120. How About We Make Love Not Porn? with Cindy Gallop

Nicole: I'd love if you could take a moment to introduce yourself to the listener and then we'll just pick up from there. Sure.

Cindy: Hi, I'm Cindy Gallup and I'm the founder and c e o of Make Love Not Porn.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. And what is that?

Cindy: Make Love Not Porn is Pro sex. Pro porn. Pro knowing the difference. Mm-hmm. We are the world's first and only user generated 100% human curated.

Social sex video sharing platform. Mm-hmm. So it kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed you to socially sexually self-express, which it clearly doesn't. The way to think about us is if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, make Love, not porn is the badly needed documentary. Mm-hmm. We are a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we will have in the real world.

We are socializing, normalizing, and de-stigmatizing sex, bringing it out of the shadows, into the sunlight to promote consent, communication, good sexual values and behavior. We are literally sex education through real world demonstration. Ah,

Nicole: yeah. And I've talked about how needed, this is in so many different conversations, a space where we can have literally that, like that space where it, it crosses over between, like you said, a documentary education, to have that full.

Space to see it, because I don't think we have any other space where we're seeing these conversations being, you know, modeled of how to do it yourself. Hi, Fatcat

Cindy: no. Um, um, make Love Not Porn is utterly unique and as a unique business, we have unique capability. We have the power to change people's sexual attitudes and behavior for the better in a way that nothing else can.

Right. Right,

Nicole: right, right. Which makes me want to ask you, Cindy, like going back to even before this was an idea, right? Like take me through that journey of how you got to this space where you recognized the need and then eventually like stepped into creating this. I.

Cindy: Um, well, well, it wasn't really a journey.

It was the complete and total accident. So Make Love porn came about because I date younger men generally in their twenties. And about 15, 16 years ago, I began realizing through my direct personal experience dating younger men that when we don't talk openly and honestly about sex, porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way.

I'm an actually action ordered person. I decided something about this, you know, as I say, 15 years ago when nobody was talking about this issue, nobody was writing about it. So this is me in isolation. Um, putting up a tiny, clunky website on no money at make love not porn.com, and, you know, in its original iteration, make government porn was simply copy porn world versus real world.

I launched it. And the entire world responded. Mm. Thousands of people wrote to me from every single country in the world. Young and old, male and female, straight and gay, pouring their hearts out. And I realized I'd uncovered a huge global social issue. And so, you know, 14 years ago, um, I went, oh my God, I now have a personal responsibility I have to take, make love not porn forwards in a way that will make it much more.

Far reaching, helpful and effective. And so that's when I turn it into a business designed to do good and make money simultaneously, which by the way, is what I believe the future of all business should be.

Nicole: Right, right, right. That's the ideal space to me. It's so clear why this is needed. And as someone who also dates men that are younger, I'm curious, like what did you see that sparked that?

Like what were the things that you were experiencing with them?

Cindy: Well, um, if, if you go to the homepage of Make Love Not Porn tv, um, we have put the original Make Love not porn.com website on there, um, for everyone to see the original porn world versus real world screens. And so, you know, to, um, that original website as things like.

Women have no hair down there. Porn world, you know, real world actually, you know, some women like to shave or wax, others don't. Um, some men like that, others prefer terl. Um, it's entirely a matter of personal choice. And actually that's what pretty much all of this boils down to. You know, it. Porn world. You know, all men love coming on women's faces.

All women love having their faces come on real world. Some people like this, some people don't. It's always a good idea to find out first before suddenly spraying it on them. You know? So they, it's, it's very much, um, I mean, as I said, it all boils down to communicate about all of this and find out what people do and don't like.

It's that simple.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me it's something, at least in my own dating life, I feel like it, it's hard as someone who's like stepped into the space of exploring, researching these things, really stepping into a different community where there's so much conversation, especially in the kink world about like what it is you like, what it is you don't like, and other sorts of things that when I play or interact with someone who doesn't come from that framework, I almost.

Feel like we're speaking different languages. Like I'll wanna have an open conversation about what we are we do or explore and they will say, well, I go off of non-verbals and other sorts of things. And I'm just like, w whoa, like this. This starts to become a whole different world. Yeah, exactly.

Cindy: You're responding.

No, non-verbal is not a good idea.

Nicole: I know. And I looked at that person, I was like, okay. I mean, I think that maybe some, that's something we could talk about and like maybe a sign of like not coming from the space of like a. World and other sorts of things. They're like, well, I don't feel like there's anything I need to be taught, per se.

And I'm like,

Cindy: Oh, dear. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I know.

Nicole: That's exactly what I was like, oh God, you know? Oh God. But I, I think, and this is a person who I would say is like very in touch with their emotions, other sorts of things. They're able to communicate really clearly. And I was like, interesting.

There's such a disconnect. Right. And I think when I think about the larger society, like. Of shame and not being able to talk about these things. I think I've been like trying to conceptualize this as quite literally a language that some people have never learned because of all the pieces of what we're talking about.

So like, I'm trying to talk to them in a, in a foreign language that they don't know.

Cindy: Well, you see, this is, this is make love not porn's power because I designed make love not porn around all of my own beliefs and philosophies. And one of my beliefs is, you know, I'm all about communication through demonstration.

Don't say it, be it and do it. Mm-hmm. And that's an incredibly important role, the make Love not porn plays because we are literally the only place on the internet. That answers the question that people have been asking down the centuries since time immemorial, which is what is everybody else really doing in bed?

