Cindy Gallop discusses society’s unrealistic sexual expectations and offers an answer to porn: an online forum where she urges us to “make sex not porn.”
“If you can’t laugh at yourself when you’re having sex, when can you?”
—Cindy Gallop
While sex is a delicate topic of discussion for many couples, fostering a healthy, intimate relationship means being open and honest about all things with your partner. In a similar way, we are led to believe that talking openly about sex, sexuality or our desires is inappropriate. We feel shame or embarrassment when details become too real, too raw, too honest. Enter Cindy Gallop and her project “Make Love Not Porn.”
Gallop has spent years studying the effects of a lips-sealed society: a society that has unrealistic expectations and a skewed understanding of sex, stemming from our lack of openness about the topic, as well as using pornography as a sole point of comparison.
Gallop created a site where real people can upload videos of real sex, a concept she dubbed “real world sex.” The difference being real world sex is unexpected, funny, messy, awkward—all the reasons it is amazing and sweet and intimate, too.
We are invited to change the dialogue around sex in a safe environment.
This isn’t a topic to be swept under the table for convenience sake; this isn’t a topic to be bottled up for fear of shame either. Through exploring videos of real world sex rather than pornography, couples are able to broach desires in an inviting way. They are given permission to tap into their deepest desires, their uninhibited sexual selves. Couples have access to a community of people who see the value in sharing the reality of sex, not the scripted, edited, hyperbolic examples pornography set forth.
Watch Cindy Gallop as she explains her passion for real world sex and her project below:
