Porn World vs Real World: Do Not Try This At Home

I guess this has been out for a while, but I just got sent the link to this cool project: Make Love, Not Porn. Created by Cindy Gallop, the site takes on the warped messages about sexuality that young people are getting from porn. It's no secret that many young people get much, if not all, their sex education via porn. A recent study reported that among kids 7 and under, 'porn' was the 4th most popular search term.

Gallop launched the project at TED2009 and above is a clip of her very witty presentation. If you can't see it, the link is here. It's as high concept as can be. Each page on the site is split into two parts that contrast fantasy and reality: 'Porn World" (men love coming on women's faces and women love having men come on their faces) and "Real World" (some women like it and some don't). It's cool that Gallop is creating non-judgmental space for everyone, but frankly the only women I ever met that did like it were being paid to say so while the cameras rolled. The site covers hair down there, oral and anal sex and what really turns women on when the cameras are off.



Here's what she has to say on her website:

MakeLoveNotPorn is not about judgement, or what is good vs what is bad. Sex is the area of human experience that embraces the widest possible range of tastes. Everyone should be free to make up their own mind about what they do and don't like.

MakeLoveNotPorn is not anti-porn. I like porn and watch it regularly myself.

MakeLoveNotPorn is simply intended to help inspire and stimulate open, healthy conversations about sex and pornography, in order to help inspire and stimulate more open, healthy and thoroughly enjoyable sexual relationships.

This project has attracted its share of 'you hate men and porn and sex' trolls on the TED site. On the main website, anyone can contribute their own Porn World vs. Real World ideas on an online form. Gallop says these are great (and hopefully will post them) and she says the contributions from men have added a new and unexpected dimension to her project. In an interview with TED, Gallop said:

A lot of men have submitted ideas that are much more about the male experience and the false expectations of men that porn engenders, which made me realize that when I do develop the site further, I will need to encompass the male experience more. I’ve got fantastic input there.

Uh, yeah. How about issues like how big guys are in the real world and how long they really last during sex. Spend a couple of hours on a porn set and you realize porn actors are like elite athletes in that department. What they can do is just not normal!

Here are some other excerpts from that interview:

On women and feminism: "I consider myself a rampant feminist. I deplore the shying away that can go on, within women, from the term “feminist.” I am, absolutely, all about being a feminist. My personal cause and platform, if you like, is women’s rights and women’s issues.

On women and age: I like to describe myself as a proudly visible member of the most invisible segments of our society – older women. I’m 49. I make an active point of telling people how old I am, as often as possible, because I’d like to confound expectations of what an older woman should be, look and act like. I say that because it’s taken me 49 years to feel this good about myself.

On women and power: As women, from the moment we are born, everything around us, from a socio-cultural perspective, conspires to make us feel insecure about absolutely everything to do with ourselves – our looks, our bodies, whether people like us, whether boys like us.

In many ways, an overarching wish of mine is that, if I ran the world I would give every woman the confidence that she deserves, to feel empowered to live her life the way she wants to live it. The fact is that girls are massively constrained in other parts of the world, but are constrained in First World countries as well.

She's just launched another project called IfWeRanTheWorld which is scheduled to launch January 2010:

I found myself thinking, if you could find a way to take all those good intentions that all of us have on a daily basis and somehow find a way to turn them, at the moment of intention, into action, you would then unleash a force of energy and power that could do extraordinary things in the world...I’m trying to make doing good sexy as hell. Everything about IfWeRanTheWorld is crafted to ultimately achieve that effect.