This post originally appeared on Jefferson Wright’s blog the robots are rising. Re-posted with permission.

Three months in, we’re so grateful for your patience and support as our tiny, bootstrapping team continues to build MLNPTV while we real-world test it in beta – with all the usual hitches and glitches.

We need to ask you to be especially supportive right now.

We’re the startup that society doesn’t want you to have. We fight a battle every day to put even the most standard business infrastructure in place, simply because we are ‘adult content’ and we have the word ‘porn’ in our name.

We have a social mission: to make #realworldsex socially acceptable and socially shareable, in order to encourage an open, healthy, honest, real dialogue around sex – because better communication on every front = better sex. We want to change the world of sex and porn for the better. But the world of business, of finance and of payments refuses to help us try.

For this reason, we are having to switch credit card processing partners. We had hoped to be able to make the transition seamlessly, but unfortunately we haven’t been able to do so ahead of our previous partner cut-off date. So right now, for what we very much hope will be a short period of time, you won’t be able to pay for video rentals by credit card. We’re so sorry – we will let you know the minute you can once more.

Also, we know this is a total pain in the butt, but when we reactivate credit card processing, we’ll need to ask you to re-enter your credit card details in order to carry on renting videos (we’ll prompt you when you sign in to do so).

We wish we could offer you PayPal, but PayPal won’t work with us because we’re ‘adult content’.  Neither will Amazon, or other mainstream payment processors.  This interview with me on Inc will give you some idea of the hurdles we face every day:

http://www.inc.com/chris-beier-and-daniel-wolfman/venture-capital-cindy-gallop-make-love-not-porn.html

So we’d love you to set up a Dwolla account to rent our videos:https://www.dwolla.com/  When I pitched MLNPTV to Ben Milne, the founder of Dwolla, he said, ‘Cindy, I don’t know what to say.’ I thought he was about to say ‘No, we can’t work with you’ – and then he said, ‘No, I mean, I really don’t know what to say. I’m from Iowa.’

But Ben got it, and supports us. Like PayPal, when you set up a Dwolla account it takes a couple of days just for bank account confirmation; like PayPal, after that, it’s just as simple and easy to use.

Dwolla only works for users in the US at the moment (but has plans to go global in 2013).  If you’re US-based, please do use Dwolla to rent our videos. If you’re one of our growing community of non-US, international members – please hang on in there, and we will let you know as soon as we can take credit cards again.

Please do bear with us. Every obstacle we encounter is why we have to do what we’re doing, to drive a more open, healthy attitude towards #realworldsex and end ridiculousness like this. As per the line from the Apple ad, ‘The people crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.’

We’re so glad we have you with us, doing just  that.

Cindy, Oonie, Corey, Sarah

Today’s guest post is by Corinne Buschhueter, who came across MakeLoveNotPorn and reached out to us with her thesis. We asked Corinne to share it with all of you – we think you’ll find it as interesting as we did.

The benefits of watching porn together and how to get 200 participants for your research in just a few weeks…

Ever since I was young, I have always been interested in the magic of love. I asked myself questions about why certain couples seem to be happy with each other and others are not. Growing older and getting experience in relationships myself, I was inspired by the role of sex in relationships. Why? Because men and women sometimes seem to be far away from each other’s paradigms on sex, especially when it comes to pornography.

This discrepancy in ideas on pornography between men and women brought me to the following ideas:

I thought, what about if couples watch pornography together? They would at least be honest to each other and talk more about porn and probably also about their own sexlife. Which apparently does not happen at the moment. At the same time, I asked myself whether their sexual life would also benefit from it….

Long story short, two years ago, during my Master study in Social Psychology, I decided to do research on how the mutual use of sexually explicit internet material (pornography) is related to relationship quality in heterosexual relationships.

After fine-tuning the concept with my open and inspiring supervisor Catrin (Associate Professor at the Social Psychology Department at the Free University Amsterdam), I sent out questionnaires to students from around the world. Honestly, I was a bit afraid this would result in a disaster. I thought either I would not get any responses at all, or people would send criticizing emails back to me. However, to my delight, the response rate was enormous!!. During several weeks I received more than 200 responses, with only little effort from my side. Apparently the time was right as our generation was asking for clarification on the subject of porn! And not only this, the data I received showed some fascinating results:

Even though past literature mostly found negative effects of pornography use, especially when consumed alone, my research concluded to more positive effects. It shows that watching pornography together as a couple has a positive link with relationship satisfaction, especially when looking at the factor of passion. This factor scored significantly higher for couples watching porn together compared to couples watching it alone or not at all. Also, all the factors in relationship satisfaction were lowest for individual pornography use! At the same time, sexual activity and sexual disclosure was significantly higher for couples watching pornography together.

Interpreting the discoveries above, we can say that shared pornography use increases the importance of sexually-related facets in a relationship. Mutual pornography use is positively related to higher relationship satisfaction.

I guess we still need to treat these results with caution because pornographic material is very diverse and there are also differences in HOW and WHY people watch it. Yet I think with these results, and projects such as “Make Love No Porn”, we have taken the first steps in breaking our sexual taboo culture and making sex and pornography a normal subject in our relationship (and of course, there is still a lot to find out on that subject)! Further I hope my study can be an inspiration for couples to watch pornography together and not alone!

