, and is now launching MakeLoveNotPorn.tv as its video-driven sister site.

MLNP’s business model is straightforward: Visitors pay $5 to upload a video, and $5 to view a video – and half the cost of watching a video goes to the person who uploaded it. So in theory, the people having the aforementioned nonperformance-like sex (let’s just shorten that to NPLS, shall we?), and recording it on video, can upload it to the site and make some money, while funneling the other 50% of the ticket price back to MLNP to support its business.

So far, it doesn’t sound too different from your standard porn site, except for a few details:

• The idea that contributors will actually make money off their videos is pretty novel.
• I’m not sure many people are accustomed to paying for porn anymore – especially “amateur porn,” which I realize MLNP is attempting to differentiate themselves from, but which is likely the category many of its prospective customers will slot it into.
• I’m assuming that MLNP won’t have advertising, given its revenue model. That alone could make it a pleasant alternative to the mainstream.
• It sounds like MLNP intends to exercise strict editorial control, which will presumably result in higher quality content.

Of course, the major differentiating factor for MLNP is its mission to make porn that, well, doesn’t seem like porn. Or rather, to make non-porn (NPLS) that is still interesting and fun to watch, especially for people who normally enjoy watching porn. (Their goal is to provide an alternative to porn so that the youth of today don’t think they have to behave like porn stars to be good in bed.)

And in the awkwardness of that last paragraph, the real issue here becomes clear. We’re back to the age-old debate over what constitutes porn. Or to put it another way: What the heck is the line between porn, and videos of people having sex that doesn’t trot out the usual porn cliches?

This is one of those questions that invariably leads down the path of “I don’t know, but I’ll know it when I see it,” which is fair enough – but let’s all agree that it’s going to be a pretty subjective editorial process.

More, More, More: Broadening the Definition of Sexy

This seems like a good time to say that I am entirely supportive of sexual entertainment that broadens the spectrum of what we normally see in porn & erotica. The vast majority of the “adult” genre is at best, tediously repetitive, and at worst, dupes people into believing they don’t deserve pleasure unless they look and behave like the people they see in x-rated pictures and movies. (Well, actually, no – that’s not the worst outcome by a long shot. But I’m going to sidestep the outcomes that are violations of the law and/or human rights – such as the subset of porn that features people who haven’t chosen to be there – because that’s a topic for another day.)

We absolutely need a much, much broader spectrum of definitions of who gets to be sexual, and what sex looks like. Older people, genderqueer people, skinny guys, curvy gals, women with short hair & well-trimmed fingernails, people of colour, people whose breasts, butts, and genitals don’t conform to the bizarrely tight constraints of porn norms… sex that’s not all about male stamina and women as objects… Hell, yes to all of the above.

So on that front, I’m thrilled that Ms. Gallop is opening up a new venue to explore what better porn-but-not-porn might look like.

Here Come the Questions

I have some nagging questions, though. Like: If the performers get paid every time someone watches their video, doesn’t that create an incentive to infuse some level of “performance” into the video? And isn’t it more likely that viewers will choose to watch the videos that adhere most closely to mainstream norms around beauty, gender roles, and sex acts? (For example, the NYT notes that one of the videos available to beta users stars two adult performers (Lily LaBeau and Danny Wylde, who are a real-life couple), having the kind of sex they purportedly have off-screen. I have to imagine they’re going to garner more views than the average, non porn-star contributor.)

On a more pedantic note, I share Slate columnist Amanda Hess‘s question about whether viewers will pay for the content in numbers that can sustain MLNP – as well as what the gender balance for contributors will look like. Hess writes:

Gallop is actively looking to appeal to women, but to do so she’ll need to overcome a serious gender barrier. Young men have long built a social order around the sharing of sexual material—think of the neighbor kid who farmed out his dad’s stash of VHS tapes to his friends—but it’s still less acceptable for women to talk openly about viewing porn, and even porn sites that encourage a commenter community are mostly filled with men. Then there’s the ultimate male porn sharer: the guy who spreads private sex tapes to thousands of strangers through his “revenge” porn site. He’s not a libertine—he’s a misogynist.