Mm-hmm.

Nicole: Which is what? Yeah. What do we see on Make Love Not porn?

Cindy: Well, we exist to celebrate the full Dora spectrum of human sexuality. So you see everything, but you see the real world version of it. Mm-hmm. So, you know, um, per what you were talking about earlier, we have a ton of kink videos. You know, we have a lot of B D S M, you know, um, golden showers, which we call p play, you know, bondage, you know, whatever it may be.

But you know, the important thing is, you know, on make Love not porn. As I said, you see the real world version, so you get to see the negotiation and the communication that happens in advance. You get to see the aftercare, you know, coming out of whatever you were doing. But also, very importantly, you know, to, we have a ton of role play videos, and we are the only place on the internet where you will see a couple doing a role play.

We're halfway through, one of them says the other one. You know what? Not really doing it for me. Mm. And then they'll go, yeah, it's all a bit meh. They'll go, let's just fuck. And it's really important to show that because it show it. It shows that all of this is very low states. You can absolutely start doing something, experiment, try it out.

It's fine to discover you don't like it, and go, okay, screw that. You know, we're not gonna bother anymore. And as I say, that is the real world version.

Nicole: But Cindy, that ruins the moment. That ruins the vibe. I don't wanna do that.

Cindy: None of our community are saying that this is really anything. In fact, in fact, quite the opposite.

Yes. So, so as I said, um, we, we are utterly unique because we have the power to change people's sexual attitudes and behavior for the better in a way that nothing else does. So, you know, over the 10 years we've been operating, we've heard from countless young people thanking us for showing them that porn is not sex.

Gen Z loves us. I mean, we are obviously the 18 and over Gen Z, but, um, you know, that they, that they absolutely love what we are. Um, we've saved countless marriages and relationships, you know, couples right to us. Tell us how we spark real communications breakthroughs. And you know, that derives from the fact that, you know, at make love not porn.

It's not just what we do, it's the way that we do it. You know, as I said earlier, everything about us is consciously, intentionally designed to socialize sex, bring it out into the open. So, for example, you know, when we were building the platform many years ago, my lead user experience designer, the brilliant uni chase, she said to me, everything on the internet to do with sex is dark and black.

We're gonna be white. And so that is why make love not Paul has a white background, because we are bringing sex out of the shadows into the sunlight. And so, as I say, everything is about normalizing. And so what couples tell us is when they watch our videos together, Again, because we are social sex that they say, you know, it's as normal to then talk about what we are viewing as it is when we watch something on Netflix or you know, on tv.

And from there it's just, you know, one short step to then talking about our own sex life in an equally normalized way. And that's where amazing breakthroughs come. Then, you know, parents, um, who are members of our community tell us that. We've helped 'em feel able to be more open with their children about sex.

More and more parents are buying their teenage and 20 something children subscriptions to make love, not porn. They tell us, I want my children to see what happy, healthy, loving sex relations look like. And then as with any disruptive technology, What is always amazing is what use cases emerge that the founder never dreamt of.

So I'm blown away by how well make love not porn does what I design it to do, but I'm also blown away by how well it does things that I did not consciously design it to do. So, you know, we hear regularly from survivors of rape. Sexual assault, sexual abuse. We hear from female survivors, male survivors, trans non-binary survivors, and they tell us that make love not porn.

Help them reclaim their bodies. We help them feel able to be sexual again in a situation where porn is way too triggering. It's not just our members who view our videos. We have a number of contributors make love, not porn stars as we call them, who tell us that being able to share themselves sexually in a completely safe and trustworthy space has enabled them to process and heal from sexual trauma.

And that was not a usage that I ever consciously thought of, but I'm so grateful and humbled that. We are able to help in this way. Yes,

Nicole: absolutely. To provide that container for healing. That's such powerful work, and I think we can talk about, yeah, the traumas that people have experienced in their direct lives through relationships, and also the collective trauma that we have all experienced living in a.

Shame sex negative world that you said like earlier has put everything into a black shadow box and like, you know, I love playing with shadow in sexuality. That's super fun. But that's a completely different narrative than the one that we live in, which is shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. So in multiple ways, you're creating a.

Healing space for so many people.

Cindy: Absolutely. And, and, and, you know, our members tell us that all the time. In fact, what is especially interesting is, so I designed to make love not porn, to be fully, um, diverse and inclusive. Um, and we are, as I said, our members are make love not porn stars are male, female, trans, non-binary, et cetera.

And you know, straight L G B T Q or races, ethnicities, we're a global platform, but what we've found especially interesting is that in the 10 years we've been operating, we've observed that make love not porn is especially a revelation for men, more men. Write us appreciative emails, leave grateful comments and anybody else because we are something unique that men will find nowhere else on the internet, which is a safe space where men can be and watch other men being open, emotional, and vulnerable around sex.

You would not believe the number of men who write to us and say, I just watched my first video, make Love Not porn. And afterwards I cried. I. I've been saying for years, I wish society understood the opposite of what it thinks is true. Women enjoy sex just as much as men, and men are just as romantic as women.

Yet neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate either fact. And we'd all be a whole lot better off if, if they were. Um, I picked up a wonderful Twitter exchange between two men last year. The first man had tweeted, this was obviously a joke, he tweeted, Hey guys, I've got this really weird fetish. I've got this kink where I wanna watch porn, where people are honest, loving, loyal, decent, and really like each other.

