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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to the you are Not Broken podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Casperson, a board certified urologist, thought leader and conversation starter on midlife living, hormones and sexuality. Enjoy the show.
- [00:18]
B
All right, everybody, welcome back to the youe're Not Broken podcast. I have the good Cindy Gallup on today. She is in New York joining us in her amazing hot pink getup. Where do I start? You were successful in marketing career and then you were on to other big things. Tell us what your greatest grand adventure is.
- [00:37]
C
Sure. So as you say, Kelly, My background is 39 years working in brand building, marketing, advertising, which I always say is actually very good experience for what I do now because I've spent 39 years working in the business of getting people to do things that they originally had no intention of doing. And that really helps with my business today. So I have a business that honestly is a complete and total accident because I did not consciously, intentionally set out to do anything I very bizarrely find myself doing now. My business came about because I date younger men. They tend to be in their 20s and gosh, 17 years ago now, like,
- [01:23]
B
0405-507080-70808 okay, I just, I had to pick in the world, like, where I was when this shift happened. Okay, I'm good now.
- [01:34]
C
So 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. So I found myself encountering a number of sexual behavioral memes in bed. I went, whoa, 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 all those years ago, no one was talking about this. No one's writing about it. This was just me in isolation.
- [02:11]
B
You knew what good sex was and all of a sudden things were changing.
- [02:15]
C
You know, the moves were being broken out and I knew where those moves were coming from. And so, and so I just went, as a naturally action oriented person, I'm
- [02:24]
B
going to do something about this.
- [02:26]
C
So 16 years ago, Pure as a little side venture, I put up on no money, a tiny clunky website@makelovnotporn.com that in its original version was kind of a public service announcement. Here's what happens in the porn world. Here's what really happens in the real world. I launched at the TED conference in 2009. I became the only TED speaker to say the words, come on my face on the TED Stage several times in succession that the talk went viral as a result. And it drove this extraordinary global response to my tiny website that I had never anticipated. Thousands of people wrote to me from all around the world, young and old, straight and gay, pouring their hearts out, telling me things about their sex lives and their porn watching habits they'd never told anyone before. And I realized I'd uncovered a huge global social issue. And so that was when 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 I turned it into a business designed to do good and make money simultaneously. Which, by the way, is what I believe all business should be ultimately. And so I turn into what we are today, which is the world's first and only user generated and importantly, 100% human curated real world sex video sharing platform. So we're kind of what Facebook would be if it allowed you to openly, healthily sexually self express, which it obviously does not. The way to think about us is if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love, not porn is the badly needed documentary. We are a unique window onto the funny, messy, loving, wonderful sex we all have in the real world. And what we're doing is we are socializing, normalizing and destigmatizing 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.
- [04:48]
B
Oh, how many, how big has it gotten? How many people do you wager that you've helped?
- [04:54]
C
I will, just for our listener's benefit, contextualize my response to that. Because the one thing I didn't realize when I embarked on this venture was that I and my tiny team would fight an enormous battle every single day. Not even to grow Make Love, not porn, just to keep it alive. Basically, because every piece of business infrastructure other tech startups take for granted, I can't. The small print always says no adult content. And that is all pervasive across every single area of the business. I can't get funded. I 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 for Make Love not Porn. Try doing business for four years without a business bank account. Can't tell you how I did it. Didn't realize I shouldn't have. Makes life very difficult. Every tech service I need to use to operate a video platform, hosting, encoding, encrypting the terms of service always say no adult content My two biggest business growth inhibitors are number one payments. PayPal won't work with adults. Stripe won't. I have to work with the murky world of adult friendly payments where because any one adult has nowhere else to go, they charge extortionate fees. 12% of my revenue every month in payment processing fees alone. Mainstream rates of 3% or less. And another infuriating business growth inhibitor is that we are banned from advertising anywhere. We cannot advertise Make Love not porn on Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit. I ask you. By the way, you know we're banned for advertising on Twitter. I ask you and because our listeners may not be aware of this, it's not just make love not porn. There's a gendered bias. And you will know this. Any female lens sexual health and wellness venture is also banned. Menstruation ventures can't have menopause fertility I'll qualify my response to you because I wish many more people knew about us. Which is why I'm thrilled we're doing this podcast. But in the 12 years we operate as a business, we've had over 2 million people sign up in total and importantly to your question, Kelly we have changed so many people's lives because as a unique business, we have a unique capability. We have the power to change people's sexual attitudes and behavior for the better in a way that very few things can. So we've taught countless young people that porn is not sex in the real world. Gen Z loves us. We've saved numerous marriages and relationships and as literally how people write to us, you saved our marriage. Parents are buying their teenage and 20 something children subscriptions because they tell us I want my kids to see what happy, healthy, loving sex relationships look like. And as with any disruptive technology, uses emerge the founder never dreamt of we began hearing from survivors of rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse. They tell us that make love, not porn help them reclaim their bodies. We help them feel able to be sexual again, post trauma in a situation where porn is way too triggering. And it's not just people who watch our videos. We have a number of contributors who we call our make love Not Porn Stars. They tell us being able to share themselves sexually in a completely safe and trustworthy space has helped them process and heal from sexual trauma. I never thought about that as a usage when I came up with this idea. I'm so happy and grateful that it is absolutely amazing.
