EP. 109 — Porn and Social Sex with Cindy Gallop

Jameela [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast that has absolutely no time and no space for shame. Fuck shame. I hope you’re well. And if you’re not, that would be fair, because the world is on fire. But if you need an hour of the best escape ever, I strongly suggest you keep listening because this is one of my favorite episodes ever. It’s one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done. It’s one of my favorite guests that I’ve ever been able to interview. Her name is Cindy Gallop, and if you don’t know her yet, you are going to be so happy with me for introducing you to her. What a fucking woman. What an absolute legend. Truly my new obsession, my absolute goal in life. Just the biggest breath of fresh air and in a moment where especially women and many marginalized people feel so under we just feel like we are being so oppressed and so rolled backwards and and so harmed and and having our freedoms stripped from us. There’s a freedom to this woman that could inspire anyone, any age, any gender, any background. She’s a remarkable human being. She’s in her sixties. She’s lived an extraordinary and massively impressive life. And she leads a completely I, I only say unique because that’s not the kind of life we hear about in the mainstream. Many people probably live this way, but often out of shame, they keep it to themselves. And to have such a celebrated public figure live happily on her own has never had a relationship beyond two years. Loves that about herself, has no kids, has never been married. Is thrilled at the idea of living alone, dying alone. Which sounds morbid, but really isn’t when you hear her talking about it. She does life exactly her own way and she comes from a half Asian background. And as many of you will know, that traditionally comes with a lot of tradition. An Asian background. Many kind of ethnicities have a lot of traditions steeped through them, and a lot of that comes into carrying that tradition on and having children and her viewpoints around all of this are so freeing. I know. I’m babbling on like a fucking loser. But I’m big big time fangirling over here. Like I can barely find the words. We talk a lot about pornography. As she has a company called Make Love, Not Porn. It’s pro porn, pro sex, but pro knowing the difference, it’s basically a company that shows real sex and making love and kink. But with diversity. With safety. With respect and. And with. With a true intention to turn people on and not just shock people. And and push the margins the way that a lot of mainstream pornography does. Mainstream pornography has sold to us the reality, but so much of it is a fantasy or nightmare. And so we talk a lot about that, talk a lot about the industry, talk a lot about her life as a woman in business, as a woman in this world. And it’s just exactly what all of us need to hear right now. So I’ll just shut up and fuck off and let you enjoy the phenomenon that is Cindy motherfucking Gallop. I love her. Cindy Gallop, welcome to I Weigh. What a legend. How on earth are you?

Cindy [00:03:52] I’m fantastic and thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Jameela [00:03:56] Oh, my goodness. I have wanted to meet you for at least ten years.

Cindy [00:04:02] Oh my god.

Jameela [00:04:02] I think I. Yeah. It’s been a while, and I. I made a documentary a really long time ago for the BBC about pornography, and I think that was the kind of beginning of my, like, real deep appreciation for your work and and love for everything you do. When we spoke the other day on the phone, I asked you the question I ask everyone in a pre-interview, which is kind of how has your mental health been your whole life? And you very candidly and wonderfully answered that, you know, you’ve been relatively okay. It’s not to say you have not had your struggles. I was thinking about it afterwards because we have very few people who ever come on this podcast who have that answer. And I was thinking about your life and how beautifully self-preservational and like has a real sense of autonomy to you and life choices that don’t fit into the, I’m sure, the standards that were set for you when you were being brought up. And I can’t help but link that way of life to how well you feel. Do you think I’m right?

Cindy [00:05:12] Do you know. I think you absolutely are. Because, you know, I do consider myself enormously fortunate because, you know, as you know, I am somebody who has never wanted to be married. I’ve never wanted children.

Jameela [00:05:27] Same thing.

Cindy [00:05:28] I adore being single. You know, I cannot wait to die alone. I date younger men casually, recreationally for sex. I’m definitely public about all of that because we don’t have enough role models who are living lives that are not the conventional ones that prove you can do that and still be happy. And honestly, I am one of the happiest people I know. And, you know, it’s not even just that I don’t miss, you know, not having a husband or children. I am ecstatic I don’t have a husband and children. And and yes, you’re absolutely right. I think that contributes a lot to my ability to feel happier and more at ease in my living situation than many other people.

Jameela [00:06:08] God, it felt like dopamine shooting not only into my brain but into my lungs. Hearing you talk like that, genuinely, because I, uh. I just keep being patronized by people around me. And God knows everyone’s had me harp on about this shit on this podcast before, but I do not want to get married. I do not want to have children. I feel very satisfied of my own company. I am currently in a wonderful relationship. But but we have a mutual agreement that as soon as that relationship no longer serves us, it is better to be apart than just to stay together for the sake of having someone or because we’re getting older and it becomes harder to meet people, which according to you, apparently clearly doesn’t. But but so many people keep telling me I’ll change my mind or keep pressuring me to alter my belief system. And my belief system comes from such a fundamental place within me. And it’s so hard to meet, as you said, role models who honor that same. That same like belief in yourself and belief in your ability to trust your own gut. Have you ever had, like, shaky doubts about this, you know, with everyone in your ear, like, you know growing up in particular? So, is it never something that you considered?

Cindy [00:07:24] I mean, obviously, growing up, you know, I’m half English half Chinese, my mother’s Chinese. I grew up in Asia in Brunei and the culture there. And my mother’s expectations were absolutely that marriage and children are inevitable. And so, you know, in my teens and twenties, you know, I vaguely thought that might be the case, but I began realizing I really didn’t want it to be. By the way, it’s taken my mother many decades, but she’s finally seen that I’m blissfully happy the way I am. So she’s just kind of accepted it. But but but, you know, I really wish many more people would just take a long, hard look into themselves and ask themselves what really makes me happy. Because people it’s very easy to live life on oiled grooves. You know, based on what your parents tell you you should be doing what all your friends around you are doing. What few many dynamics in popular culture tell you you know you should want. And I would just love more people to stop and think and go, Actually, maybe I don’t want to be with somebody. Maybe I don’t want to have kids. I’d be a lot happier pursuing that path instead of the one I’m currently headed down.

Jameela [00:08:37] 100%. And again, you are in your sixties and you are not in a long term relationship. You don’t have children. A man would still be called a bachelor in your same exact position, you know, which is not to state the obvious, but it is important and I think it is worthwhile. And I think the last two years has been really interesting in the way that it has kind of turned everyone’s ideals and ideas up upside down. You know, people who thought they wanted to be alone suddenly really felt that the panging loneliness of the pandemic and now would like to either live with roommates or pair up with someone. I definitely seen that among some of my friends and other people are like, Fuck this, fuck this. I don’t want to be trapped with anyone and I don’t want to have kids. And I really like I lost my freedom for two years and I really felt all the things that I haven’t done in my life. And if I go in quickly because, you know, we’re all in our mid-thirties now, if I can quickly have a baby because I’m supposed to because of the quote unquote clock, well no that’s real, because of the fucking clock, then I’m never going to get to do those things. So it’s kind of split the the spectrum of people that I know and what they want. And and you don’t feel like you’re allowed to say, I would like to be alone. Was it Marlena Dietrich? Someone like that just said, I want to be I want to be alone. And I felt that in my bones when I was a kid. And obviously, you know, I imagine you have a wonderful social life. And I mean, do you do you how do you are you particularly sociable?

Cindy [00:10:10] Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, I have tons of friends. I mean, I’m lucky enough to have, you know, a number of very good, very close friends I can confide in. And, you know, and I’m very close to and then I have loads of friends everywhere, all around the world. So I am you know, I don’t feel any lack of social life whatsoever. And that makes me all the happier when I retreat into solitude. And in fact, I have to say that when the pandemic struck, you know, I was in lockdown in New York in this apartment for one and a half years.

Jameela [00:10:42] Christ. Yeah.

