In this episode Damian talks to Cindy Gallop who is the self-proclaimed Michael Bay of business as she “likes to blow shit up”.
Cindy was born in the UK, lived much of her childhood in Brunei, Borneo, and returned to the UK for university education in Oxford. She has lived in New York for the last 23 years and here we talk to her about one of her ventures, Make Love Not Porn, of which she is the founder and CEO.
Make Love Not Porn is the world's first user-generated, human-curated social sex platform. It is real world sex, and definitely not porn. However, they are Pro Sex, Pro Porn and Pro knowing the difference!
Damian's chat includes talking about how this platform is different to porn, the restrictions of promoting a business in this sector and the benefits of having a platform like this in society. This then leads to talking about representation of disabled people in porn and how videos of real world sex can rectify that.
We hope you enjoy this podcast as much as we do!
In this episode Damian talks to Cindy Gallop who is the self-proclaimed Michael Bay of business as she “likes to blow shit up”.
Cindy was born in the UK, lived much of her childhood in Brunei, Borneo, and returned to the UK for university education in Oxford. She has lived in New York for the last 23 years and here we talk to her about one of her ventures, Make Love Not Porn, of which she is the founder and CEO.
Make Love Not Porn is the world's first user-generated, human-curated social sex platform. It is real world sex, and definitely not porn. However, they are Pro Sex, Pro Porn and Pro knowing the difference!
Damian's chat includes talking about how this platform is different to porn, the restrictions of promoting a business in this sector and the benefits of having a platform like this in society. This then leads to talking about representation of disabled people in porn and how videos of real world sex can rectify that.
We hope you enjoy this podcast as much as we do!
Welcome to Enhance the UK's Undressing Disability podcast where we strip back all things taboo on sex and disability
Damian Weatherald:Hello, and welcome to Enhance the UK's Undressing Disability podcast. I'm your host Damian and today we're going to be talking to Cindy Gallop, a businesswoman who describes herself as the Michael Bay of business because she likes to blow shit up, and the founder of the amazing website, Make Love Not Porn. Welcome to the show, Cindy.
Cindy Gallop:Thank you Damien thrilled to be here.
Damian Weatherald:It's great to have you on and I think you know I spoke in the intro about how you describe yourself as the Michael Bay of business because you like to blow shit up, but I think what our listeners first need to know is a little bit about you, how you got into business.
Cindy Gallop:Sure. So I'm half English, half Chinese. So my father was English. My mother is Chinese. And I was born in the UK but when I was six, my parents moved to Brunei in Borneo. And so I grew up in Brunei in Asia, came back to the UK for school and university and went to Oxford to Somerville college there, fell madly in love with theatre and so I actually started my career in theatre. I was the marketing and publicity officer for the Yvonne Arnaud theatre in Guilford, and then the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. But eventually, I got completely fed up with working 24/7 and earning chicken feed, which is what happens in the theatre. And so I moved over into advertising and so my background is 35 years working in brand building marketing and advertising. 16 of those for the same advertising agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, BBH. I began working with them in London in 1989, moved to Singapore in 96 to help start up and run BBH Asia Pacific. And the reason I'm here in New York is because I moved here 23 years ago, to open up the American office for BBH. And I ran that for a number of years before I began working for myself. And today I'm the founder and CEO of Make Love Not Porn. We are pro sex, pro porn, pro knowing the difference.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah, and it's an absolutely fantastic website. I think something else that would be good to do is can you please give our listeners an audio description of how you will look?
Cindy Gallop:Absolutely. So you'll probably find it a little odd because I've just said that I'm half Chinese but I have blonde hair. And that's because I dye it and so I have blonde hair that is cut in a short bob. I am wearing a Make Love Not Porn t shirt, which has a white logo in a red heart on a black T shirt. I am wearing a pair of rose tinted glasses, very appropriate, I'm a very optimistic person! And I want to just give a shout out to my glasses because they are a made by a company called caddis and caddis was founded by a gentleman called Tim I forgotten his second name, who turned 40, discovered that at that age your eyesight begins deteriorating especially when it comes to reading. Discovered equally that all reading glasses look terrible and so decided to start a company designing really cool reading glasses. And because I do a lot of work championing diversity in all its forms including combating ageism and because he appreciated that work, he sent me several pairs for free. That was very nice of him. And then I will tell our audience that around my neck, I'm wearing two necklaces, two pendants. I am wearing a Facebook Like on a necklace executed in silver by a young designer and many years ago, his name's Lysander Follett and I wore my Facebook Like necklace into a meeting with Twitter. Twitter weren't happy so they then sent me my other necklace which is my Twitter handle on a pendant and so I have to wear both, these are my social media necklaces. But the reason I wear them every day is because they are emblematic of the work that I do. So these necklaces always get a response from people who meet me. Now there's a generational divide for the Facebook Like, you know younger people go oh how nice, the Facebook Like. Older people go, Oh how nice, a thumbs up. But the point is that these are digital symbols that produce a positive response in the real world. And my work is all about using technology to make good things happen in the real world. And so I like the fact that these are symbolic of the work that I do.
