Shall we talk about sex?
A few weeks ago, I went to an event called FutureFest, where ideas and experiences around the themes of love, work, play and thrive were discussed in the hopes of inspiring people to change the world. There, I stumbled upon a lecture by Cindy Gallop, a 58-year-old British woman that is proposing a social revolution of sex to create a healthier, happier, more equal, and less violent society.
Gallop’s idea of a healthier society is based on the notion that we must have a more natural approach towards nudity and sex, and we need to talk about it. Because of all the taboos around sex, schools do not teach it, families do not educate, and even sexually active people do not talk about their likes and dislikes. Instead, young generations are learning about sex from hardcore porn, which they can access with extreme ease, and which evidently has nothing to do with real sex. Gallop’s idea of an equal society then comes in because a lot of this porn content is extraordinarily sexist and does not really approach pleasure, especially for women. Fixing that would in turn lead to a decrease in violence because if we talk and learn about sex, critique and accept it is a big part of our lives, aggression and abuse would lose ground. With all of that, evidently, we would become happier. It is an extremely utopian viewpoint, but it does make sense.
Based on all of this, Gallop started a movement called Make Love Not Porn, aimed at talking about the topic openly and freely. It is not against porn – she declares herself pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro-knowing-the-difference. Initially, Gallop started a website specifically to point out the differences between the two things. In a TED Talk from 2009 about this website, she went viral for the simple fact of stating that not all women want men climaxing on their faces.
As her movement grew, Gallop decided to create a social network where people can submit videos of themselves having sex to be watched and shared. She argues that it is bizarre how in a world where people share their lives in real-time, all the time, sex is never accepted. I have to agree that many social media channels do have a weird stance on nudity and sex because violence can be posted at will but OH MY GOD A NIPPLE.
Anyway, with this social network, she wants people to see real-world sex and enjoy it, using it as a tool to explore their own sex lives, seeing new things to try out and share with partners. Is this for everybody? Probably not. I have not tried it, but I am glad it exists for whoever is interested.
In this video, Cindy talks about the launch of makelovenotporn.tv in 2012.
Here is the original campaign website, comparing porn and real life.
And here is her social network.
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