Cindy [00:10:43] And to be frank, separate to obviously the appalling tragedy that was happening, especially in this city. You know, it wasn’t tough because my I’m a natural solitary. My idea of bliss has always been to be in my apartment, on my own with nowhere to go and no one to see. And I got to do it for one and a half years. It’s fantastic.

Jameela [00:11:03] Where have you been all my life? Because I’ve been made to feel like a sociopath for feeling all of those similar things. I really, I. I can’t tell you what it means to me, but it’s honestly very, very, very rare to feel really understood. Again, like, that’s no disrespect to anyone who’s having kids, who’s had kids. It’s just about the right to make an individual choice regardless of your gender, regardless of your ethnic background. You and I both being Asian growing up, you know, among influences that are so built around the woman being a homemaker and you are really a I mean, beyond a career woman, your your CV is just bonkers. And I think one of my favorite things about your CV, to go back to referencing someone who just follows their heart, is that you were in your forties, I think 45, was it? When you were just like, Fuck this, I don’t want to work for other people. I would like to pursue my own vision. Can you tell me about. Can you tell me about that time in your life, what it was that struck you? Because, again, this is a moment of huge change where I think a lot of people are realizing that maybe the life they were living isn’t what they want and they don’t want to join the I mean, some people don’t even want to work at all. They don’t want to join the rat race and they want to fuck off to the countryside and live for much cheaper, which I also think is beautiful. But a lot of people are branching out in their own businesses after having been tremendously let down by their employers or just disillusioned with their lifestyles. What happened when you were in your forties that made you just think because again, that is not a time when anyone, especially women, are encouraged to change lanes. What happened?

Cindy [00:12:45] Sure. So so I basically, as you say, I turned 45 back in 2005, and I kind of had my very own personal midlife crisis in the sense that I’d always thought of 45 is kind of a midlife point, obviously, by the way. And a happy assumption. One does, in fact, live to be 90 fingers crossed. But in the couple of years running up to it, I always thought all one’s 45th birthday is the moment when you should pause. Take stock reflect and review. Where have I been? Where am I going? So on February one, 2005, I really did that. And that was the moment when, you know, I went, Oh my God, I’ve just worked 16 years for the same advertising agency. By the way, wonderful agency, I love them to Bartle Bogel Hegarty, BBH, you know, can’t say enough nice things about them. But I went, Wow, I think it might be time to do something different. And then the problem was, I haven’t the faintest idea what. So vast amounts of thoughts and angsting ensued and eventually I went. If I want to review every single option open to me for what is effectively the second half of my life, maybe the best thing to do is to put myself on the market very publicly and go, okay, guys, here I am, what do you got? And see what happens. So I took a massive leap into the unknown. I resigned as chairman of BBH New York in the summer of 2005 without a job to go to. And it was honestly the best bloody thing I ever did in my life because I am now evangelical about working for yourself. Too many people make the mistake of thinking that a job is the safe option. It’s not because in a job you’re at the complete mercy of management changes. Industry downturns, marketplace dynamics. I say to people, whose hands would you rather place your future in? Those where a large corporate entity who at the end of the day doesn’t give a shit about you or somebody who will always have your best interests at heart i.e. you?

Jameela [00:14:47] I love that. I agree. I fully agree. I’ve been self-employed since I was about 20, maybe 19.

Cindy [00:14:55] Fantastic.

Jameela [00:14:56] I’ve always wanted to just just follow my own whims. I’m very whimmy woman. And I’m very, very, very bad with authority. And I’m very bad with feeling as though my freedom is constrained. I think partially that comes from me, from growing up in a family full of, you know, I’m fully South Asian. And so watching women just be constantly oppressed.

Cindy [00:15:24] Yeah.

Jameela [00:15:24] Within that family, I think I kind of I was what I think some people refer to as like the lightning bolt child where I was like, not no, I actually don’t have what it takes to survive that I’ll die. So I’ve been I’ve been trying to find my just just throw myself just throw caution to the wind, really, and do my own thing. And so okay. So so you took that huge risk and what was the next step? How did we get you from there to here?

Cindy [00:15:55] So, you know, basically everything in my life has happened by accident. I’ve never conscious intentionally planned anything. I’m a big believer in serendipity. And so, you know, in this instance, when I took that big leap, I mean, I was lucky. I had quite a high profile in the advertising industry. And so a ton of jobs and opportunities came to me, many of which I would not have thought of myself. And I thought, okay, I still don’t know what I want to do. I’m going to be employment slut. I’m going to talk to everybody. I’m going to take every phone call. I’m going to do every meeting, no preconceived notions. And so I embarked on the fascinating exploratory, which was as good for telling me what I didn’t want to do as what I did want to do. So I would go and do an interview or a meeting and I come out and I go, okay, so now I know in 50 million years never want to do that. And so I ended up organically, you know, while I was having all those meetings, I was consulting and speaking and I enjoyed doing that. And, and so I began kind of working for myself organically and I enjoyed it. And then basically a series of accidents led me to, you know what, I’ve now been working on in the past 30 years, which is my venture to Make Love Not Porn. And and that was a total accident because I never set out to do that. And.

Jameela [00:17:16] How?

Cindy [00:17:17] So, as I mentioned earlier, I date younger men. And by the way, that was also a total accident. I didn’t set out to date younger men. Back when I was running the ad agency, and this would have been something like 20 years ago, we were asked to pitch for an online dating brand. And in advertising, when you pitch for clients account, you have to experience the client’s product and the entire competitive landscape. So we all had to online date and this was 20 years ago and none of us at the ad agency on the pitch team ever had because it wasn’t a thing back then. And my team were all, you know, they were already dating, married, living with. They went online as fake personas, created false identities. I was single. I thought, okay, I have to do this for business reasons. Why not do this for real? Why not find out what this whole online dating thing is all about? So I posted my profile across a bunch of sites. Was very honest about everything, including my age. I much to my surprise, I got an avalanche of responses which was very good for the ego. But even more to my surprise, the vast majority of those responses were from younger men. And I suddenly realized I was every young guys, attractive, older woman, high flying career, didn’t want to settle down, didn’t didn’t want marriage and kids. And I thought, gosh, I hadn’t thought about this dating strategy, but works for me. So I began dating younger men and have been doing so very happily ever since. And so there I was dating younger men when I began realizing that I was encountering an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not encountered it very intimately and personally. I realized I was experiencing what happens when two things converge. And I stress the dual convergence Jameela because most people think it’s only one thing. I realized I was experiencing what happens when today’s total freedom of access to hardcore porn online meets our society’s equally total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex. It’s when those two things collide, porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way. So I saw myself encountering a number of sexual behavioral needs in bed and went, Woah, I know where that behavior is coming from. I thought, Gosh, if I’m experiencing this, other people must be as well. I didn’t know that because this is 14, 15 years ago.

Jameela [00:19:38] No one was talking about it.

Cindy [00:19:40] And so this is just me in isolation and naturally action oriented person going, Oh, I’m going to do something about this. So 13 years ago, I put up on no money, a tiny, clunky website at MakeLovenotPorn.com that in its original iteration was just words porn world versus real world. Here’s what happens in the poor world, here’s what only happens in the real world. I had the opportunity not to Make Love, Not Porn at TEDx back in 2009, I became the only TED speaker to say the words cum on my face on the TED stage. The talk went viral as a result. And it drove this extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated. And I realized I’d uncovered a huge global social issue.

Jameela [00:20:31] Gao in the market.