Damian Weatherald:I love the idea of that because like you said, it's definitely a generational thing how people react with social media. It's always said about it's an older platform for Twitter, for example, where Instagram's for the younger generations, and I don't buy into that at all.
Cindy Gallop:All social media is for everybody. And Make Love Not Porn is social sex media, and we are for everybody as well.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah. And that is where I need to go next. Because Make Love Not Porn is an absolutely fantastic website. I think it's great that it's breaking taboos of anyone can make the porn that they want.
Cindy Gallop:No, Damien, sorry. I'm gonna stop you there. We are not porn. We are real world sex.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah, I apologise for that.
Cindy Gallop:Yep. And by the way, it's understandable because I've spent 12 years ever since I launched Make Love Not Porn trying to get people to see the nuance in all of this. And it is an indication of how messed up our society is about sex that people go, Oh, anything involving people having sex or video must be porn. It's not. Porn is performative, produced entertainment. It's deliberately manufactured and created for that purpose. And the way to think about Make Love Not Porn is if porn is the Hollywood blockbuster movie, Make Love Not Porn is the Real World Documentary. So we are essentially what Facebook would be if Facebook allowed you to socially sexually self express which, as we all know, it sadly does not. You know, we are that desperately needed compliment and counterpoint to form, which is an utter unique window into the funny, messy, fabulous, glorious, comical ways we all have sex in the real world. And so, you know, we don't compete with porn. We are, as I said, a complement to it. People like watching movies, people like watching documentaries, people watch both movies and documentaries. Sometimes they're in the mood for a movie, sometimes in the mood for a documentary. Okay. We are not porn. We are social sex.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah, that was definitely a slip of the tongue on my part. Because, yeah, it definitely isn't porn because it is so real. And like you said, there is the the real side to it of when I've watched some of the videos on there, it's that realistic that things can things can go wrong, it can be messy. One of the videos that I watched really made it hit home that when, I can't remember the couple's name who were in the video, but one of the cameras fell off the ceiling. It just made me laugh, it was like, you know, they go into so much effort and then the camera fell off. And I thought it was just one of these things can go wrong. And it's one of these things I do talk about in other podcasts and such that, due to my condition, my joints dislocate very easily. And I will talk about how during sex, I can pop a shoulder out, pop or hip out, it happens. And you've just got to get on with it. You've got to laugh about it, you've got to do that. And that is what your website is all about. And I think it's good that there is some disability representation on there. Is it James and Tamsin?
Cindy Gallop:Yes James and Tamsin
Damian Weatherald:And it's great to see a male in a wheelchair in there. I hope there will be more on there in the future. But again, there might be hidden disabilities on there, so we don't know.