- [08:37]
B
Let's talk real quick because you can say it Better than anybody. How is real world sex not. Not like porn? To break it down for people who don't know?
- [08:45]
C
Sure. So porn is performative, produced, scripted entertainment. And the reason I use the movie documentary analogy is because Make Love, not porn, is where we showcase the sex that we all have in the real world. So our tagline is, we are pro sex, pro porn, pro, pro, knowing the difference. We are not amateur porn where people, again, are real world. People are performing, you know, and often following the porn script. We are literally set it and forget it. Set your phone up, your webcam, and you are just having the sex that you would have in the real world that you do have in the real world. And so our videos are full of accidents and pets wandering in and funny things happening and laughter and joy and love, intimacy, connection. And in fact, I'll tell you something interesting about that, Kelly, because I designed Make Love Not Porn to be fully diverse and inclusive. And we are our members, our Make Love not porn stars are all ages 18 to 18. Literally. We're global, so all races, ethnicities, male, female, trans, non, binary, straight, LGBTQ, asexual. But in the 12 years we've operated, we've discovered that we are especially a revelation to mention. More men send us grateful emails, leave appreciative comments than anybody else. And by the way, women love us as well. But this is very noteworthy because that's because we are something utterly 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 sexual. You would not believe the number of men who write to us regularly because we hear this all the time and say, I just watched my first video, Make Love Not Porn, and afterwards I cried. I've said 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. We would all be much better off if they were. I picked up a wonderful Twitter exchange a while back between two men. The first man had tweeted as a joke, obviously, hey, guys, got this really weird fetish. I've got this kink where I want to watch porn, where people are honest, loving, loyal, decent, and really like each other. Help me up with your hottest links, please. And another man replied and said, there's this website called Make Love Notporn where you can watch real couples making love. He said, I watched a video where a woman said to her man, I love you. While they're making love, he said sincerely. I cried when I heard that. We are one of the solutions to toxic masculinity.
- [11:39]
B
Oh, God, it's so beautiful. It's so lovely. If you were to write Cindy's, you get to say top three, top five. How would you encourage people to communicate with each other about sex?
- [11:52]
C
First of all? And Kelly, that's a great question because this is absolutely our mission at Make Love, Not Porn, to make it easier for every single person in the world to. To talk openly and honestly about sex. So point number one is literally just start communicating, okay? And one of the reasons that's so important is because it's not just porn that influences our attitudes towards sex. It's also popular culture in general. And unfortunately, too many movies and TV series have made people think that great sex should be wordless. Because in a rom com, the couple melt together wordlessly fall gently back onto the bed in slow motion. Wordlessly, by the way. Zero foreplay. Instant penetration. Wordlessly. Simultaneous orgasm. Wordlessly wake up next morning beaming each other across the pillows wordlessly. Seriously, fuck that shit. Great sex is born out of great communication. So my first piece of advice is start talking in bed. It's enormously ironic that because we don't talk about sex generally, people find it bizarre to talk about sex with the people they're having it with while they're actually having it. So just start talking, because the key thing is that actually everyone is dying to talk about sex. And I'll give you my own example, because I am my own research lab. You know, I'm very open about the fact that I date younger men casually and recreationally. I date a lot of them. I see for myself exactly how this plays out in bed all the time, you know, and by the way, not all the younger men I date need this advice because some of them are just naturally great lovers. But the old. The old porn moves will be broken out. And I will think to myself, okay, I'm going to have to say something now. And I know the moment I do, the atmosphere will change, but I'm going to have to say something for all the women he will ever sleep with after me.
- [13:57]
B
You're like, there's more than me involved in this.
- [14:01]
C
And here's the important thing, Kenny. That communication is enormously welcomed. Honestly, I'm a big fan of radical simplicity. I like to keep things very simple. The single biggest turn on in this world is to be in bed with someone and know they're having an amazing time because of you. And this is how you get there. And so actually, you know, I date very attractive younger men who had a ton of partners and it becomes extremely apparent in bed that they've never had a conversation about what's going on ever. I remember this is some years ago, I was dating a very attractive young man, you know, had slept with a lot of girls and I talked him through how to make me come when he was inside me. And as I said, it was very obvious that he'd never had any kind of communication like this before. And he absolutely managed there to have a fabulous orgasm. He was thrilled. And afterwards he said to me, he said, I've really learned from you. I am going to start communicating in bed, going forwards because he hadn't been another young gentleman after we both had a wonderful time saying to me, oh, it's all about communication. I was going, yeah. So everyone starts communicating. And honestly, that communication is enormously welcomed. And then the second thing, and I say this a straight woman. And so this especially applies to other straight women. I really encourage straight women to, in communicating, actively complement their male partner and complement every part of their body. And I'll tell you why I say that. So, you know, I meet the younger men I date on cougar dating sites. I applaud the rise of the niche dating site where everybody knows why they're there. You know, I always ask them, so why do you like older women? Why are you on this site? And what I hear most often is, you know, they say to me, women my own age are so insecure and it's kind of exhausting. And by the way, Kelly, I really empathize because I remember myself in my teens and my 20s, from the moment we're born as women, everything around us conspires to make us feel insecure about absolutely everything to do with ourselves. You know, the way we look, the way we talk, the way we dress. Nice girls do this, nice girls don't do that. We spend the rest of our lives coming back from that and some of us never do. So I really sympathize with young women in this context. But what that means is that being insecure can make you very self centered. You're in bed with someone, you're going, oh my God, let me hide my poochy tummy. You know, what's it, you know, And I don't give a shit what anybody thinks of my body. I think I look fabulous naked. And by the way, younger men's reactions absolutely endorse this. So because I feel fine about myself, I actively compliment him. So I call the younger men I sleep with beautiful. I tell them how beautiful they are and I do that deliberately because beautiful is not a word we use with men very often. And I also compliment every part of their bodies. And that's important because the trouble with male lens male centric porn is that it teaches men that sex is entirely dick centric. It's all about how big it is, how hot it is. And there's so much more to sex than that, including having wonderful non penetrative sex. But also there is so much that is sexy about men's bodies that is not their dick. So for example, I am a total sucker for a great male forearm, you know, gently muscled forearm, slight throwing of. And so I will compliment their forearms. I mean, I will just make them feel appreciated, you know, I remember I was dating a 20 year old again years ago. He was on the wrestling team at his college. Okay, body like a Greek God, you know, very good looking. I remember him the morning after sitting on the side of the bed saying to me shyly, you make me feel so sexy. And so to everybody, you know, the second rule of communication bed is absolutely tell your partner everything you appreciate about their bodies. Really make them feel good, they will make you feel good in return. That's how in communicating you both just ease into a lovely, lovely connection. You know, just as people don't talk enough during sex, I don't think people therefore compliment each other during sex enough.
- [18:32]
B
It's so beautiful. I love it. When did you not to get distracted, but I'm insanely curious, when did you stop being insecure? Was it a lightning bolt? Was it a gradual maturing? What? Do you recall that process?
- [18:46]
C
It wasn't one moment, Kelly. You know, as you say, it was a gradual realization. And you know, this comes with age and getting older, which is why I'm so keen to help shortcut this for every other woman. But I just reached the point, and I guess roughly speaking, this would have been at some point in my 30s where I just went, I don't give a damn what anybody else thinks about what I do, about what I look like, you know, and as I say, I really want to get this message to everybody, but especially young women as early as possible. Because fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in life and in business, by the way. You will never own the future if you care what other people think. The only way to live your life is not giving a damn what anybody else thinks. And it's just so freeing, and it's so wonderful.
- [19:47]
B
So many people are like, that I'm going to turn into a mean person. I'm going to turn into a cruel. And it's like, no, it doesn't mean that. If anything, you get to be more compassionate.
