7 ms·

Cindy Gallop’s Online Effort to Promote ‘Real,’ Not Porn-Fed, Sex

108 points by daegloe 14y ago

sbierwagen 14y ago
Her TED video: http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/ http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/
konstruktor 14y ago
No matter how experienced you are sexually: The moment you try to judge what "real" sex is, you have stopped being reasonable. Even if the kind of sex younger people have today is actually influenced by porn, it is still real sex. Sexuality has always been the topic of every medium available, and I would assume that the influence between porn/erotic media/romantic media/sex ed, culture and privately practiced sexuality has never been a one way street. However, people tend to have a bit of a blind spot towards the influence of their own culture on their life. So what she is making is just porn geared towards an audience with certain tastes, which is, of course, perfectly okay. Equating that with "real sex", however, is nothing but condescending.
- 1123581321 14y ago
  I believe by real she means more like what an average person would find in real life. If you substitute in that definition, her mission makes more sense even if you disagree.
- pervycreeper 14y ago
  Judging from the article, she also seems to have a very peculiar notion of what constitutes "real sex" (how common is her lifestyle?). Multiple generations separate her from the kids who could be exposed to her site before coming of age, shall we say, so one wonders how relevant her opinions could possibly be to them.
  - chalst 14y ago
    She says she dates men in their 20s: http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2012/04/02/rampant-feminist-cindy-gallop-tackles-love-sex-porn/ http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2012/04/02/rampant...
    - konstruktor 14y ago
      Am I the only one who finds the title "The Toyboy Manifesto: Why Older Woman Plus Younger Man Is the Relationship Model of the Future" presumptuous? Young men dating older women, like any other type of relationship, is fine because the particular persons involved like it, not because of some inherent supremacy.
      - cindygallop 14y ago
        The title was a joke :)
- dalke 14y ago
  Let's say that most people learn about families only through watching 1950s live-action TV; Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, Leave It To Beaver, and even I Love Lucy. Can I not say that those portray an idealized version of family life, rather than a real one? And that they should not be use as a guide for how a real family should interact? Yet your logic would be that "the moment you try to judge what 'real' families are, you have stopped being reasonable." I do no think I am being unreasonable to say that Ozzie and Harriet does not portray a real family. Yes it was very popular, and that show is still used as short-hand expressing a longing for an idyllic bygone American life, but the situations and reactions were only valid for a very small percentage of the US. It took another 15 years, with shows like All in the Family, for more realistic themes like miscarriage, impotence, and racism to be included as part of the issues that families might deal with. Roseanne would also fit into that category, as Barr included a lesbian main character because Barr sought "to portray various slices of real life, and homosexuals are a reality." Why can't I also say that most pornography does as good a job of portraying real sex as Leave It To Beaver does at portraying a real family with husband, wife, and two sons? Our disagreement could be a simple as a difference in what 'real' means. I use it as "more likely to be characteristic of the general culture practice." You seem to interpret it as "whatever can happen in the physical world." In which case, sure, I Love Lucy could be a perfectly accurate portrayal of a real family - unlikely, but it could. And it misses the point. That being: “The issue I’m tackling is not porn,” she said. “It’s the complete lack of open, healthy dialogue around porn and sex.”
  - Swizec 14y ago
    But is porn "not real" in that regard? Okay, the stories definitely don't happen (pizza boy/girl etc.) but nobody knows why those are a part of porn anyway, everyone just skips over them. And I'm guessing the logistic problems make three+somes less frequent than in porn, the tabooness of it all as well I guess. But the sex itself, is it that much different than "real" sex? Are there really that many people having boring sex to make the amount of people coming close to and/or surpassing porn a statistical anomaly? If I recall the movie correctly (yes, I only watched the movie), Kinsey found out people are a lot kinkier than they let others believe once you really get down to finding out their true behind-the-scenes actions. With the shifting social mores, has that changed? Do we now let others think we are far kinkier than we really are?
olalonde 14y ago
So she basically started a glorified amateur porn paysite? For what it's worth, the real/amateur/homemade genres have been around since well before she went on her quest.
- antihero 14y ago
  This is a naive viewpoint - everyone knows that "amateur" at the moment is often completely fake, and just another genre that porn companies cater for with completely fake videos.
  - apgwoz 14y ago
    And what's to stop this site from becoming fake "amateur"?
    - dalke 14y ago
      Consider it branding. The "MakeLoveNotPorn" brand tells you it's gone through at least the vetting process.
    - MadamCurator 14y ago
      All the #realworldsex videos submitted to mlnp.tv are curated before they go live on the site. What that means to me is that I watch all the content to make sure that the people in the video are engaging in #realworldsex that is consensual and that they aren't simply replicating porn cliches (certain angles, positions) simply for the sake of it. If I suspect that a creator is doing this - I won't just reject it outright - I'll contact them to get more of a backstory and go from there. #realworldsex is as varied as it possibly can be and we want to keep it that way. We just want to make sure that the content on our site is consensual, cliche free and contextualized. If it's creative and comical all the better. -Sarah, Madam Curator, MLNP.tv
  - cindygallop 14y ago
    Exactly. Hate to break it to you guys, but those dorm rooms don't exist. :)
  - 14y ago
Swizec 14y ago
