Abusing drugs to combat erectile dysfunction has become an unfortunate norm if you’re a #realworldpornstar. Just read Danny Wylde’s illuminating piece on why he had to leave porn to save his health, if you need any convincing. With the rate in which #realworldpeople are consuming these prescription pills increasing, it’s hard not to look to mainstream porn as the culprit for creating physically unattainable standards of sexual performance. Karley Sciortino tackles this topic in this article– enjoy!

Written by Karley Sciortino for Vogue. Originally published on May 28th, 2015.

“Erectile dysfunction drugs—Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra, namely—are now among the most commonly prescribed, and abused, drugs in America. For years, Viagra and its competitors were associated mostly with the smiling silver foxes in those creepy TV commercials full of unsubtle innuendo (a man chopping wood, etc.), and, for the most part, erectile dysfunction was a taboo subject, one that men, who pride themselves on virility, preferred not to discuss. But in recent years, studies show, it’s become a thing for young men to take these drugs recreationally—without a prescription, and without any real symptoms of chronic ED. They’re not using the drugs to get an erection, but to supercharge their erection—to get harder for longer—or to combat the unfortunate effects a night of partying is known to have on one’s boner.

The stigma is waning, too. Just ask your local street pharmacologist for his deal on the Klonopin-Adderall-Viagra variety pack. I’ve personally watched two guys pop an ED pill in bed over the past few years, one in his twenties, the other in his early thirties, and both after long nights of drinking. Steve gets his Viagra through some sketchy online pharmacy, but this is just one of many illicit ways people get erective dysfunction drugs these days. Another is to purchase counterfeit, unregulated pills online.

What has caused this shift? And what are the long term sexual effects of taking ED drugs recreationally, before you really need them? I recently discussed this development with a 40-year-old male writer friend of mine, who was immediately critical. “Young guys today grew up watching porn, so they think their dick has to be rock hard from the moment they start fooling around, until the moment they cum,” he said. “If they go soft for even a couple minutes, it’s devastating. They don’t think of it as an opportunity to give head, or even to just stop and kiss for a minute.” Realistically, he said, it’s normal to waver between being hard, semi-hard, and temporarily soft over the course of a sex session. “It’s natural to go a bit soft sometimes, especially if you’re taking your time and enjoying the experience. No one has ever taught these guys that, and you never seen someone even semi-hard in porn.”

I found this explanation plausible. It’s common knowledge that porn has become a ubiquitous source of sex education for young people today. Porn is the most commonly cited culprit when it comes to the misrepresentation of female pleasure—you know, those theatrical, for-the-benefit-of-the-guy orgasms that female pornstars have onscreen. But porn may also set an unrealistic standard for men, in terms of penis size and performance: No softies make the final edit. And in recent years, as the porn superstar James Deen has explained to Salon, Viagra has become a staple on porn sets. “Nowadays it’s completely standard for guys to show up with their pills and say, ‘Gimme a 30-minute warning for the scene,’” he said. “When I first started, guys were like, ‘If you can’t do it without it, you shouldn’t be doing it at all.’”

“What I don’t like about a lot of the performers who are pharmaceutically assisted is that a lot of the passion is missing,” Deen went on. “They kind of have sex like robots. Their scenes will be emotionless, and I just don’t like emotionless sex.”

You can read the whole article here.

At MLNP.tv we say ‘hell no!’ to having “sex like robots” (unless that’s your thing– in that case, onwards!). Not being able to get totally hard 24/7 in any circumstance whatsoever is unfortunately just the reality sometimes of having a penis. We totally embrace it! Check out our softserve” tag  (’cause it’s yummy) for some hot #realworldsex videos and read this informative piece on loving a soft penis. 

Written by Riese for Autostraddle. Originally published on May 19th, 2015.

“In February 2015, Autostraddle launched The Ultimate Lesbian Sex Survey, open to all “lady-types who sleep with lady-types.” We garnered over 8,566 complete responses (89% of which were from people between the ages of 18 and 36) and now we’re sharing the results with you, bit by bit. Previously: How Often Do Queer Women Have Sex?, 100 Gayest Places You’ve Had Sex, The Masturbation Habits of Queer Women, 50 Really Fascinating Things You Wanted Us To Know About How You Have Sex, 26 Bits of Solid Sex Advice, 41 Feelings You Have About Scissoring, Here Are Your Very Queer Underwear-Wearing Habits, When It Comes To Orgasms, Lesbians Are Nailing It and The 100 Most Ambitious Places You’ve Had Sex. Today we’re talking about when you lost your virginity and how many partners you’ve had!

What Is Lesbian Sex?

The average American loses their virginity at the age of 17 — but “virgins” are defined as humans who haven’t had heterosexual penis-in-vagina intercourse with a different-sex partner, which means a lot of queer women who’ve had sex with women would be considered “virgins” by that definition. So where do we even begin when talking about that patriarchal V-Card in a queer context?

Well, we’re here, we’re queer, and we have great sex, which 92% of us agree could be defined as “any time you are with at least one other person and someone is trying to make someone have an orgasm.” 66% think mutual masturbation counts, 81.5% count oral sex and 80% consider fingering (digital penetration) to be sex. Of the 9.49% who indicated “other” in addition to or instead of the other options for “How Would You Define Lesbian Sex?”, one noted:

“This is a difficult question. Do lesbians have sex? The epistomological root of the word ‘sexual’ means to sever or divide. I would say that intimacy between women does the opposite of sever. It makes us whole. We need a different word than sex to describe this.”

So, there you go. Oh yeah, and then we have this flowchart:

Click here to read more lesbian sex stats!

Written by Beejoli Shah for The Slice. Originally published on May 14th, 2015.

“There is something zen about scrolling through photos of thousands of penises, all standing at attention, rows and rows of thumbnails of erections of all colors, each captured for the camera in varying states of throb.

Click here to keep reading about Instagram’s war on adult content.

By Jasmine Garsd. Originally published on June 1st, 2015 for NPR.

It’s after hours at Rafael Hernandez, an elementary school in the Bronx, and Room 421 is in an uproar. It’s what you would expect from a sixth-grade sex education class learning how to put a condom on.

Sex education: The very concept makes a lot of people cringe, conjuring images of teenage giggles and discomfort. It’s also a subject a lot of teachers would rather avoid. But Bronx-based teacher Lena Solow is more than happy to talk about the birds, the bees… and beyond.

Solow has been teaching for 10 years. She covers the topics you’d expect, like pregnancy and how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. But Solow talks about way more than going all the way. “One of my biggest goals as a sex educator is to be sex-positive,” she explains, “to talk about pleasure and to talk about sex not just as something that just makes babies.”

Solow now works for WHEDco, a Bronx-based community development organization that includes sex education in its programs for youth. Solow teaches along with peer educators — high schoolers who assist her teaching.

