Cindy Gallop is in full evangelising mode. I’ve caught her as she comes off stage at TEDx Oxford 2012, where she took great delight in being completely open and explicit about human sexuality, as well as in making her audience laugh. The phrase “cum on my face” featured heavily.
Gallop has launched a website, makelovenotporn.tv, aiming to showcase “realworldsex” and to challenge the influence of “pornworld” on sexual behaviour. You’ll find no desperate-looking prostitutes here; the videos are not titled “fuck with big titted blonde” or “slut bukkake”. Users submit videos of themselves having sex, with backstories and even humour included. It’s not quite amateur porn – as the website says, “‘Amateur’ implies the only people doing it right are the professionals and the rest of us are bumbling idiots” – but it’s in the same vein.
The inspiration for this project came out of Gallop’s own sex life, about which she is very matter-of-fact. “So, I date younger men, and they tend to be men in their twenties, and I began encountering what I guess is best described as sexual behavioural memes. And I know where that behaviour’s coming from; it’s coming from porn.” This is understandable: “If the only clues we have are from porn, those are the ones we’ll take.” In case any young men erupt in horror about being described in this way, she hastens to add that this is not true of all men in their twenties, “There are young men who are absolutely fan-bloody-tastic in bed, I am proud to report.”
When Gallop launched the website, the media worked itself into a lather. “Oxford graduate launches porn site!” “Make love not porn, says Oxford graduate!” (Admittedly Cherwell was no exception in pointing out the Oxford connection.) A proud Somerville graduate with the backing of her college principal, Gallop simply finds this funny. “I mean, that’s got no relevance to anything. But they did really seize on it. This is not what anyone expects an Oxford alumnus to do.” Porn and sex are headline-grabbing keywords, and so “it’s been enormously easy to get shedloads of global media coverage without lifting a finger and doing one single bit of media outreach.”
The admin side of setting up a small business has been harder: banks and companies like PayPal are reluctant to work with a company with “porn” in the title. Though she has plenty of publicity, “It’s been a very long, very hard year.”
A major part of Gallop’s mission to change the world is to improve communication and sex education: as she says, “There is no open, healthy discussion around sex and how it really is in the real world. And so hardcore porn has become by default sex education today, and that’s not okay.” Parents are reluctant to speak to their children about sex, and when they do, they’re not having the conversation they ought to. When the average age at which children first view porn is eight, the ‘birds and the bees’ talk won’t cut it. Gallop reckons the conversation should go something like this: “So, darling, we know you’re online, and we know you’re visiting hardcore porn sites, we just need to explain to you that not all women like being tied up, bound, gangbanged, choked, raped, and having men come all over them, and not all men like doing that either.” So the social mission is a key part: “100% of parents are not having that conversation. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
She talks about the website (and its information-based sister website) as a tool which can be used to improve communication about sex, and can be used as a teaching aid, “So I want to give people more and more tools with which to have this dialogue the way they want to.” The videos themselves strike me as a slightly bizarre teaching tool to use in any formal way, as the website is (to put it bluntly) designed to be used one-handed. But between lovers, it could be used to help communicate, which is something she is keen to stress: “Talk about what makes you really happy in bed, talk about what you like doing, what will really bring you satisfaction.” Gallop herself says that the young men she sleeps with can easily be cured of their ‘porn world’ expectations.
Though it has quite a strong social message, the website is not about censorship, or disapproval of hardcore porn itself. Submissions are “curated” (what a job to have), but the team aim to approve 99% of submissions. When I ask her about porn filters she scoffs, “Oh absolute bollocks. Porn filters are a ridiculous idea. Like I said, the issue isn’t porn, the issue is a complete lack of a counterpoint. As long as our society refuses to be open and honest about sex, that’s the problem. Porn is not the problem.” It’s more about challenging the “porn world” behaviours which she sees as so damaging: “I want to help the porn industry see that you can invent a new business model and leverage human sex as entertainment in a different kind of way, to help them be a better business and a better industry.”
On makelovenotporn.tv you have to pay to rent videos, which is one of the things that strikes me as most problematic about the project. Gallop herself is confident that it will work, saying, “I believe that if you create something that gives people pleasure, you should see a financial return on it, and the more people you give more pleasure to with something you’ve created, the more financial return you should see.” This is certainly the ideal, but in practise people have become used to getting things for free: music, films, newspapers and even books. However, certain new payment models, like Spotify or the FT’s online paywall, have managed to make money regardless. The website uses a revenue sharing model, where half of every payment goes to the uploader; this may encourage users to upload quality content, so that the more discerning porn-viewer is willing to pay up.
Gallop is excellent at promoting her website and doesn’t bother with false modesty, boasting of its uniqueness. “We are out to showcase to the world something that nobody else is showcasing in the same way.” She is also proud of her fan-letters and messages of support: “Out of the many, many emails I’ve had, from everywhere in the world, young and old, male and female, there’s a whole group of emails that go something like this: ‘I came across your TED talk, I went to your website, I shared both of them with my boyfriend/ girlfriend/husband/wife/lover/ partner, off the back of that we had a great conversation, now our sex life is so much better, thank you so much.’” She cites various examples of gratitude – teachers, parents – and her Twitter feed is full of retweeted messages of support. She’s a serial entrepreneur and used to work in advertising, so she probably knows a thing or two about how to get a project off the ground: this involves boasting about it at any opportunity.
An incredibly candid person, Gallop’s openness is part of her identity. “I’m essentially unblackmailable, because once you’ve stood on the stage at TED, and announced to the world that you have sex with younger men, you can never be ashamed about it ever again. So I live my life out in the open – yes I’m quite an extreme example of that, but it’s an enormously relaxing, stress-free and liberating way to be. I know exactly who I am, I know what I believe in, I live my life according to those principles and philosophies, and I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks.” It really seems as if she actually doesn’t give a damn, which is perhaps one of the reasons she has so many fans.
It is no surprise, then, that makelovenotporn.tv intends to embrace social media, and hopes to make their videos go viral. In some ways, liking a porn video on Facebook or sharing it on Twitter is a logical extension of the way the world is going: “The new reality in life and in business is complete transparency. Everything that you do today as a person or as a company is potentially in the public domain, courtesy of the power of the internet.” This will certainly make some people uncomfortable – do you really want to know your friends’ deepest sexual desires? To know that they’ve just finished masturbating to a certain video? Is nothing to be private any more?
However, perhaps we could do with a little more openness and honesty about our desires and porn-viewing habits. As Gallop says, “I hate the hypocrisy that exists in this world, we’re all human beings: sex is part of who we are. I’d like to see a future where it doesn’t matter what job you want to do, you are not judged by your sexual proclivities because it’s just human, it’s natural.”
“There is no Steve Jobs in the porn industry,” she declares. She doesn’t exactly say that it could be her, but she seems to think of herself in a similar way. An innovator, an entrepreneur, someone who can challenge the way things are done and who attracts a devoted following; this is what Gallop hopes to be for the porn world.