So basically she's making an amateur porn site, charging bucks for it, and dressing it up as moral supremacism? I think fantasti.cc has been doing a great job at this for more than a year now (when they started featuring user-submitted porn on the frontpage and became more of a social network for sexy vids) ... except it's free and without the moral baggage. However I do agree with her that most mainstream porn of the freely found online for free variety has become completely ridiculous. That said, I might be willing to pay $5 to watch amateur porn that's longer than 3min bits and pieces and recorded at more than one pixel per frame.
- zoul 14y ago
  I just visited fantasti.cc and was greeted with an ad showing some girl streching her ass, the copy claiming something about the most extreme whatever. I can’t comment on the vids on the site, but this ad shows precisely what’s wrong with most of the modern porn (and disqualifies the site for me). If Gallop makes a decent site showing people having more real sex, then I think she does more than “just build another amateur porn site”. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to protest against “moral baggage”. She’s just offering an alternative, a different point of view, not pushing for new legislation against the forms of intercourse she doesn’t like.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Ads are just ads, I don't think it's fair to judge the site by them. That said, I think fantasti.cc is a mixed bag. As a community driven site, there are users with excellent submissions and a lot of mainstream porn.
- FixThisPOS 14y ago
  Where does she claim anything about morality? Now I think I'll start one for women who've been influenced by porn, and lesson one will be: Twisting a cock does not feel good for the cock owner.
peteretep 14y ago
Next up ... an online effort to promote `Real`, not Twilight/50 Shades of Grey, relationships ...
drcube 14y ago
So what exact porn moves is she talking about? I watch a fair amount of porn, and a lot of the positions are obviously uncomfortable and just for show. Even if it wasn't obvious at first, it would be as soon as you tried them. However, I do think porn has introduced me to some new, valuable ideas. Maybe this lady has just had some bad lovers? Anyway, while I think the rationale is condescending, I'm all for some more "natural" looking porn on the market.
- cindygallop 14y ago
  If you check out http://makelovenotporn.com/ http://makelovenotporn.com/ you'll see what I'm talking about. And no, the lovers that inspired MLNP to begin with were only a few vs a bunch of really great ones :) MLNP is not anti-porn: the issue I'm tackling, as I say in the NY Times piece, is the lack in our society of an open healthy discussion around sex and porn, that would enable more people to bring more of a real-world mindset when viewing what is essentially artificial entertainment. My entire message with MLNP boils down to simply 'talk about it'. If you go to the About page on MakeLoveNotPorn.com, you'll see why this is an issue.
  - truebecomefalse 14y ago
    I think sites like reddit.com/r/sex already provide rich community discussion about sexuality and sex.
  - smsm42 14y ago
    I visited that site and was greeted with such valuable insight as "in porn, they love to do X, but in real world, some people like to do X and some do not, it's a personal choice". You don't say! Are we really got to the point that such things need to be spelled out? What next - obligatory warnings on movies saying "the movie is not real life, you do not have to copy characters in the movie, it is your choice how to live your life"? This just makes me sad.
brackin 14y ago
I prefer this TEDX talk to Gallop's on a similar subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
antninja 14y ago
Realistic porn is an already existing subset of porn. A maybe counter-intuitive effect of filmmaking is that well-produced films in the likes of x-art.com appear more realistic and cute than what amateurs upload. A good director will make us forget that the camera is there and that it's all staged.
- icebraining 14y ago
  To me, X-Art and similar producers always felt like the other opposite of fake porn. It's not harsh and violent like plenty of mainstream porn, but the participants are still very much acting for the camera. I think the only website I know where, even tough they never try to disguise it as non-porn, the participants actually seem to enjoy themselves consistently is Abbywinters.
FrojoS 14y ago
A bit off-topic: Has anyone ever tried to correlate societies porn consumption with the decline of birthrate? I could imagine different countries would have different access to porn, maybe this has an effect? Of course, Internet porn is only around for a decade and birthrate decline for much longer, but maybe even cheap color print and VHS had lasting effects, not just the pill and women education. Man might not be as horny anymore as the used to be.
- DeepDuh 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure you'd get a positive correlation - but a worthless one.
  - FrojoS 14y ago
    Likely. But maybe there is enough control groups? Societies with less or minimal porn consumption?
- rmc 14y ago
  The main thing that reduces birth rate is longer lifestyle, more education and wealth, education and employment for women, not just porn.
  - FrojoS 14y ago
    Yes. I had that whole list in my original comment, than deleted it because it was longwinded. I'm just asking if porn might _also_ be a factor. There are definitely other factors at work anyway. Look at France, which has a much higher birthrate than its neighbors, despite showing similar values in all the factors you named.
seltzered_ 14y ago
Gallop's not the first one to do this. I don't know why I know this, but Tony Comstock made "real love, real sex" videos at while at http://www.comstockfilms.com/ http://www.comstockfilms.com/ . They're intended to be "documentaries that simultaneously explore the vital role of sexual pleasure in committed relationships and the problematic place of explicit sexuality in cinema" He also has a recent blog post about why he stopped making the films: http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movies-anymore-and-what-i-do-instead/ http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movie...
- cindygallop 14y ago