Peer educators are a key part of the equation, advocates say, especially with so many kids exposed to information about sex. Bianca Laureano is a co-founder of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network. She says that having instructors who share the students’ backgrounds “affirms young people’s identities, and they can feel comfortable speaking with someone who not only mirrors their own cultural experiences, but also gives them the example of someone who has persevered. Resilience.”

There are no spelling tests in this class. But Solow does talk to kids about writing. Sexting, that is, and the legal ramifications of sending and receiving racy pictures of underage youths, even if they themselves are well underage. It can count as child pornography, she warns.

This is an example of how, while these students are really young, they already know — or think they know — a lot about sex. “My seventh graders, every single boy in that class has asked me a very explicit question about porn,” she reflects. “Kids are getting information about sex and examples of what sex looks like in a lot of different ways already. It’s actually not even about saying, ‘Oh, we should be giving them information.’ It’s actually about saying, ‘We need to be supplementing the information that they already have.’ ”

Head over to NPR to check out the rest of the article or listen to it in full to learn more about the awesome and inspiring sex education work that’s happening in the Bronx!

Written by Chelsea Mize for Bustle. Originally published on June 10th, 2015.

“If you grew up as an avid-movie watcher, you probably soaked up some unrealistic expectations along the way. Perhaps the thing we have the most unrealistic expectations about thanks to Hollywood is sex. Though some movies do a better job than others in accurately depicting what sex is actually like, even the most realistic sex scenes are bound to demonstrate some inconsistencies. Hollywood taught us these 16 lies about sex and, as a woman and a writer, I feel obliged to expose these lies.

Whether it be how much the cost of living in New York City is or the possibility that you will run into your soulmate in a meet cute in a coffee shop, Hollywood likes to warp our expectations of reality. Sex is the cruelest expectation to play with because, by setting our standards too high, Hollywood is also setting people up to be disappointed in their sex lives.

Just in case anyone is out there wondering why they haven’t had romantic sex in a cornfield yet or why no one warned them that they might snap their tibia in half like a twig while having shower sex, I am here to give you some real talk about movie sex versus real life sex.

It is my sincerest hope that each of you will have enough great real life sex that you won’t ever feel like you’re being outdone by movie sex. But, just in case the sex scenes in moves have led you a bit astray, I’m here to set the record straight and expose all the lies Hollywood taught us about sex.

Foreplay? It’s Not That Great (Hint: It Is)

This is probably the most egregious crime committed by cinematic sex scenes: refusing to acknowledge how awesome (and necessary) foreplay is. You always see those couples in movies who meet, cast one sultry look at one another, and then, suddenly, there is full-on penetration before you can even say “Pass the lube.” It’s all about the foreplay, ladies and gents. Unless you want a sexual experience that is  reminiscent of the Sahara desert on a particularly dry summer day, I suggest you let your girl warm up first.”

Click here to read the rest of the unrealistic sexpectations Hollywood has taught us!

At MLNP.tv, we believe #realworldsex is the hottest sex there is and that the key to a mutually satisfying sex life is to TALK ABOUT IT! What’s more, we think things like having hair down there and using condoms can be majorly hot, not to mention totally normal, parts of #realworldsex. If you find one of your partners thinks otherwise, it’s at least time to have a healthy chat about it. xo Madam Curator

Written by Rachel Sanoff for Bustle. Originally published on June 16th, 2015.

“Your sex life with your partner can provide a lot of insight into the healthiness of your relationship. Specifically, whether or not you have a supportive partner who is interested in your pleasure. Your partner’s treatment toward you during physical intimacy can reveal a lot about their emotional maturity and, frankly, whether they deserve even a minute of your time. If your partner says certain things in bed over and over, like he doesn’t want to use condoms, then it might be time for you to end the relationship. Comments that pick apart your body, shame you for expressing your desires, or reveal your partner’s lack of interest in your comfort and orgasm represent your partner’s selfishness, immaturity, and inability to provide you with happiness and fulfillment. Do not take their obnoxious remarks lightly.
In the most recent issue of Cosmopolitan, Nicki Minaj discussed the importance of the reciprocity of pleasure for women in the bedroom, or orgasm equality. Those interview comments were so exciting because the media is usually saturated with images of sex that consider female pleasure and safety to be secondary to male ejaculation. The media is also saturated with images that advocate for only one impossible type of feminine beauty. And your sex life has no room for a partner’s selfishness or patriarchal beauty standards.

Sex requires vulnerability and trust, so pay attention to what your partner says and how it makes you feel. If your partner says any of these seven things in the bedroom, it might be time for you to shut it down:

1. “But it feels better without a condom.”

2. “Uh, I don’t really like it if it has hair.”

Click here to read some more bedroom deal-breakers!

Although this article was published a while back, we think it brings up some incredibly important and still relevant points – what do you wish you learned in high school sex ed? Let us know!

Written by Melissa White for HuffPost Women. Originally published on October 21st, 2013.

“In a recent Huffington Post article, “So, You Think You’re Cool Because You Hate Condoms?,” I cavalierly stated, “No matter how high the stakes, most adult attitudes surrounding safer sex are formed (and stuck) back in high school.” Which is true.

However, more often than not, what is learned “back in high school” arrives via friends or porn. For most of us, official sex education was mediocre or simply non-existent.

Fast forward 20 (or so) years and the situation hasn’t really improved.

It may surprise you to learn that only 22 states in the U.S. mandate sex education, and of those, a mere 12 mandate sex ed that is medically accurate!

And if your position happens to be that you don’t want teens having sex at all, rest assured: many teens aren’t taking your position into account — and are doing what comes naturally, instead.

As many teens go on to become sexually misinformed adults, they’re likely to experience sex ranging from less than satisfactory to hazardous to their health, often simply for lack of awareness about how to make better choices in their sex life.

On the other hand, teens with comprehensive sex education develop healthy sexual attitudes and practices — and as adults, enjoy healthy sexual attitudes and relationships. As confirmed here and here.

By opening up a public conversation about just what kind of sex-positive information is essential for shaping healthier attitudes around sex, we will educate each other while empowering teens to more satisfyingly and safely navigate the increasingly sexualized world they face.

To help get this discussion started, I began by speaking to friends and sex educators in my circle about the sex ed curriculum they wish they’d been given.

Here is our first take: Sex Ed 101: Safety & Pleasure for the Real World — (and yes, my quote is #3):

1. Build Upon a Foundation of Consent and Positive Sexuality
“I want to see holistic sex education that teaches us creative, sexy ways to respect our bodies while encouraging us to practice safer sex. We need to teach that active, enthusiastic consent must be central to every sexual relationship. I wasn’t taught consent can be fun, consent can be sexy. When young people are getting terrible messages about what sexual relationships are or should look like from the media or our peers, we have to create a more transformative, more sex positive ethic in sex education.” – Jamie Utt

2. The Difference Between Gender & Sex
“The difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, and that both are spectrums, not binaries. [Education] about sexual practices, at least a few of the more common ones, and some uncommon ones, too, all taught with the same lack of judgment. That if you’re being safe, sane and consensual, you are doing it right.” –Justin Cascio

3. Condoms Should Be About Pleasure First.
“If your condom feels good, you’ll use it. First, make sure you or your partner is wearing the right size condom. (Here is how you figure out your condom size.) Next, don’t rely on free or cheap condoms. By spending $1 on a premium condom you can have a greatly improved experience. And if you don’t know where to start, beginning with a condom sampler is a great, affordable option.” – Melissa White“

Click here to read on about the importance of lube, masturbation, sex toys, and more!