I do not want to end with the idea that everybody should watch pornography together, at least right away. But I wanted to share my conclusions with you, hoping they will be helpful to you finding your own answers and own path in the future:

• Read my thesis here.
• Follow me on twitter / @corinnebuschh
• Shoot me an email / C.Buschhuter@gmail.com

Thank you Seppi, Bas, Jim and Theadros for your valuable feedback and adding ideas for this blog!

Here at makelovenotporn.tv we talk a lot about how much we love the messy, hot and complex nature of #realworldsex. So often, some of the most compelling and memorable aspects of our sexual encounters in the #realworld are left underrepresented by the kinds of sexual images available online, and while this helps things appear more polished and glossy, it also serves to distance us from relating these images to our own experiences.

Having people see themselves in the #realworldsex videos so generously provided by our MakeLoveNotPornstars is one of the #realworld results we value tremendously, and therefore one of the reasons we hold contextualized #realworldsex in such high esteem. Whether it be in the context of a one night encounter or a romantic bond that last years and years, #realworldsex is the result of #realworldrelationships.

And, of course, through experience, we know that #realworldrelationships change.

We hope our valued MakeLoveNotPorn.tv members will sympathize with the fact that changes in our MakeLoveNotPornstar relationships also, inevitably, mean changes in the availability of their #realworldsex videos.

We’re sorry to report that MakeLoveNotPornstars Ionsquares have ended their relationship, and have asked us to remove their videos from our site.

These things happen, and we are sad to hear this but of course happy to comply. We have of course credited all our members who have active ionsquares rentals, so that they can substitute another video or videos instead.

Please know that when you contribute videos to MLNP.tv, any time your circumstances change or you change your mind – because that’s the way life goes –  we’re happy to remove them.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank ionsquares for sharing their #realworldsex with the MLNP.tv community. Many of you have personally written to tell us how much you’ve enjoyed their videos and it was no doubt their PassionateDomesticKinkyCaringGenerousLoveNotPorn and its relatability in the #realworld that helped garner so much of your praise.

In the meantime, please do continue to enjoy our other videos (and to keep submitting your own #realworldsex!) and we’ll be delivering a new HumpDay edition next week.

xo

Sarah and The MLNP.tv Team

As a newly married person whose daily work involves celebrating love and sex in the #realworld, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of love and how it is expressed. What does love look like? What does love feel like? And, of course, how can we go about expressing our love for others in a way that nurtures and inspires?

If you’ve left your house at any point since Christmas, you’ve probably come into contact with more than your fair share of Valentine’s Day displays. I’ve seen so many this year, I realized the other day that I was subconsciously thinking it was already over! It can be awfully hard sometimes to express what’s in our heart – let alone what we want in bed – but you wouldn’t know it from all the roses, heart-shaped confetti and glittering candy wrappers flying around.

Generally speaking, whether I’ve been single or not, I’ve always tried to maintain a safe distance from both the commercial aspects of this holiday as well as the pessimistic sentiments of those who hate said commercialism so much they end up vilifying expressions of love all together.

The truth is, when we place all our heartfelt expectations on one particular day and expect it/our partner(s) to meet all our dreams of ideal love, odds are they’re going to fall flat. In fact, I always seem to have an amazing date in the days leading up to V-day, causing whatever plans I end up having to feel somewhat forced.

My thinking here is that instead of getting frustrated trying to make #realworldlove fit into the narrow confines of one day, why not embrace the unpredictable ways #realworldlove manifests itself in the #realworld everyday?

And, if you’re curious about what #realworldromanticlove and the #realworldsex that accompanies it looks like in the #realworld, then look no further because this week’s Hump Day Edition: MakeValentinesLoveNotPorn has it in spades!

Whenever Cindy explains MLNP.tv to somebody for the first time, she always mentions how we are a social experiment. We’re putting the call out for #realworldsex and we haven’t the faintest idea what will come back. Similarly, whenever I’m talking about MLNP.tv I like to say MLNP.tv is based on the principle of “Why should we be the ones to say what #realworldsex is? You show us!”

The #realworldsex videos you see on MLNP.tv may not always be or look like what you expect. Simply put, because #realworldsex is so rarely available online, we don’t actually know what it looks like outside the realm of our own direct experience!

MLNP.tv community member Trevor put it like this:

“When I watch videos on makelovenotporn.tv, I feel I’ve never seen people having sex before.”

Not knowing quite what we’re going to get is one of the joys of receiving new #realworldsex videos – they can be short or long, quiet or loud, shot with nice DSLRs or an old web cam – but regardless of these variables they all reveal #realworldsex and #realworldlove the way they really exist.

Joining our journey on the path to discovering #realworldsex this week are three new MakeLoveNotPornStars, for a total of four new #realworldsex videos!

• Subtle Cravings – A couple who recently started a blog documenting their #realworldsex and marital musings share a surrealist oral exploration.  Here is a little taste:

• EllaBella – A lady with a beautiful smile who – captivated by faces at the moment of orgasm – gets herself off in no time in order to share hers.
• ezdoesit – A lady who knows how to get down with herself in a way that is sensual yet precise.

Whatever your pleasure, I’m sure you’ll find some a lil’  sumthin’ sumthin’ to love in this week’s edition! And, maybe you’ll even love it so much that you’ll want to wrap it up in a valentine and gift it to someone special!