  Absolutely. What I'm setting out to do is help my friends in porn break down the wall between society and the non-socially acceptable 'parallel universe' that porn exists in. This is a blog post & interview with me on how I want to help the porn industry as a whole: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-business-of-makelovenotporn http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-bus...
GrueFiend 14y ago
Easy, willing to sleep around, kind of trashy: all the hallmarks of girls many boys in high school secretly were okay fantasizing about. I fail to see the virtue she's advocating. This lady (anyone else thinking "blecch!"?) hasn't reigned in any vice or made this world a better place.
- stevvooe 14y ago
  She's also succeeded in completely missing her stated demographic by charging for it. I do sense a charlatan.
  - cindygallop 14y ago
    This is a short video interview with me on the business of MakeLoveNotPorn: http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-bring-you-hot-sex-videos-all-at-the-same-time/ http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-brin... and my launch post on the details of our business model and why I designed it the way that I did: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo... Yours, Charlatan :)
    - stevvooe 14y ago
      <blush>
- cindygallop 14y ago
  You can read about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv's social mission, objective and how we're working to make the world a better place here: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo... Yours, Ms Blecch! :)
bane 14y ago
I had a fascinating discussion one time with a friend who was active in the local Asian-American arts community. She told me she had a filmmaker friend who was having trouble screening an art movie he had produced about East Asian sexuality. He had been claiming establishment discrimination is working to suppress his expression of the sexuality of a key demographic. Thinking it was an interesting topic our conversation went something like: Me: East Asian sexuality? That's a pretty focused topic. Her: Yeah, he had a hard time getting actors who would have sex with each other on film. Me: So....it's a porno? Her: No! It's an art film! Me: But they actually had to have sex on film? Her: Yes! Of course for authenticity! It's about the ways in which East Asians feel their sexuality is repressed compared to the West! Me: Compared to the West? Her: Yeah! The West is so open about sexuality, L.A. is the home of porn, Playboy is from the U.S. etc. etc. Me: You...are aware that something like 50% of all porn on the planet comes out of just Japan. A country with half the population of the U.S. and several countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism? There are several studies that indicate the ready availability of cheap pornography catering to just about any proclivity imaginable has been a major contributor to the declining birthrates in the more developed East Asian economies? If anything, much of East Asia is oversexed! Her: ??? Me: It sounds to me like your friend just wanted an excuse to make a porno, but saying it was an art film kept it from being part of the seedy underbelly of society and gave his project an air of legitimacy. He didn't, by chance ask if you were interested in acting in it were you? Her: Yes, he did. sigh So, I think people who are interested in the titillating parts of porn, but who are turned off by the various associations it has, will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to pretend that various attempts at it, perhaps by coming through non-traditional channels, are in fact not porn when they most certainly are.
- pdog 14y ago
  > [S]everal countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism This is a common, unfortunate misconception about SEA countries. They aren't visited "almost entirely" for sex tourism. Sex tourists form only a small minority of visitors, but loom larger in our minds when we discuss them.
  - 14y ago
pessimizer 14y ago
Porn as prescriptive propaganda. There's already, and has always been, a market for depictions of non-crazy sex between couples in a relationship. It's just a minor market amoungst many, and IMO, not any less perverse and odd. Complaining about porn not being real is similar to claiming soccer isn't real. "Real people don't run that fast." "He's just trying to impress the cameras." "What he just did was super dangerous." But it is real, because those are human beings having sex, so if "real" as a word has any meaning, it's real. But the word is being used as a prescriptive code as in the phrase "real women," which simply means "women who are not thin." Just because models being used in "real" campaigns are not thin does not make them representative of the general population - they are more attractive, their bodies in rarer proportions, they are still thinner, and they lack the actually thin - because 'real'ness is simply a reaction to thiness. The usage of the word "real" in that industry is simply disguising that reaction as a call to authenticity, something that advertisers have done since the beginning of advertising. If the models were as the general population, why would anyone pay to look at them? If professional footballers played the same game as wekend footballers, why would anyone pay to look at them? If people in porn looked like you and your girlfriend and had sex like you and your girlfriend, why would you pay to watch? If "real" models become the standard, and you are a thin person, will you have to go underground to find representations of people like you in the media? I'm just being silly, though. This clarion call for real porn is cyclical, and predictable in its failure - because that market is already being pandered to, and because most people would rather have real sex tham watch it. We have terms for people who want to watch averagely attractive people have average sex within a loving relationship. Peeping Toms.
- ForrestN 14y ago
  I think you misunderstood. She doesn't mean "real sex" as in normal-looking people. She means real sex in terms of behavior. The article says the site is a reaction to young men who have sex in the manner of porn (which I assume means a certain amount of macho performance, posing, a manner of making sounds and talking during sex, etc.) as opposed to the manner in which real people tend to have sex. There is a very BIG market for "amateur porn" which is filled with "normal-looking" people as opposed to porn stars. This is more about education and promoting a different vision of the behavioral side of sex.
tHNrowaway 14y ago