And read about #condomhot #realworldsex here!

Written by Lane Moore for Cosmopolitan. Originally published on June 17th, 2015.

“When most people think of watching porn, they probably think of going to a seedy, poorly designed crapfest of a website and watching janky, poorly lit, awkward-as-hell videos of people having sex. But Millennial women are over that shit, and, in search of better porn for women, they’re finding Tumblr.

While Tumblr doesn’t release statistics on the number of people flocking to the platform for porn, one Tumblr porn site operator said she gains about 4,000 new followers a month — mostly women, mostly twentysomethings. I reached out to some friends to see if anyone was on the bandwagon of young women leaving conventional free porn sites like RedTube and PornHub behind in favor of well-designed, infinite scrolling pages of sexy GIFs and erotica, and I got a shocking number of enthusiastic yesses. I inquired further.

Keep reading to discover why Tumblr Porn is closer to #realworldsex than you might think!

Written by Slutever’s Karley Sciortino for Vogue.  Originally published June 11th, 2015.

“Condoms kinda suck, but STIs and abortions suck way more, so condoms it is! I’m not going to use this article to rant about the reasons why everyone should use protection. We already know why: because STIs are annoying, expensive, and could negatively affect your life forever, and because getting an abortion is a really inconvenient way to spend a Saturday afternoon. However, according to statistics, most of us are idiots and have unprotected sex on the regular, even with STIs on the rise in this country. I find it bizarre that so many people still talk about condoms being a turn-off, when really, the biggest turn-off is having to argue with a guy about why he should put one on.

Proper condom etiquette can be really sexy. The bar isn’t very high—all a girl wants is for you to stop whining, put it on, and control your delusions of grandeur, because when you wear a Magnum unnecessarily, it feels like we’re having sex with an empty bag.

My friend, a 25-year-old editor I’ll call Karen, is uniquely passionate about condom dexterity. “The most attractive thing is when the guy can do it all with one hand,” she said with great admiration, sort of the way my dad talks about LeBron James. “He grabs the package and rips it open with his teeth, all while keeping one hand on me—that’s literallysuch a skill!” Karen often talks fondly of one ex who was particularly agile with a condom. “The process was so fluid, I wouldn’t even notice it happened,” she said.”

Read the rest of Karley’s take on proper condom etiquette here!

Check out our collection of #condomhot videos here and read about how #condomhot #realworldsex can change the world here!

Lately we’ve been posting some really awesome stuff that focuses on the weird shit that happens during sex to everyone. We stumbled across this article on queer women owned and run Autostraddle, which highlights the totally normal things that happen to ladies who sleep with other ladies. Even though this is aimed at a more queer audience, we’re sure you can relate, regardless of your sexuality! This reiterates our point: sex is super weird and fun and silly and messy regardless of who you sleep with!

By Carolyn Yates for Autostraddle. Originally published on December 11th, 2014.

1. Vagina Farts

Vaginas sometimes make fart noises during sex. This is called queefing and it’s a result of air being pushed into a small wet space and then being pushed out, either because you move or because something is inside of you or both. It’s totally fine and normal:

“You’re doing everything right. Before you go dissing your toots, hear this: the hotter, harder and more playful positions you get in, the more likely you are to queef. Now, a queef is caused by the air that gets sucked into a place that usually doesn’t have any. Your vagina is not a wind tunnel, you know? When you change your body position, a gap in your own gap can cause your vagina to vacuum up air. When something besides the air … wants to take up space inside you, well, it pushes the air out and that’s the funky sound you hear.”

2. Farts, Period

During sex, you are moving around. (Or you are in a kinky situation and emphatically not moving around.) Maybe someone else is. Maybe you’re tense. Maybe you ate food at any point in your life. Everyone farts sometimes, and you can choose to either laugh and keep going or have it ruin a sexy moment, which hopefully is not a difficult choice to make:

“I do find that laughter helps to remedy most situations like these, assuming something’s not seriously askew with your digestive tract. Besides, farts are easy to laugh at because they are funny. It’s a trumpety sound coming from your butt! In a Salon article by Tracy Clark-Flory, poignantly titled ‘Farting in Love,’ author Beth Lisick wrote that she jokes about farting … by saying things like, ‘That sounded like it came from the ’80s.’”

3. Not Being Able To Get Your Skinny Jeans Off (Or Not Being Able To Get Her Skinny Jeans Off)

It’s hard to feel hot when you’re awkwardly taking off skinny jeans. You can remove them in the bathroom or something, but you can also just embrace removing them in front of your activity partner. Under your jeans is a naked person your activity partner is excited to see, it’s gonna be fine and it happens to everyone:

“Super-tight straight leg pants, worn notably by sex symbols and rebellious icons Elvis Presley and James Dean, made it big in the 1970s underground punk scene. The pants’ popularity stayed alive through the decades, persisting largely through other music scenes. And although skinny jeans were once — and still are — the choice pants of rock stars and those looking to fight The Man, they have now joined the ranks of the lesbian subculture so that we, too, can experience the awkwardness of trying to hook up, having trouble getting your skinny jeans off, having to hop around the room removing them from your ankles, and finally end up with a pair of inside-out skinny jeans on the floor. Holla.”

4. Feeling Ridiculous In A Strap-On Harness

The nice thing about underwear harnesses is that they’re easy to use and easy to wash and at no point do you have to worry about a buckle coming undone or catching on your activity partner or riding up or doing any of the annoying things that classic leather strap-on harnesses with actual straps do. In their guide to taking butch (but really any lady) cock seriously, Sinclair Sexsmith writes:

“When you’ve seen that gleam in her eye and it’s time for you to strap it on, don’t be embarrassed, apologetic, or shy. At that point, she’s gotta wait for you to disrobe (possibly) and re-buckle, test the weight between your legs, get comfortable. Don’t rush.”

Their cock commandments are about the obvious rather than about the harness it goes in, but also apply – Sexsmith suggests wearing it around until you get used to it, playing with it by yourself and pretending you feel great about it until you do:

“But what if you just don’t feel it, don’t feel connected to it? Well, for now, I suggest you just fake it. Don’t lie about it — but make up in your head what it would feel like if you could feel it, and go from there. Experiment. Channel your favorite porn star and the way they drive their beautiful tool with such grace and ease and respect. (Don’t have a favorite porn star who straps on and plays? Maybe you should do some research, and find one!) Really feel into it and see what kind of sensations you can feel, and focus on those. A lot of strapping on and playing and ‘feeling’ a strapped-on cock is mental, so be curious and open to expanding what you thought was possible.”