Cindy [00:20:32] A gigantic gap in the market, even bigger today. And so that was what made me feel that I now had a responsibility to take Make Love Not Porn forwards in a way that would make it much more far reaching, helpful and effective. And so I turned it into the business that is today makelovenotporn.tv, which basically is designed to address the fact that we are, as our tagline says, pro sex, pro porn, pro knowing the difference, because the issue isn’t porb. The issue is that we don’t talk about sex in the real world. If we did, among a host of other benefits, people would then be able to bring a real world mindset when they view what is simply a form performative produced entertainment. And so I basically turned Make Love, Not Porn, into the world’s first and only user generated human curated social sex video sharing platform. We’re what Facebook would be if it allowed you to socially sexually self express, which it sadly doesn’t. If porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie Make Love, Not Porn is the documentary. We’re a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, beautiful, wonderful ways we all have sex in the real world. And in that sense, we are literally sex education through real world demonstration.

Jameela [00:21:49] I think it’s wonderful. And when I was making this documentary years ago for the BBC, it was about specifically the impact of pornography on children. Because children are watching pornography, they’re being able to access it on their phones, on their friends phones, on their parents computers sometimes. And that is their first ever encounter. Like some of us had dirty pictures. I think I had the one minute preview that would turn up on channel like 305 and I would wait at 10 p.m. 11 p.m. and midnight to catch, just like a glimpse of whatever sex was when I was like a single digit child. And that was my first understanding. But I’m very lucky in that even though I had sex late, I was able to and so is most of my generation able to learn about sex via having sex doing sexual things. And obviously that’s never perfect. You have young people who also still don’t talk about sex or don’t know anything about consent, but it is petrifying the impact on the brain of your first sexual experiences being mainstream pornography. Because mainstream pornography is in the run up to this interview, I was like, because since that documentary, I just never, ever looked at porn after having researched it because I saw so many disgusting things that I literally threw my laptop in the River Thames. As in like if you go to Embankment at the bottom of the River Thames my laptop MacBook 13 inch MacBook because I couldn’t I was so disturbed by what I’d seen. And again, I’m pro pornography, but I’m absolutely not pro what so much of pornography has become. And I want to be careful not to kink shame, but there is such an abundance of an abuse of women and a humiliation of women and the language used about women specifically that terrifies me. And I remember this kid and we had to cut this out from the documentary, but this 12 year old kid, this boy put his hand up and he was he asked so in a so innocently, miss, if I rape a girl, will she start to enjoy it the way that they do in porn? And it was honestly like sent shivers through all of us and of course, to protect him because he didn’t know any better. It just would have been so inappropriate to put that on TV, we cut it out but on. I, I couldn’t get. I’ve never been able to get that moment out of my head.

Cindy [00:24:20] So Jameela, this is exactly what I designed Make Love, Not Porn to solve. And by the way, because we are on an utter unique venture, we have an utter unique capability. We have the power to change people’s sexual attitudes and behavior for the better in a way that nothing else does. And so our mission ultimately at Make Love, Not Porn, is to end rape culture. And we do that 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 this is the very key part. We make all of that aspirational versus what you see in porn, in popular culture. And I’ll tell you something that is has been very interesting for me to observe, which is I decide to Make Love, Not Porn, to be fully diverse and inclusive. Yeah, we are for women, men, trans non-binary, you know, our members, our contributors, we call our Make Love, Not Porn stars span the full glorious spectrum of gender and sexuality. But Make Love, Not Porn is especially a revelation to men. We probably get many more emails from men than anybody else because we are something that men will not find anywhere else on the internet, which is a space where they can be and they can see other men being open, emotional and vulnerable around sex. And when men discover us, they absolutely love that. But there was, I picked up a wonderful Twitter exchange a few months back between two men, one man who tweeted jokingly, Hey, guys, I’ve got this really weird porn kink fetish. Can you make some recommendations? I want to watch porn. Where people are honest, loving, loyal and decent and really nice to each other. Hit me up with a lot of links, please. And another man replied to him and he said, There’s a website called Make Love, Not Porn, where you can see real couples fucking and making love. I watched the video where the woman said to her man during their lovemaking, I love you. Sincerely, I cried when I heard that. And by the way, men write to us and tell us they cry when they watch our videos. Because they’ve never seen anything like, you know, the real world emotion and love and intimacy and feelings that our real world sex videos celebrate that you will not see anywhere else on the net.

Jameela [00:26:52] I’m so glad you’re here. I have so many things that I want to talk to you about because in the lead up to your, uh, podcast, I ended up watching more porn in the last couple of days, and I’m obviously gonna throw this laptop in another river. I’m in Berlin, so I guess it’ll be easy to find one. But I have. I have thoughts and theories, and they’re not fully formed, but I’m just going to try them out on you because I think you’re just so great. So. What is stressful to me about the fact that even since 2013 or whenever I made that documentary, I would have thought we’ve had so many conversations and the MeToo movement and, and, and conversations about things like Make Love, Not Porn and the idea of more like woman friendly pornography, etc.. That conversation is definitely risen. The conversation of consent has definitely risen, and it feels as though places like Pornhub it’s gotten worse. Now it’s incest. Naughty daughter, naughty step girl, naughty sister gets punished like it’s more and more of like more rape culture even than what I saw in 2013. So my first question is, do you think that’s a backlash to the progress of the conversation around consent?

Cindy [00:28:06] Right. Well well, so what I would say, Jameela, is what you’re talking about stems from a couple of places that are not obvious to people. And I’ll explain what I mean by that first is that I get called up a lot by journalists to want to interview about porn. And the journalists will say something like, So, Cindy, do you feel that porn objectifies women? and I will reply that I think any industry dominated by men at all and throughout the industry inevitably produces output that is objectifying and objectionable offensive to women. And I will then point them to the commercial advertising breaks in the Super Bowl, because my industry advertising is as male dominated as every other industry in popular culture, movies, TV, porn. And that’s the problem. And I actually have an art project that I’ve talked about for years that I’m dying to do. I haven’t been able to get the funding I need to do it because I have to be able to pay a photographer models. But I’m going to do this one day. And we have no shortage of models because when people hear about this, they volunteer. I want to take the home page of one of the big mainstream porn sites, Pornhub, Youporn, Redtube. And I want to recreate it and replicate it by reshooting every video thumbnail with the genders flipped. Because nothing would demonstrate the ludicrousness of the male lens in porn and the male centricity of mainstream porn more than that. And by the way, I don’t know how graphic I’m allowed to get on your podcast.

Jameela [00:29:42] As graphic as you like.

Cindy [00:29:43] OK terrific because. I mean, feel free to edit out anything you don’t want to, you know.

Jameela [00:29:48] It’s all staying in Cindy.

Cindy [00:29:50] But, but I’ve done a version of this in the past. I’ve crawled porn sites on Twitter. So, for example, brazzes will tweet a video of a blow bang and I will go, Hey, brazzes.

Jameela [00:30:04] Sorry, a what?

Cindy [00:30:06] A video of a blow bang.

Jameela [00:30:08] I don’t know what a blow bang is.

Cindy [00:30:10] Count yourself lucky. I think I think a lot of our listeners will. And as I go on to explain what I mean, I think you’ll get it because I tweet back at them and I go, Hey, brazzes, I want to see a female version of that. I want to see a lick bang. I want to see a naked man on his knees grinning with all around him. A whole bunch of women naked from the waist down, shoving their pussies in his face.

Jameela [00:30:32] Right.

Cindy [00:30:33] Or brazzes will tweet of still from a video and I’ll go hey brazzes I want to see the female version of that. I want to see a giant pussy looming in the foreground and close up behind it, grinning from ear to ear three mens faces covered in pussy juice. You take my point.

Jameela [00:30:48] Yes.

Cindy [00:30:49] And by the way, Jameela, that that male centric lens is and and this is true in all of popular culture is what drives most of the problems. Because, you know, I date younger men and I’m very selective about whom I date. My fundamental criterion is they have to be a very nice person. I have great weight off, very nice people. I only date utterly lovely younger men and yet I totally see them in bed modeling the behavior, the body language that says My dick is the center of the universe, and that’s what they’ve internalized.

