Make Love Not Porn: a guide for men, boys and the real world with Cindy Gallop

27:21So as I said, you know, we tag our videos completely differently from the way you see porn videos. You know, we use tags like juicy, succulent. Our tag for oral is downtown. Our tag for anal is deliberately derived from the recipient's experience of anal. We tag our anal sex videos. Oh, oh, oh, hey now. Why are you doing this? Because we want you to take this language and use it beyond that platform in the real world. You know, it's language you can use to talk about sex without being embarrassed of what's coming out of your mouth or worrying about being overheard. And it's language you can use to talk about what you want to do in bed in a celebratory, positive and gender equal way.

28:01And so we are using our language to reshape how people think about sex. And one of the ways we're doing that is, you know, as you've said, in porn, you know, porn teaches men that, you know, sex is entirely dick centric. It's all about how big it is, how hard it is, how long you keep that. In the real world, men are frequently semi-erect or not erect because that's just how things happen in real life. And so we have a tag for those of our videos on Make Love Not Corn where, you know, the man is not erect or semi-erect. And that tag is derived from the world of ice cream. We tag those videos soft serves because soft serves are yummy and delicious.

28:43Elliott:I mean, I love this. I love that you have a different language to try and reframe the way that we think about porn because I mean that not only as you said with your mission to end rape culture it makes you think about sex in an entirely different way but also nobody as you say nobody wants to be finger blasted and so by reframing it it means everybody's going to be having better sex as well in the long run. I'll give another example of um of our tagging so when we began building Make Love Up when I said to my team I was to come up with a term for the female version of blowjob because funnilingus doesn't hack it okay oral sex and and the reason that it's important is because you know i said i want it to be as quick easy and simple to say as blowjob because when something is quick easy and simple to say it gets said a lot more gets asked for a lot more and it happens a lot more so our tag for the female version of blowjob is lick job and our lick job yeah and and our lick job videos are very popular because this is the real world okay as my friend sex nerd santa likes to say if your eyebrows aren't wet you're not doing it right yeah and so you can learn a lot from our lick job videos do a lick job that is that's the right term cindy you said something earlier around women love sex just as much as men do and I feel like amongst young boys there is the idea that like sex is something that you get and actually it's the the boy's pleasure and the boy's thing to access and win if you like and the women give it up and so can you just talk more about that because I think helping young boys to understand that women enjoy sex as well I think would really help them to approach it in a different way where it's a mutual thing rather than something that I've got to obtain.

30:39No, you're absolutely right, Elliot. And, you know, make love not porn, you see equality in action. You see orgasm equality in action. I've talked about, you know, how we help boys and men with make love porn. How we help girls and women is we give women sexual agency. Okay. In fact, One woman left a comment on one of our videos saying, you know, after seeing this video, I felt more enabled and empowered in my own sexual agency. Thank you for this gift. And so what boys and men see is women having agency in sex, demonstrating they get just as much pleasure out of it. You know, they see equality in action.

31:23And by the way, obviously, again, you know, we have, as I say, you know, a ton of like queer videos as well as straight videos. But, you know, talking in a straight context, they see the power of women having just as good a time as men and men absolutely being there to ensure that women have a good time. And, you know, I'll give you one example. So a couple wrote to us, and this is some years ago, and this is interesting too, because as a platform that showcases real world sex lives, we showcase how real world people manage their sex lives through real world health conditions. You know, so we have people who are cancer survivors, you know, menopause, etc.

32:05Anyway, this couple wrote to us, they said they've been happily married for 20 years. The husband was sadly diagnosed with prostate cancer. You know, they operated chemo cancer free, but erectile dysfunction had resulted. And they've had a very active sex life. This made them very unhappy. They went to see a therapist who said there's this platform called Make Love Not Porn. So they wrote to us and went, oh, my God, you know, this was incredible. And what I found fascinating when they wrote this very long email and they said our sex life is now even better than it was before the operation. I suspect that was because at Make Love Not Porn, we show you all the wonderful ways you can enjoy yourselves that do not involve penetrative sex.