I've got to agree with most everything here. Porn messed up a large number of my relationships in university. I'm just under 30. When I was a teen, almost everyone around me had broadband (well, DSL). My family had dialup. So no internet porn for me. My father/mother did not have a stash nor did any of my friends. So no VHS porn. Somehow I managed to never watch porn during my secondary school years. I did do a lot of reading though. Alt.sex.stories was nice back then. At university I got real internet, but still did not watch porn. (Roommates.) I did however start dating. These girls had seen porn. Lots of it, compared to me. It was odd, because they'd ask me to do things I found completely disgusting. (Voyeurism, anal, simulated rape.) The same girls would refuse to do things I thought deeply compassionate. (Oral sex was more appealing to me than straight sex.) It was not until after school when I got my own place that I finally watched some porn and finally made the connection. All mainstream porn is horrid. At a most basic level it is about one thing and one thing only - giving the viewer something to look at. The fundamental issue here is that for flesh to be seen, it has to have an unblocked line to the camera. If it is unblocked, no one can be touching it. If no one is touching it, it is being neglected and someone is not having as good a time as they could be. Nothing happens in porn because it feels good, only because it looks "good". You end up with truly ridiculous sex in porn where there is no physical contact between the two parties except at the genitalia. And even that is kept at a minimum! (I could provide specific if requested, but given my literary upbringing they might be a little too detailed and graphic for this forum ;) It is about as bad as hackers on TV where they are using two keyboards simultaneously while a projector plasters their face with scrolling text. Sure looks impressive, but it just can not work that way.
decklin 14y ago
The suit is back!
doron 14y ago
I always viewed porn actors as some kind of gladiatorial occupation. possessing bodies and skills practiced (and often designed)for a specific cause. the disclaimer to me, is implicit. In the same way that most action movies are not in any way a proper schooling on how to handle weapons, the viewer will find very quickly in a real life encounter that his actions are not working for him/her. There is no doubt that the easy access to porn is shaping contemporary expressions of sexuality for all genders. But maybe focusing on just young 20 something men as a sexual partner can hold a problem in an of itself. From my late thirties point of view... early twenties don't know much about anything. As a sidenote: So much of porn is free to access, i wonder about the paywall (what with the "educational" statement, why not make it free? and get Durex or Astroglide to foot the bill". Making a the site a paysite, just makes it yet another specialized porn site, albeit for specific tastes.
- cindygallop 14y ago
  My launch post on our blog explains our business model and how I designed MLNPTV as a circular ecosystem. It's very easy to watch #realworldsex videos for free: all you have to do is contribute them yourself, and then use the money other members pay into your account to watch whatever you want :) http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo...
saturdaysaint 14y ago
She's found a real problem, but not necessarily a solution (or a business), sadly. Stuff like this has been around since porn's been around. The reason porn addresses something of a human need is that it provides intense sexual stimulation to people without access to (or even the emotional maturity for) sexual relationships. I hate to say it, but the emotional needs of a beautiful woman are pretty academic to a 19 year old guy that hasn't figured out how to talk to girls or an overweight 45 year old guy whose options are limited. I doubt that disabusing them of porn's ridiculous conventions is going to substantively improve things for them. I mean, it's just hard to compete with intense sexual release. The real opportunity is for authors/educators/leaders/academics that can help guys without access to sex understand sex and relationships in a truly useful way. We've seen this with things like the world of "seduction education" and things like "nofap" on reddit. Actually, reddit is a real problem I see for her business - there are already active, technically astute and fairly well moderated forums for exactly these types of discussions.
- stevvooe 14y ago
  Your view of the porn-consuming demographic is offensively myopic.
- MadamCurator 14y ago
  At mlnp.tv we're glad to see when anyone is engaging in a healthy dialogue around sex and porn.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Fascinating discussion, lots of great points. Seems like much of the modern porn industry is scripted like the floor exercises in a gymnastics event, you have to have moves A, B, C, Etc., and a great dismount. Sort of the porn version of the hero's journey. The comments here suggest the OP might be more effective in her mission if she either illustrated effectively the scripted nature of porn or commissioned specific examples of better? healthier? more loving? sex.
- cindygallop 14y ago
  That's precisely what I'm doing - commissioning from all of you: crowdsourced, user-generated #realworldsex :) You can read the details of what I and my team are building on our blog: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/
cindygallop 14y ago
Thanks so much everyone for this great discussion. For anyone interested, you can read more about what my team and I are building and our social mission, business model and circular ecosystem on our blog: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ Do sign up for beta, and we would love your #realworldsex submissions :) - anyone contributing content gets fast-tracked into beta immediately. Just email cindy@makelovenotporn.com - many thanks.
anaheim 14y ago
Aging cougar who can't take it hard any more launches business to convince pay couples to watch other boring couples get it on during another boring Friday night. Is anyone really taking this woman seriously?
anamax 14y ago
Ah yes, "porn isn't real". Neither are romantic comedies, princess stories, and the rest of the relationship-porn genre.
smsm42 14y ago
I find it amazing that any kind of sex needs to be "promoted". I was always thinking that's one of the things people would do as much as they can get without any promoting required.

