TED Community » Cindy Gallop

More About Me

I'm passionate about

The interface between creativity and technology
Changing the world one microaction at a time
Healthy open dialogue about sex

An idea worth spreading

Facebook = social graph. Twitter = interest graph. IfWeRanTheWorld = action graph.

Talk to me about

Microactions
Martinis
MakeLoveNotPorn

People don't know that I'm good at

Immediate inspiration

My TED Story

I come to TED for the content, the inspiration, and the free food (especially the Vosges Chocolate Bar).

Comments

• TEDCred score: +252.00 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Heh heh. I'll pass that compliment on to Sarah :)
  
  Krisztian, here is why I'm doing what I'm doing:
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/garden/when-children-see-internet-pornography.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
  
  Take a look at the 'About' page on http://makelovenotporn.com/ to see just some of the thousands of emails I've received from people everywhere that demonstrate why this is an issue.
  
  Re how what we're doing is different, don't take it from me, take it from a review from the porn industry itself, here where WhackMagazine calls us 'nothing short of revolutionary':
  
  http://whackmagazine.com/post/36514826944/from-the-whack-archives-review-of-makelovenotporn-tv
  
  and a perspective from porn blogger LynseyG:
  
  http://lynseyg.com/cindy-gallop-will-make-you-think-and-bring-you-hot-sex-videos-all-at-the-same-time/
  
  Best thing is to take a look for yourself - email cindy@makelovenotporn.com and I'll send you a beta invite. :)

• A comment on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Linda - LOVE IT. Perform away! :)

• A comment on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Linda - I think you'd like what we're trying to do with https://makelovenotporn.tv/ :)
  
  http://bullettmedia.com/article/porn-thats-not-porn-cindy-gallops-case-for-real-world-sex/
  
  Do email cindy@makelovenotporn.com and I'll send you an invite into beta.

• A comment on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Ken - broadly speaking, yes, but the issue is more nuanced than that. MakeLoveNotPorn is not anti-porn. The issue isn't porn, but the lack in our society of a counterpoint - an open, healthy discussion around sex in the real world, that would then, amongst many other benefits, enable people to bring a real-world mindset to the viewing of what is essentially artificial entertainment. Our tagliine is 'Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.' Our entire message boils down to 'Talk about it'. That's because overly porn-influenced behavior is usually driven by the best motives, not the worst. We all get vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are very fragile. People find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex with the people they're actually having it with, while they're actually having it. You are terrified of hurting the other person's feelings/putting them off you/derailing the encounter/derailing the entire relationship - but you want to please them; you'll seize your cues on how to from anywhere you can, and if the only cues you've ever been given or encountered are from porn, those are the ones you'll take - to not very good effect. This is an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not begun encountering it very directly and personally, through dating men in their twenties, 5 years ago, and why I launched http://makelovenotporn.com/ 4 years ago, before the media talked about any of this. I am my own research lab - I continue to date younger men - and so I can tell you this issue is endemic and it's only getting worse. (And I am very selective about whom I date and only date utterly lovely younger men - but this is how they are being educated about sex.)
  
  Also, yes, this is manifesting negatively re male self-image, as per this piece from the New York Times recently:
  
  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/health/teenage-boys-worried-about-body-image-take-risks.html
  
  It doesn't mention porn, but I can tell you that's one of the reasons for this.

• A comment on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Everyone joining in this conversation - please do email cindy@makelovenotporn.com if you would like to be invited into the beta of https://makelovenotporn.tv/ At just 14 weeks old in private beta, we have over 116,000 people signed up on our beta waiting list, and people are joining and paying to rent #realworldsex videos - we have cold hard cash proof of concept in a world where the received wisdom is 'nobody pays for porn' :) At only 2 weeks live, XBiz, the porn industry's biggest trade journal, ran the headline 'Cindy Gallop's New Website Takes Aim At Porn's Status Quo': http://www.xbiz.com/news/153233 and this is an in-depth interview with me about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv that XBiz posted 3 weeks ago: http://www.xbiz.com/news/156181, while Gizmodo calls us The NSFW Social Media And Content-sharing Platform The Internet's Been Waiting For: http://gizmodo.com/5937150/makelovenotporntv-is-the-nsfw-social-media-and-content+sharing-platform-the-internets-been-waiting-for
  
  Do come check us out :)

• A reply on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: Thanks for the recommendation Morton, and thanks Carl :) Do email cindy@makelovenotporn.com for an invitation into the beta of https://makelovenotporn.tv/

• A comment on Conversation: Porn's effects on women users

  Dec 2 2012: *cough* Women watch and enjoy porn too. (Different women enjoy different sorts of porn - there is a tendency to lump 'porn' together as one big amorphous mass, when, like 'literature', it comprises many different approaches.)
  
  When I launched http://makelovenotporn.com/ at TED 2009:
  
  http://blog.ted.com/2009/12/02/cindy_gallop_ma/
  
  everything I said about porn acting as default sex ed in the absence of an open, healthy attitude to and dialogue around sex in the real world, applies just as much to women as to men. (Check out the 'About' page on the site for just some of the thousands of emails I've received daily over the past four years about MLNP from young and old, male and female, gay and straight, from every country in the world.) Young women write to me distressed about the fact that their boyfriends are doing everything they see in porn. But young men also write to me to say, my girlfriends are doing everything they see in porn; they're putting on a performance, and it's getting in the way of a real connection.
  
  For detail on how porn influences women as well as men, please read my short TED book 'Make Love Not Porn: Technology's Hardcore Impact On Human Behavior': https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/make-love-not-porn/id452296228?mt=11
  
  Those emails inspired me to launch https://makelovenotporn.tv/ just 3 months ago - this is the New York Times on that venture: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/fashion/cindy-gallops-online-effort-to-promote-real-not-porn-fed-sex.html?_r=0
  
  The porn industry, like every other industry, is male-dominated. 99% of mainstream porn is made by men for men. There are women making porn, and 'feminist porn' , but too few of them. The best future is one equally influenced 50/50 by men and women. The shape, approach and content of the porn industry will change when there are many more of us women creating ventures within it; more women will enjoy them, and men too, because they will be innovative and different - like MLNPTV :)

• A reply on Conversation: What do you think each and every one of us can do to counter the impact and influence of porn as default sex education, everywhere?

  Dec 7 2011: I am. Check it out in spring of 2012 and see what you think. :)
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  A reply on Conversation: What do you think each and every one of us can do to counter the impact and influence of porn as default sex education, everywhere?

  Dec 7 2011: Actually, porn is like any other industry sector that I study as a business consultant - it's gotten so big it's gotten conventional; the industry is tanking because its business model has been destroyed by the advent of free porn online; the entire industry is engaging in 'collaborative competition', ie competing with everyone else by doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Sound like music/broadcasting/publishing/advertising/any other industry you can name? So creativity and innovation becomes how many holes can you stick how many things into simultaneously in more and more extreme circumstances, vs true visionary creativity and innovation. That's why I'm setting out to disrupt porn with http://makelovenotporn.tv. I would like to be the Steve Jobs/Apple of porn :)
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: What do you think each and every one of us can do to counter the impact and influence of porn as default sex education, everywhere?

  Dec 7 2011: Philippe - because the lives we live openly don't involve Tom Cruise running down our street or getting caught up in car chases. The sex we have behind closed doors and never talk about in public is never openly displayed in the same way as the real world option vs the fantasy world of porn.