32:47And that actually needs to be represented. You know, I said, you know, real world lick jobs, giving real world pleasure to real world women. All the ways you can use your hands and your thumbs and fingers and your mouth and so on. and that also is a very important part of, you know, it's not all about you, the boy or the man. And I say that because, you know, I date, my number one criteria is that they have to be a very nice person. I've great radar for very nice people. I date the men I date in an atmosphere of mutual trust, respect, affection like him. And nevertheless, when we get into the bedroom, I can see them modeling the body language that says my dick is the center of the universe because that is what they have unconsciously internalized to growing up with male lens, male-centric porn.

33:33And so, as I said, we showcase female agency in sex. We give women agency. And we show boys and men what a wonderful thing that is. When you both want it equally, you're both having an equally good time. You know, and here are all the many ways in which you can ensure that is the case. Love that.

33:58you thought this was your run club era turns out it was more of a thinking about run club era the good news someone's marathon training is about to start sell your workout gear on depop just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest they get their race day fit and you get a pay out for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop, where taste recognizes taste.

34:29Elliott:I would really like to talk to you about strangulation because there's been some shocking research out recently about the impact strangulation has on the brain. And we know that as little as 4.4 pounds of pressure, so that's the force it takes to open a can of coke, can block the jugular veins, causing blood to pool in the brain. And loss of consciousness is possible in as little as four to 10 seconds. Brain damage can happen in minutes during strangulation. Strangulation is common now amongst young people having sex. It wasn't when I started having sex when I was younger at all. I don't remember anybody trying to strangle me clearly strangulation has become common as a direct result of porn and it's about 50 percent of 16 and 17 year olds have experienced strangulation during sex and i will just be clear there is no safe way to strangle somebody which people believe lots of young people believe that there is a safe way to do it i actually had a conversation about strangulation sex with my hairdresser recently who said but they don't know what they're doing like um as if you know there is a safe way to strangle somebody during sex there is no safe way to do this the government has committed to making it illegal to show strangulation or suffocation in online pornography is that it Cindy is job done or is there more that we need to be doing so um I mean first of all and by the way Jolie um you know on this as with everything else for me I'm not porn I am my own research lab.

36:04You know, I have been non-consensually strangled in bed by someone who obviously thought that I would enjoy that, which I theoretically do not, and found it extremely unnerving as an experience. Here's what's completely missing from the public discourse in this at the moment. The issue is not banning potentially harmful sexual practices and porn. The issue is showcasing, celebrating, publicizing wonderful, healthy, fabulous, loving practices in real world sex. And, you know, this is why I'm so frustrated, because I and my tiny team have fought a battle every single day for the past nearly 17 years, not even to grow MakeLoveNotPorn just to keep it going.

36:45Basically, because every piece of business infrastructure other tech startups take for granted, we can't. The small print always says no adult content. And this applies to every area of the business. I cannot get funded. I can't get banked. I can't promote MakeLoveNotPorn. You know, I have huge issues accepting payments. What needs to happen is that, I mean, quite frankly, the UK government needs to make a whacking great grant to MakeLoveNotPorn and MakeLoveNotPorn.Academy to counter this. Investors need to get behind us. Philanthropists need to donate money to us. The world needs to see how wonderful it is to MakeLoveNotPorn.

37:22And that is completely missing from the discourse. As I said earlier, we're doing something really powerful and transformative to MakeLovePorn. we are reinventing sexual aspiration. We are making people see that this is how to be great in bed the real world sex way. I've said for nearly 17 years now, the issue isn't porn. The issue is we do not talk about sex in the real world, openly and honestly. We don't advocate that. Because if we did, amongst a whole host of other benefits, people would then be able to bring a real world mindset to the viewing of what is performative produced entertainment.

