
Cindy Gallop’s Online Effort to Promote ‘Real,’ Not Porn-Fed, Sex - daegloe
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/fashion/cindy-gallops-online-effort-to-promote-real-not-porn-fed-sex.html
======
konstruktor
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.

~~~
dalke
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
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?

~~~
aes256
It's not just the pizza delivery story lines. Almost everything about porn is
fake.

The settings are fake, the lighting is fake, the actors' physical appearance
is fake (make-up, post-processing, etc.), the emotions are fake. Often the
actors lie about their age, their sexual experience, etc.

~~~
hollerith
Someone on 4chan, a forum with many devoted experts on porn, said that most of
the big penises are fake (i.e., prosthetics), too. (No one further down the
thread contested the assertion).

~~~
bitwize
I've seen prosthetic pussies in porn too (most notably in a movie where a man
purportedly inserts nearly his entire head in a woman; the plastic prosthetic
female sex bits were glaringly obvious).

------
tHNrowaway
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.

------
bane
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
_> [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.

~~~
bane
Yeah, probably a poor choice of words. I think my conceptual space is unfairly
colored by the exploits of the military type I know.

------
Swizec
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
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.

~~~
icebraining
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.

------
sbierwagen
Her TED video: <http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/>

------
olalonde
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
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
And what's to stop this site from becoming fake "amateur"?

~~~
MadamCurator
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

------
antninja
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
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.

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

------
saturdaysaint
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
Your view of the porn-consuming demographic is offensively myopic.

------
pessimizer
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
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.

~~~
pessimizer
I didn't. And I agree - the market for normal people having vanilla sex is
well served. People who are looking for it, get it. Most people are looking
for stunt people having stunt sex.

>This is more about education and promoting a different vision of the
behavioral side of sex.

It's moral education, promoting a particular vision of how she thinks people
should be having sex. My guess is that it's also going to be a bit puritan,
with soft focus, obstructive camera angles and a lot of cuts. It will probably
make people whose sex lives are pretty statistically normal feel perverted and
judged.

------
seltzered_
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/> . 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-
movie...](http://www.tonycomstock.com/2011/09/12/why-i-dont-make-movies-
anymore-and-what-i-do-instead/)

~~~
cindygallop
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-
bus...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/30727363965/the-business-of-
makelovenotporn)

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

------
drcube
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
If you check out <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.

~~~
smsm42
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.

------
doron
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
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/hellowo...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld)

------
anamax
Ah yes, "porn isn't real".

Neither are romantic comedies, princess stories, and the rest of the
relationship-porn genre.

------
cindygallop
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/>

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.

------
ChuckMcM
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
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/>

------
FrojoS
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
I'm pretty sure you'd get a positive correlation - but a worthless one.

~~~
FrojoS
Likely. But maybe there is enough control groups? Societies with less or
minimal porn consumption?

------
GrueFiend
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
She's also succeeded in completely missing her stated demographic by charging
for it. I do sense a charlatan.

~~~
cindygallop
This is a short video interview with me on the business of MakeLoveNotPorn:

[http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-
brin...](http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-bring-you-
hot-sex-videos-all-at-the-same-time/)

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/hellowo...](http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/post/29383253943/helloworld)

Yours, Charlatan :)

~~~
stevvooe
<blush>

------
smsm42
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.

------
decklin
The suit is back!