108 points by daegloe 14y ago

Her TED video: http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/ http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/

No matter how experienced you are sexually: The moment you try to judge what "real" sex is, you have stopped being reasonable. Even if the kind of sex younger people have today is actually influenced by porn, it is still real sex. Sexuality has always been the topic of every medium available, and I would assume that the influence between porn/erotic media/romantic media/sex ed, culture and privately practiced sexuality has never been a one way street. However, people tend to have a bit of a blind spot towards the influence of their own culture on their life. So what she is making is just porn geared towards an audience with certain tastes, which is, of course, perfectly okay. Equating that with "real sex", however, is nothing but condescending.

1123581321 14y ago
I believe by real she means more like what an average person would find in real life. If you substitute in that definition, her mission makes more sense even if you disagree.
pervycreeper 14y ago
Judging from the article, she also seems to have a very peculiar notion of what constitutes "real sex" (how common is her lifestyle?). Multiple generations separate her from the kids who could be exposed to her site before coming of age, shall we say, so one wonders how relevant her opinions could possibly be to them.
- chalst 14y ago
  She says she dates men in their 20s: http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2012/04/02/rampant-feminist-cindy-gallop-tackles-love-sex-porn/ http://blogs.reuters.com/the-human-impact/2012/04/02/rampant...
  - konstruktor 14y ago
    Am I the only one who finds the title "The Toyboy Manifesto: Why Older Woman Plus Younger Man Is the Relationship Model of the Future" presumptuous? Young men dating older women, like any other type of relationship, is fine because the particular persons involved like it, not because of some inherent supremacy.
    - cindygallop 14y ago
      The title was a joke :)
dalke 14y ago
Let's say that most people learn about families only through watching 1950s live-action TV; Ozzie and Harriet, The Donna Reed Show, Leave It To Beaver, and even I Love Lucy. Can I not say that those portray an idealized version of family life, rather than a real one? And that they should not be use as a guide for how a real family should interact? Yet your logic would be that "the moment you try to judge what 'real' families are, you have stopped being reasonable." I do no think I am being unreasonable to say that Ozzie and Harriet does not portray a real family. Yes it was very popular, and that show is still used as short-hand expressing a longing for an idyllic bygone American life, but the situations and reactions were only valid for a very small percentage of the US. It took another 15 years, with shows like All in the Family, for more realistic themes like miscarriage, impotence, and racism to be included as part of the issues that families might deal with. Roseanne would also fit into that category, as Barr included a lesbian main character because Barr sought "to portray various slices of real life, and homosexuals are a reality." Why can't I also say that most pornography does as good a job of portraying real sex as Leave It To Beaver does at portraying a real family with husband, wife, and two sons? Our disagreement could be a simple as a difference in what 'real' means. I use it as "more likely to be characteristic of the general culture practice." You seem to interpret it as "whatever can happen in the physical world." In which case, sure, I Love Lucy could be a perfectly accurate portrayal of a real family - unlikely, but it could. And it misses the point. That being: “The issue I’m tackling is not porn,” she said. “It’s the complete lack of open, healthy dialogue around porn and sex.”
- Swizec 14y ago
  But is porn "not real" in that regard? Okay, the stories definitely don't happen (pizza boy/girl etc.) but nobody knows why those are a part of porn anyway, everyone just skips over them. And I'm guessing the logistic problems make three+somes less frequent than in porn, the tabooness of it all as well I guess. But the sex itself, is it that much different than "real" sex? Are there really that many people having boring sex to make the amount of people coming close to and/or surpassing porn a statistical anomaly? If I recall the movie correctly (yes, I only watched the movie), Kinsey found out people are a lot kinkier than they let others believe once you really get down to finding out their true behind-the-scenes actions. With the shifting social mores, has that changed? Do we now let others think we are far kinkier than we really are?

olalonde 14y ago

So she basically started a glorified amateur porn paysite? For what it's worth, the real/amateur/homemade genres have been around since well before she went on her quest.

antihero 14y ago
This is a naive viewpoint - everyone knows that "amateur" at the moment is often completely fake, and just another genre that porn companies cater for with completely fake videos.
- apgwoz 14y ago
  And what's to stop this site from becoming fake "amateur"?
  - dalke 14y ago
    Consider it branding. The "MakeLoveNotPorn" brand tells you it's gone through at least the vetting process.
  - MadamCurator 14y ago
    All the #realworldsex videos submitted to mlnp.tv are curated before they go live on the site. What that means to me is that I watch all the content to make sure that the people in the video are engaging in #realworldsex that is consensual and that they aren't simply replicating porn cliches (certain angles, positions) simply for the sake of it. If I suspect that a creator is doing this - I won't just reject it outright - I'll contact them to get more of a backstory and go from there. #realworldsex is as varied as it possibly can be and we want to keep it that way. We just want to make sure that the content on our site is consensual, cliche free and contextualized. If it's creative and comical all the better. -Sarah, Madam Curator, MLNP.tv
- cindygallop 14y ago
  Exactly. Hate to break it to you guys, but those dorm rooms don't exist. :)
- 14y ago

