LOS ANGELES — A buzz has been brewing about sex educator and entrepreneur Cindy Gallop’s new crowdfunded porn site that some optimistic proponents are hoping will revolutionize online porn — or at least make a dent into what she and others believe is nothing more than male-dominated, fantasy driven porn for men.
Articles in Cosmo, Slate and even Forbes have touted Gallop’s “real sex talk” “Make Love Not Porn” campaign that began with a website in 2009 that’s charter is to deliver the information on the “myths” propagated by porn's mainstream.
Now Gallop’s about to launch MakeLoveNotPorn.tv where folks can post their own videos, and if accepted by her team of curators, serve it up to the site’s visitors for $5 a pop for a three-week rental. The money is then shared 50/50 between the creators (less some fees) and the site.
Gallop has maintained for years that she wants to make people’s sex lives better by explaining that women need not act like porn stars and provide the typical movie fair that includes facial cum shots, anal sex, shaved vaginas, etc.
Her website descriptions make stark distinctions: “Porn World: ‘Men love coming on women’s faces, and women love having men come on their faces. However, she says in the “Real World,” “Some women like this, some women don’t. Some guys like to do this, some guys don’t. Entirely up to personal choice.”
The “real world” sex Gallop is seeking for her new website also invites porn stars to submit their work, but her idea is to blatantly compete with porn’s status quo.
According to the Slate article, “Gallop’s initiative isn’t just about disrupting the hegemony of the semen facial — it’s about making ‘real world sex socially acceptable and socially sharable in a way no one has ever achieved.’ This is pornography that is created entirely by the people participating in it, not an outside team of writers, directors, and producers (even if it's later picked over by a team of curators).”
Gallop is also intent on creating more porn that’s appealing to women — certainly not a new idea as is evident by the endless articles from hordes of new female journalists, bloggers, columnists and legitimate and bogus sex educators — many of whom think because they don’t like what’s been working for years are now de facto experts on the industry.
Of course kudos are sometimes handed out to companies like Girlfriends Films and Abbey Winters. But somehow women already in porn like Pink Visual President Allison Vivas, who is one of the most savvy and progressive women in the industry, often publicly expressing her concern to deliver porn that appeals to women’s tastes, is rarely mentioned by the "male-dominated porn" bashers. Others of note include Tristan Taormino's female-centric video series, and Candida Royalle's Femme Productions to name just a few.
And the hoopla about Gallop’s new endeavor seems to gloss over the fact that a nice offshoot of the website is that she just might make a ton of money from the people who have been clamoring for amateur "real world" porn (that’s actually been provided by the so-called “monolithic male-run porn industry" for years).
What’s more, despite the wishes of Gallop and others, in all likelihood it will be men who plunk down their $5 to see hot amateur action — just like they always have — and Gallop will profit nicely from what's sure to be a healthy amount of “money shots.”