Yep, that’s right, makelovenotporn.tv now offers you the option of treating your sweetie to the gift of #realworldsex! What better way to say be mine?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – we want YOU to show us what #realworldsex looks like! Not only can it be an amazing experience, it can also earn you #realworldcash!

Feel free to hit me up at sarah@makelovenotporn.tv if you have any questions about submitting after reading this post.

xo

Sarah

A question I get asked a lot is, ‘What do you mean when you say MLNP.tv is #realworldsex? Aren’t you just another amateur porn site?’

Well – no.

Here’s a personal perspective on some examples of what I envisaged as #realworldsex when I originally began concepting the whole idea of MakeLoveNotPorn.tv. I stress ‘examples’, because actually, MakeLoveNotPorn.tv is an experiment. We’re building the platform and putting it out there, and we haven’t the faintest idea what we’re going to get back. YOU – the world, our community, our wonderful MakeLoveNotPornstars – are showing us, by sharing your very own #realworldsex with us.

This is just the kind of thing I mean when I reference #realworldsex.

• #realworldsex is funny. If you can’t laugh at yourselves when you’re having sex, when can you? The same ridiculous shit happens to all of us – but we often don’t realize that because we don’t tend to share; it’s more ‘OMG what happened last night was so excruciatingly embarrassing I can never talk about it to anyone ever!’ Like…. the nightmare putting the condom on. In theory, it’s one smooth seamless act; in practice, we all know it doesn’t happen like that – and when it doesn’t, things go soft, the moment passes, encounters get derailed. Queefing, fanny farts? Everyone does it. Nothing to be ashamed of. Hit us with the outtakes! We want the sexual equivalent of America’s Funniest Home Videos on MLNP.tv !

• #realworldsex is messy. You think porn’s dirty? Porn actually sanitizes sex. Porn’s very clean, compared to #realworldsex. Nobody has hair.  You never see anyone using lube, even though they get through gallons on set. You don’t see any of those nice, fun, messy things that happen in the real world. So we welcome stuff like period sex. You don’t see that in porn – and as a result too many young men and women actually think you can’t have sex during your period. But it’s when we women are at our horniest, and it’s fab. We’d love to see your great period sex.

• #realworldsex is responsible. In straight porn, there are no condoms. Or if there are, and this goes for gay porn too..suddenly the condom’s on! Jumpcut! Where did that come from?!  Well, we want to see your hottest, most arousing #realworldsex videos actively competing to eroticize condom usage. What’s the hottest way you can introduce a condom into the action? Put it on? Take it off? Dispose of it? I have sex with condoms all the time. I want to watch my kind of sex – plus I want creative ideas for those awkward condom moments we all encounter. MLNP.tv wants to fill the gap out there between no-condom porn, and death-disease-and-disaster-prevention condom sex ed, with #condomhot #realworldsex – because if more of us had more creative ideas on how to make using condoms hot and arousing, there’d be a lot more safe sex happening, a lot less STDs, and a lot less unwanted pregnancies. The condom brands have it all wrong with their messaging: reliability is a given.  All anyone ever really wants to know is that condoms won’t get in the way of great sex.  So please – hit us with those MakeCondomHotLoveNotPorn submissions and show us!

• #realworldsex is lazy. You know that thing when you and your loved one have had a long hard day? You’re both lying in bed at the end of that long hard day, totally knackered…..but really horny? You want to get off……you don’t want to have to lift a finger to do it. Well, in the real world, that’s when you have ‘sleepy sex’ – or ‘lazy person sex’, which is our MadamCurator Sarah and her husband Jon’s term for it. There are many hot creative ways to MakeLazyPersonLoveNotPorn – and we want to see them all. You don’t have to rock it like a pornstar every time!

Because we are an experiment, we’re learning all the time ourselves about our own reactions to #realworldsex, as we view what you send us. Our very first #realworldsex submission ever was from MakeLoveNotPornstars BZandGloria – 30 or so minutes of very hot straight sex. As I was watching it, I found I couldn’t stop looking at Gloria’s face. That’s because she was loving it. She was so aroused, she was so turned on, she looked adorable how much she was enjoying it. Regardless of how hot the rest of the action in frame was, I found myself fixated on her face – because we rarely see faces and expressions like that in porn.

UK magazine EasyLiving published an article in its February issue by a woman who volunteered to make a #realworldsex video with her husband, submit it to us and write about the experience. Check out that video by HavingFun – it’s great. She told us: ‘Making the film was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and a fabulously bonding experience with my husband. I think you’re really on to something.’  We were fascinated – we didn’t realize when we started this venture, that the actual process of making a #realworldsex video for MLNP.tv could in itself be relationship-transforming. We’d love to hear from you what your experience is when you submit!

What this means, is that MLNP.tv doesn’t play quite the same role as porn. We’re not simply masturbatory material (although of course we are very happily that too). We are a fascinating glimpse into the real, raw, intimate sex lives of real people. One of our members, a man who’s obviously watched a lot of porn, told us,

‘When I watch your videos, I feel I’ve never seen people have sex before.’

Another man summed up what we’re all about perfectly when he told us,

‘Watching porn makes me want to jerk off. Watching your videos makes me want to have sex.’

---

So…that’s my take on #realworldsex. Next post up, MadamCurator will be talking specifically about the #realworldsex judgements we apply when we curate the wonderful videos you send us. Plus we want to hear from you what you consider #realworldsex – we’re learning all the time, together.