Swizec 14y ago

So basically she's making an amateur porn site, charging bucks for it, and dressing it up as moral supremacism? I think fantasti.cc has been doing a great job at this for more than a year now (when they started featuring user-submitted porn on the frontpage and became more of a social network for sexy vids) ... except it's free and without the moral baggage. However I do agree with her that most mainstream porn of the freely found online for free variety has become completely ridiculous. That said, I might be willing to pay $5 to watch amateur porn that's longer than 3min bits and pieces and recorded at more than one pixel per frame.

zoul 14y ago
I just visited fantasti.cc and was greeted with an ad showing some girl streching her ass, the copy claiming something about the most extreme whatever. I can’t comment on the vids on the site, but this ad shows precisely what’s wrong with most of the modern porn (and disqualifies the site for me). If Gallop makes a decent site showing people having more real sex, then I think she does more than “just build another amateur porn site”. And I don’t think it’s appropriate to protest against “moral baggage”. She’s just offering an alternative, a different point of view, not pushing for new legislation against the forms of intercourse she doesn’t like.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- icebraining 14y ago
  Ads are just ads, I don't think it's fair to judge the site by them. That said, I think fantasti.cc is a mixed bag. As a community driven site, there are users with excellent submissions and a lot of mainstream porn.
FixThisPOS 14y ago
Where does she claim anything about morality? Now I think I'll start one for women who've been influenced by porn, and lesson one will be: Twisting a cock does not feel good for the cock owner.

peteretep 14y ago

Next up ... an online effort to promote `Real`, not Twilight/50 Shades of Grey, relationships ...

drcube 14y ago

So what exact porn moves is she talking about? I watch a fair amount of porn, and a lot of the positions are obviously uncomfortable and just for show. Even if it wasn't obvious at first, it would be as soon as you tried them. However, I do think porn has introduced me to some new, valuable ideas. Maybe this lady has just had some bad lovers? Anyway, while I think the rationale is condescending, I'm all for some more "natural" looking porn on the market.

cindygallop 14y ago
If you check out http://makelovenotporn.com/ http://makelovenotporn.com/ you'll see what I'm talking about. And no, the lovers that inspired MLNP to begin with were only a few vs a bunch of really great ones :) MLNP is not anti-porn: the issue I'm tackling, as I say in the NY Times piece, is the lack in our society of an open healthy discussion around sex and porn, that would enable more people to bring more of a real-world mindset when viewing what is essentially artificial entertainment. My entire message with MLNP boils down to simply 'talk about it'. If you go to the About page on MakeLoveNotPorn.com, you'll see why this is an issue.
- truebecomefalse 14y ago
  I think sites like reddit.com/r/sex already provide rich community discussion about sexuality and sex.
- smsm42 14y ago
  I visited that site and was greeted with such valuable insight as "in porn, they love to do X, but in real world, some people like to do X and some do not, it's a personal choice". You don't say! Are we really got to the point that such things need to be spelled out? What next - obligatory warnings on movies saying "the movie is not real life, you do not have to copy characters in the movie, it is your choice how to live your life"? This just makes me sad.

brackin 14y ago

I prefer this TEDX talk to Gallop's on a similar subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

antninja 14y ago

Realistic porn is an already existing subset of porn. A maybe counter-intuitive effect of filmmaking is that well-produced films in the likes of x-art.com appear more realistic and cute than what amateurs upload. A good director will make us forget that the camera is there and that it's all staged.

icebraining 14y ago
To me, X-Art and similar producers always felt like the other opposite of fake porn. It's not harsh and violent like plenty of mainstream porn, but the participants are still very much acting for the camera. I think the only website I know where, even tough they never try to disguise it as non-porn, the participants actually seem to enjoy themselves consistently is Abbywinters.

FrojoS 14y ago

A bit off-topic: Has anyone ever tried to correlate societies porn consumption with the decline of birthrate? I could imagine different countries would have different access to porn, maybe this has an effect? Of course, Internet porn is only around for a decade and birthrate decline for much longer, but maybe even cheap color print and VHS had lasting effects, not just the pill and women education. Man might not be as horny anymore as the used to be.

DeepDuh 14y ago
I'm pretty sure you'd get a positive correlation - but a worthless one.
- FrojoS 14y ago
  Likely. But maybe there is enough control groups? Societies with less or minimal porn consumption?
rmc 14y ago
The main thing that reduces birth rate is longer lifestyle, more education and wealth, education and employment for women, not just porn.
- FrojoS 14y ago
  Yes. I had that whole list in my original comment, than deleted it because it was longwinded. I'm just asking if porn might _also_ be a factor. There are definitely other factors at work anyway. Look at France, which has a much higher birthrate than its neighbors, despite showing similar values in all the factors you named.

seltzered_ 14y ago

Gallop's not the first one to do this. I don't know why I know this, but Tony Comstock made "real love, real sex" videos at while at http://www.comstockfilms.com/ http://www.comstockfilms.com/ . They're intended to be "documentaries that simultaneously explore the vital role of sexual pleasure in committed relationships and the problematic place of explicit sexuality in cinema" He also has a recent blog post about why he stopped making the films: http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movies-anymore-and-what-i-do-instead/ http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movie...

cindygallop 14y ago
Absolutely. What I'm setting out to do is help my friends in porn break down the wall between society and the non-socially acceptable 'parallel universe' that porn exists in. This is a blog post & interview with me on how I want to help the porn industry as a whole: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-business-of-makelovenotporn http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-bus...