Cindy Gallop:So I have to tell you Damien, I created Make Love Not Porn, to celebrate the full glorious spectrum of human sexuality. And so it's been really important for us from day one to build a category that is Make Disabled Love Not Porn. Now, a couple of things that mean that that has gone much more slowly than we would like. The first thing is something just to make our audience aware of which is, you know, when I embarked on building this venture, I had no idea that I and my tiny team would fight an enormous battle every single day to keep it going, let alone grow it. And the reason for that is every piece of business infrastructure, any other tech startup gets to take for granted, we can't because the small print always says no adult content. And this is all pervasive across every single area of the business in ways that people outside the sphere don't realise. I can't get funded. I can't get banked, you know, it took me four years to find one bank here in America that would allow me to open a business bank account for Make Love Not Porn. Every single tech service we need to use to operate our video stream platform, hosting, encoding, encrypting, the Terms of Service always say no adult content. In every single case, I have to go to the people at the top of the company, explain what we're doing, beg to be allowed to use their service. Sometimes, for some that don't know, it's a very labour intensive process. Our biggest operational challenge is payments. PayPal won't work with adult content, Stripe can't, mainstream credit card processors won't. We had to build our entire video stream platform from scratch ourselves as proprietary technology, because existing streaming services won't stream adult content. I'm so jealous of friends who've built video stocks on top of video, quick, easy, simple. I can't do that. You know, even something as simple as sending out emails to our members. MailChimp refuses to work with adult content, we were rejected by six or seven email partners until we found SendGrid who does. And to give you an idea of how ridiculous this is, a couple of years ago, I needed a contract user experience designer. I put a perfectly standard job description for UX designer up on Upwork, 20 minutes, they took it down, they told us because of Make Love Not Porn, we are not allowed to advertise standard tech jobs on their jobs board. So this is just to make you aware that we have a tiny team battling this every day, for many years, it was just me and one employee, our curator Sarah. These days, we do have a very small team of six. But what that means is that our resources are very limited in terms of being able to do community outreach, in the way that we would love to, to ensure more and more representation. We are, you know, we are only able to publish what we receive. And we don't have the resources and the wherewithal to go out and and really work with communities to bring them in. And that is especially you know, to point number two, challenging when it comes to the community of people with disabilities. Because we've actually been reaching out to working with disability activists over the years to build this category. We are acutely aware that when you are a person with disabilities, it isn't so easy to video yourself having real world sex, either solo or with a partner. Because usually, you will need all sorts of assistance in terms of even having sex, let alone then be able to share it on video with our community. And so, we were thrilled when Andrew Garza who is a wonderful disability activist. And in fact I love the company, he and his sister, Heather Morrison, are building, which is making disabled sex toys, by disabled people for disabled people. I'm a board advisor to them, because I love what they're doing so much. And Andrew very kindly wrote a wonderful blog post, which in fact, I must send to you after this, which was all about how to share, Make Disabled Love Not Porn videos when it is not that easy. And so we know it's going to take time, but we are very much hoping to build that category and more representation. And by the way, Damien, one of the reasons we're so keen to build that category Make Love Not Porn also is because, quite frankly, able bodied people would enormously benefit from watching Make Disabled Love Not Porn videos, because what a wonderful demonstration in the need for empathy, and sensitivity and consent and communication, and all sorts of things that, as I say, able bodied people could really benefit from learning from watching how people with disabilities have real world sex.
Damian Weatherald:I completely agree because this is one thing we do at Enhance the UK, is try and break these taboos down because so many people still come to us and say, disabled people shouldn't be having sex. It's not right. And we get that so much, even I get it. My disability is invisible to a lot of people unless I'm in my wheelchair. I'm an ambulant wheelchair user so I don't use one all the time. But once people know, I have had so many negative comments, my wife will get it - should you be having sex is it safe? And it's absolutely ridiculous.