I’d like to share with you two verbatim exchanges I’ve had with people I’ve met in the past couple of months…

Actually, there’ve been quite a few of these, but I’m just going to give you two examples

Young woman:  ‘I’m so thrilled to meet you! I’m a huge fan of what you’re doing. I Love MakeLoveNotPorn!’

Me: ‘Oh, that’s wonderful!  Have you joined MakeLoveNotPorn.tv?’

She: ‘Er….no.’

Me: ‘Darling, you are not a true fan until you have signed up and rented at least one video to support us.’

Which she promised to do immediately.

Second exchange, with another young woman:

She:  ‘I’m so excited to meet you! I’m OBSESSED with MakeLoveNotPorn.tv!’

Me:  ‘That’s great! Are you a member?’

She: ‘Um…no.’

Me: ‘Darling, you cannot say you are obsessed with MLNP.tv and not have signed up and rented at least one video.’

We could not be more thrilled to have so many wonderful people who believe in what we’re doing and support our mission to create a more open, honest dialogue around sex in the real world.

But we need you to put your money where your mouth is, people.

Years ago, when I was running the Coca-Cola account at my old agency BBH London, Vinita Bali, who was head of the Coke brand at the time, identified a form of behavior – or, more accurately, not behavior – she termed ‘virtual consumption’.

 She was referring to the fact that it was possible at the time (and has been, ever since) to, say, attend a soccer match sponsored by Coke, where you would be surrounded on the field by Coke billboards; receive a Coke-branded program; get free giveaways of Coke caps and scarves; watch Coke ads on the electronic screens at half-time; enjoy musical entertainment at half-time sponsored by Coke; have an absolutely wonderful time, and leave, without having at any point during the entire experience actually purchased and drunk a can or bottle of Coca-Cola.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, MLNP.tv is not Coke. But, while Coke is able to put a lot of monetary resources toward enticing you to buy their product, we’re mobilizing our real-life blood-sweat-and-tears bootstrapping, underfunded, overloaded human resources to the max in order to give #realworldsex the due it deserves.

If you believe in our mission of being pro-sex, pro-porn and pro-knowing the difference, talking about it and saving the world through better sex, then please help us break free of the limits of virtual consumption and gain the real world consumption we need to make this venture succeed.

Think of it as our version of the Kickstarter effect. If every one of you who supports us joins MLNP.tv and kicks in just $5 to rent one video (half of which, by the way, goes to the fabulous MakeLoveNotPornstars who contributed it) that will go a long way to helping this tiny, bootstrapping, underfunded venture keep going and growing.

And when it comes to walking the talk and doing this one teensy weensy microaction  – funnily enough, we have a platform for that, which is all about turning good intentions into action.

Just click here on our MakeLoveNotPorn actionplatform on our sister startup, IfWeRanTheWorld.

We really really need, and would really really love and be so grateful for, your help and support. Please pick up a microaction, email microactions to your friends and network to invite them to microact too, and spread the actionplatform everywhere you can (you can share it straight from IfWeRanTheWorld to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).  The more people who do this, the more we can all turn ‘virtual consumption’ into #realworldhelp and #realworldsupport, the more we’ll be able to keep doing what we’re doing and grow MakeLoveNotPorn to be the global movement and socializing-sex influence we’d all like to see.

We can’t thank you enough for helping.

Cindy wrote this op-ed for the The Independent - it was originally published Jan 31, 2013 – and it is awesome and you should totally read it.

Much that people find deplorable about porn is actually driven by its business problems as an industry.

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I wrote this op-ed for the The Irish Journal.  It was originally published Feb 4, 2013

Today’s young women and men are being educated about sex by watching hardcore porn online for years before they ever have their own first romantic or sexual experience. For their sake, it’s time to open up about real sex

I DATE YOUNGER MEN – usually in their twenties. Which is how I began encountering, five years ago, an issue that would never have crossed my mind if I had not encountered it very directly and intimately: what happens when total freedom of access to hardcore porn online, meets our society’s equally total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex, and results in porn becoming, by default, the sex education of today. In not a good way.

Recent studies show the average age today at which a child first views hardcore porn online is 11, with some studies putting that number as low as eight. This is not because eight year olds go looking for porn. It’s a function of what they’re shown on someone’s cellphone in the playground; what happens when they go round to a neighbour’s house – because it doesn’t matter what parental controls you have in place at home, your kids live their lives in other places; or, because this is the most wired generation ever, an eight-year-old does something cute and innocent – they learn a new naughty word, they Google it – and one or two clicks away is something they never expected to find.

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The above image is a slice of a ‘porn collage’ by the brilliant Andy Bonomo, whose work I strongly encourage you to see.

When we talk about how we designed MakeLoveNotPorn.tv to be SFW except when you are on an individual #realworldsex video page, by far the most common reaction is this:

When you visit the typical adult site, you expect to be visually assaulted by the blinking, thrusting, spurting, scissoring, pounding banner ads that typically surround the content.  Not to mention the oftimes eye-popping nature of the previews themselves.  Having a marketing background, I totally get it – you want the customer to find your product sizzling enough to want and in order to make it so you resort to all kinds of tried-and-true merchandising shenanigans, not the least of which is showing off your product in it’s most flattering light.  In this way, the typical porn site is no different than, say, Amazon or Net-a-Porter*.

On MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, you don’t see anything that would make you want to slam your laptop shut until you are actually on the page where you watch the video.  You could be on a plane perusing the library or member profiles and the person sitting next to you would be none the wiser.  We took this approach for two reasons:

• We want you to be able to talk about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv and our mission openly and without shame - we’re making #realworldsex socially acceptable and socially shareable, and our experience design needed to reflect that (as much as possible).
• We wanted our experience to mimic, in a way, how you sexually interact with someone you care about – all of that teasing, testing, saucy, sweet titillation that leads to a great rogering session (and makes it great).

This is just one of the many ways in which we sought to draw distinct lines between MakeLoveNotPorn.tv and the #realworldsex we show, and amateur and porn itself.

What do you think?  Did we succeed?  Do you have ideas for other ways we can make this happen?  Let us know in the comments!

* Full disclosure:  I am helpless in the face of the kind of shoe porn that these folks offer up on a regular basis.

Receiving a new #realworldsex submission is exciting. Opening my laptop to find that another courageous person (or persons) has decided to share something so intimate with me and the makelovenotporn.tv community makes me want to do a happy dance and give them a hug at the same time.

Reviewing a #realworldsex submission is fun, hot and sometimes a bit nervewracking. I could sit here and tell you that I never get flustered or slightly shy when watching people have #realworldsex, but that wouldn’t be the truth. And it shouldn’t be. The #realworldsex videos on makelovenotporn.tv are there to make you feel things – physical and yes, emotional. As Cindy likes to point out, porn sanitizes sex and makelovenotporn.tv is here to bring back its beautiful humaness.

It is an equally privileged and tough position to be in, when you are in charge of evaluating whether someone’s most intimate moments are going to end up on your site. The nervewracking part is the moment where I realize that the video I’m currently reviewing will not make it onto the site.

Yep – not all videos that are submitted to makelovenotporn.tv end up on makelovenotporn.tv. Most of them do, but some of them don’t. And, usually, when a video is rejected it has more to do with how the sex is being framed, rather than the people in the video not enjoying themselves.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve yet to receive and then reject a video where I didn’t believe that the people involved in the video were very proud of and happy with their #realworldsex. This is the tough part.

As a rule of thumb, the #realworldsex videos that get accepted most quickly onto makelovenotporn.tv are those that show consensual #realworldsex without performance.

What do I mean by without performance? That whatever is happening in the video is not put on for the camera but instead shows what the people in the video would actually do if there was no camera rolling.

As you’ve probably guessed, many of the most popular sex positions that you see in porn aren’t used over and over ‘cause the performers find them the most pleasurable. They’re used because they’re the sex positions that give the camera person easy access to a close-up shot of a pornstars nether regions and the viewer at home a clear view of the action (read:penetration shots).

And while I certainly don’t mind a few close-up shots here and there, that’s not what makelovenotporn.tv is all about and that’s not really what your sex life is all about either.

The videos that end up on MLNP.tv frame/capture non-performative #realworldsex in a way that allows MLNP.tv to be a place where people (current and future MakeLoveNotPornStars alike) can see sex showcased in a way that has rarely ever been seen on the web. The folks in the mainstream porn industry are experts at filming and distributing #pornworldsex – we are designed to be a place where people know they can find curated #realworldsex. It can (and does) include real-life pornstars, but the sex itself is totally different.

#Realworldsex is sex between #realworld lovers not between people who are only #pornworld co-workers.

#Realworldsex is whatever you want it to be.

It can be one person, two people or any number of people. It can be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or simply refuse to even be labeled. It encompasses all genders and sexual identities into infinity and beyond but doesn’t buy into fetishizing or commodifying them.  It is, at its core they way we express and experience emotions and sensations in the context of relationship with ourselves and/or another person/persons.

#Realworldsex videos that make their way onto MakeLoveNotPorn.tv are recordings of specific moments and experiences in time that allow the viewer as big a view of the complexity of a #reallife sexual experience/exchange/revelation/release as the MakeLoveNotPornStars in question are willing to share.

 Sharing a video of yourself having #realworldsex with another person, let alone me and the rest of the MLNP.tv community is a gift born of great bravery and willingness to be vulnerable for the benefit of others. MLNPstars are people who feel so passionately that people can experience and enjoy great #realworldsex that they share the #realworldsex they love so that people can realize that potential in their own lives.

 And by realizing the potential for pleasurable and emotionally rewarding #realworldsex in their own lives, I don’t mean that the people who watch videos on makelovenotporn.tv will necessarily go off and do exactly what they see in them – but rather that the videos available to them on makelovenotporn.tv will help them see how #realworldsex can be a way of connecting with oneself or others in a way that is mutually pleasurable, consensual and free of porn cliches.

One of our favorite quotes comes from a male member on our site who said:

‘Watching porn makes me want to jerk off. Watching your videos makes me want to have sex with my girlfriend.’

My hope is that watching our MakeLoveNotPornStars having great #realworldsex will give our users more confidence to talk about sex, tell their partners what they really want in bed and be less or no longer ashamed of their desires or bodies.

Of course, we’re also down for getting you off and inspiring you to try things or just even think about sexy things you’ve never experienced before. Expanding the repertoire in a respectful way (even if it’s respectfully spanking your partner because they asked for it) is never a bad idea.