37:59Now, we're talking about a very large issue with many nuances. But, you know, I will just say that many things are laid at Corn's door that should be laid at societies. It is actually not Corn's job to educate. It is societies. And when you educate them as early in age as possible, then people are able to look at constructed entertainment and go, this is not the real world. That is not something anybody should be doing in practice. it's precisely because of the lack of what is so badly needed a real world counterpoint showing you what is great sex in the real world and that is what we are but until we get the funding we need and the support we need you know we cannot scale to be the solution to all of this

38:45Elliott:that I know we can be. Is there a possibility for people to invest in Make Love Not Porn right now? Absolutely. You know, I've been trying to raise funding for 17 years. So investors, come on in. Also, we have a non-profit vehicle. We have a partnership with a non-profit called Inspire Access, which enables us to take philanthropic capital. So philanthropists, we can take taxed up donations, donor advised funds, foundation grants. But also, you know, I would love the UK government to basically give us a grant to MakeLoveNotPorn and importantly, MakeLoveNotPorn.academy, which is our zero to 18 and beyond sex education extension of everything.

39:25Elliott:Have you had any conversations with the British government? Has anybody approached you? Have you had any good chats? So last year, Baroness Gabby Burton interviewed me for the UK Government Independent Porn Review Commission. And Baroness Burton published her report back at the start of this year. And she says two very important things in that report for us. The first is that she talks about how uniquely Make Love Not Porn operates, the way I design it through the female lens to be the safest place on the internet, and says, as the founder has told me, they faced a host of business obstacles. You know, investors should be investing in what we're doing.

40:05And separately elsewhere, in the report, she says, you know, parents and schools need education to be able to teach children to be porn literate, to educate about sex in the real world. And there are various initiatives, but there is no one-stop shop, one central hub for all of this. And that is exactly what I designed Make Love Not Corn Academy to be. And I was really hopeful that that report would be a game changer for us. But unfortunately, both of those items are buried in a very dense, several hundred page report that therefore nobody read unless it was their job to read. And, you know, the media honed in on the more sensationalized aspects of it.

40:47And so I really appreciate Baroness Burton endorsing what we're doing and actually setting up a perfect opening for the market opportunity to make Love Lockdown Dock Academy. But nothing's happened as a result.

41:00Elliott:We need to get Bridget Phillipson on this, the education secretary. They have, as you will know, part of the curriculum is to teach misogyny in schools and what that actually will look like. I don't think any of us really know, but it feels to me like the end goal for teaching misogyny in schools is the end goal of Make Love Not Porn. And so they could achieve their end goal very easily by linking up with you and the work that you're doing. Parents and teachers began reaching out to me from day one of Make Love Not Porn. And they begged me for the zero to 18 and beyond sex education expansion of what we do.

41:34So 10 years ago, I came up with the idea for Make Love Not Porn.academy. Educational technology, edtech, is exploding as a sector, not in this area. So I conceived MakeLoveNotPorn.Academy to be a global aggregator hub for the best of the world's sex education content that is already out there, but is being blocked, censored and deplatformed everywhere, literally as we speak. So our mission with MakeLoveNotPorn.Academy is to organize the world's sex education information to make it universally accessible and useful. That is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission statement, organize the world's information to make it universal assessment useful, because today in this area, Google is not doing that.

42:15The algorithm itself is biased. It's censoring. Parents, teachers tell me they cannot find the resources they need when they search for them. So we are building the Google of sex ed. And I'm delighted to be having this conversation with you today because, and this is a bit of an exclusive for you, we have just taken a very bare bones, what the tech world calls minimum viable product version of MakeLoveNotPorn.Academy live in public beta. And so I would love you to share the link to it when this show goes up. I had this idea 10 years ago because that's how long investors have refused to fund it, even when it's to do with education.

42:58I managed to raise a small amount of equity crowdfunding last year. I didn't hit my goal, but I raised a small amount, which enabled us to design and build the academy. And so it is literally very bare bones. We are still publishing educators and content, but we have taken it live very quietly under the radar for real world testing. and so I'm sharing this with you now because I would love you guys to check it out I would love our listeners to check it out this is the opportunity to be a boy audience to be our real world testers in real time please go to makelovenotporn.academy you know see what you think, give us your feedback and also by the way please support us we have a membership model a bit like the museum model it's completely free to access everybody it's entirely safe for work Um, we operate our 100 % human curation models we do with MakeLoveNotPorn, humanize, vet, every educator, every piece of content.

43:58Um, but you can become a member for just a hundred dollars a year. Um, that's about sort of 75 quid, I think. Um, and that will help support us and help me and my tiny team operate MakeLoveNotPorn.academy because, you know, as I say, while investors are not funding us in the way that we need, we need your help to be able to continue to operate this.