Cindy Gallop:Oh my God! Bloody hell. No, that's out bloody rageous and you know we absolutely exist at Make Love Not Porn, Damian, to completely change that mindset. I'll give you an example in another area of diversity, anecdotally, why this is so important? So when we launched Make Love Not Porn.TV back in 2012, we obviously had to see the platform with the content pre launch. So I and our then curator Sarah spent a whole year asking everybody in our network and complete strangers, will you film yourself having real world sex for us. And by the way, that is how I found out that 99.9% of the time the answer is yes. I mean, even to the extent where, I had to rearrange my facial features, I want to go, What! You will?! The desire to do this lies a lot closer to the surface than many people realise. And given a reason, given our social mission, and our social and sexual values, people jumped at the chance. So pre launch, we had a wonderful video submitted by a young gay male couple, living here in New York, they were in a committed relationship, they were madly in love with each other and this was the most adorable video of 45 minutes of amazing loving gay male sex. I mean, the love radiated through the screen, they were besotted with each other, tonnes of kissing. And so we were thrilled. And then just before launch, they asked to pull the video because they've shown their faces one of them worked in education, they got cold feet. And by the way, at Make Love Not Porn, the moment you want your video down, we delete it, no questions asked. You know, nobody else does that by the way. We don't require a process, you don't have to apply, you don't have to wait. You know, the moment you tell us you want it off our platform, it's yanked, done. I mean, you might submit a video one day, we publish it, you're free to change your mind overnight, and we'll take it down the next morning. So we actually took the video down but I wrote to this couple and I said absolutely no worries, however, I hope at some point further down the line, you will allow us to publish that video. And here's why. The nature of Make Love Not Porn is such that people would watch that video who would never watch gay porn. And if you needed it, that video had the power to completely change your worldview of what you think gay male sex is. Because, if you are homophobic, you think that gay male sex is whips, chains, dungeon, satan stuff of hell. When you watch two human beings loving each other, the same way you love your partner, I believe that has the power to be transformative in terms of your worldview of what people with other sexualities, and other scenarios versus yours, actually are. And so that is another very powerful transformative impact of being able to celebrate Make Disabled Love Not Porn on Make Love Not Porn, because to your point, I believe that when people are able to see what that actually is, what it involves, how it is simply human beings loving themselves or each other the same way you do, I believe that has the power to completely transform people's attitude towards people with disabilities and sex.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah, and I think it could help make a more inclusive, more tolerant society, because like you said, people have these pictures in the minds of what gay sex is like, what sex for disabled people is like, and that could be so far from what is real. And like you say, I think going back to how we started the conversation, I think porn has a place in that problem as well. I think mainstream porn really does cause some of those issues.
Cindy Gallop:Because with real world sex we are not fetishizing anything. You know, all we're doing is at Make Love Not Porn, we hold the mirror up to the fabulous sex we all have in the real world. You know, in that sense, by the way, Make Love Not Porn is a social experiment. We just put this platform out there. You our community, you the world, you show us what real world sex is. We're not dictating anything. And we are simply reflecting what really happens in the real world.
Damian Weatherald:Yeah I completely get that. I think it's good that because of the way porn is now and it's so easy for people to get, and they have these pictures, and it's a problem that society has sometimes and the younger generations, because they have access to porn, that's all they think sex is. Now if they had access to Make Love Not Porn, for example, they would see what a real life experience of sex is. How it can be different for different people, there's disabled people on there, there's larger people, there's older people. That was something I just found fascinating because you don't see many, unless it's getting fetishized, and I think this is something I was going to ask you. Do you think this sometimes puts disabled people off? Because they might be worried about being fetishized? Because when I look at mainstream porn, and other adult sites, I often think the only time you ever see a disabled person is in a fetish way.
Cindy Gallop:Yep, no, no, sadly, Damien, that is absolutely not what is putting people with disabilities off of Make Love Not Porn. It's simply that they've never heard of us. And so I want to make our audience aware because again, they might not know this. When I've talked earlier about our enormous challenges with business infrastructure, a really key part of that is that we are banned from advertising. We can't advertise. We can't advertise on Facebook, Instagram, we're banned for advertising on Twitter, we're banned for advertising on Reddit, which by the way, I find especially outrageous, given everything on Reddit. And we are also banned from advertising in traditional media. You know, here in New York, the MTA will not allow Make Love Not Porn to advertise on billboards on the subway. And incidentally, so our audience understands this, this is massive, and it's a massively gendered bias. It's not just Make Love Not Porn. Any female ends, sexual health and wellness ventures are banned from advertising in all these places as well. My friends were female founders with menstruation ventures, menopause ventures, fertility ventures, they can't advertise. In the meantime, male sexual health and wellness ventures absolutely fine. Erectile Dysfunction solutions, come on in. It's infuriating, but it's especially infuriating because Make Love Not Porn is a very media and advertising responsive venture. When people find out about us, they want us. The problem is how they find out about us when we are banned from advertising. And so there is virtually zero awareness of us in the disability community, which is why by the way, I'm so thrilled to be doing this podcast you know, please do spread the word far and wide.
Damian Weatherald:We'll certainly be doing that Cindy.
Cindy Gallop:It's simple that disabled people do not know about Make Love Not Porn, that's the really pressing thing.
Damian Weatherald:We will certainly try and rectify that. When this podcast goes live, we will get you maybe to write a little article as well to put on our Hub that people can join and see all that and we'll see what we can share on social media because like you said, it's weird what can and can't be shared on social media. Reddit is an area where I see an awful lot of things about sex toys, because that is my background, and see stuff on there but like you say if you can advertise on there, that's just crazy to me.