- [19:56]
C
Yeah, no, no, exactly. You know, it's funny because, you know, I do media interviews where the interviewer will say something like, so, Cindy, what turned you into such a provocateur? Or you're a very controversial. And I'll go, I don't think about myself as a provocateur. I don't think I'm controversial. And the very fact you are applying those terms to me says a lot more about society, what it expects than me. When you say provocative, controversial, outspoken. All I'm doing is I'm speaking my truth, Right?
- [20:35]
B
You're being yourself. I'm trying to extrapolate, like, for me and, like, you know, hormones and women getting access to hormones and choosing what they want to do with their body. To me, I'm like, I'm so grounded in the fact that I'm right about this and, like, I'm just early. I can wait for the world to catch up or I can just keep doing my thing to, like, help it get caught up. I'm hearing that in you of like, dude, you're right. You're absolutely right. We're just waiting for the world to catch up.
- [21:02]
C
Spot on. Because my favorite quote of all time is Alan Bey, who said, in order to make the future, you have to invent it. And I am all about inventing the future. Too many people think the future is something that happens without us, rolls us over in its wake. And I am all about decide what you want the future to be. Make it happen. Why would you not go? I see a world that is like this. Why would you not make that world happen? You and I are inventing the world we want to live in, basically. Why would you do that?
- [21:42]
B
Well, because you don't. They don't know. It's possible people don't know everything's made up. Like how? Like, you can't bank the fact that you can't bank. If you educate people about sex. That's made up, right? Like, it's all just made up, which means it can be changed or you work your way around it because, you know, like, it's not gravity, right? It's not real. It's made up. A human created that.
- [22:06]
C
Again, in interviews, I will get asked things like, you know, relation to make love, not porn. So, Cindy, when do you think we'll all be less repressed about sex? When do you think all of this will change? And what I always say is, you made a mistake in the way you ask that question, because you asked that question in the passive tense. All of this changes when you and I and everyone else make it change. I make them change. And so you and I are making this shit change.
- [22:42]
B
There's a lot of waiting around, because especially now, what I hear in my world is like, women are mad. When's it gonna change? Is your plan to just sit in your kitchen mad, bitching to your girlfriend about being mad? That's not how things change.
- [22:56]
A
I'm glad you're mad.
- [22:57]
B
Mad's energy. Let's use it, right? But it's kind of this sitting around waiting for the world to be different instead of realizing, like, you're the world.
- [23:06]
C
Exactly, exactly. And I'm a great believer, Kelly, in the fact that change happens from the bott up, not the top down. And what I mean by that is every one of us, every day, taking micro actions. And micro actions are small, simple, easy actions. So easy why we do them, every one of us microacting to change what we want to see change cumulatively. All those micro actions add up at scale to enormous impact. And for example, people have said to me many times over the years, cindy, you know, I love what you're doing with Make Love Not Porn. You know, I've joined, I've subscribed. If I were an investor, I would give you all the money I have, but sadly, I'm not. What else can I do to help you? And so I go, there is a very simple micro action that you can take every day to help us at Make Love Not Porn. And that is very simply, every day, talk about sex, and the next thing you know, I don't mean literally go out there and talk about sex. What I mean is in the course of your daily life, as you go about your business, you know, your work, your personal life, when you have a conversation where if we were not so messed up about sex, it would be perfectly natural to reference it, do that, talk about sex. I give them my example of how I do this because you know how on social media, our friends are always, you know, celebrating birthdays, going on lovely vacations, and they'll post a photo of the celebration or the resort or whatever, then there'll be a stream of comments going, happy birthday, or, oh, my God, that looks like paradise. So I will comment, happy birthday. Hope you had great birthday sex. Or on the gorgeous tropical beach photo, I will comment, oh, my God, that beach looks amazing. Hope you had great sex on it. They did. And so what I'm doing is I'm socializing, talking about sex, you know, bringing it out into the open, just referencing naturally. And when I do that, my friends respond, ha, Simmy. Yes, you bet we did just talk about sex naturally and normally. And people respond and welcome that. And so that's the micro action, you know, I give people. You can help the way make love, not porn is spearheading the social sex revolution. The revolution part is not the sexual. It's the fact we're finally making it social. You can help make that revolution happen by just every day when it would normally be perfectly natural to. But everyone's moving, you know, just talk about sex.
- [25:39]
B
I love it. Segue that into helping this very specific, not minority of women who are so afraid to talk to their male partner because they don't want to offend him all day, every day. I get that. What would you say to that?