44:19Elliott:Well, I'll be signing up. I would encourage everybody to do the same. I think that sounds absolutely brilliant and exactly what is needed and also feels very much to me like school, something schools should really be investing in as well. Absolutely. And in fact, on the Academy, you know, we have a ton of resources for parents, for children, young people. We also have a ton of educators who have created brilliant, you know, lesson plans, curriculum for schools, programmes for schools. And again, as I say, We are still in the process of getting all these educators onto the platform. So, you know, not everything is there as yet.

44:54We're loading it all on, literally, as we speak. But this is designed to be a resource for schools. And especially, by the way, because, you know, people keeping sex ed out of schools, they don't know what it would be like if they allowed it in. They just say we're really bad. In their heads, they have this abstract concept, Solomon Gamora will ensue. When you look at the academy, you can see at a glance the best of the world sex education all in one place. You can see for yourself how brilliant, informative, educational, healthy, non-threatening it is. And you can search it by age-appropriateness, cultural sensibility, but also, but importantly, by personal comfort level.

45:36We've just brought this together. You decide. You pick and choose what's right for your classroom, your school, your family. that's when we think we can help get more sex editor schools but we would really like it to

45:50Elliott:come from a government level I would say as well because when my kids were in primary school we lived in Manchester and the primary school they went to was one of the main schools in Manchester that was rebelling against sex education being taught at school and I one morning dropped my children off at school and there were tv cameras outside and they wanted to interview people about whether it was okay to talk about sex in primary school and every parent said no it's not okay to talk about sex in primary school apart from me and I went to a meeting with the school and I there must have been 120 parents there I was one of five parents that were there to defend sex education being taught in primary schools so it feels very much to me like some parents have a natural instinct to say no that should never happen in schools it should happen at home even though it's not happening at home and until the government gets involved and says no this is really important and schools should be engaging in this inevitably schools are going to really struggle to be able to have that sort of content in in the classroom and I think what where where make a porn dot academy can help with that julia's um often a parent has no idea what sex education actually means so that's why they're you know um and if you just browse the academy you can see and and this is one of the things i'm very keen to bring to the world because i also had the idea of the academy because i both have a network of brilliant sex educator friends all around the world who face all the same challenges we do their content gets blocked on facebook instagram tiktok their accounts get suspended they can't permit themselves and we have i mean for example we have a ton of brilliant Gen Z educators who want to help their own generation grow up, educate about all of this.

47:36And they are bringing such innovative, creative, imaginative, colourful, vibrant ways to education that people really need to see what is happening in sex education, a way that will reassure them. There are so many different approaches to choose from. And they are all, again, we vetted everything on the academy personally. This is all healthy and helpful and informative and non-explicit. Again, everything is safe for work. You know, on the academy, age appropriateness is basically about who that educator is targeting. You know, so if it's over 18 content, you know, 12-year-old boys, feel free to get bored by reading about the menopause.

48:18I think if 12-year-old boys read about the menopause to realize what's going on with mom, you know, but literally everything is, everything is okay for everyone to access, essentially. And I'm hoping that, as I say, again, we're tiny, we're sort of in previews at the moment to use the Broadway Western model. But I'm hoping that as we build and grow, people will see the amazing breadth of what is happening out there in sex education that is so helpful, so interesting, and not the boogeyman of your imagination when you can't see what it actually looks like. I think that's brilliant. I think, I don't know the stats, you may know the amount of young people that don't have any kind of sex education talks with their parents at all.

48:58I think mine was use a condom. I don't want to be a grandma. And I think a lot of the barrier and blockers is just confidence as parents in what to say, what is age appropriate. So I think having a resource where it's professionals, it's been vetted, it's people who know what they're talking about. for me personally as someone who does not feel super comfortable talking about sex with my children my eldest is 10 and we're very aware it's something we need to start doing more of so I will be going on that website and learning for myself. Excellent and thank you for the

49:31Elliott:exclusive on it as well Cindy I want to briefly talk to you about the fact that younger adults and adolescents are having less sex than they used to they're actually masturbating less than they're used to and we also know that young people young men are slowly seeming to get AI girlfriends and friends as well replacing that for real world relationships what do you think is going on there and are we sort of sleepwalking into the end of human intimacy so this is um again precisely what I designed um the academy to tackle Julie because I mentioned earlier that I've you know, the year's been exhorting parents to talk to their children about sex as early as possible.