5. Fluids (Too Many Or Not Enough)

Some people get wet enough to soak through the duvet and some need a gallon of lube per sexual encounter and some squirt and some don’t and all of this is fine. You can deal with this by using something like a waterproof Liberator throw if you’re too wet and vast amounts of the lube of your choice if you’re not wet enough. Being super wet is awesome because you probably save money on lube. Being super dry is awesome because look at all the fun types of lube you get to try. Squirting is fun because hello, you had an orgasm that made you squirt. No good activity partner will be bothered by any of this.”

Read the whole list over at Autostraddle! Can you relate? Prove it! Share your #realworldsex with us! Email us at curators@makelovenotporn.tv

Faced with the prevalence of pirated, ‘free’ porn available online, the adult industry has had to adapt to stay afloat. While many of these changes have created a worsening scenario for performers, producers and consumers, they also open the door for companies, like MLNP, who take a more ethical approach to the sex we see online.

Written by CARRIE WEISMAN for ALTERNET and reposted on Salon. Originally published on August 2, 2015.

“Users of Internet pornography are probably familiar with the site YouPorn. And maybe RedTube. There’s also Tube8, XTube, ExtremeTube, and PornHub. The list goes on. These sites, often referred to as the “tube sites,” host a wide array of free (and largely pirated) user-generated content that’s starting to change the porn industry. Listed below are seven of the most surprising ways porn is changing.

Industry insiders will confirm that porn production is at an all-time low. Colin and Angie Rowntree have been in the porn business for over 20 years. Back in 1994, the AVN Hall of Fame inductees founded the BDSM website Wasteland.com. In 1999, Angie started Sssh.com, a porn site “for women, by women.” Colin estimates that at least 50% of the small studios have gone under in the past 10 years. Angie told me over the phone, “A lot of the little tiny mom-and-pop ones are gone, and those were the ones that had original ideas.”

Colin added, “If you want to get new content, quality content that’s actually well made, somebody has to pay the performers. Somebody has to pay the cameraman. Somebody has to pay the editors. Somebody has to pay for all this stuff. And if nobody is paying to buy it, the whole thing comes tumbling down — which it currently is.”

The duo has mapped out a little blurb that appears at the end of each of their films, reading, “Piracy is not a victimless crime. Please be respectful of the people who have shared a very intimate part of themselves with you, the crew that helped bring it to life, the editor who put it all together and the studio who paid for this production and gave everyone a safe, respectful and fun place to work. After all, would you work for free?”

2. Porn stars are picking up gigs on the side.

Porn isn’t as lucrative an industry as it once was. And that fact is starting to work its way into performer’s paychecks. “Performer payment rates have dropped, my guess would be, 35-40% over the last 10 years,” Colin says.

It’s not uncommon for aspiring actors to pick up gigs on the side. Aspiring porn actors are no different. As production continues to slow, well-paid positions are getting harder to come by, and performers are looking elsewhere for extra cash. Personal appearances are one option. Social media outreach is another. But these endeavors are usually reserved for more established stars. The rest fall back on other forms of business.

Rowntree told me, “The really unfortunate, unintended consequence for performers is that a lot of them are also escorting on the side now. Which I have no problem with. But escorting is different than being a porn star. Escorting has got certain protocols, requires a certain amount of street sense.”

“You know, Suzy from Nebraska who goes to L.A. to be a porn star starts turning tricks in a motel room without any backup security and things like that, it’s just a disaster waiting to happen.”

3. Age verifications are becoming harder to track.

The  “2257 Regulations” refers to an FBI program that requires porn producers to verify the age of their performers. As it states on the FBI website, “Section 2257 was enacted to require producers of sexually explicit matter to maintain certain records concerning the identity and age of performers to assist in monitoring the industry. The identity of every performer is critical to determining and ensuring that no performer is a minor.”

But as Rowntree explained, pirating content breaks that chain of information. He said, “There’s absolutely no way to backtrack it. It just becomes lost. So it opens itself us to underage performers in sex movies on free tubes becoming accessible so anybody. And I’ve got a real problem with that.”

It’s not great news for those on the other side of the screen, either. Most tube sites don’t have any age verification program in place. Rowntree said, “Any 12-year-old, without even clicking a button that says ‘Yes I am over 18,’ can get in there and see more hardcore porn than you could ever imagine.”

4. Catering to the niches pays off.

Transformers 5 is currently in the works. While it probably won’t be so different than the previous four movies, one thing is for sure: it’s going to make a lot of money. As Angie Rowntree noted, Hollywood has found the perfect formula. Porn isn’t so different. The big-busted blondes, the well-endowed hunks who so often appear in porn are all over the tubes. The scenes are formulaic and unoriginal, but also widely popular and profitable.

In regards to this kind of “vanilla porn,” Colin Rowntree says, “There’s just so much out there. It’s so oversaturated between the tubes and all of the various remaining paid sites. It’s just a fool’s errand to try to produce that stuff unless you’re some huge distribution company.”

He added, “Specific niches, like BDSM and porn for women, are really good because there aren’t a lot of other people shooting that kind of thing.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Written by Cheryl Wischhover for Cosmopolitan. Originally published under the title, “What It’s Really Like to Own a Porn Company,” on August 6th, 2015.

“Shine Louise Houston, 41, is the founder of Pink and White Productions, whose films and series, like “The Crash Pad,” have earned accolades from the mainstream adult community and the Feminist Porn Awards…

There wasn’t a good representation [in porn] of the queer community, and you don’t see people of color unless they’re in a niche market. I didn’t want it to be niche. I just wanted to have a video that would be diversity in body types, diversity in gender expression, diversity in skin color. I have a real problem with everything in mainstream porn being in these categories, like “MILF” and “interracial.” I feel like those categories are highly problematic.

It was kind of a weird right time and right place. [After my first film, “The Crash Pad,” was released], all of a sudden out of nowhere film festivals were calling us, like [LGBT film fest] Outfest. I wasn’t even applying to film festivals at this point. It was also kind of crazy because we had an article in [lesbian magazine] Curve and that gave us movement. Apparently the market was so dry in this category that as soon as I made this one film it was like an explosion.

[To find performers,] a lot of it was word of mouth and a few performers came from ads on Craigslist. They were friends of friends, and I knew some people from the Lusty Lady [strip club] who were in the movie. Since I was new and I hadn’t actually made anything yet, I had lots of lengthy conversations with people before they were actually cast in the movie. I kind of wish I had that luxury now, but those days are gone. Now we have such a following, especially for “The Crash Pad” series website, that we have people applying left and right. If we were able to cast everybody who has put in an application so far we’d be booked for the next six years.