- [25:54]
C
I'm a great believer in communication through demonstration. This is one of my personal philosophers, which is don't say it, be it, do it, show it. So make love, not porn is communication through demonstration. You know, it's sex education demonstration. But what I mean by that specifically in the context of couples communication. So something that obviously is an issue for a lot of women is not orgasming with a part porn. What I say is, first of all, every woman absolutely must have her favorite vibrator. And I say favorite vibrator because vibrators are like partners. You've got to find the one that's right for you.
- [26:35]
B
Yeah. You may have to spend a little bit of money.
- [26:37]
C
Yep. Because one woman's rave is another woman's. Can't figure out how to make this thing work. So find your favorite vibrator. And then the important thing is, because women who can give themselves fabulous orgasms with their vibrator are very reluctant to introduce it into sex with their partner because they feel he'll be threatened. And so what I say is, do what I do, which is so I might be in bed with someone and I know that nothing they're doing is going to get me off. And so I will say, and this is not a request, this is a statement that I'll go, darling, I'm just going to get my vibrator out. So I recommend women, you know, just. Just say, I'm going to get my vibrator out. Because the key thing is once he's seen you integrate that vibrator into your lovemaking to give yourself a spectacular orgasm. He's going to be all about it. I find that again with the men I date. You know, the next time we're in bed, they'll go, do you want to get your vibrator out again? Because they so enjoyed the effect when I used it. The same thing with, you know, a young woman wrote to me, and by the way, there are all sorts of reasons for this, including a non right thinking partner. She said she found it difficult to get wet during sex and she really wanted to use lube, but her partner, her boyfriend, felt that she should be getting as wet naturally as all those women do in porn. So I went back and I went, well, first of all, what you don't see out of frame in porn is that giant vat of lube that they're all using on set, because, trust me, they are. But what I said was, and again, this is what I do. Just start using the lube. Because lube makes everything better. You can never have too much lube. It's just fabulous. I mean, whether you think you need it or not, it makes everything better. And so I said, just start using the lube, because the moment he feels how fabulous that is in every possible context, he'll be all about the lube. And so I recommend that, you know, it can be really difficult and awkward to work up to a conversation. Find a way to demonstrate the benefit of what you want to talk about in a way that absolutely will have him going, more of this, please.
- [28:51]
B
Yeah. And maybe not wait for their permission is what I'm hearing is like, no, no, you need to take care of yourself here and do what you need to do here. And that's not a waiting for permission or for him to come up with the idea sort of scenario.
- [29:04]
C
Exactly.
- [29:05]
B
I think there's a lot of women in midlife who. They're down about midlife. They're down about changing bodies. They're down about, is sex going to get worse. They're kind of in the doldrums a little bit. I think it's ripe for reframing because of the empowerment that comes along, because of the zero fucks that comes along. How would you impart that? And do you see that? Or do you hang around with, like, all, like, fuck, yeah, midlife women in your life? But do you see. Do you see what I'm talking about?
- [29:37]
C
I absolutely do, Kelly. And you know, it is this appalling, again, patriarchal culture we live in, which Absolutely manifests in popular culture, so that older women are not sufficiently depicted in fabulous, wildly sexually desirable and attractive ways all around us. And consequently, older women all too often feel that they are invisible. Their life is over. It's all downhill from here. And, you know, a couple of points to make to that. The first one is a very practical one because I work alongside Make Love, Not Porn, as a consultant to support myself. And years ago, I was working on retainer as a consultant to a Japanese advertising agency called Hakahodo, which required me to spend time regularly in Tokyo. So I was in Tokyo for a week, and one evening, I and my colleagues at the ad agency went out for dinner to a sushi restaurant, and we all got tanked on sake. And one of the Japanese women at the agency revealed that in her youth, she had been briefly apprenticed to a very famous Japanese soothsayer, fortune teller kind of person. And it was very brief apprenticeship. So he taught her to read palms, but in quite a limited way. She could read your palm and tell you, you know, I think your career, your love life, your health. And that was kind of about it. So, of course, we're all drunk and sulky around here. We're all going, read me, read me. So she read all our palms, and everyone else is Japanese, so she read them in Japanese. But obviously with me, she had to read it in English, and English wasn't very good, which is part of the charm of this. But because she looked at my palm and she said to me, you are only halfway. And I was 49 years old at the time, and that was exactly how I felt, only halfway. And so, first of all, I say to old women, you have as long to live again as you've lived to date. You have almost as long to live again as you have lived to date. What are you going to do with that? Because it can be all upside from here.
- [31:48]
B
Yeah, you've already learned how to tie your shoes.