Hit me up your hottest things, please. And another, another man replied to him and he said, There's this website called Make Love Not Porn, where you can watch real couples fucking and making love. He said, I watched a video where the woman said to her, man, I love you while they're making love. He said, sincerely.

I cried when I heard that we're one of the solutions to toxic masculinity, you know? And. It's important because Nicole, our ultimate goal at Make Love Not Porn is to end rape culture globally. We have 10 years of proof of concept of that at our micro level. We end rape culture by doing something incredibly simple that nevertheless nobody else is doing.

We end rape culture by showing you how wonderful, great consensual communicative sex is in the real world. Our social sex videos, role model, good sexual values and good sexual behavior. And here's the important part, we make all of that aspirational versus what you see in porn and popular culture. You know, men leave comments like one man left a comment video saying, you make me want to be a better man in the bedroom.

and life.

Nicole: Wow. Wow. Yeah, and I think that when we think about rape culture, there's such this frustration towards men and statistically I understand that. And the reality is though, that men are also suffering under patriarchy, right? Under these absolutely expectations and. Not to put any sort of like men suffer more than women or any other gender.

We don't even need to make those judgment calls, but what people who are socially conditioned as men experience in this system is painful. They experience this strong performance anxiety frequently about it, needing to look a certain way, needing to do a certain thing, needing to be orgasm centric, all of these other pieces and, hmm.

I think they are equally suffering under this model and not had enough space to have conversations for that pain. Because of all the other things, like you said of like, can men be romantic in these other sorts of things? Can they have emotions? I mean, it's like obviously yes, but within the paradigm of what we're seeing, that space isn't given for them to say like, Yeah, sex can be uncomfortable and scary and I don't wanna always have to have this sort of pressure of like, I need to make the other partner come.

Like, that's a lot of pressure. But it is what you see in porn, right?

Cindy: Uh, yep. I mean, I mean, to be honest, Nicole, let's face it, in a lot of, um, straight porn, there isn't even pressure on the man to make woman come. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's go back.

What I observed in the younger men I date. And you know, to, to your point, and I have to explain this all the time, you know, good values in the rest of your life do not translate into good values in the veteran. Naturally. I learned that one 'cause, because you know, basically male lens, patriarchal porn.

Teachers, men, that sex is entirely dick centric. You know, it's all about how big it is, how hard it is, how long you keep going, and I am very selective about the younger men that I date. My number one criteria is they have to be a very nice person. Mm-hmm. I have fantastic radar of very nice people. I only date utterly lovely younger men in an atmosphere of, you know, mutual, trust, respect, affection, liking, and yet in bed.

I see them unconsciously modeling the body language that says my dick is the center of universe, because that's what they've unconsciously internalized. Mm-hmm. And, and, and, yeah, that's a real issue. Obviously, oh yeah.

Nicole: I think I'm really resonating with you. 'cause I had a very recent experience where that was what it was.

And I was trying to say like, well maybe we could do something else. Maybe we could play in this area of the body. And like, what if we take off penetration off the table completely and explore sensation in other ways? And this has brought me to some conversations in my community. We're almost like, I don't know how you feel about this, Cindy, but I wanna go on my first date with people and ask.

Um, so what is sex? And how do you define that? And let's start there. No, no.

Cindy: Nicole, do you know you're absolutely right. So, so, so at Make Love Not Porn, we are spearheading what we call the social sex revolution. Mm-hmm. The revolution part is not the sex, it's the fact we're finally making it social. And so when we were concepting Make Love Not porn tv, you know, 14 years ago, you know what we concepted a member profiles.

Um, I said to my team, You know what we are working towards is making happen one day. The scenario where you can be on a first date and you'll bring your phone out and you will show your data, your profile and make love not porn, and you will go, this is who I am sexually. I mean already being a member of our community.

What that says about you is, I'm good in bed the way it really counts. The real world sex way I stand for good sexual values and good sexual behavior. But then, you know, showing your profile and make love not porn, enables you to show what you appreciate. And again, you know, it's very important. You know, we've built a community around shared sexual values.

Not sexual predilections sexual values. And what I mean by that is, um, you know, again, as I mentioned earlier, I designed to make love not corn around my own philosophies. One of which is that everything in life starts with you and your values. So I regularly ask people this question, what are your sexual values?

And nobody can ever answer me, because we are not taught to think like that. Oh, our parents bring us up to have, you know, Good manners, work ethic, sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed, but they should because in bed values like empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness, honesty, trust, respect, are as important as those values are in every other area of our lives where we are actively taught to exercise them.

It's enormous frustration to me that. I've fought a battle every single day for the past 14 years to build, make love Not born, and keep it alive basically. Because every piece of business infrastructure, other tech startups take for granted. We can't. The small print always says no adult content and especially frustrating is the challenges we've had raising funding.

Mm-hmm. 'cause I have an entire make love not porn roadmap. I planned out from day one that I've never yet been able to raise the funding for, to build. And part of that roadmap is so a man wrote to us several years ago. Saying, you know, I love this platform. I love the videos. Then he said, please, please, please, will you start a dating website?

Mm. He said, because I just know that everybody on your dating site would be a stellar person. Talk about brand endorsement. Yeah. But, but he's absolutely right because we've built this community around shared sexual values, and it's an extraordinary community. You know, the. Honestly, the, the wonderfulness that we see in the comments in our videos every day, you know, um, there's nothing like it anywhere else.

