Why now may be the perfect time for a porn revolution that brings realistic sex to the forefront

When watching mainstream porn, it doesn't take much for the viewer to realize that the video is made with them, said viewer, in mind. Performers make eye contact with the camera more often than their partner, for example. They're in positions that showcase their bodies and genitalia, never mind if it's comfortable or intimate.

And performers are doing just that: performing.

Sextech pioneer Cindy Gallop set out to distinguish performative porn from real-world sex when she created the original MakeLoveNotPorn.com in 2009, which she debuted in her viral TED Talk.

Now, over a decade later and amid the global pandemic, Gallop believes now is the time for a "social sex revolution," as she dubs MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP). "We feel the pandemic is MakeLoveNotPorn's time — and at long last," said Gallop in an interview with Mashable.

The global response from Gallop's TED Talk encouraged her to take the idea further. The site changed to MakeLoveNotPorn.tv in 2013 (following a beta round in 2012) after Gallop fought for funding for years, offering a platform for people to share their "real world" sex. Unlike a platform like Pornhub's Community tab, MLNP set out to showcase all types of couples, body types, ages — everything that mainstream porn wasn't.

The lack of funding has remained an obstacle throughout MLNP's tenure, to the point where the site is largely the same as when it launched. This dilemma is not unique to MLNP or Gallop: Sextech entrepreneurs historically have trouble raising funds. What's more is that social media and other platforms, such as PayPal, are prudish in what content they allow. One famous example is when micro-blog site Tumblr, which used to house oodles of NSFW gifs and photos, banned adult content in 2018.

Even several months ago, Gallop saw resistance: She was denied to speak about why sextech is the next trillion dollar industry at 2020's CES.

She believes, however, that the tide is finally turning — and social distancing could be the catalyst. "We're all at home and we are doing what you do at home, we are being more candid about all of those things," she said. "We believe those barriers are breaking down."

Not only are people around the world stuck at home and focused on activities they can do there (namely, sex), but many are also starved of connection. "The world is more in need of love, intimacy, and human connection than ever before," said Gallop.

Gallop and her team have already seen increases in traffic, revenue, and submissions to MLNP. The number of daily users increased by over 33 percent over the past four weeks, and revenue has increased by 20 percent.

Furthermore, her team has begun adding features they've always envisioned when they launched .tv in 2013, like a comment section and "YES!" buttons to provide positive feedback.

Another reason Gallop believes the pandemic can usher in a new era for MLNP is the financial potential for users. Using a democratized-access-to-revenue system, users who upload videos receive 50 percent of overall revenue for video rentals. "At a time when the world has been negatively financially impacted, we're hoping this also will be quite appealing to potential MakeLoveNotPornstars," said Gallop, using the site's term for users who upload videos.

MLNP is far from the only site that allows users to profit from uploading explicit content, and not the only one seeing use increases either. OnlyFans saw an 75 percent increase in new user registrations on the platform in the month of March, a spokesperson told Mashable.

Graphic for the new "YES!" button feature. Credit: MAKELOVENOTPORN

But there's a core difference between MLNP and a platform like OnlyFans. OnlyFans is just that — for fans, similar to other avenues of mainstream porn. MLNP is for the contributors themselves. "People who OnlyFans for sexual self-expression are quite often playing to their fans," said Gallop. "They will take fan requests and they'll do what fans requests — and we're not about that because MakeLoveNotPorn is not about anything performative."

"One of the biggest differences I see versus some of the content I see folks in my community making on OnlyFans is that stuff on MakeLoveNotPorn prioritizes the pleasure of the people in the video versus the pleasure of the viewer," said Bex Caputo, MLNP's curator and liaison with MNLPstars.

In addition to working with MLNPstars, Caputo also watches every video submitted from beginning to end. This is to make sure that all the legalities are taken care of (say, that the users both have submitted IDs and don't have copyrighted music playing in the background) and to make sure that the video has context — what were they doing before the camera was on and what happened after sex, for example.