- [31:50]
C
Exactly. You can bring all that experience to bear. And secondly, and this is something I encourage people to do at every age, but precisely because of that, now is the time to take a long, hard look inside yourself and ask yourself what really makes me happy? Because maybe it's not staying in that marriage you've been in for the past 30 years that is not giving you anything, including, by the way, zero sex. Maybe it is not carrying on living where you're living, but deciding that you would like to go and base yourself somewhere completely different. Depressingly, especially women very rarely do this, because, again, part of the culture around us says you look after other people. The last person you think about is yourself. Is your husband happy? Are your kids happy? Is your family happy? Are your parents happy? Are your friends happy? And honestly, precisely when you are older is the time to get rid of all that crap and go, what about me? What would make me happy? Because honestly, this is the stage of a life at which you are never too old to do anything. And when you do it, you'll be amazed at how transformative the impact is.
- [33:09]
B
Oh, I love it so much. I see that a lot. So many women are like, well, we're just staying together because, you know, no,
- [33:16]
C
no, no, don't do that. Do not do that, because there's a whole amazing life living out there for you. And by the way, you know, for our listeners who may not know this about me, you know, I am someone who has never, ever wanted to be married. I've never wanted children. Very glad I always knew that as opposed to finding out the hard way by having them. You know, I, I am not a relationship person. I adore being single. I cannot wait to die alone. I date younger men for sex. I'm deliberately public about all of that because we don't have enough role models that demonstrate you can live your life very differently and be amazingly happy. And I'm one of the happiest people I know. So some time back, I was on a podcast about entrepreneurship and stress. And the interviewer said to me, so, Cindy, obviously building make love, not porn, batting all these obstacles is very stressful. Do you have a daily self care practice to kind of counter that? And I went, oh, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I absolutely have a daily self care practice. My daily self care practices. I have no husband, I have no children. That is self care with a capital S and a capital C. Everybody try it. Your children are grown. If you don't want to be with your husband anymore, you know, get rid of him. Oh my God. Life can be amazing when you are living for you.
- [34:42]
B
Yeah, totally. To me, it's like, it goes back to like, once you realize this is all made up, you get to really decide what's right for me. And no, you're not going to go crazy. And you know, like, no, but you're going to live because, you know, people, people ask me like, why do you do this? Why you do that? And like, I recently, I literally quit my job eight days ago.
- [35:02]
C
Oh my God. I didn't know. Congratulations.
- [35:04]
B
I know. Thank you. And it's like once you realize, like, this is Finite. This is gonna end. How do you want to play? What do you want to create? How do you want to change it? Like, once you start thinking like that, you can't help but make different decisions than when you thought differently.
- [35:26]
C
Absolutely.
- [35:28]
B
I love that. So what's your ultimate vision for Make Love Not Porn? Like, what? What's five years? What's 10 years?
- [35:35]
C
First of all, obviously, I want to raise the funding to scale Make Love Not Porn to change the world through sex. And that's really important, Kelly, because ultimately our mission at Make Love Not Porn is to help end rape culture globally. Now, that may sound like a very big mission, but we have 12 years of proof of concept at a micro level because we help end rape culture by doing something very simple that nevertheless nobody else anywhere is doing. We help end rape culture by showing you how wonderful, great, consensual, communicative sex is in the real world. We eroticize consent, our real world 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. One man left a comment saying, this video makes me want to be a better man in the bedroom and in life. We can do that. And then the second thing that I want to achieve, which we are working on right now, is we are finally building and launching later this year something I've had in the pipeline for 10 years because parents and teachers began begging me for this from day one of Make Love Not Porn, which is the 0 to 18 and beyond sex education expansion. MakeClubNotPorn Academy. So this is what I characterize as the Khan Academy of sex education, because Khan Academy, the online tutoring platform, tutors on every other subject under the sun except this one. Educational technology. EdTech is exploding as a sector not in this area. So we last year launched an equity crowdfunding campaign, our first ever. And by the way, it's our first ever, because historically, no crowdfunding platform would accept us. Like everything else infuriating me, the reason we have to do this is because the wonderful actress Jameela Jamil is a big fan of Make Love not porn. She interviewed me on her podcast, Loves what we're Doing, talks very candidly about how porn impacted, you know, her relationship, self esteem growing up. And so she proposed she she lead an equity crowdfunding campaign as our lead investor, and she brought us the we funder. So we are targeting just over a million dollars. We've just passed 400,000 so listeners, if you like the sound of what I'm talking about? Please go to wefunder.com makelovenotporn