“Crash Pad” is like an anthropological study of queer culture. You can see just how politics have shifted. And you can see there are trends in what people do. For a while there it was strap-ons always. Now, not really. Then we had a rage for pumps and everybody was using pumps. Some things come back and some don’t. I also think there’s been a steady increase in trans visibility and I think it’s translated into who feels comfortable enough and empowered enough to apply. It’s a snowball effect. That encourages more trans folk to apply. Also I think it’s appreciated because we’re not doing it in a way that is making it an exotic [fetish] thing. It’s like, Oh it’s just another performer. “

Keep reading to discover why MLNP.tv loves Shine Louise Houston!

MakeLoveNotPorn.tv is all about celebrating and showcasing the #realworldsex everyday people have in their everyday lives. Most of our MLNPstars are folks who’d never filmed themselves having sex before hearing about MLNP and its mission, let alone thought about uploading sex videos to the interwebs. And so, to respect our MLNPstars privacy and boundaries – and to let sharing your #realworldsex truly be about pressure-free sexual exploration – how you choose to share your #realworldsex on MLNP.tv is totally up to you.

Choose your own #realworldsex adventure

Our MLNPstars are always given the option to remain totally anonymous. So, if you’re super into sexual liberation but not so much into showing off that pretty mug of yours, we’re all for wearing masks, and keeping faces in shadow or out of frame.

Another thing we’re all for is taking down your videos the minute you don’t want them up anymore. In the #realworld, people’s lives change and romantic relationships end, and so we’re committed to a no questions asked, ‘change of heart’ policy, where the second you decide you don’t want people around the world seeing your #morningsex anymore we take it down as quickly as possible.

Equally, we have just as many MLNPstars who are happy to show their faces, which is great, because we love to celebrate our MLNPstars and to put them forward for partnerships like the #realworldsex video sex toy reviews we recently did with Refinery29, where five MLNPstars (couples and singles) tried out brand new sex toys for the very first time on camera.

We also relish the chance to spread the word about how much we adore our MLNPstars via our frequent media coverage, like in the recent HBO docu-series, Sex On //, which profiled MLNP in a segment that rocketed site traffic and in particular brought plenty of new fans to the MLNPstars who appeared in the program.

The more comfortable you are showing your faces and talking about sharing your #realworldsex on MLNP, the easier it is for us to promote you and the wonderful and important contribution you make to our site. For example, creative millennial MLNPstars, Colin/Gray, have always been thrilled about us getting their names out there, which has led not only to their being part of our Refinery29 partnership, but also to coverage on Bustle, .Mic and Slutever, along with their own featured edition, MakeColin/GrayLoveNotPorn.

As a result of the positive experience they’ve had with MLNP.tv and the publicity and fans they’ve gained, Colin/Gray have recently begun planning to take things to the next level by becoming affiliates of Good Vibrations and by submitting to other ethical sex video sites like I feel Myself and Beautiful Agony. We’re thrilled about this, because we want MLNP to create new possibilities for our attention seeking MLNPstars, while at the same time protecting the anonymity of those who would prefer to have their identities remain wholly or partially concealed.

As Gray of Colin/Gray puts it,

“MLNP is a very supportive, caring community that has never stopped promoting our work. We love the team at MLNP and the viewers who rent our videos. Together you make our experience with filming our fun, quirky, creative, steamy sex really exciting and fulfilling.”

And, by the way, there are still plenty of ways to get a little (or a lot) of attention and promote yourself, while still remaining anonymous:

• AllenandtheJean have over 10K followers on twitter without ever having shown their full faces in their #realworldsex videos or the thousands of photos they’ve shared with their adoring fans. By obscuring their faces in their videos, they were able to participate in HBO’s Sex On // while still remaining mysterious.

• Same goes for MLNPstars Violet+Rye, whose cinematic, face-free videos have appeared on HBO and in ABC Nightline’s coverage of MLNP. They also share lots on twitter and via their smart, funny, and always sexy blog.

• Speaking of blogging, Rickat share lots of additional shots and musings on theirs, and have recently agreed to appear – masked – in an online mini-documentary about their experiences as MLNPstars!

• MLNPstars LoveandLasagna also regularly update their blog and twitter with pics from their sexy adventures and culinary explorations while generally shying away from big mainstream media coverage.

• Modesty Ablaze does likewise via her blog and twitter.

• And, finally, some MLNPstars like WeMegiddoStyle are happy to share their intro videos on our YouTube channel but prefer to cherry pick the press they participate in, like Sex On// and the NYC PFF.

As you can see, it’s completely up to our MLNPstars to choose their own sexual adventure and decide how much or how little exposure they’d like both on MLNP and in the press we receive. While at the moment, MLNP is tiny and bootstrapping, we’re actively working to raise funding to be able to build, market and grow our platform to the point where our MLNPstars will be as famous and celebrated as YouTube stars for the same reasons –  their authenticity, individuality, realness – and make just as much money. Our goal is to one day have your #realworldsex video reach 1 million rentals, and at $5 per rental with us giving you half that income, well, we’ll all be laughing. In the meantime – and when our golden YouTube level moment comes – we’re ready, willing, and eager to promote and celebrate our MLNPstars any way we can, and of course, always with permission.

By Assistant Curator, Ariel Martinez – who, when not at MLNP, works as a sex educator and spends a lot of time talking about blowjobs.

There are so many blowjob videos on the internet. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing! A great BJ can be awesome for the giver and the receiver, can foster intimacy and can be super hot and rewarding. It’s just that… there are so many.

There also seems to be a commonly held belief that in order to “keep” the man or keep the dick in your life happy, you have to be the very best at blowjobs ever in the history of the world or else your partner is going to be getting head under the desk from a cute young secretary. And guess what? That isn’t true, and also what an awful and (in the majority of cases) unrealistic thing to be afraid of. There isn’t nearly the same amount of pressure put on people whose partners have vaginas to keep up those LickJobs because, well, you never know I saw them making eyes at that hottie in HR – and that’s unfair. Not to mention way less fun and pleasurable for everyone involved.

When the tables are turned and it comes to videos of people eating pussy on the internet, there isn’t quite the same magnitude of options. And when there are videos depicting the art of cunnilingus, it’s usually portrayed in a way that’s more aesthetically pleasing (whatever that means LOL) rather than focusing on the pleasure of the person getting their clit licked.

Nine times out of ten in mainstream porn, the tip of the tongue is barely touching any part of the vulva. The giver’s head is pretty far from the receiver’s body, and it looks like they’re tentatively licking a too-cold freeze pop.

But blow job videos usually consists of someone literally taking a cock as far back into their throat as it can go. There isn’t the same apprehensive way of dealing with someone’s junk as there is in a lot of cunnilingus videos. The deep throaters of the #pornworld just go for it. Which doesn’t even make that much sense, because most of the nerve endings on a dick are in the head. It’s all about multi-tasking, BJ givers! You don’t have to deep throat to give mind-blowing head.