Jameela [00:31:21] What does that behavior look like so that we can all identify that?

Cindy [00:31:26] I think it’s pretty easy and I think it’s very familiar to a lot of our listeners, which is simply it’s all about whether or not he comes.

Jameela [00:31:34] Right.

Cindy [00:31:34] You know, it’s all about what’s happening to his dick. And again, bear in mind, these are really lovely young men. Okay. And that that is what they’ve unconsciously internalized. And so, you know, all of this changes when we as women, are unable to bring our lens to bear. Because, you know, I mean, I’ve been working on Make Love Not Porn for 13 years and I’ve done a shit ton of media interviews. And so another question I get asked all the time is, So, Cindy, why do you think we’re all so messed up about sex? Why do you think we’re all so repressed? And I get this question so often and I have my answer down pat. Three reasons. So reason number one, social cultural dynamics, centuries of religion, repression in every single country in the world. What we’re talking about is global. Reason number two, the patriarchy. Because historically every institution, including government and religion, has been male dominated. We as women have never been allowed to bring our lens to bear on human sexuality, and the world is a poorer place for it. And reason number three very straightforwardly is there are not enough people like me. And what I mean by that is the world makes it fucking difficult to innovate and disrupts social narratives around sex. My team and I fight a battle every single day to keep Make Love, Not Porn alive. Many people have tried to do everything we’re talking about and given up, but I don’t blame them because my life is shitty on a daily basis because of what I do. We we need many more people like me who will not give up no matter what.

Jameela [00:33:06] Why is your life shitty on a daily basis?

Cindy [00:33:09] So you know, the one thing I didn’t realize when I began building Make Love Not Porn was that, as I said, my tiny team and I would fight a battle every single day, essentially because every piece of business infrastructure, any other tech startup gets to take for granted. We can’t. Small print always says no adult content, and that is all pervasive across every single area of the business in ways that people outside the sphere don’t realize.

Jameela [00:33:37] So you’re talking about venture capitalists like you can’t.

Cindy [00:33:41] That’s one aspect of it. I can’t get funded, but I also can’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 for Make Love, Not Porn. My biggest day to day challenge is payment processing. PayPal won’t work with adult content, Stripe can’t mainstream credit card processes won’t.

Jameela [00:33:59] Wait so how do all the male porn sites exist?

Cindy [00:34:05] So first of all every every porn producer has exactly the same problem. Every every sex tech and a startup founder like me has same problem. I won’t just say what you know. I find a lot of people aren’t aware of the mainstream porn industry is dominated by one colossal monopoly that would never be allowed to exist in any other sector. But it’s its dominant form because nobody wants to go there. A company called Mindgeek owns everything Mindgeek owns, pornhub, youporn, redtube, etc. etc. When you operate at that scale with that stranglehold on the industry, you’d be amazed who’s prepared to work with you on the bank from the payments fronts that won’t tell anybody that they are. So there’s a whole different issue born out of that monopoly. But but but just separate to that, every [inaudible] I need to use to operate my video sharing platform hosting, including encrypting the terms of service always say no adult content. In every single case, I have to go to the people at top of the company, explain what I’m doing beg to be allowed to use the service. Sometimes they let me, sometimes they don’t. It’s a very labor intensive process. I had to build a video sharing platform from scratch as a proprietary technology because existing streaming services won’t stream adult content. I’m so jealous of friends who built video startups on top of Vimeo. Quick, easy. Simple, cheap. I can’t do that. Even something as simple as sending out our membership emails. MailChimp will not work with adult content rejected by six or seven email partners til we found someone who would, and to give an idea of how ridiculous this is. A couple of years ago, I needed a contract user experience designer. I put a perfectly standard job description up on Upwork, twenty minutes later Upwork took it down and told us we’re not allowed to advertise jobs on Upwork because we are Make Love, Not Porn. Every single thing is a battle. And that is why the answer to everything we’re talking about is not to shut down, censor, clamp down block repress it is instead to open up. Open up the dialogue around all of this open up to welcoming, supporting funding and helping female entrepreneurs like me, especially, who want to disrupt all of this for the better. Open up to allowing us to do business the same way everybody else does. Because when you do that, you transform the landscape of adult. I like to repurpose some text Wayne LaPierre of the NRA’s infamous gun control quote. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a business is a good guy with a better business. That’s what I and so many other women are trying to do, and we are being stymied at every turn because of these barriers that were put in place for one purpose and are shutting out everything that’s open and healthy, and helpful and normalizing.

Jameela [00:36:51] Fuck me. I had no I had no idea because I mean, you are literally still such a success story to me, but I had no idea this is what you were up against. And I also I just can’t I can’t fathom why more people wouldn’t want to help. And even though, like, I don’t know, Melinda fucking Gates or whoever, I can’t remember her name now, the woman who left Jeff Bezos is now just giving all of his money.

Cindy [00:37:19] Dying to get to both of them.

Jameela [00:37:21] Yes, we need to we need to find them, because this is this is a vital service. It is a vital service. So many incomprehensible amount of people watch pornography all of the time. And it is creating immense harm on kids and on teenagers.

Cindy [00:37:40] Here’s an interesting thing, 13 years after my TEDx talk, people people know that they need what Make Love Not Porn delivers. Because and by the way I forgot to mention another huge business growth inhibitor which is we are banned from advertising. We can’t advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit in traditional media.

Jameela [00:37:57] Women’s magazines even?

Cindy [00:37:59] No it’s entirely gendered, by the way. And it’s not just us it’s any female lends sexual health and wellness ventures, you know, menopause ventures, menstruation ventures can’t advertise on social either. And by the way, social is is affordable. I’m afraid women’s magazines aren’t. But here’s the interesting thing. Make Love Not Porn’s growth has been entirely organic, therefore driven by two things media coverage and search. And the interesting thing about search is that every day people around the world search for us without knowing that we exist. And what I mean by that is the top organic search terms that drive people to us are Make Love, Not Porn, real sex, not porn, Make Love, Not Porn where they don’t know there’s a business called that. One young man told me that he found us when he googled porn that is not porn. He was so fed up with everything out there. He wanted something different. No idea what to look for when you google porn that is not porn you find Make Love, Not Porn. That’s how much people want exactly what we deliver, which is real world sex. And by the way, we have so many social benefits beyond correcting the miseducation of porn. And there’s one I want to I want to make you aware of, because it speaks to exactly the issues that you talk about so often on on this podcast. Social sex videos on Make Love, Not Porn are enormously reassuring because we celebrate real world everything, real world bodies, real world hair, real world penis size, real world breast size, real world valvas. And the reason that’s critically important Jameela and I know you know this is that you can talk body positivity all you like. You can preach self-love til you’re  blue in the face. At the end of the day, nothing makes us feel great about our own bodies like watching people who are no one’s idea of aspirational body types getting turned on by each other, desiring each other, having an amazing time in bed. Our mantra Make Love, Not Porn is every body is beautiful when they’re having real world sex and they really are. And in a world where everything in popular culture tells us you are not sexually desirable unless you are this skinny six pack abs look like this. You know, our members write to us and tell us, you made me feel better about my own body. You know, one man wrote and said, my girlfriend and I now feel able to be more open and sensual with each other because you made each of us feel better about our own bodies. You know, a woman, by the way sensually sharing your real world sex on Make Love, Not Porn is as transformative for you and your relationships as social sharing everything else been for the world at large. A woman published her first video on make love not porn. By the way most of our Make Love Not Porn stars have never filmed themselves doing anything sexual before ever. They’re doing it for us because of even our social mission. But this woman posted a solo masturbation video there are many of those and in the personal narrative for it she said All my life I’ve been told my vulva’s ugly. It’s too flappy it’s too big it’s too this it’s too that. I don’t agree. And so I’m going to I thought I’ll share this video here and see what you think. Our community is amazing. You know, within an hour, a stream of comments going, Oh, my God, you’re beautiful. What are they talking about? You’re amazing. We love you. There is so much love and affirmation in the make love, not porn community that’s built around shared social and sexual values that is utterly transformative just for people who watch our videos, but for the Make Love, Not Porn stars who, you know, we feel privileged. They share the most intimate part of their lives with us.