GrueFiend 14y ago

Easy, willing to sleep around, kind of trashy: all the hallmarks of girls many boys in high school secretly were okay fantasizing about. I fail to see the virtue she's advocating. This lady (anyone else thinking "blecch!"?) hasn't reigned in any vice or made this world a better place.

stevvooe 14y ago
She's also succeeded in completely missing her stated demographic by charging for it. I do sense a charlatan.
- cindygallop 14y ago
  This is a short video interview with me on the business of MakeLoveNotPorn: http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-bring-you-hot-sex-videos-all-at-the-same-time/ http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-brin... and my launch post on the details of our business model and why I designed it the way that I did: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo... Yours, Charlatan :)
  - stevvooe 14y ago
    <blush>
cindygallop 14y ago
You can read about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv's social mission, objective and how we're working to make the world a better place here: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo... Yours, Ms Blecch! :)

bane 14y ago

I had a fascinating discussion one time with a friend who was active in the local Asian-American arts community. She told me she had a filmmaker friend who was having trouble screening an art movie he had produced about East Asian sexuality. He had been claiming establishment discrimination is working to suppress his expression of the sexuality of a key demographic. Thinking it was an interesting topic our conversation went something like: Me: East Asian sexuality? That's a pretty focused topic. Her: Yeah, he had a hard time getting actors who would have sex with each other on film. Me: So....it's a porno? Her: No! It's an art film! Me: But they actually had to have sex on film? Her: Yes! Of course for authenticity! It's about the ways in which East Asians feel their sexuality is repressed compared to the West! Me: Compared to the West? Her: Yeah! The West is so open about sexuality, L.A. is the home of porn, Playboy is from the U.S. etc. etc. Me: You...are aware that something like 50% of all porn on the planet comes out of just Japan. A country with half the population of the U.S. and several countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism? There are several studies that indicate the ready availability of cheap pornography catering to just about any proclivity imaginable has been a major contributor to the declining birthrates in the more developed East Asian economies? If anything, much of East Asia is oversexed! Her: ??? Me: It sounds to me like your friend just wanted an excuse to make a porno, but saying it was an art film kept it from being part of the seedy underbelly of society and gave his project an air of legitimacy. He didn't, by chance ask if you were interested in acting in it were you? Her: Yes, he did. sigh So, I think people who are interested in the titillating parts of porn, but who are turned off by the various associations it has, will jump through all kinds of mental hoops to pretend that various attempts at it, perhaps by coming through non-traditional channels, are in fact not porn when they most certainly are.

pdog 14y ago
> [S]everal countries in East Asia tend to be visited by foreigners almost entirely for sex tourism This is a common, unfortunate misconception about SEA countries. They aren't visited "almost entirely" for sex tourism. Sex tourists form only a small minority of visitors, but loom larger in our minds when we discuss them.
- 14y ago

pessimizer 14y ago

Porn as prescriptive propaganda. There's already, and has always been, a market for depictions of non-crazy sex between couples in a relationship. It's just a minor market amoungst many, and IMO, not any less perverse and odd. Complaining about porn not being real is similar to claiming soccer isn't real. "Real people don't run that fast." "He's just trying to impress the cameras." "What he just did was super dangerous." But it is real, because those are human beings having sex, so if "real" as a word has any meaning, it's real. But the word is being used as a prescriptive code as in the phrase "real women," which simply means "women who are not thin." Just because models being used in "real" campaigns are not thin does not make them representative of the general population - they are more attractive, their bodies in rarer proportions, they are still thinner, and they lack the actually thin - because 'real'ness is simply a reaction to thiness. The usage of the word "real" in that industry is simply disguising that reaction as a call to authenticity, something that advertisers have done since the beginning of advertising. If the models were as the general population, why would anyone pay to look at them? If professional footballers played the same game as wekend footballers, why would anyone pay to look at them? If people in porn looked like you and your girlfriend and had sex like you and your girlfriend, why would you pay to watch? If "real" models become the standard, and you are a thin person, will you have to go underground to find representations of people like you in the media? I'm just being silly, though. This clarion call for real porn is cyclical, and predictable in its failure - because that market is already being pandered to, and because most people would rather have real sex tham watch it. We have terms for people who want to watch averagely attractive people have average sex within a loving relationship. Peeping Toms.