And, um, and that by the way, is partly because I designed make love not porn, to be the safest place on the internet because I designed it through the female lens. And what I mean by that is, The young, white male founders of the giant tech platforms that dominate our lives today. They are not the primary targets online or offline of harassment, abuse, racism, sexual assault, violence, rape, revenge porn.

Therefore, they did not, and they do not proactively design for the prevention of any of those things on their platforms, and we see the results of that around us every single day. Those of us who are most at risk every single day. Women, black people, people of color, L G B T Q, that disabled. We design safe spaces and safe experiences.

I and my tiny team spent literally years concepting and designing make love not porn before we ever built it, because we knew if we were gonna invite people to do something they've never done before. Socially share their real world sets. We had to think through every possible ramification of that to create a completely safe and trustworthy space.

And as a result, not only do we operate unlike anybody else in the adults here, we operate unlike anybody else on the internet period. And that's because, as I say, I designed to make love not porn through a female lens around what everybody else should have. Nobody else did human curation. I. There is no self-publishing of anything on Make Love Not Porn.

Our curators watch every frame of every video submitted from beginning to end before we approve or reject and we publish it. No one else does that. We review every member profile post, and by the way, on Make Love Not Porn. Your profile post can be a safe work and not safe work as you like, but we review them.

We approve or reject and we publish them. No one else does that. We review every comment on every video before we approve or reject and publish them. No one else does that. We can vouch for every single piece of content on our platform in a way that nobody else can. We are tiny bootstrapping. We have no money and we have human curated everything for 10 years.

Imagine what Facebook, Instagram only fans could do with their billions if they chose to. This is not about a question of viability. It's a, it's, it's about a question of will and desire to

Nicole: Absolutely. I watched that documentary on PornHub. I'm sure you saw

Cindy: I know of it. I haven't watched it.

Nicole: Yeah, it was like the amount of people who started asking questions about the lack of verified content that was being post and the high amount of sexual violence content, and it took so much pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing to get them to finally change it.

But like you said, they had the billions of dollars. Two, if they wanted to from day one, have a different platform

Cindy: and so, At make love not porn Nicole. We take human curation to lengths that no one else has ever dreamed of, and. You know, I want, I want our listeners to know that everything I'm talking about could be the future of the internet designed and built through the female lens.

If only we got the funding to make it happen, for example, on Make Love Not Porn. It is not possible to even complete our submission process, let alone ever have published anything that is not fully consensual and legal. So we require full identifying details and two forms of government issued ID for every single participant in a video, including, by the way, if you've chosen to have somebody else behind the camera, even if you never see 'em, we have to know exactly who they are.

Two forms of government issued id. Um, and by the way, all other adult sites only require one. We require two. Okay. Then, you know, as I said, when you submit your video, you know you've passed the paperwork, um, test. We watch your video from beginning to end, and by the way, Our only criteria of make love not porn is it's gotta be real, it's gotta be consensual.

But our curators are trained to, when they watch the video, even if you know you've delivered on all of the paperwork, 2257 requirements. Our curators watch a video going, as I watch this video, do I feel the camera's in a position where everyone knows it's there? Do I have a bad feeling about this video?

'cause what we say to our curators is you don't have to rationalize that. You don't need any explanation. Got a bad feeling about a video. We're not publishing it. Nobody goes even 100th of the way that we do. Okay? Then when we accept your first video, We begin building a personal relationship with you.

Okay? We know who every single one of our make love not porn stars, is we have a personal relationship with every single one of them. Nobody else anywhere on the internet does that. Then our, our commitment to you as a make love not porn star is the moment anything changes. Your relationship, your life, your circumstances, even just your mind.

You tell us, we take your videos down immediately, they're gone. And what I mean by that, Nicole, is we don't have a process. I. There is no online form to fill in. There is no waiting period. You just message us any way you want as a make love porn star did the other day. They sent us an email. Within 10 minutes the videos were down.

Nobody else does that. And by the way, what's quite entertaining is, so this is the real world, you know, so, so a couple will message us and go. Sorry guys. You know we've broken up and can you please take all our videos down? And we go, damn, they were adorable. 30 videos gone in one full swoop anyway, and we do immediately a few months later.

Hi guys. We're back together again.

There's some couples where that happens on a regular basis. When we onboard our make love not porn stars, we ask each one, what kind of language do you and don't you wanna see in the comments? You know, because, you know, we will curate accordingly. You know, I mean, for example, we have, as I mentioned, a number of trans, non-binary make love not porn stars, where we have pronouns obviously in everyone's profile, but they may present as a different gender and it can be very triggering to be misgendered even in appreciation.

By the way, all our comments are wonderful. Our community is amazing, but you know, and we will obviously not publish comments that misgender, but equally, You know, you can be as idiosyncratic as you like about what you do and don't wanna see in your, in, in your comments. So, you know, one, make not porn star said.

I don't see any comments about my feet. Okay, fine. If anyone reaches their feet, we're not publishing those. So again, no one goes 100th of the way to, and you know what's really important about this, Nicole, is that at me, love not porn, human curation starts far further back than the platform I. And what I mean by that is I'm very entertained when people say to me, oh my God, Cindy, so you have these human curators.

What do you do to help their mental health? Because they must have to look at such a point. And I go, no, no, they don't. Because you know, we make it crystal clear what make love not corn is for, and what kind of content we want. We make it clear, as I said, not only in our FAQs, but across all our social channels in every media interview.