to support us. Minimal investment is just $100. You know, any amount helps. But importantly, it's enabled us to begin designing and building the academy. And we're building the academy on the same principles as make love, not porn, user generated, crowdsourced, 100% human curated revenue share. So I'm not about reinventing the wheel. This is an aggregation play. We are building the go to global hub for the best of the world sex education content. And so how that works is we are in full educator outreach right now. And obviously, Kelly, we want you and your fabulous work on the academy as well. We're inviting everyone to share with us their own content. Videos, books, comic strips, coursework, the products they want to sell, et cetera. We are bringing all of this together. As always, human eyes will vet everything. And make love, not porn. We make sure it's safe, we endorse it, but we are bringing this all together to make it all easily accessible and searchable by age appropriateness. If you're a parent freaking out, going oh my God, my six year old asked this, what do I say? We will give you the tools and be able to have that conversation. If you're a teacher, the class of 14 year olds, here are all your age appropriate curriculums and you know, coursework and so on. Education, if you're an adult, access all areas. Adults are desperate for all this information as well. But very importantly, the academy will be where children and young people can access sex education without parental teacher gatekeeping. And I'll tell you why that's important. I have a friend who's a mother and, and as you have to these days, she monitors her kids browsing history. So this happened a few years ago. Her son was 8 years old and she saw to her horror that on the family computer he had googled sex for children. So she freaked out, but did the right thing, stayed calm, sat him down. Darling, I happened to see talk me through. This anecdote is adorable and horrifying in equal measure. Because her son wanted about sex. He was a child, he knew he was a child. He wanted to learn about sex in a child appropriate way. He sweetly, innocently googled sex for children. You can imagine what came back. Utterly traumatized. So cannon be when an 8 year old boy can enter his age will only serve him age appropriate sex education. The key thing about this Kelly is in 16 years of make love not porn, I've built up A huge network of educators, brilliant, educated friends all around the world who face all the same challenges I do. Their content gets blocked on Facebook, Instagram, their accounts get suspended. They're bad for promoting what they do. Open, healthy sex education is being blocked, censored and deplatformed everywhere. We are going backwards as a society. I've said to my team, our mission at the Academy is to help organize the world's sex education information. That is a deliberate paraphrase of Google's original mission statement, to organize the world's information. Because they didn't. Today, the algorithm is biased, it's censoring. And so we want to be Google for sex ed. We want to bring together all the amazing work out there already in one place so that everybody can find it. And the wonderful work my friends are doing can reach far, far wider audiences who would welcome all of this, but have no idea where to go to
- [41:36]
B
get it so necessary. It was just in the news very recently. It was either a Reddit post or some sort of group. It was thousands of men all crowdsourcing how to rape women. What's your solution? Cause to me, I'm like, it's just separating the sexes more now. People are like, men are awful. What's your view on something like that?
- [42:00]
C
So there is actually, Kelly, a very straightforward solution to that that has not been happening, but could happen if the people able to implement it would only do so. So, basically, in the broader tech landscape as a whole, every platform that we use today, especially the giant tech platforms, they were founded by young men, usually young white men. Those young white male founders are not the primary targets, online or offline, of harassment, abuse, sexual assault, racism, violence, rape, intimate image abuse. 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 that around us every single day, those of us who are most at risk every single day, women, black people, people of colour, lgbtq, people with disabilities. We design safe spaces and safe experiences, but we don't get funded. Only 1.7% of all venture capital last year went to female founders. And that is why we have still not seen how much better, safer, happier and way more lucrative the future of the Internet could be when it's designed and built through the female lens. And here are the two keywords at scale. The solution to countering all of this is fundamental. Female founders, because we build platforms that solve this, but nobody's funding us. There's a wonderful woman, Melissa Hutchins, who was a Victim of cyber stalking, intimate image abuse. And she has started. I mean, she absolutely, after years of suffering, bore witness, her stalker, her abuser is in jail, thank God. She has started venture called Certify AI, which plans to make it easy to locate intimate image abuse in order to eradicate it. That's the female lens on AI that is not getting funded. And so the answer is, when you fund us at the same level, VCs, investors, you fling millions of dollars at white guys, at tech pros. We build the counterpoint to all of this. We build the solutions and we build the platforms that shift culture. As I said, I'm out to end rape culture with make love, not porn. I'm out to make it completely unacceptable to do that, because right now, none of the men