How to capture your #realworldsex:

I have written and spoken a bit already about how to capture/frame your #realworldsex in a way that is in-line with the MLNP.tv philosophy but because I want everyone’s #realworldsex video to have as much of a chance as possible of being accepted and published on makelovenotporn.tv, here are some more tips:

• Get creative with your intro video and backstory! Guys, this is your sizzle. It’s what will entice people to rent your video and it’s also what gives us a sense of who you are, what you like and why you decided to share your #realworldsex. It’s the difference between knowing that you and your wife have been together for 16 years and you still find her more beautiful than ever and thinking that I’m watching a one night stand. Or watching what was a super spicy one night stand and not realizing you two have never been together before ’cause the chemistry is off the charts. Context is hot and important. Please include it.

• Start the camera running early. This is a tough one, I get it. But one of the things about stepping out of a #pornworld mindset (even an unconscious one) is to challenge the idea that the most important part of the video starts when you’re already naked. One of the things MLNP.tv was designed to showcase were the moments you never see anywhere else, and those include whatever is happening before you get down to it. Whether it’s snippets of your flirtation at the bar or just you watching TV on the couch, we want to get a little glimpse of the context this #realworldsex is coming out of. For inspiration, click on the photos below.

Do you and your partner shower together after sex? Bring the camera into the bathroom and record the two of you talking over the sound of the water. This I want to see! I absolutely love how Subtle Cravings show cuddling at the end of this video - take note!

• Leave the camera running afterward. When you’re done having #realworldsex, it’s not like you have an orgasm and the POOF! you’re back in your house fully clothed, sitting in front of your computer. Please don’t leave us hanging like that! Let us see how you or you and your partner(s) debrief and come down from what you’ve just experienced. Even if it’s just seeing you let out a satisfied sigh and reclining while your heartbeat returns to normal. Better yet, let us see the cuddling, the pillow talk, whatever is it that is your equivalent of the post-sex-cigarette.

• Give us a wide angle. It’s totally fine if you don’t want to show your face in your video but please don’t mistake “not showing your face” with “only showing your frisky bits.” The idea that we only want to see sex as upcloseaspossible and only from one person’s point-of-view is one of the oldest porn cliches there is. It’s something that a boring porn producer might do because they’re scared no one will pay for their videos unless the “proof” of sex is in your face at all times. Let’s explode that, shall we?  Violet+Rye do a great job of contextualizing and showing emotion in #realworldsex without showing their faces. Check it out.

• Edit minimally. Pop quiz: How does MLNP.tv want to show #realworldsex? Answer: In a way that has never been seen before. As Cindy pointed out, #realworldsex is messysillyhotawesomeunpredictable but most of these things (aside from maybe some hotness) are hardly ever kept in the final cuts of porn scenes because they are thought to interrupt the flow of said hotness. We beg to differ. Big time. In fact, we believe that it’s those moments that make #realworldsex, well, #realworldsex should be left in. So, if you really want to do some editing then please have a light touch.

• Let there be light. The thing about watching #realworldsex is that you actually want to be able to see what’s going on. Make sure you turn on a lamp or two, leave the overhead light on or have morning/daytime sex. You’re proud of your #realworldsex – light it that way!

• Music? I love music. But depending on the music you use in your video, it can be distracting and not in a good way. Personally, I want to hear just #realworldsex or #realworldsex with maybe a little bit of copyright-free music in the background. For audio inspiration, check out any of AudioSmut’s videos – they’ve got that on lock.

So there you have it, my sweets – what is #realworldsex and how to capture it, according to Madam Curator. There is so much more to say here and I will continue to update this series but I wanted to share these thoughts now in order to help all our current and future MLNPstars have a better understanding of our vision and some more tips to help them along the way as you watch, film and share #realworldsex!

What is #realworldsex to you? How do you know it when you see it? Any other tips? Let me know in the comments!

When I tell my friends about MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, I often get confused looks. Why would I pay for porn, when the internet is basically made of the free stuff*?

Paging through RedTube or PornHub, I’m visually assaulted by images of simulated gang rape, pedophilia, and other acts I find a turn-off at best, and degrading or triggering at worst. The descriptions use terms like “slut”, “whore”, “bitch”, “brutal”, and graphic descriptions. I’m seeking out something that will excite me, but have to wade through pages of words and images that depress me. Sometimes I’ll abandon the enterprise altogether after realizing I’m no longer in the mood.

I love the idea of paying real people to share their experiences. But more than that, I appreciate how MakeLoveNotPorn.tv respects me as a viewer and participant by allowing me to discover what I want to watch instead of pandering to the lowest common denominator of shock and awe. That’s why I tell my friends, “you get what you pay for”.

* And cats. The internet is also made of cats.

Ever wonder what our makelovenotpornstars do with all the cold hard #realworldcash they make sharing their #realworldsex on MLNP.tv?  MLNPstars bilikesscifi break it down for us.

We made some money!

Several months ago we posted two videos on MakeLoveNotPorn.tv. We liked this project and wanted to support it for several reasons. We love that its a start-up (yay entrepreneurs!) that focuses on real world sex. A lot of porn (not all, but a LOT) is staged and artificial. A major reason I don’t like porn is that the women are so often forgotten – they are there strictly to give pleasure, not be a part of it.

Re-posted with permission from A Tale of Bi and Bi. Follow them on twitter and tumblr.

Originally published in Huffington Post on May 30th, 2013. 

Cindy Gallop thinks we think about porn all wrong. She appeared on HuffPost Live on Thursday to chat about her site, MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, which seeks to depict the “real world sex” that is often absent from mainstream pornography and encourage an open conversation about sex.