Here's the thing. When you make it crystal clear what kind of content you want, that is the only kind of content you get. You know, I don't have to worry about our curator's mental health at all, because our curators all day, every day, watch nothing but love. They see nothing but love. They are curating nothing but love.

We have a platform that is all about nothing but love. And by the way, in the tough old world that it is, I'm enormously grateful to have a business that is all about love.

Nicole: Yeah, of course. Because that's political as hell, right? When we think about all the things that we've talked about, all of the pain, all of the healing, things like that is a hundred percent a political way of, you know, pleasure activism of changing the world and the ripples that that will have.

Huge. Right. I think as you were talking I was starting to think about like yeah, ideas of like free speech of having this space where you can post wherever you whatever you want. Right. But I think kind of like I was saying earlier, like PornHub having that sort of dynamic where it wasn't verified, none of that stuff creates a dynamic where there is literal harm like we were talking about where, um, You know, survivors of violence, like couldn't get their stuff down.

So then it creates this interesting dynamic where like curation, I would say is necessary in terms of safety of all the beautiful things that you can create. And like that intersection between curation, free speech, community accountability, right? Like it's interesting, like you're creating a. Safe community.

And with that comes the need to curate because free speech isn't always the safest way to do that.

Cindy: Well, well here's enormously ironic thing, Nicole. I mean, I mean, first of all, everybody else should emanate what we do at Make Love Not Porn, okay? Because, because first of all, I designed Make Love not Porn around enormous respect for our community.

And I make that point because the young white male founders of Big Tech. They don't respect their communities. To them. Community is statistics, numbers, dollar signs. That's how they regard all of us. Okay? When you design around respect for your community, you identify what your values are and you make it crystal clear what you stand for, and when you do that, you attract the community that shares those values.

Okay? As Facebook proves, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. You can't just go, we are gonna open up this platform to the entire world and then be surprised when a complete fucking shit share results. Okay? So everybody should be identifying what they design this platform for, who they want on it, what their values are, okay?

And then the interesting thing is what these giant platforms don't realize. If they implemented our model of human curation, they would make so much money, and here's why. First of.

What kind of content you want and that you are now going to human curate to ensure that you instantly turn off the fire hose, racism, child abuse, you know, whatever, because people know they cannot upload that content anymore because it will not be published. So you actually don't have to, you know, I mean, what those white fans goes, oh, but you know, our numbers are so huge we couldn't call.

No, you could, because the moment you announce what you stand for, that you're human curating, you lose all the shit because the shit knows it can't get through. I tell the world this publicly because this is what I want those platforms to do. Yeah. Then you relate us and make more money accordingly.

Nicole: And I think that's kind of what you're saying then is the value system because for them, the value system is.

Money, but without the other pieces that you were talking about of like preventing harm. Right. So like their value system isn't necessarily balanced in a way that is about our health and wellbeing.

Cindy: And, and, and it's so ironic 'cause as I said earlier, I designed make love not porn around what I believe the future of all business should be, which is doing good and making money simultaneously.

Not only can you absolutely do the two simultaneously, you can make more money by doing what I'm talking about.

Nicole: We're moving towards, like you said, again, a more values driven society, where people are passionate about finding brands, content creators who are doing exactly what you're talking about, of moving forward with values that are inclusive and creating those sort of safe spaces.

Cindy: Let me push back on that, Nicole, because no, we are not moving towards that society. Mm-hmm. And the reason I say that is because it's important when you talk about something like never to use the passive tense. Because you know, a question I get asked often and have, I've been over the 14 past 40 years is so, Cindy, when do you think all of this will change?

When do you think we'll be less repressed about sex? And my response is always what I've just said to you. It's, which is you've made a mistake. You've asked that question in the passive tense. All of this changes when you and I and everyone else make it change, and I don't wait for things to change. I make them change.

No, we are not moving in the passive tense. There are people like me making us move to that society, many people doing many different things in many different spheres. That's the only thing that moves us towards a better future. People actively making that happen versus that future happening of its own volition.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. And I think that that activism can look like a lot of different things, right? Like you're doing that the space of creating your platform. I'm creating my platform. And then the person who, you know, you don't have to have a platform to do this activism work.

Cindy: Um, no, exactly. I mean, you know, you cannot have too many of us coming at this in completely different ways.

Do, do you remember a few years ago when Russia invaded Crimea?

Nicole: Right, and the personal is political. So when I am having sex with someone who goes on nonverbals, I get the choice in that moment, one, to ask myself, do I wanna do the teaching? Because one, I could just say like, this is not how I wanna spend my time and energy, and it's not my job, first off, to teach that person that.

But two, I do have the space if I want to, to have that expansive conversation to show a little bit of what I do know. And so I think like that even like personal is political space. Like someone watches content on make love not porn, right? Learns from that conversation. Goes on a date with someone has someone who says they do nonverbals and then you say, well, hold on.

And that is political activism.

Cindy: No, no, absolutely. And funnily enough, people have absolutely done that. You know, so we have a blog post from a young woman. This is, this is some years back, but basically I. You know, met this guy, I think it was in Miami, you know, really hot, you know, went to bed. He was dreadful in her case, you know, she said, I couldn't be bothered to, you know, I, I just got up, put my clothes on, left and over my shoulder at the door.