50:17I've also encouraged parents to talk to their children about love as early as possible. And the reason for that is that love is such a foundational construct in our society. We leave it to popular culture to define. Don't do that. Because to your point today, children are growing up as much through screens as IRL they are communicating predominantly through screens which makes IRL social interactions awkward and anxiety inducing they're stuck across porn at very early ages they are to your point having romantic and sexual relationships with AI chatbots AI chatbot usage is exploding amongst young people where those relationships are completely friction-free play back exactly what you want to here, what is getting lost in all of this is the joy, the messiness, the friction, the heartbreak, the connection, the wonder of first love.

51:12And so we must educate children about love. Make Love Not Porn is love in action. Make Love Not Porn Academy is education through love because that is the framework we bring to it. There's a reason our name is Make Love Not Porn. And so the Academy has decided to contextualize sex education in education about love, about dating, about intimacy, relationships, because everybody wants love. You know, I had a wonderful event earlier this year. There was an organization here in the U.S. called the National League of Young Men. It's a nationwide nonprofit with chapters all over the country. It's an organization for mothers and their high school teenage teenage sons.

51:57and the mothers run each chapter and they schedule programming designed to bring their sons up to be fine upstanding members of and leaders in the community huge kudos to the mothers of the Greenwich Connecticut chapter who earlier this year invited me out to Greenwich to talk to 50 teenage boys about Make Love Not Porn and I love the way they did it because um you know that um we had it at one of their homes at a very large living area they put all the boys and me in it they fed the boys thoroughly first lots of pizza good move um and then they said to the boys okay boys we are now closing the doors we're going to another corner of the house we know nothing we hear nothing this is your chance to be alone with Cindy and ask anything you want make the most of it and so I you know gave him a short presentation about make love not porn why we exist you know what we're doing then I opened it up to Q &A and of course these are teenage boys first of all, deathly silence.

52:54Then one boy asked a question, another one asked, and then the floodgates opened. And we had the most amazing free and frank Q &A session. They were adorable. And they wanted to know about girls and dating and what do girls really like and how to make love not porn. I promise you, everybody wants love, intimacy, human connection. And it's so important that you know we educate in that context we can absolutely change the world through sex if we educate about it through love and that's what you know Makeup Porn and Makeup Porn Academy are both dedicated to doing.

53:31Elliott:I mean what an experience having Cindy Gallop come and talk to you as a teenage boy and you have her to yourself to ask anything you want. There is one other thing I really have to talk to you about as well while I have you, biased algorithms. Oh my god, This is something I've recently become very aware of. And you started this movement of pointing out to people how biased algorithms can be and showing how it works on LinkedIn. And we've now seen, certainly I've seen over the last few weeks, that women are changing their profiles to male profiles in their droves, changing their gender on LinkedIn in their droves.

54:08Elliott:And they're seeing their impressions and their reach increase, not just by a small amount, but, you know, 200 to 800 % increase. It's enormous. Do you think LinkedIn and other social media platforms and the tech giants will ever going to amend these very sexist algorithms? Or are women just going to have to pretend to be men for the rest of eternity to get anywhere? So we have to make them, is the answer to that, Julie. and we have to make them because biased sexist misogynistic algorithms

54:48are enormously harmful and damaging to women and because of that they are also harmful and damaging to men and you know just for our listeners you know as Julie observed I began calling this out on LinkedIn because I've been on LinkedIn for 20 years it's worked brilliantly for my business and I noticed early this year that there'd been algorithm change and my reach had fallen off a cliff I have over 140 ,000 followers on LinkedIn I've hit my LinkedIn connection limit of 30 ,000 connections didn't even realize there was a limit till I hit it I currently have over 1700 people on my connection weakness that I can't accept because LinkedIn makes it very difficult to cull you know build connections and my posts average a few hundred impressions each and the the the really harmful thing about that is algorithmic suppression of women's voices equals economic oppression of women i'm a founder i'm building make love not porn and making porn academy and i cannot get the word out about my businesses to get the support i need even when as you've heard they are something parents and teachers desperately want and want to make use of.

