LOS ANGELES — Ten years after birthing MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP) during a four-minute TED Talk, advertising executive Cindy Gallop spoke to online publication Gestalten about where her site in the #MeToo era, and where it's headed over the next ten years.
Gallop first announced MNLP at the 2009 TED Conference. She told XBIZ in 2012 that she had noticed, while dating younger men, that she was "encountering an issue that would simply never have crossed my mind if I had not experienced it very directly and personally: that when you combine total freedom of access to porn online, with society’s total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex, what you get is porn as default sex education, in not a good way."
So she set up a website where paying members could submit their own recorded sex for other paying members to watch, with strict, human-curated criteria emphasizing open sexual communication and consent.
On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Gallop believes MLNP has gone a long way toward building the good sexual behavior she envisioned when she launched the site.
"Our members tell us that we’ve saved marriages; rejuvenated relationships; transformed communication; helped [with] healing from erectile dysfunction, post-cancer, sexual assault, abuse and trauma; sparked a long-wanted pregnancy; expanded sexual repertoires," Gallop told Gestalten. "Our 'MakeLoveNotPornstars' tell us socially sharing their #realworldsex has enhanced their sexual self-esteem; made them love themselves more; improved their relationships, and in general, been as transformative for them as socially sharing everything else has been for the world at large."
She also believes that in a culture adjusting to growing acknowledgement of consent and power dynamics, MLNP is a definitive educational tool.
"#MeToo has surfaced a wide-ranging discussion about consent," Gallop said. "Here’s the problem: nobody knows what consent actually looks like in bed. Nothing educates people about great, consensual, communicative sex; about good sexual values and good sexual behavior, like watching people actually having that kind of sex. Every single video on MakeLoveNotPorn is an object lesson in consent, communication, good sexual values, good sexual behavior. We are literally educating through demonstration."
Gallop also spoke about how the structure of MLNP's team helped to create a safe space for people to speak about and upload their own sex lives for strangers to discuss.
"The young white male founders of the tech platforms that dominate our lives today are not the primary targets of harassment, abuse, sexual assault, violence, and rape — so they don’t proactively design for it, and that is why matters have been made worse," she said. "MakeLoveNotPorn is a female-founded venture with a predominantly female team; we spent literally years conceptualizing and designing MLNP before ever building it because we knew if we were going to invite people to do something they’d never done before — socially share their '#realworldsex' — we had to create a completely safe and trustworthy space."
Gallop sees the next decade for MLNP as being instrumental in the creation of what she calls the "Social Sex Revolution." She expects to develop such initiatives as the "Khan Academy of Sex Education" to distribute the work of sex educators globally; social networks like MakeLoveNotPornSocial and MakeLoveNotPornErotica for self-publishing both personal and professional works of sexual self-expression; and ConSensual, a safe-sexting instant messaging platform for improving sexual communication.
"[W]hen all of that is working together as the 'Social Sex Revolution,' here’s what will happen: parents will bring their children up openly to have good sexual values and good sexual behavior, in the same way, they currently bring them up to have good values and good behavior in every other area of life," said Gallop. "When we do that, we also end #MeToo: sexual harassment, sexual abuse, sexual violence — all areas where the perpetrators currently rely on the fact that 'We do not talk about sex' to ensure victims will never speak up; never go to the authorities; never tell anybody. When we end that, we massively empower women and girls worldwide. When we do that, we create a far happier world for everyone, including men. And when we do that, we are one step closer to world peace. I talk about MakeLoveNotPorn as my attempt to help bring about world peace, and I’m not joking."
Read the entire interview here.
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