But I don’t want to talk about blow jobs right now. I want to switch the societal conversation away from blow jobs. We need more videos of people eating pussy. Why? Because eating pussy is awesome, it can feel AMAZING for the person receiving the attention (as well as for the giver) and we desperately need to move past the stigma that vaginas or vulvas are gross. For people that like oral sex and want to receive it, there needs to be an expectation going into any sexual encounter that there should be no more ‘inherent’ pressure on one person to give over another. When I was sleeping with guys, I would NEVER go down on them unless they went down on me first.

By not talking about eating pussy, or not talking enough about it at least, it contributes to the idea that vulvas are gross or that it will smell bad or taste bad or what have you. It also continues to shape how we prioritize male sexuality over female sexuality, and I don’t need to tell you that we totally should not be doing that. Hello, 2015.

Feel like experimenting with flavors? Grab a dental dam (or cut a condom in half for a makeshift one) to participate in safe(r) sex or grab some silicone lube to keep things nice and slick.

A vulva is going to smell and taste like a vulva, and that’s just a fact about being a human with a body. You can totally play around with flavored lube which can be super fun and sexy to integrate into oral sex – but at the end of the day, you’re still licking a part of a human body, and that’s not necessarily always going to taste like sorbet.

Having more videos of people genuinely depicting great #downtown action on all sides of the spectrum will increase our desire to talk about it, to get better at it, and to move past the stigma of “eating someone out is gross”. Because it’s not— nothing consensual and sexy has to be gross if that’s what you’re into.

So check out, MakeLickJobLoveNotPorn, an edition that prioritizes the act of going down! I hope that it leaves you inspired to partake in some LickJobs of your own. You know we’d love to see it!

xo,
Ariel

Feeling inspired? Email us at curators@mlnp.tv! You can also follow Ariel on Twitter

Written by Emma McGowan for Bustle. Originally published on September 3rd, 2015.

The kind of change that the internet is bringing to us as a society and as individual sexual beings is so rapid that it can be hard to even get a grasp on what’s happening before it changes again. To help you find your feet in this ever shifting landscape, I’ve catalogued 12 ways that the internet has changed our sexuality, so far. Some are good, some are not so great, and others just are but all together, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. There is definitely more to come.

1. Cyber Sex Is As Varied As IRL Sex

Sexting. Dirty talk over messenger. Video chat sex. Camming. All of these options for getting down are new with the advent of the internet. We’re figuring out awesome new ways to get each other off via our computers and smartphones and that is hot. With these tools, people are discovering things about their sexualities that were straight up impossible to know 15 years ago. That’s pretty damn cool.

2. We Have A Significantly Wider Access To Porn

This is perhaps the most obvious change but also one of the most influential. While pornography used to be available only to people over the age of 18 who were willing to go through the embarrassment of buying it in the store (or people who found it hidden under mattresses and stuffed in the backs of closets), it’s now available to anyone, any time, at any age. The internet has driven down the value of porn, created new genres, and widened accessibility— and that has brought on a whole host of changes.

3. We View Our Bodies Differently

Running tangentially to the explosion of internet porn is the increase in popularity of plastic surgeries like labiaplasties, which let women change the shape of their labias so that they look “better.” But how the f*ck do people have a standard for what a labia “should” look like? The only possible answer is porn, which is full of pretty, plastic vaginas.

While labiaplasties are undoubtedly at the extreme end of the spectrum, mainstream porn features depressingly few body types. In addition to the onslaught of unrealistic body standards that both men and women are faced with from non X-rated sources, we now have the perky, enhanced, naked bodies of porn stars to contend with. Ugh.

4. We Perform More During Sex

Porn has also influenced how we behave in bed. When you see how sex is “supposed” to look over and over again, it will inevitably seep into your own sexual encounters. Former ad exec Cindy Gallop created her company MakeLoveNotPorn for exactly that reason. In her now notorious Ted Talk, Gallop explained that her younger male lovers were mimicking actions they’d seen on the screen as porn became more and more accessible. Gallop’s response was to create a website where “real world sex” is highlighted so that there’s an alternative out there to the performative stuff that most people are watching.

Head over to Bustle to check out other ways that the internet is changing our sexuality via the original post!

This week we were thrilled to receive a brand new #realworldsex video from spicy, recently engaged MLNPstars, hannable. Then, imagine our surprise when we started playing the intro video and realized it was 18 minutes long – a new record length! Typically, we recommend that our MLNPstars keep it short and sweet with their ‘free peeks,’ but this one really knocked it out of the park. Here are a couple of reasons why:

1. After watching the intro video, you’ll feel like hannable are your new BFFs

You know when you’re good friends with a super hot couple and you’re like, ‘Damn, I wonder what kind of sex they have, I bet it’s really hot,’ and then you resign yourself to wondering about it forever? Me too. But this time it’s different, because by the time you’ve finished watching hannable’s new intro, and have seen how cute and raw and open they are, you’ll feel like they ARE that couple. I was smiling throughout the whole thing, especially when they talked about their fave parts of the #realworldsex they just had, and I LOVED that I was able to click right on over and watch said #realworldsex. When does that EVER happen? Literally never. We are the only place on the internet (in the world) where you are able to really get to know a #realworld couple and then click on over to watch them get it on. Which is rad as hell.

2. They’re super awesome at communicating about the sex that they want to have

How cute, clever, and downright generous is it that hannable designed an entire drinking game just to communicate with each other about their #realworldsex, and then FILMED IT in order to share that communication with you. Mrs. hannable, as she calls herself, is super turned on and into BDSM / kink stuff, which her honey will totally do with her, even though it isn’t his favorite thing of all time. I LOVE THIS FOR SO MANY REASONS. I adore that she feels so comfortable vocalizing and articulating her desires to her fiancee, and that he is so willing to try something new, because he’s so turned on by how into it she is. They ask each other about their favorite parts of the sex that they had, and they both just talk about how connected they feel to each other, which is like, the whole point a whole lot of the time, amirite?! I love that Mr. hannable is so down to try something that might be a little out of his comfort zone to please Mrs. hannable, how and she understands that just because he’s tried something once doesn’t mean he wants to do it all the time.

This is a great reminder that if you try something new in the bedroom, it doesn’t mean that you’re taking a holy oath to incorporate it into your normal sex routine. If you try something new and it’s great and hot and fun, sweet! More to have in your back pocket. If it’s weird, whatever, on to the next adventure! At least you tried it and now you know more about yourself and your partner and what you do and don’t like.

3. They show that great communication over time leads to knowing each other REALLY well

The whole point of the drinking game was that you had to drink if you didn’t want to answer a question. Spoiler alert: neither of them really ended up drinking, because not only are they each comfortable answering all of the questions (almost), they also step into the other’s shoes and test the waters by sweetly answering for each other while their honey offers feedback. Each question leads to even more open exploration and understanding.

