Oxford educated businesswoman Cindy Gallop has unveiled MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a website which aims to challenge the accepted standards of pornography by promoting videos showing sex between real couples. The website runs on user-generated content and makes ‘real-world’ sex shareable online.
The website, which is still “in beta, darling. Invitation only” and has 66,000 people on the waiting list, is a platform for sharing and enjoying erotic videos. The sex in the videos must be contextualised, cliché-free and consensual.
Cindy Gallop, who read English at Somerville, where she had a “whale of a time”, says she wants to “separate the myths of hardcore porn behaviour from the reality of healthy but hot sexual relationships.” She believes that too many people, young men in particular, base their sexual expectations on the hardcore pornography that is widely available on the internet.
The 52 year old advertising executive turned website entrepreneur first introduced the idea at a TED talk in 2009. She claims dating younger men exposed her to the fact that “there is an entire generation growing up that believes that what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex.”
Gallop believes there is a “complete lack of open, healthy dialogue around porn and sex” in homes, schools and society at large which means “hardcore pornography de facto has become sex education.”
“This message is not anti porn, I’m a fan of hardcore porn” she adds, “but porn tends to present one world view. I want to help bring the creativity, individuality and self- expression back to it. It’s not about performing for the camera, we’re looking for the comical, the messy, the ridiculous. We’re looking for the real.”
However, some Oxford students were less excited by the promise of ‘real-world’ sex. One second-year said, “I don’t know if I can deal with the real thing. Who wants to see a fat Swedish couple having sex on their kitchen floor?
“The fact that MLNP.tv is open to everyone, not just industry professionals, also means that you could come across your friends having sex.”
The website, described by The New York Times as “Youtube for the erotically unabashed,” consists of videos uploaded by members having “#realworld sex.”
Members are charged $5 to post a video, viewers pay $5 to watch and 50% of proceeds go to the contributor.
Each video comes with a back story. MakeLoveNotPorn.tv’s first offering was created by Lily La Beau and Danny Wild, a “real life couple” who work in the pornography business, and the video shows them having sex at home.
La Beau explains in their introductory video, “In porn we are every day asked to do crazy positions and really stupid things which look great on camera but don’t always feel as great as they look. Cindy wanted us to fuck just like we want to fuck.”
Wild, who edited the video, says, “I kept thinking I don’t know how to show real sex. As performers in the porn industry every time you bring out a camera that means it’s not real anymore. But this is not like porn, I hope you like it, you see a lot more of our connection which I think is the point.”
Built on the idea of sharing and enjoying sex, the website pushes the boundaries of social media. For Gallop, “Sex is personality. How we self-identify and self-express sexually is as much a part of us as any other talent, skill or trait we currently publicise on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram. It is a sign of success for any social media network or platform when your community reaches the stage where they feel comfortable using you to express themselves sexually.”
Gallop sees sex as a social currency like any other. A Facebook timeline will celebrate relationships in all its shapes, like pictures of a kiss, an announcement of a relationship, or wedding photos. “MakeLoveNotPorn.tv enables you to celebrate that one final dimension of human relationships and humanity that no one else will,” says Ms Gallop.
As for making her own video, “anyone building a start up should be using their own platform, but right now it’s so early in our life cycle it would be too distracting for any of the team to be on there. So not for the time being, but further down the line, who knows?”
Gallop worked for British advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and moved to New York in 1998 to open its US office. In 2005 she started her own projects ‘IfWeRanTheWorld’ and now ‘MakeLoveNotPorn’.