on those platforms are challenging the others and going, shut this shit down, because this is appalling. And we need a culture shift driven by the female lens. And we can make that culture shift happen. You know, I talked earlier about the impact make love, not porn has on men. Imagine that impact at scale when they see how very differently they could operate to get what everybody wants. Love, intimacy, connection. I had a wonderful evening last night. I was invited to give a talk to the Greenwich chapter of the National League of Young Men. Now, I had no idea there was a thing called National League of Young Men until I got this invitation. It's a nationwide nonprofit with chapters around the US and it's wonderful because basically, it's for high school boys and their mothers, and it's designed to give young men the life skills they need to grow up as members of the community, community leaders, people with the right values to really be men in real life in the way that we'd love to see masculinity redefined. And I love the fact that, you know, Erin Hill, the mother, invited me. She's the president of the. Of the Greenwich, Connecticut chapter. And so she held us at a house with another mother. What they did was, you know, There are about 30 to 40 boys between the ages of 14 and 18. They were more on zoom because some of them couldn't make it to the actual IRL event. And, you know, the mothers settled, settled. The boys introduced me, and then they shut the doors, removed themselves completely, so there's no embarrassment. And it was just me and all these lovely teenage boys, and I did a presentation about make love, not porn. Then I opened it up to Q and A, and obviously there was some, you know, squirming and giggling to begin with, but we actually ended up with A fantastic, very free and frank Q and A where they felt able to ask the questions they really wanted to ask, you know, and I was able to give them very straightforward answers. And they really want to know how to make love lot porn, you know, they want to know what girls like. They want to know how to be good in bed. You know, it was a fantastic conversation. And when we are able to drive that culture shift at scale, that is when we can solve all of this hideousness.
- [47:01]
B
Everybody gives Cindy your money.
- [47:03]
C
Exactly.
- [47:05]
B
Exactly. Oh my gosh, that is so inspirational and lovely and beautiful and like. And yeah, I mean, it's everything that I say all the time. Everything you say all the time is like communication, connection. People want to feel belonged and if they don't feel belonged in the real life, they're going to go on a Reddit thread and belong with a bunch of guys trying to figure out how to rape women of like, we need to provide the alternative, whether that's in a loving relationship or in normalizing it in society in general. I love it. Any parting words? Give us the MakeLove NotPorn place to give you money though, too. Not just the other place, all the places.
- [47:44]
C
So, listeners, if you like what I've said, Please go to makelovenotporn.com, sign up and subscribe. Subscriptions start at $10 a month. Very affordable. Consider becoming a make love not porn star. We have a revenue share model. Half of all income from video rentals goes to you. And actually, our make Love not porn stars tell us the experience of showing themselves a make love not porn is transformative for them and their relationships. And we would absolutely love you to, you know, follow indigallup akelovenotporn on Instagram, Twitter, you can find me on LinkedIn. We're on Facebook. But we would especially love you to go to wefunder.com makelovenotporn and invest what you can. And by the way, very importantly, this is not a donation. This is an actual investment. You will own a teensy weensy piece of Make Love not porn. You will be part of our investor group that we will update on everything. You'll be part of actually making Make Love Not Porn and MakeLoveNotPorn Academy achieve everything that I've talked about in this wonderful interview.
- [48:48]
B
Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on and let's be in touch.
- [48:53]
C
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Kelly, thank you so much.
- [48:56]
A
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of youf Are Not Broken if you want to dig deeper with me, sign up for my Adult Sex Education Masterclass where you learn adult things like communication skills, anatomy lessons and desire types, and how to talk to your doctor about sexual health concerns. If you want the Adult Sex Education Masterclass for free, join my monthly membership for more in depth exclusive content, more time with yours truly. A private podcast, coaching and educational empowerment and you can watch my interviews live and get them immediately without advertising. Head over to www.kellycaspersonmd.com for the membership and Adult Sex Ed Masterclass members Get the Master class for free. This podcast is presented solely for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. I am a doctor but not your doctor in this format and all of my platforms and guests including on this podcast are not giving individual medical advice or practicing medicine. See and consult with your own care team for your individual needs and concerns. This podcast is not intended as a substitute for the care and advice of a physician, therapist or other qualified professional. This podcast does not constitute the practice of medicine, in case you were curious about that and no doctor patient relationship is formed. But I still love you. Using the information on this podcast or any of my platforms is at your own risk. Until next time. Remember you are not broken.