I also wonder how the micropayments are doled out. Does each performer have his or her own account, or are the payments funneled to one contributor to split with their co-performer(s) as they see fit? I hope it’s the former scenario – since the honour system isn’t likely to be too reliable if a couple (or trio, etc.) parts ways after making their film.

Perhaps the biggest question is how plausible it is to create videos that don’t constitute a performance. I get where MLNP is going with their mission, but the fact remains that filming oneself having sex, and uploading it to a website for others to watch (and pay for), is a performative act – one that, in mainstream culture at least, is also taboo for the majority of people. As I write this, I’m going through my mental rolodex of all the sex-positive, open-minded and open-hearted people I know (lucky for me, it’s a longish list), and I am coming up very short on prospective MLNP contributors. I mean, sure, I don’t go to Burning Man or the Folsom Street Fair, but I’m a well-connected, progressive left-coaster who’s been around the block a few times. But my friends run businesses, and have kids*, and occasionally run for political office, and do various other things that make it tricky to earn a side income as an online adult performer.

Setting aside, though, the question of who will choose to contribute to MLNP, there is also the question of what kind of sex they will feel comfortable sharing with the world. MLNP’s editorial team may be ready to throw the doors wide open on what constitutes a great sex video, but I imagine the contributors will have to do pitched battle with their own beliefs about what ought to go into their video. Some of their choices will be determined by boundaries around what they prefer to keep private, but others will surely be based on anticipating the viewer’s expectations, be they esthetic or content-oriented.

Perhaps this dance will prove to be the very reason MLNP was created – to convene a conversation around how and why we “perform” sex, both on- and off-screen. But there’s also a risk that MLNP’s video content will merely replicate norms seen elsewhere. (Just ask critics of SuicideGirls how they feel about the transgressive power of having more slim, conventionally attractive white girls - tattooed, pierced,  multicolour-haired and natural-breasted, but still slim, attractive white girls – in porn.)

I hope MLNP.tv succeeds. If nothing else, I know there are parents everywhere who are cheering at the prospect of their teenaged kids having access to videos that show consenting adults having NPLS – because they know that otherwise, their sexual imaginations risk being curtailed by banal, often-misogynistic, laughably accessible mainstream porn. And if that’s as far as MLNP gets, that’s a good thing. I just hope it can go beyond good, to great – and that will require creative answers to some big, intractable questions.

* Yes, I know that many adult performers have kids and successfully keep their professional and personal lives separate. I’m just saying it’s not always easy – and that for people who don’t primarily earn their income from sex work, having kids is a significant barrier to uploading a video of themselves having sex to a website.

Update (25 Sep 2012, 9:15 pm): Cindy Gallop has graciously responded in the comments; I recommend reading her take. The links in her comment are also well worth your time.

I was talking to a girlfriend of mine about e-books and she referred me to this Fast Company article about Harlequin’s (you know, the romance novel publisher) e-book imprint. It’s fascinating. Go ahead and read it, or if you’re like me, stick it on Instapaper for reading later.

There are a bunch of things that I love about this piece.

1. Angela James (the subject of the article), who runs Carina Press, Harlequin’s e-book division, is thirty-five years old. Which is pretty awesomely young to be running a big, booming business.
2. Ms. James’s relevant background includes being a member of a fan listserv for an erotic romance e-book publisher. Yes. She was a fan first – an online community member – before she took her first job in romance publishing.
3. The whole article is a great reminder of how much innovation smut in general (a term I like to use to include everything from slash fiction, to romance e-books, to porn) has wrought in the online sphere.
4. There are some pretty radical differences between the business model Carina Press is using and the one traditional print publishers use. And they all make enormous amounts of sense.

Let’s talk some more about that last one, because I have been pretty worried about the future of book publishing for a while now, and this is the first time in years I’ve had much hope that the big publishers might actually pull it together to embrace change rather than resisting it.