55:59And this is not just me, other friends of mine, women business owners, you know, we've seen our businesses take a hit because we don't have a visibility. So right now we are absolutely protesting. And by the way, I've tried to have this conversation with LinkedIn and they've went out of it. So we have a number of us coming at this from many different angles. My friend, Jane Evans, also a founder, also found her reach tanking with her followers. So she and I have just launched a petition on change.org. I will drop the link calling for LinkedIn to do a number of things for fairness in the feed, for fairness of visibility.

56:35And by the way, an important technical point to make is LinkedIn is not necessarily doing this deliberately, but when you have an algorithm that is being trained on what has been historically biased, and for LinkedIn, it's business world and business people are predominantly male and white, and everything I'm talking about is even worse for black and of color, women and men as well, then you are basically taking away visibility for jobs, for promotions, for value, for events, hiring for businesses. And that's a huge problem. And so we absolutely cannot let this happen. We have to make them address this.

57:17And I encourage everyone to, if you can share the change.org petition, that that'd be fantastic because we are talking about something very very fundamental to all of our livelihood all of our economic health and applies as much to men as it does to women because we are we are more social collectors than men we drive the growth of these platforms and when we are relegated men and businesses don't benefit either and i've seen women saying when they

57:45Elliott:changed their gender to being a man they got different jobs sent to them as well so it wasn't just about the reach they were getting jobs sent to them that were of a higher salary a higher status than they had done previously which exactly yep absolutely terrifying thank you for lead for identifying it for leading the movement on that for starting the petition they'll definitely be sharing that to end i don't want you to leave us ever but i know you have things to do if you knew there were lots of boys listening right now. If you could say one unfiltered truth to them, the thing that you think no one else is saying to them, what would it be?

58:24I would say, boys, I know you want to be loved and you absolutely can be loved and you will be loved. You need to be aware that that will come from making genuine, intimate human connections with whatever gender you want to be loved by. And that can only happen when you are you and you want to connect as you. Don't be influenced by what you see from Andrew Tate. Don't be influenced by what you see in porn. Be yourself because that's how people respond to you and that's how you will find love. And love comes from being open, being vulnerable, being willing to open up to somebody let them know how much you like them sometimes that'll go well sometimes it won't it doesn't matter you know life is about absolutely taking a shot because you never want to think i wish i'd done that when you didn't but but you will absolutely be loved um be open to loving and being loved cindy gallop you are a bloody hero

59:33Elliott:So thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Honestly, it means the world to both of you. Yeah, thanks so much, Cindy. The way you embody your message has inspired me. You live and breathe it. You know, when you're speaking, it's not just words. I can tell this is visceral. This is, you know, your purpose. So yeah, thank you for sharing with us. I've appreciated it so much. No, I enormously appreciate that. And as you say, I didn't set out intention to do any of this, but as the saying goes, the path appeared. And this is my path. And I would just like to say to our listeners, if you appreciate what my team are doing please go to makelovenotcorn.com sign up and subscribe to support us consider becoming a make love not corn star you know big british love not we welcome all of you please do go to makelovenotcorn.academy and and please do support us there because we really need you to become academy members to enable us to keep it going and um and please spread the word yeah i think that's the best call to action we've had on this podcast so far.

1:00:33Elliott:Invest as well if you can. I mean, what a thing to invest in. Investors, it's Cindy at makelovenotporn.com. Philanthropists who can donate, it's Cindy at makelovenotporn.com. And UK government, I need a whacking great grant. It's Cindy at makelovenotporn.com. Absolutely. Listen, thank you, Cindy. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.

1:01:01Elliott:Have no fear. Chosen Foods is here to defend your favorite foods from the forces of seedy oils and sketchy ingredients. With cooking oils, salad dressings, and mayo, all powered by the good fats from 100 % pure avocado oil and simple, delicious ingredients. Chosen Foods.