ForrestN 14y ago
I think you misunderstood. She doesn't mean "real sex" as in normal-looking people. She means real sex in terms of behavior. The article says the site is a reaction to young men who have sex in the manner of porn (which I assume means a certain amount of macho performance, posing, a manner of making sounds and talking during sex, etc.) as opposed to the manner in which real people tend to have sex. There is a very BIG market for "amateur porn" which is filled with "normal-looking" people as opposed to porn stars. This is more about education and promoting a different vision of the behavioral side of sex.

tHNrowaway 14y ago

I've got to agree with most everything here. Porn messed up a large number of my relationships in university. I'm just under 30. When I was a teen, almost everyone around me had broadband (well, DSL). My family had dialup. So no internet porn for me. My father/mother did not have a stash nor did any of my friends. So no VHS porn. Somehow I managed to never watch porn during my secondary school years. I did do a lot of reading though. Alt.sex.stories was nice back then. At university I got real internet, but still did not watch porn. (Roommates.) I did however start dating. These girls had seen porn. Lots of it, compared to me. It was odd, because they'd ask me to do things I found completely disgusting. (Voyeurism, anal, simulated rape.) The same girls would refuse to do things I thought deeply compassionate. (Oral sex was more appealing to me than straight sex.) It was not until after school when I got my own place that I finally watched some porn and finally made the connection. All mainstream porn is horrid. At a most basic level it is about one thing and one thing only - giving the viewer something to look at. The fundamental issue here is that for flesh to be seen, it has to have an unblocked line to the camera. If it is unblocked, no one can be touching it. If no one is touching it, it is being neglected and someone is not having as good a time as they could be. Nothing happens in porn because it feels good, only because it looks "good". You end up with truly ridiculous sex in porn where there is no physical contact between the two parties except at the genitalia. And even that is kept at a minimum! (I could provide specific if requested, but given my literary upbringing they might be a little too detailed and graphic for this forum ;) It is about as bad as hackers on TV where they are using two keyboards simultaneously while a projector plasters their face with scrolling text. Sure looks impressive, but it just can not work that way.

decklin 14y ago

The suit is back!

doron 14y ago

I always viewed porn actors as some kind of gladiatorial occupation. possessing bodies and skills practiced (and often designed)for a specific cause. the disclaimer to me, is implicit. In the same way that most action movies are not in any way a proper schooling on how to handle weapons, the viewer will find very quickly in a real life encounter that his actions are not working for him/her. There is no doubt that the easy access to porn is shaping contemporary expressions of sexuality for all genders. But maybe focusing on just young 20 something men as a sexual partner can hold a problem in an of itself. From my late thirties point of view... early twenties don't know much about anything. As a sidenote: So much of porn is free to access, i wonder about the paywall (what with the "educational" statement, why not make it free? and get Durex or Astroglide to foot the bill". Making a the site a paysite, just makes it yet another specialized porn site, albeit for specific tastes.

cindygallop 14y ago
My launch post on our blog explains our business model and how I designed MLNPTV as a circular ecosystem. It's very easy to watch #realworldsex videos for free: all you have to do is contribute them yourself, and then use the money other members pay into your account to watch whatever you want :) http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/hellowo...

saturdaysaint 14y ago

She's found a real problem, but not necessarily a solution (or a business), sadly. Stuff like this has been around since porn's been around. The reason porn addresses something of a human need is that it provides intense sexual stimulation to people without access to (or even the emotional maturity for) sexual relationships. I hate to say it, but the emotional needs of a beautiful woman are pretty academic to a 19 year old guy that hasn't figured out how to talk to girls or an overweight 45 year old guy whose options are limited. I doubt that disabusing them of porn's ridiculous conventions is going to substantively improve things for them. I mean, it's just hard to compete with intense sexual release. The real opportunity is for authors/educators/leaders/academics that can help guys without access to sex understand sex and relationships in a truly useful way. We've seen this with things like the world of "seduction education" and things like "nofap" on reddit. Actually, reddit is a real problem I see for her business - there are already active, technically astute and fairly well moderated forums for exactly these types of discussions.

stevvooe 14y ago
Your view of the porn-consuming demographic is offensively myopic.
MadamCurator 14y ago
At mlnp.tv we're glad to see when anyone is engaging in a healthy dialogue around sex and porn.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Fascinating discussion, lots of great points. Seems like much of the modern porn industry is scripted like the floor exercises in a gymnastics event, you have to have moves A, B, C, Etc., and a great dismount. Sort of the porn version of the hero's journey. The comments here suggest the OP might be more effective in her mission if she either illustrated effectively the scripted nature of porn or commissioned specific examples of better? healthier? more loving? sex.

cindygallop 14y ago
That's precisely what I'm doing - commissioning from all of you: crowdsourced, user-generated #realworldsex :) You can read the details of what I and my team are building on our blog: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/

cindygallop 14y ago

Thanks so much everyone for this great discussion. For anyone interested, you can read more about what my team and I are building and our social mission, business model and circular ecosystem on our blog: http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/ Do sign up for beta, and we would love your #realworldsex submissions :) - anyone contributing content gets fast-tracked into beta immediately. Just email cindy@makelovenotporn.com - many thanks.

anaheim 14y ago

Aging cougar who can't take it hard any more launches business to convince pay couples to watch other boring couples get it on during another boring Friday night. Is anyone really taking this woman seriously?

anamax 14y ago

Ah yes, "porn isn't real". Neither are romantic comedies, princess stories, and the rest of the relationship-porn genre.

smsm42 14y ago

I find it amazing that any kind of sex needs to be "promoted". I was always thinking that's one of the things people would do as much as they can get without any promoting required.