“We have shown countless young people what sex looks like in the real world.”

Pornography is more accessible than ever, even for teenagers. This is a concern not only for parents, especially since violent and degrading videos are widespread on porn websites. How can we combat this distorted image of sexuality?

Cindy Gallop is convinced: Videos of real sex are the most effective. She founded the platform Make Love Not Porn. There, people share videos of themselves having sex. In an interview, she explains what distinguishes such videos from pornography and what stands in the way of female founders in the sex tech sector.

You were 49 and a successful advertising consultant when you launched your website, Make Love Not Porn, in a TED talk. What was your goal?

I had no goal. Make Love Not Porn happened to me. The reason was that I was dating young men in their twenties. So, around seventeen or eighteen years ago, I noticed a trait these men had. Long before it was publicly discussed, I experienced very personally and intimately what happens when people grow up in a culture where, first, sex isn't discussed, and, second, all kinds of pornography are freely accessible. When these two factors come together, porn becomes sex education.

How did this manifest itself?

In bed with these men, I encountered a series of sexual behavior patterns that made me think, "Woah, okay—I know where this behavior comes from!" And I realized: If this is happening to me, it's happening to others too. But no one talks about it.

And you wanted to change that.

I set up a small, clunky website at makelovenotporn.com. At first, it functioned like an informational poster saying: These things happen in the porn world—and these things happen in real life. I launched the website at the 2009 TED Conference. My talk went viral. And thousands of people from all over the world wrote me intimate details about their sex lives and porn use. From then on, I felt personally responsible for making Make Love Not Porn bigger and more helpful.

What does the website look like today?

Make Love Not Porn is a social network for sexual videos. It offers insight into the funny, loving, and wonderful ways we all have sex in the real world. It's sex education through real-world examples. The platform is also a social experiment: We don't dictate what sex looks like in the real world; we ask the community. We allow anything that is legal, consensual, and real. We have videos of couples, threesomes, and masturbation videos of men, women, trans, and nonbinary people. They show what a healthy relationship with yourself and your own body looks like.

Who are the people who show themselves having sex on your platform?

Before we launched the platform, we needed a foundation of videos. My then-curator and I spent over a year asking our entire network and many strangers if they would film their real sex for us. Each time, after explaining my idea, I asked if they'd be interested in participating. And I found that the overwhelming response was yes. Many shared videos before they realized they could monetize them. I think most of them are interested in seeing a healthier, more open approach to sex in the world.

What changes when people see such videos?

The platform is as transformative for sex as social platforms have been for the rest of the world. We have shown countless young people what sex looks like in the real world. Because sex may be omnipresent in films, on Netflix and on porn sites - but what it looks like in real life is something you don't see anywhere else. In reality, sex also includes the relationship between the people involved. You can see and feel that in our videos. That's why we even get parents writing to us who want their child to subscribe because they would rather satisfy their curiosity with us than on YouPorn. Our videos make many people feel more comfortable in their bodies.

Like that?

We show real bodies, real hairiness, real penis size, real breast size, real vulvas. This is important. Because you can talk about body positivity all you want, but there's nothing more powerful than watching two people who don't fit the desired body type excite each other and have a great time in bed.

They're videos of people having sex. What distinguishes them from porn videos?

This question shows how broken our society's view of sex is: If someone has sex in a video, it's immediately called pornography! I say that where pornography is a Hollywood film, the videos on our platform are the much-needed documentary. Pornography is scripted, performed, and produced. It is entertainment material, artificially created to arouse. We, on the other hand, show what people do in the real world. A pet might sneak into the room. You see the mishaps that occur. We also have many BDSM videos that show bondage and humiliation. But they are honest, too. They show the context of these practices: the discussion about rules and boundaries beforehand, the cuddling, and the aftercare afterwards.

You mentioned that people can earn money on your platform. How does that work?

To watch videos on our platform, you have to purchase a subscription and rent individual videos. Half of the price goes to the video creators. We invented and introduced this principle years before Onlyfans.

Onlyfans is also a platform where people can share sexy videos and earn money from users' subscriptions. It's a younger platform than yours, but much more successful. Is your authentic approach doomed to be niche?

My ambition is just as big as Onlyfans'. Years ago, I set the goal of a Make Love Not Porn video being rented a million times for five dollars, with the creators getting half the profit. That hasn't happened yet because no one wants to finance us. Onlyfans was created by a few white men determined to exploit sex work to the maximum. If I were that exploitative, I could make a lot more money. But we deliberately operate very differently.

What are the differences between your platform and Onlyfans?

We curate the platform entirely by hand. We watch every video in full before it's shared and read every comment. We've designed the platform to be as safe as possible for the video creators. We obtain consent from everyone in the video and pull the video if any of them no longer want it online. That's why the videos can't be downloaded. And we're unique in that we don't sort videos by popularity or show the most popular ones.

Why don’t you want to show which videos are particularly popular?

First, because we want to show sex in the real world. And that's not competitive. For us, all videos are equally valuable. Second, such a ranking would encourage the production of precisely the type of video that's most popular. We want to prevent that. A venture investor once told me this decision was entrepreneurial suicide. But we're sticking with it.

Where does the money come from to keep the platform running?

The reason we're still around after sixteen years is because this platform is important to me. I put my savings into it and liquidated my pension fund for it—a bad idea at 65. After my TED talk, I spent two years looking for an investor to launch the video platform. He invested $500,000. He's still our main investor, with four million over the last twelve or thirteen years. I tried crowdfunding. Our goal was one million dollars. We only reached half that. On top of that, three banks have closed our accounts this year alone because we create "adult content."

Nobody wants to have anything to do with “adult content,” a code word for sexuality?

Payment service providers like PayPal and Stripe categorically exclude companies with this label. What we do is completely legal; we verify the age of everyone involved. We're more ethical than most social platforms! Yet we have virtually no access to banks, are blocked on social media, and aren't allowed to advertise. I know many female founders in the sex tech space. We all have the same problems. My next project is therefore to found a financial services startup for companies like mine that would otherwise be excluded. There's a huge market there.

In your presentations, you also talk about a learning platform you want to establish. Where do you get the motivation?

Yes, I'm currently looking for investors for the Make Love Not Porn Academy, where we plan to offer educational videos for minors, filterable by age and cultural or religious sensitivity. A platform for education: informative, fact-based, and non-judgmental. There's so much interest and demand for it! I'm not doing all this to implement my great ideas. I'm doing it because people ask me to every day.