I said, you need to go to mate love not porn.com. Okay. And then, and then I got a tweet from a woman who had met somebody, you know, I met this man who said to me that he had a master's in sex because he watched PornHub all the time. And he said, I said to him, Get a real degree going to make. That's

Nicole: hilarious.

I love that. That's like an easy way to drop, like, here's some educational content for you. Maybe you should go in this direction, and then I don't have to take the time, energy, responsibility to try and like show that world to someone else.

Cindy: Exactly.

Nicole: Yeah, and I think that then that's how change happens, right?

That person hears that content and the amount of ripples that that can happen. So, It's not then that we're moving towards that, it's that we are actively changing that reality through this.

Cindy: Yeah, no, absolutely. So, so I get asked all the time, you know, people very kindly say, Sydney, I love what you're doing with Make Love not porn.

I want to help, you know, I've, I've gone to the website, I've signed up, I've subscribed, and by the way, listeners. If you like what I'm talking about, please support, make Love not porn by going to make love, not porn, tvb and taking out a subscription. They start at $10 a month and affordable. They go, you know, if I have money, I would totally fund you.

Sadly, I don't. What else can I do to help? And I go, there's a very simple micro action that you can take that will help us. And it's simply this. Every day talk about sex. I. And I explain what I mean, you know, I don't mean literally go out there and talk about sex. What I mean is as you go through your daily life, if you are part of a conversation or a discussion where if we were not so fucked up about it, it would be perfectly natural to.

Talk about sex, do that. And you know, I have an exercise, I do myself in this space. So you know how on social media, you know, our friends are always, you know, the having birthday celebrations or going on fabulous vacations and then, you know, everyone leaves comments going, oh my God, happy birthday, or, you know, that looks amazing.

And so I deliberately will leave comments like, happy birthday. I hope you had great birthday sex, or fabulous speech. Hope you had great sex on it. 'cause you know they did. You know, and again, this is about centralizing, normalizing sex. And when I do that, my friends will go, ha ha ha, Cindy. Yes we did. You know?

You know, because again, I made it natural and normal to. So that's what I mean. You know, a micro action everyone can take is every day talk about sex. Mm-hmm.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I love that opening up more space. 'cause for me, I've always tried to look at it in the frame of like, if we took off this lens of shame and fear, like this is a pleasure at the end of the day that.

If I can come up to my friends and say like, I went on this really great date and we had this amazing bowl of ice cream and it was so tasty and wow. Like I wanna live in the world where I could equally be like, yeah, I went on this date and we had amazing sex and it was really great and yummy. What I think is like a nuanced topic though, about this, and at least it's something that I've experienced more recently, is that.

When I do that, like I have to be very careful because there are some people that I will open up to maybe about my kink identities or my queerness or other sorts of things with, which then they respond back in a way of like, and I don't even think it's conscious, Cindy, I don't think they're intentionally doing this, but the ways that they respond or ask or other sorts of things will come from like this like assumption that maybe my interest in kink is based on a trauma or other sorts of things.

And it's really, it's been. I think it's been painful for me in a lot of ways. 'cause I'm trying to connect and like open up and share about it, and then they make these assumptions and comments and then it, it makes me feel worse and then I feel bad, you know? 'cause they look at me and what I did and go like, oh wow, you did that?

Like, oh, so then it's like that nuanced question of like, yes, activism for sex and like, talk about it all the time, but also like, where is that space of like safety?

Cindy: Um, do, do you know Nicole? I I would just say that. That reaction you describe is driven by the dynamic that I call fear of what other people will think, which operates around sex unlike any other area.

They're not reacting as they really want to react. They're reacting as they think they should react. I'm very comfortable talking about make love not porn in every possible environment, including, you know, I absolutely talk about it in my corporate speaking engagements and so on, and that's because no matter how corporate, the environment, I know perfectly well that every single person in the room knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I have 14 years of conversations and encounters with complete strangers that have demonstrated me that everybody's dying to talk about sex. And you know what? Whatever their reaction initially may be, as I say, it's been driven by, you know, societal conditioning. You know, oh my God, I ought to react or horrified and shocked and, you know, blah blah, push through that because, 'cause that is not their true response.

And they know that by the way, they know internally that is not natural response.

Nicole: Maybe though I do think that some people are like, like when they hear about certain kinks, like age, play, pet play, other sorts of things, I do think that people come from a, a quote unquote true response of disgust because it is a paradigm they've not thought about or thought with expansiveness while push on that.

Like is that their authentic response? I would say no. I would say that that is like, Shame society that has affected them.

Cindy: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, um, the comments we get in our videos, I mean, for example, you know, our, our term for golden showers is P play. People leave comments on, on our make love, not star p play videos saying, I never thought that I would've found this hot and arousing.

But I do. You know, and again, it's my point, Nicole, about communication through demonstration. It's only when you see it that you realize and you have a whole different framing and a whole different context and a whole different understanding. So back in the day before, when we were building makeup, before we launched it, we obviously had to seed the platform with content pre-launch, which meant that I and my then curator Sarah, spent a whole year.

Asking everyone in our networks and complete strangers, will you film yourselves having real world sex for us? I love that. And by the way, you know, I would, so anytime I had a conversation about make Love not porn, I would always end it by asking the person I was talking to, would you be interested in contributing content?

And I would always ask this regardless of whether I personally thought they would, wouldn't, which is how I found out that 99, 9% of the time the answer is yes. To the extent that I literally had to force my face to stand up 'cause I would go, what the desire to do this lies a lot closer to the service, to many more people you would've thought and given a reason.