Jameela [00:41:41] This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve ever had. I’m not honestly not blowing smoke up your ass like it is honestly, just. I’m so. I’m so. Excited for everyone to hear this. Also, I find it. I find the parallels between us really hilarious. And I feel like you are making a love and sex and porn version of exactly what we’re doing at I Weigh and it sounds like your community is just like my community and I hope that they enmesh because everyone is so loving. When we put pictures of people with disabilities, people of different sizes, different genders on our pages. I can’t believe that there is, I’d say, 99% and this is on social media. The 99% positive comments are reaffirmation people becoming friends, people writing to us saying that they felt suicidal before and now they’ve realized that they are loved and they are celebrated and beautiful, and now they feel so good about themselves. It’s amazing what a safe space you’re building.

Cindy [00:42:43] Exactly. And actually, Jimmy and I want to and you may find this interesting. I want to contextualize that in the broader tech landscape as a whole, because the young white male founders of the giant tech platforms have dominated our lives today. They are not the primary targets, online or offline harassment, abuse, racism, sexual assault, rape, violence, revenge porn. Therefore, they did not and they do not proactively designed for the prevention of any of those things on the platforms. And we see the results around us every day. Those of us who are most at risk everyday, women, black people, people of color, LGBTQ, the disabled, we design safe spaces and safe experiences. I designed Make Love Not Porn through the female lens around what everybody else should have, but nobody else did. Human curation. There is no self-publishing of anything on Make Love, Not Porn. Our curators watch every single video submitted from beginning to end before we approve or reject and we publish it. No one else does that. But we also review every single post on every profile, photo, text, illustration before we approve and publish it. No one else does that. We review every single comment on every single video before we approve and publish it. Again no one else does that. We can vouch for every piece of content on our platform and that is why Make Love, Not Porn is the safest place on the internet. And our community, to your point, absolutely reflects that because we’ve created a completely safe and trustworthy space where everybody feels affirmed and valued and important and loved.

Jameela [00:44:20] And it is so it’s so important and for a multitude of reasons. You know, going back to the thing about kids is that I think what’s so dangerous about pornography and, you know, you kind of touched on this at the very, very start of this is that it’s being able to separate real sex from pornography. When kids are able to identify with something as fantasy because it’s blue or it’s, you know, looks like an animal, like it’s very, very clear. In, in content made for children when something is human and when something is not. And yet with pornography, you have this kind of complete fantasy play stuff that would very rarely be be done often or consensually or happily by many people in the world. But it just sort of looks like mommies and daddies, you know, it looks like I’ve just people there’s no way to there’s no signal that this is from someone’s imagination rather than this is a real reflection of what all of your porn should be. I remember talking to children where they had started trying anal sex at the age of 12. Right. And she didn’t like it and he didn’t like it. And they both thought that they were supposed to like it. So they were both doing it, neither one enjoying it.

Cindy [00:45:33] Exactly. And so and, by the way, I mean, the parents are buying their children’s subscriptions to Make Love, Not Porn, they tell us, because they want them to see what happy, healthy loving sex looks like.

Jameela [00:45:42] That’s amazing.

Cindy [00:45:43] But what is very frustrating to me is that and actually I’m about to set out to raise a round of serious funding, about to set out to raise $20 million to finally do this. Because for years I’ve been trying and failing to raise funding for the 0 to 18 version of Make Love, Not Porn, which is what I call the Khan Academy of Sex Education, because Khan Academy tutors on every other topic under the sun except this one. Education, technology, edtech exploding, not in this area. And so I want to build and Make Love, Not Porn dot academy what URL.

Jameela [00:46:13] What do you mean by 0 to 18?

Cindy [00:46:15] And so what I mean is parents of teachers have been writing to us since day one of Make Love, Not Porn to ask us to create a sex educational version of what we’re doing. And by the way, I will just mention this because this is advice possibly your listeners could benefit from. Because I’ve had to talk to parents so many times over the years, I always ask parents to do two things that are really important. And they’re very simple. Number one is you cannot begin talking your child about sex too early. And when I say that, I mean I don’t mean literally talk about sex. What I mean is the very first time your child asked where babies come from touching their genitals, the most important thing isn’t even what you say as much as how you say it. Never, ever get visibly flustered or embarrassed. Never shut them off. Never close the conversation down. Instead, just answer calmly, straightforwardly, truthfully, and you will open up a channel of communication that will always be there for them as they grow older. And then the second thing I say to parents is, and today, for all the reasons you’ve spelt out, Jameela, when you talk to your child about sex, you must now also talk to your child about porn. And it’s a lot easier to do the most parents think and by the way this really plays into what you’re saying earlier because all you have to do is a version of what I’m about to give you and you dial it up or down, depending on the age of the child. You go so darling, we just talked about sex. And you know how together we watch movies and videos and cartoons where things happen that aren’t real? Well, there are also movies and videos about sex, and they’re not real either. And because of that, it can be quite confusing. So we’d rather you didn’t watch them until you’re older. But if anyone ever shows you anything like that or you come across it, come and talk to us, we can explain it. That is all you have to say, because just by saying that, you’ve done two critically important things. Number one, you’ve set up in their heads when they stumble across porn, as they will, that it’s not real. And secondly, you have said, come and talk to me about it, because again, to your point, you will want them to do that because what they stumble across can be utterly traumatizing. So that’s my quick, quick and easy advice to parents. But basically the reason I want to build Make Love, Not Porn academy. And as I said, I think, you know, the moment is not absolute right to get the funding for it is because sex educators all around the world have all the same problems I do. And so Make Love, Not Porn academy is based on the same principles. Make Love, Not Porn dot TV. User generated crowdsourced curated revenue share. Because I’m not about reinventing the wheel, it’s an aggregation play. So this is where we open up, Make Love Not Porn Academy to sex educators all around the world who can submit to us their own content, videos, coursework, comic strips, books, whatever it is now we will curate at the heart of everything we do lies human curation because we only publish what is make love, not porn endorsed. So if you are an American sex educator and you slip into what is depressingly popular over here, abstinence only sex education, we’re not publishing that. We don’t endorse the so-called education approach that goes, don’t do it. We will then publish segmented by age appropriateness. So if you’re a parent freaking out going, Oh my God, my six year old just asked about this, what do I say? Just where you would go for entirely age appropriate tools and content to have that conversation with a six year old.

Jameela [00:49:51] Fantastic.

Cindy [00:49:52] If you’re a teacher with a class of 14 year olds, she has me for age appropriate teaching materials. If you’re an adult access all areas because adults are as desperate for this as anybody else. Some of this would be free to access but would also charge to download subscribe bulk buy if you’re a school, different revenue streams, different use cases. By the way, we’re talking a huge, huge revenue generator and we will then split the income 5050 with its creators the same way we do with our Make Love, Not Porn stars. Because Jameela right now nobody goes into sex education to make money. I have friends who are brilliant sex educators. They face all the same barriers I do. They can’t even make a living doing this. They’ve had to take other jobs. I want to change that. This is enormously valuable work.