"The curation aspect isn't about censorship," said Ariel Martinez, community manager at MLNP. While Caputo works with MLNPstars, Martinez works with users who just consume the site's content. "It's just about contextualizing whatever is gonna happen."

Caputo has an open dialogue with users rather than ban videos outright, especially because for many of the users that submit videos, this is their first time foraying into posting explicit content on the internet.

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That curation element is seen throughout MLNP. User profiles and comments, the latter of which is a new feature of MLNP, are curated by the team before publishing as well. There's a note above the comment box that reads, "Please, keep it positive," inspired by Gallop's years urging LinkedIn to add a similar note about keeping comments professional to no avail.

"I believe that those little little nudges on a site can make all the difference," said Gallop. "We haven't had a single negative comment we've had to censor."

Martinez reiterated the positivity of the comments, and said that users are responding to the new feature well. In the week since the site debuted the feature, they have over 100 comments — and not only have they been positive, but some have even been profound.

Martinez pointed out one such comment that was written about a video of a couple watching a previous video they shot. "I was brought up in a religious home where sex was dirty, and pleasure a sin," the commenter wrote. "It is delightful to see how happy you both are, and how freely you share. You have convinced me that what you do is the natural way relationships should work. After all these years, I don't know if I can be so naturally happy and free, but I'm going to try."

User feedback. Credit: makelovenotporn

This positivity runs through the feedback of MLNP in general, according to the team, in ways Gallop never imagined when the site launched. Examples they cited were cancer survivors reclaiming their sexuality and rape survivors rediscovering how sex can feel good again without watching triggering porn on mainstream sites.

"We just get emails that are so amazing, all the time," said Martinez, "and I feel really lucky to be able to bear witness to that journey of sexuality." One of the most moving emails she's read was from a couple relearning how to have sex following a prostate cancer diagnosis, whose story eventually landed as a blog post on the site.

Other blogs feature similar stories from users, from someone having their first guilt-free sexual experience to a survivor sharing how the site helped him understand his assault.

"Some of the emails we get bring tears to my eyes," said Gallop."

Martinez said this trickles down to every form of communication with MLNP members. "We had a man who was like, 'I really love how you don't make me feel like a dirty old man. It's really nice to be able to talk to you and not have this sense of shame,'" she recalled.

Gallop has big aspirations for where MLNP can go with the proper funding, expansions that she said the community has been asking for since day one. One is what she called the "Khan Academy of sex education," and said she's been trying to get it funded for six years. (If you search "sex education" on Khan Academy, the top result is a biology class on how organisms reproduce.) Gallop said "MakeLoveNotPorn.academy" would not only include educational videos on sex but on love, intimacy, relationships, and the like.

The next area of expansion would be MLNP's social media elements. Gallop believes that when mainstream social media sites like Facebook have policies like their current ones on sex and nudity, we're moving backwards as a society.

"We ultimately would want an area of MakeLoveNotPorn that allows you to self publish what currently gets you kicked off Instagram, blocked on Tumblr, Facebook account shut down," she said.

porn revolution Credit: bob al-greene / mashable

Finally, she wants an area of MLNP devoted to erotica. Users send them written erotica since they can't publish it elsewhere, but the site currently doesn't have functions to publish it either. Writing, art, photography, video — Gallop envisions that it would have the same democratized access to income as the explicit videos have now.

"We want to enable that work to be showcased because we want to push it out into the broader cultural mainstream," said Gallop, "so that we have a more open healthy reflection of sex and public culture as a whole."

All three prongs speak to MLNP's vision of normalizing sex in a holistic context, according to Gallop. The revolution of the "social sex revolution" is not the sex — it's the social.

"We want to bring the nuance to all of this in a way that enables people to dump the shame and the guilt and the embarrassment," said Gallop, "and really embrace the full gloriousness of, the full spectrum of human sexuality that we're celebrating."

In a time where being social — and sexy — online is more important than ever, perhaps more people will see Gallop's vision.