First, Carina Press’s authors make 15-30% in royalties from their books’ sales. To put that in perspective, I believe Emira & I earn something like 5-8% of the cover price for every copy of our book that’s sold, or just over a dollar per book. Our agent, of course, takes a cut of that, and then we split it in two & pay taxes on that. So let’s just say royalties are not exactly keeping us in the lap of luxury. (Or even in lattes, not that we’re complaining – after all, we did keep our day jobs.)

But I digress. I’m guessing most Harlequin/Carina writers don’t use agents – traditionally, at least, Harlequin has always had direct relationships with its authors – so they would keep all of their royalties. (They don’t get an advance, but advances are taken out of your royalties anyway, so as far as I’m concerned that’s a moot point.)

Now, of course, Carina’s e-books are priced lower than print books – $2.99-5.99 – but that’s good news, too, from my perspective. In digital media, you have to charge what the market will bear, for one thing – and for another, romance books aren’t priced very high to begin with. Remove the cost of printing & shipping and pass that savings on to the consumer – talk about a win-win.

I’m also delighted to hear that Carina has foregone the use of DRM. This line from James is priceless:

“Our theory is that it doesn’t prevent piracy because any pirate can strip DRM in about 30 seconds,” says James. “DRM instead inhibits casual sharing, an important part of the reading process — and the purchasing process.”

It’s clear right there that she gets her customer. She’s echoing the same sentiment expressed by Neil Gaiman in this brief video about the internet, piracy and copyright - namely, that there’s value in fans sharing copyrighted content because it leads to new fans, and therefore new customers.

I’m also impressed by the fact Carina publishes 2-4 new books every week. This is simple supply-and-demand stuff, but the traditional print publishing industry simply isn’t equipped to respond to customer demand the way e-book publishing can. Romance readers are notorious for inhaling books in no time flat and clamoring for new titles. In many ways, they’re the ideal e-book customers, because they also tend not to re-read older books or even seek them out. It’s a transient medium that thrives on novelty.

When we published our book, I learned some things that blew me away about the publishing industry. There are a lot of things about the way things have always been done in that industry that boggled our little digital-entrepreneur minds. For instance: It took 9 months from the day we submitted our absolutely-final, copy-edited, no-more-edits-allowed manuscript to the publishers, until the date the book was actually on store shelves. That’s three-quarters of a year. Unbelievable. That it could possibly take that long, in an age of publishing-on-demand, to get a book printed out & distributed to stores, still blows my mind.

Here’s another tidbit: To this day, we receive exactly two sales reports per year. Every six months, we get one mailed to us (yes, via snail-mail) along with our royalty cheques. By the time we see how sales were for January through June, it’s usually October. With this kind of reporting, there is no earthly way that we as authors can possibly respond to sales trends. So let’s say, for instance, there’s a sudden upswing in sales of The Boss of You in Baltimore – which might, say, prompt us to do a bit of Googling to find out who in Baltimore has been talking us up, or perhaps write something on our Facebook Page to see if anyone from Baltimore is stopping by for the first time – but no, we couldn’t possibly have that information in time to do anything useful with it. It’s deeply frustrating as an author, because our greatest hope is to connect with our readers and give them something that’s useful and valuable to them. The old processes simply don’t work well in the digital age.

(I want to be clear, by the way, that none of these complaints is directed at our publisher. Everyone there has been absolutely amazing to us, and we love them dearly. They’re all hamstrung by the same problems I’m complaining about, simply because they’re part of an industry that has some seriously messed-up “way we’ve always done it” problems. Let’s not even start on the financial problems posed by the fact bookstores can return unsold books to publishers months after ordering them… Anyway, my point is: individual publishers are not the problem – the problem is systemic.)

It’s delightfully poetic and significant that the path into the future of publishing is being paved by erotic fiction writers and their fans. Eros and creativity are inseparable, of course. But I think the community component is an important one, too. It’s meaningful that Angela James is an unapologetic fan of the romance genre, and has obviously gained the trust of her readers at least in part because she is one of them. Her success is another nail in the coffin of the old, top-down, “expert”-led publishing models, even while it hails a new profit source for a giant conglomerate (Harlequin is owned by TorStar).

I’m excited to see where this all leads. It’s certainly about time publishing got with the twenty-first century.