Jameela [00:50:34] I think that’s incredible. I mean, I have some sex educators on this podcast and this is work that I am completely obsessed with because I think it’s so important. And I grew up knowing nothing about sex and being absolutely terrified of sex and and scared to talk about it and embarrassed. And I’m sure the reason that part of why I didn’t watch porn until I made that documentary is because I felt shy. I think a lot of women feel like porn isn’t really for us or some women that I know watch porn just to see what men are watching, to see what men, quote unquote want. And the reason I say, quote unquote, is because not dissimilarly to children, there is also a part of teenage or young male or old male minds that is watching this and hyper normalizing it to the point where they think that this is what women want, this is what they think they should want. Some of them really do want that, and that’s fine. And that’s, you know, each to their own. But the hyper normalization of the dehumanization of pornography, especially towards women and especially the the more marginalized they are, seems to be, the more derogatory the sex that’s being had is i. I think that this is such a and go on.

Cindy [00:51:45] And here’s another important aspect Jameela, which I think you will appreciate because Make Love, Not Porn is a global platform, everything I’m building is global. So when I say I want to showcase my friends who are brilliant sex educators, I mean friends like Parodevi in India. Pardevi is an Indian filmmaker. She’s amazing. And she started a company called Agents of Ishq to create culturally appropriate sex education for India. She makes these videos which are bloody brilliant. They use Bollywood musical spoofing to create really important things about sex. Every time they introduce a new video, I share the shit out of it all over social. And I said to her, You know, why do your videos only have 60, 70,000 views on YouTube? And she said, because I can’t get them seen anywhere in India because of issues. So imagine I’m going to showcase her work on Make Love Not Porn Academy. You will be able to go and identify culturally appropriate sex education and not just in India, but with the entire Indian diaspora. Or, you know, again, our friends in China and our friends and, you know, and so there’s also a whole dimension of this, which is this is needed so badly globally and in every country in the world. I know there are people working to try and educate and they are shut down even more that we are the US or the UK. And I want I want to change that.

Jameela [00:53:11] Absolutely. And just to return to the point I was making about men is that among my male friends, I find that so many of them come home and tell me or come back and tell me that when you live with some of my male friends, not all of them, but they come to me and they say that I had the sex with this girl and it looked amazing, like she was doing all these amazing things from pornography. Clearly, she’d watched a lot of pornography, and obviously I have and it was hot, but I didn’t feel anything. It felt disconnected. It felt like a performance rather than making love. And it is the older they’re getting and the more in touch with, in tune with themselves they’re getting, the more that is starting to kind of perturb is a strong word, but it’s definitely jarring for for increasing the amount of men and then women and men aren’t really having these conversations. And so there’s just this intolerable amount of guesswork that goes into the most intimate and important to be transparent about act that maybe humans can interact with each other in now.

Cindy [00:54:10] Absolutely. And so there are two ways in which we solve that at Make Love, Not Porn, because the first is we celebrate, as I mentioned earlier, we celebrate real world emotion, love, intimacy, feelings. And the reason that’s crucial is because, again, all around us in popular culture, movies, TV, streaming, we see many creative expressions and narratives of relationships, but we never see the actual sex. On Make Love, Not Porn, you see the actual sex, but you also see the relationships. Because in our videos, those two things are indivisible. And when I say that, by the way, I don’t just mean that in our partnered couples recent etc. videos, you see what it’s like to have amazing love, you know, healthy relationship dynamic between people. You know, how many solo videos you see what it’s like to have a healthy relationship with your self, with your own body, your own genitals, your own sexuality. And then the other thing we do, and this is and this is ultimately why I created Make Love, Not Porn. As I said earlier, I realize the issue isn’t porn issues. We don’t talk about sex in the real world. And so everything we do has one mission in mind, which is to help make it easier for every single person in the world to talk openly and honestly about sex. Because we don’t. Because we don’t talk about sex generally. It’s an area of rampant insecurity for every single one of us. We’ll get vulnerable when we get naked. Sexual egos are very fragile. And to your point, people find it therefore bizarrely impossible to talk about sex to the people their actually having it with while they’re actually having it. Because in that situation, you’re terrified that if you say anything at all about what is going on, if you comment on the action any way at all, you will potentially hurt the other person’s feelings, put them off you, derail the encounter, potentially derail the entire relationship. The same time you want to please your partner, you want to make them happy. Everybody wants to be good in bed. Nobody knows exactly what that means. And so you will seize your cues from any way you can. And if the only cues, you’ve ever seen are in porn, those are the ones you’ll take. And so I’ve I mean, I obviously am my own research lab, you know, as I said, I encounter what I’m addressing. So, you know, I met a few years ago an extremely attractive, lovely young gentleman who was 19 at the time, and we carried on seeing each other the next couple of years. And this is a very good looking young man who had a ton of partners. It became apparent in bed that he had never, ever talked, I mean, none of them had ever talked to each other about anything. Because I you know, issued instructions about how to make me cum while he was inside me. And and did very satisfactory. But then afterwards he went wow, oh, my God, you know, no one’s ever said anything to me about what I’m doing. And and and I said, actually, you know, you’ve made me realize I need to communicate more and I’m going to do that going forwards. And so literally, at the most basic level, we exist to make it easier to talk to each other in bed. Because people don’t.

Jameela [00:57:21] No, I mean, we’ve I’ve spoken a fair bit with sex educators and sex therapists on this podcast about BDSM, for example, and it’s kind of considered the outskirts of the sexual community, and yet it’s one of the only sexual communities that has consent and communication as a foundation. You know, I’m in Berlin where there’s a lot of that here, people explaining to me how it works and sending each other their menus of what they like in bed or kind of meeting up on websites and being like, We’re into the same stuff, let’s meet up. Which we never we never do. We never do in the mainstream. And it leads to so many needless, awkward or scary or like traumatizing or just light shit nights.

Cindy [00:58:04] And, and, and again, that’s what you see at Make Love Not Porn because our kink videos show you the pre-negotiation. This is the real world. And so you see the real world application of negotiating boundaries and consent. And then you see the real world after care. You know, you see what it’s like to come down from a scene and take care of each other. And also, again, because this is the real world and you won’t see this anywhere else. We have, for example, many role play videos, you know, but on make love, not porn we see a role play video where halfway through one person goes to the other. You know what? This isn’t really doing it for me. This person goes yeah it’s all a bit meh. And they go let’s just fuck. And, you know, it shows it’s very low stakes. You can start doing something. You can find out you don’t like it, it’s fine to drop it, you don’t have to stick it out till the end, you know? And that’s real world sex. That’s the funny, awkward, loving, wonderful, hilarious time we all have in the real world.

Jameela [00:58:57] 100%. And I think that that’s so important. I also just would love to see more pornography with women my age, older than me, older than that, older and older. Because the the pubescent teen obsession of of mainstream pornography is is very pedophilic. And I’ve always been disturbed by Lolita, as in like the the pedophile romanticized novel being the kind of the set standard for what is sexually enticing. It’s not realistic. And my friends, again, a lot of my male friends have been really fucked over by this because their brain has been sort of like almost neurologically warped by pornography because they’ve seen so much as such developmental ages. And so they find themselves attracted to these very young looking women or young bodies, you know, very taut, etc.. But then they don’t actually have very much in common with people younger than them. And they actually find stuff in common with women their own age more often or older than them per say. But and so they end up often not getting to the sex because the date is just a bit, you know, they’re they don’t have anything in common. There’s no real connection. It feels a bit weird to be with someone for them who is who looks a certain way but maybe doesn’t have as many like things in common. And again, age gap dating’s fine. I’m just saying that it’s just funny how they kind of feel like slightly imprisoned. A lot of them have stopped watching pornography. They’ve gone off social media. They’ve decided to kind of detox their brain in order to be able to get back to what actually instinctively feels right to me. Maybe it’s an older woman. Maybe at someone my own age.