“The headline is ‘it’s not that porn degrades women, it’s that business degrades porn,’” Gallop told co-hosts Alicia Menendez and Marc Lamont Hill. She found MakeLoveNotPorn.tv shortly after a heralded 2009 TEDTalk on sexuality.

“Very ironically one of the things that creates problems is the fact that they’re not allowed to do business under the same conditions as everyone else,” Gallop continued.

Watch Cindy on Huff post Live Here!

Written by Elisa & Lily for StyleLikeU.  Originally published on June 11th, 2013.

With porn being more accepting of real women’s bodies than fashion (as recently noted by Fiona Duncan in Bullett), we, as a culture, need to get real. And Cindy Gallop says that she is going to fucking-well show us how via Make Love Not Porn, the website she started in order to combat culture’s rampant sexual miseducation. Cindy’s platform provides an open and shame-free rebuttal to the pervasive, male-dominated construct of pornography. By allowing people to upload real-life lovemaking videos, Cindy shows that sex is not choking your partner or cuming on her forehead, but is funny, beautiful, messy, glorious, wonderful, ridiculous human silliness.

Debunking assumptions is one of Cindy’s fortes. While many in the high-powered advertising world (where Cindy had an illustrious career) were wearing their version of menswear to fit in, she sealed deals with male execs in python pants and shoes that were anything but orthopedic. Just as Make Love Not Porn makes clear that women are unhappy when they don’t have an orgasm during sex, Cindy, too, makes it evident that men are more referential to a woman whose wardrobe stresses, not suppresses, her individuality (i.e. power). As someone who has made a career of understanding what people want, Cindy is someone to pay attention to. “The future is for inventing, not sitting around idly while it happens to you,” she zealously quotes Alan Kay. Her forecast? We’re on an unstoppable trajectory towards “authenticity, genuineness, and self-expression.”

Watch the rest here!

Bloody Lovely Audrey – Heat from Bloody Lovely Audrey on Vimeo.

 I loved it – because I hate the inauthentic portrayal of sex that we see all the time in films, television, music videos. I also loved it because we conceived MLNP.tv to be many things, including an alternative sales and distribution channel for musicians, offering a platform nobody else does: music to MakeLoveNotPorn to. Everybody has their sex soundtracks, but music never gets sold that way. Equally, sex and music go together like a horse and carriage – we are where you can showcase the sexuality of music and musicians in a way no one else will let you.

Just a couple of competitions we’d love to win. It’d only take a minute of your time but it’d mean the world to us

Help Bloody Lovely Audrey win a slot in Splendour in the Grass 2013 (Australia)

http://www.triplejunearthed.net.au/BloodyLovelyAudrey

Just Rate and Review our songs. Takes a minute

Help Bloody Lovely Audrey win a slot at Lallapalooza (United States of America)

https://apps.facebook.com/promotionshq/contests/317526/voteable_entries/68160058

Its a simple click of ‘Vote’ and we have a chance to play with the big boys.

Written by Matthew Trost for TED Blog.  Originally published on December 2, 2009. 

“At TED2009, audience member Cindy Gallop gave a 4-minute presentation that became one of the event’s most talked about. Speaking from her personal experience, she argued that hardcore pornography had distorted the way a generation of young men think about sex, and talked about how she was fighting back with the launch of a website to correct the myths being propagated. Later, she expanded her brief presentation into a provocative and thought-provoking TED Book.”

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of interviewing Larry Flynt at the invitation of PromaxBDA for the opening session of their annual conference

Pleasure, because this year marks the 25th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Falwell vs Flynt. Larry Flynt fought a battle on behalf of all of us for the First Amendment and the protection of free speech. Whatever your view of Larry Flynt (and Larry and I do not see eye to eye on a number of things, as we discussed in the green room) if he hadn’t won that battle, well, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman wouldn’t have been able to exist to operate their outrageous humor, political satire and freedom of target-picking in the way they do today, and neither would any of the rest of us.

Larry wrote on his blog:

Keep in mind that starting trouble can be a lonely business. When I took my free-speech case to the Supreme Court, I was on my own. Now everyone’s reaping the benefits of my victory. Sometimes it may seem like you don’t have a chance of winning, but you sure as hell won’t if you don’t try.

Not a lot of people have gone looking for trouble as much as I have, and I have the scars to prove it. Everything I know I learned the hard way. Why didn’t I ever learn my lesson and shut the hell up? Because life may be a bitch when you’re fighting for freedom, but the other option is worse.

My greatest hope is that the next generation will look at what I’ve done and realize that sometimes there’s no greater honor than being a righteous pain in the ass.

Beyond the Supreme Court victory, not as much has changed as Larry and we would like to see. The battles to build a business based on ‘adult content’ that he describes in his autobiography An Unseemly Man are battles I and my team are still fighting today to build MakeLoveNotPorn, a #realworldsex platform with a social mission. We couldn’t empathize more with ‘Sometimes it may seem like you don’t have a chance of winning, but you sure as hell won’t if you don’t try.’

And so, to every piece of business infrastructure and not-available-to-us funding source where ‘no adult content’ in the small print means we have to exercise determination, ingenuity, battling, bootstrapping, begging and pleading – we will continue to be a ‘righteous pain in the ass’, in our determination to make this business work and to drive a more open, honest, healthy, truthful attitude to and dialogue around #realworldsex in the way that we all want to see.