Given our social mission. Social values, people jump at the chance. So, and during this period we were introduced to a lovely young, gay male couple living here in New York, um, in a committed relationship, mad in love with each other, and they submitted a video that was 45 minutes of amazing loving gay male sex.

And then literally just as we were about to launch, they asked to pull the video and they'd shown their faces. One of them worked in education. They got cold feet, and as I said, the moment you asked, you know, but I wrote to them. And I said, absolutely. Pull the video. No worries. I said, I hope at some point further down the line, you'll allow us to publish this video.

And here's why I said, you know, the nature of the Make love not porn brand is such that people would watch that video, who would never watch gay male porn, you know, for example. And if you needed it, that video had the power to completely change your worldview of what you think gay male sex is. Because if you are homophobic, you think gay male sex is, whoops, chains, Dungeons Saints could have helped.

When you see two human beings loving each other the way you love your partner or partners, I believe that has the power to transform your worldview and your perception of people whose sexuality is different from yours. And, and it's interesting. So we have a ton of solo videos, masturbation videos. Again, male, female, trans, non-binary.

And again, you know, as, as I said, it's not just what we do, it's the way that we do it. We socialize, normalize this. And so we get emails from straight men saying, I really appreciate the opportunity to watch other men masturbating. You know, because, because if you're a straight man, um, you probably never have.

And so what they see is, I mean, as one man said to us, I suddenly realized I could be having so much more fun masturbating. There are all these tips and tricks that other guys are doing. Yes.

Nicole: Yes. And so in that then you're quite literally, Cindy, changing the collective consciousness about so many ideas.

And I think when, when you think about things like homophobia and the aggression that comes out for people who are, um, unaware or in so, um, societal judgment and thinking or afraid of that. Like to be able, like you said, to see hmm. Gay sex in a way that is loving and caring and all of these pieces. It almost shatters that cognitive dissonance and, and you have that moment where you're confronted with everything that I am, I had assumed is not accurate.

And dare I say, that changes how you respond. I would say we'd have less homophobia and these other sorts of things and aggression in the world if we were able to connect by seeing that.

Cindy: No. Um, um, absolutely, absolutely. Um, and, and that is why it is criminal, literally, that I struggle to raise the funding to scale, make love not porn, so the world can see all of this.

So, listeners, you know, anybody knows any open-minded investors. Hook a sister up, Cindy, at make love not porn.com. Mm-hmm. You know, our vision is constrained by lack of access to capital. That's all.

Nicole: Yes. And I think I wanna take a moment because I remember during our first recording when everything got messed up, you talked about this.

And I don't think that listeners will know fully when you're talking about this restraint like, Cindy, why are you struggling?

Cindy: Oh my God. Yeah, so as I said earlier, every single piece of business infrastructure, other tech startups can just use without thinking about it. We can't because the small print always says no adult content, and this is all pervasive.

Across every single area of the business. So, you know, I've talked about my difficulty getting funded. I also couldn't get banked. It took me four years to find one bank here in America that would allow me to open a business bank account to make love, not porn. Try doing business for four years without a business bank account.

Lemme tell you how I did it in ways I shouldn't have, but it does not make life easy. I have two huge business growth inhibitors. The first is payments. PayPal will not work with adult content. Stripe won't mainstream credit card processes won't, so I have to work with, there's a whole subculture of adult friendly payment processes.

Who, because anybody adult has nowhere else to go charge extortion fees. You know, I pay out 12% of my revenue every month in payment processing fees alone that is unsustainable for a business. The mainstream rate is 3% or less. Any tech service I need to use to operate my video platform. The terms of service, always say no adult content.

In every single case. I have to go to the people at the top of that company, explain what we're doing, beg to be allowed to use their service. Sometimes they let us, sometimes they don't. It's a very labor intensive process. We never get to work with best in class of anything. Business partner wise. Even something as apparently simple as sending out a membership emails.

MailChimp won't work with us, Clavio won't work with us. You know, we were rejected by nine or 10 email providers till we got send to work several years ago. I needed a contract user experience designer. I put a perfectly standard job description up on Upwork. 20 minutes later, Upwork took it down and told us that because we are making up not, we're not allowed to advertise jobs on Upwork.

And my other huge business growth inhibitor is that we are banned from advertising. Make love not porn anywhere. We cannot advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Google, YouTube, um, you know, traditional media. And by the way, it's not just us. There's a gendered lens at play here. Any female lens sexual health and wellness venture can't advertise either.

Menstruation ventures can't advertise menopause, fertility. In the meantime. Male sexual health wellness, not a problem. Erectile dysfunction solutions. Welcome everywhere. One of the reasons I'm raising funding is because, as you can probably sadly, understand, those advertising barriers fall when I can write a big enough check.

You'd be amazed where we can advertise when, when, when, when. Pay them a shit ton of money, but it's especially frustrating. Right now that we are banned from doing paid search ads on Google because Make Love Not Porn is a very advertising and media sensitive business. And what I mean by that is the moment people find out about us, they want us because right now, every day, all around the world, people search make love, not porn, without knowing that we exist.

And what I mean by that is the top organic search terms that send traffic to us are make love. Not porn. Real sex, not porn. Video, sex porno. Make love not porn. Where they dunno. There's a company called that one young man told me that he found us when he Googled porn that is not porn. Mm-hmm He was so fed up with everything out there.