4. They’re adorably in love

In between jokes, kisses and laughing, the energy and connection between these two is undeniable. Not only do they talk about the amazing sex that they have, they also talk about goals for their relationship. They’re already getting married (where’s my invitation?), but they also plan on getting their own place and being able to decorate it and thrive in it how they want to. They also mention future videos they want to shoot — including painting themselves and then doing it on a giant canvas and hanging it up on the dining room. I NEED THAT #REALWORLDSEX VIDEO LIKE I NEED WATER. Seriously can’t wait for that one. But above all, they just seem so incredibly connected and happy to be with one another and on the same page. It’s so amazing to be able to watch that kind of chemistry with two people, and extra incredible that they share such a vulnerable piece of their relationship– their first foray ever into any kind of BDSM, with MLNP.tv. I am truly honored and appreciative to have been able to see it, and hope that you will be as inspired by it as I was!

Well, what are you waiting for? Click here to watch part 1 of hannable’s foray into kinky #realworldsex. Loving this raw and honest intro video? You’ll likely dig WeMegiddoStyle‘s intros, too!

Written by Madam Curator, Sarah Beall for BUSTLE. Originally published on September 30th, 2015.

As a human with a wifi connection, it’s probably not news to you that porn and the internet are BFFs. Type in an innocuous word like, “pony,” alongside another fun word like, “play,” and all of a sudden you’re no longer designing invites for your niece’s fifth birthday party — you’re receiving an invitation to an all-out brony orgy. Now, you may not mind the invitation at all (You do you, bronies) but the timing’s definitely a bit off, and well, what was up with that sad looking pink brony in the corner? Was he really enjoying himself? Maybe you’ll give him extra butterfly friends on the invite to cheer him up.

The desire to watch fellow creatures getting it on has existed since at least the time when cave people introduced the fine art of sexy cave drawing, and definitely before any rumor started about a Kylie Jenner and Tyga sex tape.

As the curator and community manager for MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, a site that hosts pre-screened videos of non-performative, consensual, contextualized, creative, and porn cliche-free #realworldsex, I see this natural human curiosity play out in real time every day and I’m here to tell you there’s plenty of deliciousness out there!

Aside from the fact that I’m paid to watch people’s uncensored sexy times all day — Hi, mom! — one of the most rewarding and initially unexpected pleasures my chosen career has brought me has been learning how valuable it can be for couples (and singles) to have access to videos that show real people having the sex they have in their everyday lives. At a private screening before MLNP.tv went live, a man in attendance who had just finished watching a video by one of our MakeLoveNotPornStars said, “When I watch porn, I want to jerk off. When I watch #realworldsex I want to have sex with my girlfriend.”

How cool is that? A video of two regular people having sex had turned this guy on, and instead of making him want to go furtively rub one out, it made him want to share pleasure with another human being. That, plus he didn’t have to experience what I like to call a “porn hangover,” where once he’d had his orgasm, he suddenly experienced a rush of sexual shame followed by concerns about what he’d just watched. Were the actors in the scene consenting and properly paid? Was it ethically produced? Was that screaming orgasm in the middle real? Did it matter to him that the orgasm was probably fake? Was there something wrong with him?

MakeLoveNotPorn is pro-sex, pro-porn, and pro-knowing the difference. At MLNP, we believe that #realworldsex is the hottest sex there is and that there’s nothing amateur about it. We want people to understand the differences between #pornworldsex and #realworldsex because we’ve intimately experienced the confusion and disappointment that can occur when you don’t. That said, shaming people for watching and enjoying porn is so not on the menu and the example above could just as easily feature a woman or a person of another gender. We’ve created a space online to celebrate an entirely new category of sex video — the #realworldsex video — and we’re thrilled to report that people from all over the world are checking it out!

What my role as Madam Curator has taught me is that regardless of gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity or relationship status, watching #realworldsex is great for your sex life. So long as you talk about it first, and everyone is consenting every time, exploring the age old art of titillation by sex video is something that can be fun, hot, and very likely to translate into better sex IRL. So, here is exactly how watching #realworldsex will improve your sex life.

1. It Helps You Get Fully In The Mood

Even if the thought of having sex is super appealing in theory, your body (and brain) might sometimes still need a bit of extra help getting fully turned on. According to The New York Times, researchers in the field of sexuality are currently all about the concept of responsive desire — the idea that women in particular experience, “arousal first, then desire.” Feeling like you could be down-to-clown-around but not ready to rip off your clothes and swing around your bedpost, like in some kind of Beyoncé-at-home fantasy? Treating yourself and your partner to a bit of visual foreplay by watching a #realworldsex video will rev up your desire and increase your physical arousal — both things that will lead to better orgasms.

2. It Stimulates Communication

There’s nothing quite like having a visual example right in front of you to help communicate what you currently like in bed, what you’d like to explore, and even what you don’t like, too. For example, watching a real couple have romantic anal sex (it exists!) might turn you on but that doesn’t mean it’s on the agenda for date night. Avoid the trap of thinking that enjoying seeing someone else do something sexually means you’ve sworn a blood oath to try it yourself, and instead use it as an opportunity to say to your partner, “They seems to be really loving that! Not sure it’s for me right now but maybe I wouldn’t mind you using a finger or tongue there, etc, etc.”

Head on over to BUSTLE to read 5 more reasons why watching #realworldsex videos is great for your relationship! As if you didn’t already know ;)

Written by Rebecca Traister. Originally published on October 20th, 2015 for NY Mag.

Last winter, Reina Gattuso was a Harvard senior majoring in literature and gender studies and writing a biweekly column for the college newspaper, the Crimson. She covered a variety of subjects, among them her sexuality (she identifies as queer) and Harvard’s byzantine class hierarchies, and she wrote a regular feature called “Four Dollar Wine Critic.” In February, she dedicated her column to the subject of sexist sex.

Gattuso is not against sex by any means. “I don’t say yes. I say oh, yes. I say yes, please,” she wrote. And she did say yes at a booze-soaked party hosted by a group of men she didn’t know. One of the men told her that because she was bisexual, he assumed she was “particularly down to fuck.” He said she could make out with his girlfriend if she would hook up with another of the men.

“I have so much to drink my memory becomes dark water, brief flashes when I flicker up for air,” Gattuso wrote. “I’m being kissed. There’s a boy, then another boy. I keep asking if I’m pretty. I keep saying yes.” But in the morning, she wrote, “I feel weird about what went down” and was unsure how to express her feelings of dissatisfaction and confusion over “such a fucked-up experience.”