I asked Larry where the name ‘Hustler’ came from originally. He said for him the meaning was someone, whether a man or a woman, who just wants to get ahead, in business and in life.

We’re hustlin’.

Cindy

Support us by renting #realworldsex videos here!

Written by Gloria of BZandGloria

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My first intro to “porn” would have been my mom’s copy of the The Joy of Sex.  She kept it hidden in her underwear drawer and I would carefully pull it out when she was at work.  The renderings of the shaggy hippies that looked like my friend Lisa’s parents were a bit confusing but they certainly did indeed communicate the “joy” from the title. They smiled and giggled and tumbled about. It sure seemed like a lot of fun, and I couldn’t wait to be a grown-up and get in on that action. (In stark contrast to the terrifying and confusing  Japanese woodcuts in the back… Alex Comfort’s attempts to celebrate diversity may have backfired there with me.)

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I grew up before internet, so porno movies or magazines were pretty hard to come by for a young girl with no males in the household.  There was the dirty bookstore whose painted windows and warnings to those under 18 against entry made me imagine there were hordes of drooling R. Crumb characters waiting to attack me inside.  And I would have sooner attempted a bank heist than grab the crinkly cellophane-wrapped Hustler at the Waldenbooks in the mall. In high school, I sent away for an Adam & Eve catalog that sold porn tapes, simulated body parts and flavored lube. Instead of getting some insight into my favorite topic, I got more confusion. And it wasn’t that I was naive, I knew what people used the pocket pussies and dicks molded from actual porn star privates were for. It’s just that everybody looked steely-eyed and grim or shrieking in pain. No hair, no hippies, no fun.So all that was left to guide my wild imagination were dirty parts in nondirty books and foreign films where people were beautiful, sex was consensual (or if it wasn’t that was a very, very bad thing) and it was above all pleasurable. I dreamed of a man grinning lasciviously at me as we romped through turn of the century Paris (I liked period dramas). We wouldn’t be able to keep our hands off each other. We’d be dirty and fleshy and howling in delight.

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Then when I turned 18, college, actual sex and the internet happened all at once. Looking back it could have been in the same weekend. Interestingly though, with all this access somehow I fell into a porn gap. Maybe because once I had my first boyfriend I was more eager to take my research into the field. Of course, with boyfriends and male roommates came those elusive pornographic magazines and videos… actually in my house! Their prior illicitness made them sexy for sure, but that wore off pretty quickly. I did find myself wondering, “Is that how you’re supposed to do it?” or  “Is that what I look like?” and “that looks difficult.” It was like finally making enough money to eat at fancy restaurants that don’t have signs or websites and realize that it’s all just duck fat, truffles and foam. And once my curiosity was satisfied, I didn’t venture back for more that often. Not because I thought it was bad or dumb, it just wasn’t my cup of tea… similar to how I feel about Dr. Who. Also, I was pretty sure that all porn sites would give my computer a virus.

Think about it, with all the porn at our finger tips, accessible 24-7, we’d still totally peek if a co-worker pointed to window across the way and said she just saw people having sex.

When I think about what MakeLoveNotPorn.tv will look like in the future, I envisage a space online that showcases every single possible combination of genders, sexual orientations and turn-ons imaginable. If I’ve done my job as Madam Curator, MLNP.tv will be a place where everyone feels comfortable sharing and celebrating their #realworldsex regardless of race, sex, age or what/who they like to do in bed. Or on the floor. Or in a truck. Or in a hotel room in Rome.

You get the idea.

From its very inception, MLNP.tv was designed to be a place where everyone can share their #realworldsex, regardless of whether they’ve filmed themselves in the past or the thought never even crossed their mind before joining the MakeLoveNotPorn community.

People Like You Make Love Not Porn.

People Like You share their #realworldsex on MLNP.tv!

havingfun deepen their relationship through the experience of filming their #realworldsex.

Violet+Rye MakeMarriedBrooklynCinematicLoveNotPorn to the delight of their twitter fans.

ThisIsOurHandle MakeGayLoveNotPorn in a way that brings their personal and professional lives together.

Lily Cade MakesLesbianLoveNotPorn with her friends.

BiLikesSciFi like filming their #realworldsex and then watching it to see how their bodies move together.

LilyandDanny show us how #realworldpornstars have #realworldsex in their downtime.

Brizzleee savour each other and MakePassionateLoveNotPorn despite hectic schedules.

xxxotter MakesGayNipsyLoveNotPorn and shares his very special talent with our community. Spoiler: it’s megahot.

IonSquares let their TenderKinkyInsatiable libidos out to play even when working the nightshift.

RedFox make CreativeSensualLoveNotPorn look effortless after 16 years together.

BzandGloria never filmed themselves having #realworldsex before they shared this tender couch romp.

EaHeartXO combine a long distance friendship with explosive later-in-life sexuality.

EllaBella makes morning orgasms a priority.

two_sybarite gets kinky after 26 years of marriage.

Our MLNPstars are people like you. And we want YOU to share your #realworldsex on MakeLoveNotPorn.tv!

Regardless of whether you’re thinking, “Hells yeah!” or simply “Maybe!” why not check out some of our submission tips and guidelines.

You can also always email me at Sarah@makelovenotporn.tv with any questions!

xo

Madam Curator