What is something different? No idea what to search for when you search porn that is not porn. You find make love not porn. That is how much the world wants us and knows it needs us. And another indication of the scale of the opportunity for make love not porn when we have funding is. You know, as you know, at the end of every year, PornHub releases their year in review where they analyze their massive trove of data across the all their platform and identify that year's key trends.

They released that year in review, 2022 report, um, a couple months ago, and they identified the number one trend on their gigantic platform is what they call reality. People are looking for real. And so when that study came out, I shared the shit outta that and I said, what all those people are looking for, although they don't, they don't know it yet, is make love not poor.

Nicole: Yes. Huge, huge thing to tap into because it's what everyone wants. And I think that I. For all the listeners, there have been so many times on this podcast where I've talked about the need for this, right? A sex education that is not porn. And there's been so many conversations about this. So many people who will say, yeah, like, we need this.

Where is this? Why isn't this here? What's going on? It's like, We need to have a conversation about how the systems of capital and this structure are quite literally preventing access to the content that we want and need. And so there's a very political intersection here when we're all like, where is this?

Why isn't this happening? It's because of the system that is getting in the way of our access to it.

Cindy: No, and, and so what, what I, what I say, what I've been saying for literally years, Nicole, is the answer to everything that worries people about porn and sex is not to shut down. Censor, clamp down, block, repress.

It is instead to open up. Open up the dialogue around all of this in the way that you and I and all of us are doing open up to welcoming, supporting, and funding entrepreneurs like me who wanted to start all this the better and open up to relying all of us to do business the same way everybody else starts.

Because when you do that, you transform the landscape of adult.

Nicole: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're creating that world of a new reality of what? Sex, yeah. Intimacy. Pleasure and connection could be, and dare I say, those are some of the most important things in our lifetime.

Cindy: Hmm. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Nicole: Well first I do wanna say thank you.

If we can take a moment. You said tiring earlier of all of the work that you're doing and like I'm, I see you in that and all of this energy that you're having to tackle so many different barriers to change the world in this. So I just, I do wanna say thank you.

Cindy: Thank you very much, Nicole. I really appreciate that.

Nicole: Yeah. I wanna hold a little bit of space as we come towards the end of our time in case there is anything that maybe we didn't hit that is still lingering on your heart. Otherwise, I have a closing question I ask everyone on the podcast. Go for it. Okay. So the closing question I ask is, what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?

Cindy: Gosh. Um, Um, I think what I would say to that, Nicole, is I wish more people understood that because we're so fucked up about sex, we've defaulted it to an act with a thing we do. It's not, it's personality. I. Who we are sexually informs everything about how we feel about ourselves, other people, our relationships, our lives, our happiness.

When you are at ease with yourself as a sexual being, that is transformative. As I, you know, taking the shame, guilt, embarrassment outta sex, making us all at ease with ourselves as sexual beings. Is utterly transformative for each one of us, for all of us, and for the world at large. And so I wish more people understood that, that that is what's normal.

Nicole: So Cindy, you might understand me in a way that maybe other people don't. When I say that as someone getting their doctorate in clinical psychology and the power that is connected to exploring this space, oh man, am I passionate about helping people to explore this and learn their psychology and their.

Self with their sexuality.

Cindy: Exactly. Oof.

Nicole: People are like, what? Why is that important? I'm like, you have no idea.

Cindy: Oh my God. I know.

Nicole: Well, that's what I'm saying. You get it. You get it. And together we are gonna make that world happen together. We are making it happen every single day. So I really appreciate truly all the work that you're doing and being able to share this space with you.

Cindy: Thank you so much Nicole. It's been great talking to you.

Nicole: Yeah. Is there anywhere you wanna plug to, I know you've talked about make love not porn, but anything else to, as well to close off with the listeners?

Cindy: Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean as well as obviously going to make love not porn, not to be in subscribing I'd, I'd love for you all to follow me and make Love Not Porn.

We are at Sydney Gallup at Make Love Porn on Instagram, on Twitter. Our Facebook page is ml NP tv. I'm on LinkedIn. And actually there's one thing I would also love you all to do. So in the 14 years I've worked in main love, not form, I have had a ton of emails with questions. Asking for sex advice, you know, because I mean, especially in the early years, people had nowhere else to to, to go.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, I've started a sub stack, um, it's called Dear Cindy, and you can write in, you know, send in your questions. And each week, every Monday, I answer, you know, one of the questions I've received, and by the way, you know, some of 'em are sex advice, but people also ask me about things like, People have been very interested in my apartment in New York City.

And so, um, this week's post is all about my previous home, the black apartment, Google it, and, um, but also, you know, things like how do you make a perfect martini because that's my cognitive choice and, you know, to, um, and basically you can basically ask me anything, but, but I would love our listeners to go to dear on sign up.

Please subscribe because, you know, all of these subscription income goes to make love not porn, to support my startup because we are, you know, so cash strapped, um, and underfunded. And so I'd be very grateful, you know, people would, would sign up and subscribe to Dear Sydney. And you know, as I think you can gather from this conversation, you can literally ask me anything.

Nicole: Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. And those conversations, one person at a time, Cindy, oof. Those are gonna change the world. Yeah. Yeah. It was such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks for coming on.

Cindy: Terrific. It's been a joy, Nicole. Thank you very much. Yeah, of course.