Cindy [01:00:41] Share rather four micro actions every single woman can take to transform the porn industry and make it more feminist. And and I say that because genuinely I’m a big believer in micro actions, simple, easy to do actions where every one of us is doing them on a daily basis to change what we want to see cumilatively adds up at scale to enormous impact. So everyone listening. Here are the four micro-actions. Number one, women talk publicly about the fact that you enjoy watching porn because we do. Because there’s a total double standard where men can go oh porn. You know, where as nice girls don’t do that. The reason the reason it’s really important.

Jameela [01:01:21] But are they not doing it because we go on fucking pornhub and then we just get assaulted with horrifying images?

Cindy [01:01:28] No, because we want to watch porn and they may not like the porn. But but but the reason it’s really important to talk publicly about the fact that women love watching porn is because when enough women do that, the porn industry goes fuck me. That’s the a huge market opportunity there. Okay people people people will will deliver against a market opportunity when they see that market opportunity in front of their eyes. And as long as women are too embarrassed to say that we enjoy watching porn, that’s what will happen. So that’s micro-action, number one. Number two is recommend the shit out of the porn you enjoy to your girlfriends.

Jameela [01:02:00] Right.

Cindy [01:02:01] And I say that because so Make Love Not Porn is not porn, we’re social sex, but nevertheless, we end up in a lot of those lists that women’s media brands create of porn women women enjoy. So Glamor, for example, a couple of years ago produced a list of 15 porn sites women will absolutely love. And we’re number one. And I mention that because every time we’re on one of those lists, it sends a ton of traffic to us because women are desperate for recommendations.

Jameela [01:02:27] Right.

Cindy [01:02:29] Because because porn exists in the shadows. We don’t have the tools that we use in other parts of lives. There is no yelp of porn. There’s no social acceptable curation navigation. So micro-action number two women recommend the porn you love to your girlfriends, because that’s how I have many brilliant female queer pornographer friends, Jameela, who are making exactly the porn you want to see older women, you know, real world bodies because of mindgeek stranglehold on the industry. They can’t get the traffic and the revenue, the numbers they deserve. And so every one of us, when we discover porn we love recommending it on helps them. Micro-action number three and this is for straight women. Sit your male partner down and show him the porn that you really enjoy. And the reason I say that is because I hate the terms feminist porn and porn for women.

Jameela [01:03:19] And female friendly porn like it kind of creates this.

Cindy [01:03:22] You know I do have friends who call themselves feminists pornographers. They make porn for women. But the reason I hate those terms is because the moment men hear that, they go, not for me. Most terms marginalize that porn. Men have no idea how hot and arousing creative and innovativethey would find porn made by women for women. So sit your male partner down, make him watch it. He’ll be pleasantly surprised. My fourth and final micro-action for women is actually make. And I don’t I don’t mean do it yourself. I don’t mean be in it yourself, but. But make the porn you want to see in the world. Over the years, so many women come up to me in corporate environments and said, you know, Cindy, I really wanted to make porn, but, you know, I live in a country where the laws make it impossible. And one woman in Ireland said that to me, by the way, it is very difficult legally or, you know, the came up against all the problems I did and they couldn’t. And the reason I say that is because we have not even begun to see the future of porn through the female lens.

Jameela [01:04:23] Right.

Cindy [01:04:24] And so my message to women is, you know, whatever fantasy you have that you would love to see porn of. And by the way, while rule 34 of the Internet goes, if it exists there is porn of it, it is not true for the female lens. Whatever your fantasy is, however specific, bizarre, odd, crazy. I guarantee you there are millions and billions of all the women who would also be turned on by that and.

Cindy [01:04:46] And so, you know, it’s easier now than ever before to make films and put them out there. In the same way that many indie film makers are. Put the porn you want to see out into the world, and you have the opportunity to make an absolute fucking shit ton of money out of doing that, especially because women like me are breaking down the infrastructure barriers and to term. I mean, there are many female founded porn platforms coming up at the moment because we want to change all of this.

Jameela [01:05:16] Right. Okay. And so maybe don’t put your face in it if that’s something that you don’t want on the Internet forever or blur your face out that is something.

Cindy [01:05:25] Well, I’m talking about becoming a porn director, by the way. Not a porn star.

Jameela [01:05:29] Right, right, right, right. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. I was about to upload all kinds of videos onto the Internet. God, thank God you clarified.

Cindy [01:05:43] No, but I will just say, Jameela, also that if Make Love, Not Porn achieves its ultimate social mission. One of the side benefits is that nobody should ever have to feel ashamed or embarrassed ever again about having a naked photograph or a sex tape on the Internet because it’s simply just a natural human part of what we all are.

Jameela [01:06:06] Yes. I agree. I fully agree. It’s just that because we’re not yet in a society that doesn’t punish women specifically more so than men. I agree. I’m very down for the hyper normalization revolution and I’m very, very, very excited about what you’re doing. And I when I really mean it, I say this on the podcast so that it’s there forever. But however I can be of service to you to support your work and your efforts, please let me know, because this is the kind of thing that I feel helps so many people around the world. Sex is so lovely. If that’s your thing, you might be asexual or aromantic or any of these different things. But if sex is something that you enjoy or would like to enjoy, you deserve that. And there is a more integral and beautiful and fun and filthy fuckin side of sex that you maybe think you’re not allowed to have because of the way that you look, or because it doesn’t exist or because you think men won’t be into it or women won’t be into it. There are fucking almost 8 billion people on this planet. The chances are there are people out there who are into the same things as you, and a lot of the people who aren’t don’t even know what they’re into because we’re a culture so dominated by what we’re told to like. We’re so dominated by fucking tastemakers. And my last point about what I saw on the kind of main porn of pornography sites in the last couple of days, is that. Those as with anything, right, as with any form of advertising or movie making, the way to gain virality in an online world with so much endless competition is to make things that are more and more shocking. They have no, they are no longer focusing on what is sexier or what will actually be popular for being sexier. Or what will get people off or make people come. They are they are now just making the most shocking possible video so that people, even if they’re not aroused, will talk about it, will share it to their friends being like, Jesus fucking Christ, have you seen this? Have you seen what they did to that woman or this girl or this, you know, 13 year old stepdaughter in this video. They are just going for the shock factor now, above all, sensuality or even really sexuality. It feels more like the kind of it feels a bit like the horror genre. Do you know what I mean? Like the horror genre is just moving beyond the realms of what like even the worst psychopath to conjure up. Sorry, that’s the porn police coming to get me, if you can hear them for speaking ill of porn. But. But. But I love that you’re bringing reality back to sex. You are grounding sex while still keeping it, like, fun or kinky or all of the different things that sex can be for, you know, for whatever someone’s taste is. I feel very, very sad and scared for anyone, any age, especially men, but really also the women who are watching the same shit, who think that this is where sex is elevated to. It’s nothing to do with sex. It’s just like the fucking horror genre. It is just about clicks, it’s just about shocks, it’s just about being memorable and getting people talking. Now for that to be what’s on the homepage of these sites makes me extremely sad and extremely concerned because as we talk about tastemakers that guides people into thinking, Oh, well, this is what’s popular, this is on the homepage, this is what people want from me. And regardless of your gender, whether you are the doer or the taker, you might be complicit or part of something that you don’t even really like fundamentally actually want to do. You just think you should based on a fucking marketing strategy. So I just want everyone to keep that in mind. Cindy, you have no idea how down for your cause I am. Maybe you do now.

Cindy [01:09:49] I’m thrilled to hear that. And I will tell you what I would love you to help me with. Um, and by the way, you know, to what you’ve just said, this is why I say to people, Make Love, Not Porn. operates in the single biggest market of them all. Not sex, not porn. The market of human happiness. And so I will say to you, because I need help with this generally. And so any listeners who might be able to help too, I need help finding investors and funding and and I’ll tell you why I need help, because I know that my investors are absolutely out there. There are tons of them. They’re impossible to find. By the usual means because they all have one thing in common. Your willingness to fund, Make Love, Not Porn is entirely a function of your personal sexual journey. It is a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality through my own experience and I have no way to research and target for that, especially because sex is the one area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside, the people that look like they would woah totally get it, don’t. The people that look like total prudes do. And so that’s why I put what I’m doing out there all the time. You know, why? You know, I really appreciate doing interviews like this because I have to rely on making synaptic connections or draw those people to me. So anybody who knows, anybody who they think might be up for funding, Make Love, Not Porn, hook a sister up, it’s Cindy@MakeLoveNotPorn.com.