Eventually, she realized that what she was grappling with was not just the night in question but also the failure of campus feminism to address those kinds of experiences. We tend to talk about consent “as an individual process,” she wrote, “not asking ‘What kinds of power are operating in this situation?’ but only ‘Did you or did you not say yes?’ ” Feminists, she continued, “sometimes talk about ‘yes’ and ‘no’ like they’re uncomplicated … But ethical sex is hard. And it won’t stop being hard until we … minimize, as much as possible, power imbalances related to sex.”

It may feel as though contemporary feminists are always talking about the power imbalances related to sex, thanks to the recently robust and radical campus campaigns against rape and sexual assault. But contemporary feminism’s shortcomings may lie in not its over­radicalization but rather its under­radicalization. Because, outside of sexual assault, there is little critique of sex. Young feminists have adopted an exuberant, raunchy, confident, righteously unapologetic, slut-walking ideology that sees sex — as long as it’s consensual — as an expression of feminist liberation. The result is a neatly halved sexual universe, in which there is either assault or there is sex positivity. Which means a vast expanse of bad sex — joyless, exploitative encounters that reflect a persistently sexist culture and can be hard to acknowledge without sounding prudish — has gone largely uninterrogated, leaving some young women wondering why they feel so fucked by fucking.

Feminism has a long, complicated relationship to sex, one that has cycled from embrace to critique and back again. By the time a generation of women woke feminism from its backlash slumber around the millennium, the sex wars of the 1980s were long over. Some second-wave feminists, including Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, had seen sex, pornography, and sexism as all of a piece, finding it impossible to pick the strands of pleasure from the suffocating fabric of oppression. So-called sex-positive feminists — Ellen Willis, Joan Nestle, Susie Bright — set themselves against what they saw as this puritanical slant. The sex-positive crusaders won the war for a million reasons, perhaps especially because their work offered optimism: that sexual agency and equality were available to women, that we were not destined to live our sexual lives as objects or victims, that we could take our pleasures and our power too. They won because sex can be fun and thrilling and because, for the most part, human beings want very badly to partake of it.

In this line of thinking, sex after yes, sex without violence or coercion, is good. Sex is feminist. And empowered women are supposed to enjoy the hell out of it. In fact, Alexandra Brodsky, a Yale law student and founder of anti-rape organization Know Your IX, tells me that she has heard from women who feel that “not having a super-exciting, super-positive sex life is in some ways a political failure.”

Except that young women don’t always enjoy sex — and not because of any innately feminine psychological or physical condition. The hetero (and non-hetero, but, let’s face it, mostly hetero) sex on offer to young women is not of very high quality, for reasons having to do with youthful ineptitude and tenderness of hearts, sure, but also the fact that the game remains rigged.

It’s rigged in ways that go well beyond consent. Students I spoke to talked about “male sexual entitlement,” the expectation that male sexual needs take priority, with men presumed to take sex and women presumed to give it to them. They spoke of how men set the terms, host the parties, provide the alcohol, exert the influence. Male attention and approval remain the validating metric of female worth, and women are still (perhaps increasingly) expected to look and fuck like porn stars — plucked, smooth, their pleasure performed persuasively. Meanwhile, male climax remains the accepted finish of hetero encounters; a woman’s orgasm is still the elusive, optional bonus round. Then there are the double standards that continue to redound negatively to women: A woman in pursuit is loose or hard up; a man in pursuit is healthy and horny. A woman who says no is a prude or a cock tease; a man who says no is rejecting the woman in question. And now these sexual judgments cut in two directions: Young women feel that they are being judged either for having too much sex, or for not having enough, or enough good, sex. Finally, young people often have very drunk sex, which in theory means subpar sex for both parties, but which in practice is often worse (like, physically worse) for women.”

Head to NY Mag to read the rest of this incredibly important and interesting piece!

Written by Melissa Mankins for The Huffington Post. Originally published on November 2nd, 2015.

I am fat — not curvy, fat. I have a fat stomach and I jiggle when I walk. I am most likely going to be the fattest person in the room at all times and I gladly accept that role. I adore my body and I don’t hate myself. I love all of my imperfections and dimples. I never want to be skinny.

Society tells me that this is a radical notion. It’s not. There are more girls like me out there. We just aren’t given space to be visible. I feel like I was put on this earth to be colorful and take up space and I am not ashamed.

We are told by the media that we need to live in shame, stop eating seventeen cheeseburgers, and hide our bodies. We are told to wear something “more flattering” and “not to show so much skin” and “put your boobs away Melissa, you are scaring the children.” Oh, I’m sorry, I would have cleavage even if I wore a turtleneck and I’m sick of trying to hide it.

We are also told that no one is going to want to have sex with us, especially someone conventionally attractive. Just look at any women’s magazine — not a dimple in sight! My own father told me when I was 10 years old that no man would ever want to hold my hand unless I lost weight and stopped biting my fingernails. LOL@dad, they want to do so much more than hold hands now.

I am fat and I have casual sex with strangers, attractive strangers even. Recently I took a roadtrip with my mom from LA to Oregon, where I live. It was an impromptu mini vacation before I move to Portland to go back to school for my art degree, start a boudoir photography business and live amongst other body-positive, sex-positive women like myself and the beautiful beards that love us.

My mom loves to draw everything out, so she was only willing to drive three hours per day. This meant that we stayed in four different hotels over five days. Partly inspired by Amber Rose’s Slut Walk, which was happening at the same time as my trip, and partly out of my love for new adventures, I started swiping right on men and women on Tinder as I waited to deplane at LAX.

I follow Amber Rose on Instagram and I find it infuriating watching other women tear each other down for what they choose to do with their own bodies. I also find equally disturbing the entitlement some men demonstrate when a woman chooses to display any amount of skin or overt sexuality in their presence.

To me, being called a slut isn’t degrading. I see it as empowering and symbolic of me taking ownership over what I choose to do with MY body. My fat beautiful curvy soft body.”

Head over to The Huffington Post to read the rest of this article that highlights the sexiness of #realworldbodies!

Originally posted on October 29th, 2015 for Daily Digest.

“Research carried out by the State University of New York recently suggested that B.J’s can have a whole host of health benefits. The news had men everywhere celebrating. But it seems that women also have cause for joy now as some parallel research conducted suggests that cunnilingus has plenty of its own advantages, for both men and women.

The research monitored more than 150 straight and lesbian couples, 75 of which were told to concentrate heavily on oral in their s*x lives, 75 of which were told to not to. The results show a notable difference in stress and anxiety levels, as well as sleep quality and intimacy levels (in and out of the bedroom).

The health benefits can be very real, though. Going down encourages her to produce hormones like oxytocin and DHEA, which have been proven to have protective effects against diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

The research also points to the sedative effect of the release of oxytocin and other endorphins, meaning it’s the perfect way to encourage sleep for those that suffer from insomnia or restless nights. The study additionally claims that these hormones can even relieve migraine headaches.

All these health benefits are there for the person performing the act too, so it’s good for both of you!”

Head over to Daily Digest to read the rest of the post! Check out our LickJob edition if you want to watch people improving their health ;)