Jameela [01:11:24] I mean, I’m all over this. I’m not joking. I’m all over this. And I’m someone who’s been a prude way more of my life than I haven’t. And and I’m really just, like, only finding my feet sexually in the last, like, seven or eight years and learning to not feel embarrassed about being sexual because I come from a Pakistani and Indian family. So that’s just not you know, sex is for children. Sex isn’t for pleasure, especially not women’s pleasure. And so I’m unpacking all of this shit, and I couldn’t feel more grateful to come across your work. In fact, I think it was you. You and I said a very similar thing publicly, that kind of so I, I think it was you where we both compared completely separately, having no idea the other one had said it around the same time that learning sex from porn is like learning how to drive for watching the Fast and the Furious.

Cindy [01:12:18] And now I’m actually I’m actually going to give credit for that quote to the person who is due it who is a journalist called Mary Beth Williams.

Jameela [01:12:25] Wonderful.

Cindy [01:12:26] Who actually wrote wrote that first in a piece she wrote in Salon in fall 2009 after our TED talk in early February because it has gone round the Internet and actually Mary Beth Williams was the very first person who ever said that. So I’ll give her full credit.

Jameela [01:12:39] Great, great, great. Perfect, good. I mean, I had said it not knowing anyone else had said it like we all have these similar thoughts, but it made me feel like you. Me. And did you say Mary?

Cindy [01:12:50] Mary Beth Williams.

Jameela [01:12:50] Mary Beth. It feels like we’re all on the same page and we have the same feeling of this coming. Not from a place of judgment, a place of love, of information, a place of love, love, honesty, autonomy, consent, joy, pleasure for all. And this is a conversation that absolutely does not just impact for one gender, one age, one size. I was curious because I hadn’t yet investigated deep enough. Do you also include disability on your website?

Cindy [01:13:20] Oh, my God, yes, absolutely. So we’ve been working for years to build up how make disabled love, not porn category. We’re working with an arm of disability activists. It’s obviously more difficult because if you are a person with disabilities, then it’s trickier to find ways to kind of be able to video yourself you need assistance, etc., etc.. But we, we have reached out to and we have a number of activists working with us to build up this category. And by the way, Jameela, the reason for that is not only because we want to celebrate the fact that disabled people are sexual beings, but also because non-disabled people really benefit from watching the sensitivity and the empathy and the care that goes into make disabled love, not porn sites. And also I just met you have something else because porn sorry Make Love, Not Porn. I’m constantly blown away by how well make look not porn does what I designed it to do but also how well it does things I never designed to do. So on the decided to do front. I mean, we hear all the time from couples who say, you saved our marriage, you saved our relationship, haven’t had sex in years, but only didn’t design it to do is we hear from survivors of rape, sexual abuse, sexual assault. We hear from female and male survivors who tell us that Make Love, Not Porn, helped them reclaim their body. It helped them feel able to be sexual again and be and be able to have a sexual life again in a scenario where porn is obviously way too triggering. That is true not only of our members who watch our videos, but we have a number of our contributors our make love not porn stars who came to us from backgrounds of sexual abuse and trauma, and being able to share themselves sexually in a completely safe and trustworthy space is helping them heal. And honestly, I have no idea when I concepted this that this was also a use case for it, and I’m blown away by that.

Jameela [01:15:17] I love that. And it feels like you really have just covered all bases. And I also feel as though this whole conversation has spoken so much, I hope to my followers the way it has to me. If I feel energized and galvanized and excited to get on that website tonight, I’m sure many of us will, and to tell not just my female friends, but my male friends and my non-binary friends. I want to tell everyone like, you know, to make sure that they get on this site. I’ve been familiar with your work, especially as an activist, but I think, again, my, like the trauma of that documentary is why I haven’t been on any pornography websites until the last couple of days. And so, you know, maybe, maybe today as much as my journey back to real pornography.

Cindy [01:16:07] No, no, and again Jameela. We’re not porn. Remember, we are pro sex, pro porn, pro knowing the difference. We are social sex.

Jameela [01:16:15] You are social sex, right. That is the terminology I will use. To my journey to social sex.

Cindy [01:16:20] Because all I’m doing is I’m applying the types of social media to the one area no other social networking platform will allow in order to socialize sex, to normalize bring it out of the sunlight. And in fact, this is why at Make Love Not Porn we call ourselves the social sex revolution. The revolution part is not the sex, it’s the social. It’s just bringing out the sunlight, taking the shame and guilt and embarrassment out of it. You know, we are a shame changer.

Jameela [01:16:49] I love that. I love that. Well, that is the exact name of the I Weigh game. And so I am thrilled, thrilled to have this chat with you. There are other conversations I would love to have with you some other time. I think your insights on on business and leadership, etc. are things that and and freedom and being your own boss that I think are hugely valuable that I would love to talk to you about. But today I want to focus on on what we’ve discussed already. So please come back another time and have that also vital conversation with me. But for now, everyone go and look at Make Love, Not Porn. Follow Cindy Gallop’s work and and please walk into the world of social sex with no shame and just desire for your own right, it’s to pleasure. Well, Cindy, before you go, will you please tell me, what do you weigh?

Cindy [01:17:41] I weigh changing the world through sex and making a huge amount of money doing it. And I want to just explain the second part of that, because I’ve obviously talked at some length about the first, but I believe the future of business is doing good and making money simultaneously. And I want to see many more female founders do that in a way that makes our ventures get taken seriously because we are all unicorns in waiting. And yet, not enough of us have realized that at a scale that allows us to make the kind of money where we can then help other women, fund other women, support other women, donate to other women. I want us to build our own financial ecosystem because the white male one isn’t working for us. And so I weigh changing the world through sex and making a huge amount of money doing it.

Jameela [01:18:30] That’s fabulous. And I love that you’re one of the first things you said about your kind of drive to be successful in business is to be able to do purpose driven work that changes the world for the better. I’m very much so aligned with that and I really appreciate you and I can’t wait to hang out with you in person and and find a way that I can support your work. Thank you for coming. You’ve been a fucking legend. I’m freaking out.

Cindy [01:18:57] Thanks Jameela, I can tell this is one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever done. I so appreciate everything you’ve said, and I’m just thrilled to have this opportunity. So thank you so much.

Jameela [01:19:06] Thank you. We’ll speak soon. Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela, Jamil, Erin Finnegan and Kimmie Gregory. It is edited by Andrew Carson. And the beautiful music you’re hearing now is made by my boyfriend James Blake. If you haven’t already, please rate review and subscribe to the show. It’s a great way to show your support. We also have a bonus series exclusively on Stitcher Premium called Ask Jameela Anything. Check it out. You can get a free month of Stitcher Premium by going to Stitcher.com/premium and using the promo code I Weigh. Lastly over at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. You can leave us a voicemail at 18186605543. Or email us what you weigh at IWeighpodcast@gmail.com. And now we would love to pass the mic to one of our fabulous listeners. I weigh the sum of my experiences, but I also weigh compassion, empathy, love and acceptance. I weigh my accomplishments and my ability to keep going when sometimes I don’t want to. I weigh the heaviness of things that I carry. I want to weigh the ability to make a difference, to be an example to my kids, to be a light and safe place for those around me. I want to feel the weight of me making things a little lighter for those around me.