Cindy Gallop:Yep, it's just so frustrating because as you know, Damien, racism, homophobia, ableism run rampant on all those social platforms. Yeah, we and again, I speak collectively, I and my fellow, especially female founders in all of these areas of sexual health and wellness, we bring a really healthy lens. We bring information people are desperate for and yet we are banned from advertising while everything else runs rampant on social.
Damian Weatherald:Do you think in the big picture of society there is a way we can change this? How do you think we have these conversations more openly?
Cindy Gallop:So I've been speaking out for 12 years about the fact that everybody on the internet should be emulating what Make Love Not Porn does. So I want to contextualise how unique we are, in the framework of the broader tech landscape as a whole. So the young, white, able bodied male founders of the giant tech platforms that dominate our lives today are not the primary targets online and offline of harassment, abuse, racism, ableism, sexual assault, violence, rape, revenge porn, therefore, they did not and they do not proactively design for the prevention of any of those things on their platforms. And we see the results around us every single day. Those of us who are most at risk every single day, women, black people, people of colour, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, we build safe spaces and safe experiences. So I in my tiny team spent literally years concepting designing Make Love Not Porn before we ever built it, because we knew if we are going to invite everybody to do something they've never done before, socially share their real world sex, we had to think through every possible ramification of that to create a completely safe and trustworthy space. As a result, not only does Make Love Not Porn operate unlike anybody else in the adult sphere, we operate unlike anybody else on the internet, period. So at Make Love Not Porn, I designed the platform around what everybody else should have, nobody else did, human curation. There is no self publishing of anything on Make Love, Not Porn. Nobody else does that by the way. Our curators watch every single video submitted from beginning to end before we approve or reject it, and we publish it. Nobody else does that, by the way. But not just that, our curators review every post on every member profile, be it text, photos, art illustration, before we approve, and we publish it. And by the way, your posts on your profile at Make Love Not Porn can be as safe work or not safe as you like, but we review every single one and we publish it. No one else does that. We review every comment on every video, before we approve and publish it. Nobody else does that. We can vouch for every single piece of content on our platform in a way that nobody else can. And that is why Make Love Not Porn is the safest place on the internet. And a very important part of human curation Damian is that for us, it starts way further back than when you arrive on our platform. Because as I said earlier, I created Make Love Not Porn to celebrate the wonderful sex we all have in the real world. That is the only kind of content we feature. It's the only kind of content we want. So we are crystal clear about what we are for, not just on our FAQs on our website but across all of our social channels, in every media interview, in every podcast interview like this. And surprise, when you make it very clear what kind of content you want, that is the only kind of content you get. And so imagine Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube operating like Make Love Not Porn. Okay, first of all, as I said, when you make it really clear what you stand for what you're all about and by the way, none of those platforms have. I designed Make Love Not Porn around a very specific set of values that are my values. No one else has done that. When you make it really clear what you stand for, and what kind of content you want, that's the kind of content we get. Secondly, when you human curate, when you announce that human eyes will review every single submission to make sure it's only that kind of content, guess what? The child rapists, the racists, the Nazis, no longer submit that content because they know it won't get through, you turn off that Firehose immediately. And thirdly, when you therefore have an environment that is designed for only the kind of content you want that is human curated accordingly, you make so much more money, because advertisers flock to you, because the two keywords Brand Safety. Yeah, nobody else is doing that, everyone else should
Damian Weatherald:And you look at the problems there has been with the likes of Pornhub, because of the stuff that's been uploaded on there. And that is one thing I did find when I first looked at Make Love Not Porn, was how safe it was, you know, I went through a lot of different categories and I just thought there was nothing there I wouldn't have wanted to look at. And so in the early days, did you get videos submitted that you weren't willing to put on?
Cindy Gallop:The answer to that is yes, but not in the sense that that you're thinking about.. So I said to my team right up front, I want us to design this platform so our acceptance rate is 99.9%. Because I didn't want to have to reject anybody's real world sex. So there are three broad reasons why we have to reject videos. By the way, none of them have to do with the nature of the content, again in the way that you're thinking about it, because what I always have to say to people is, everything you see in porn, somebody somewhere loves doing in the real world, actually millions of somebody's. It's not about the act okay. So reason number one is, too porn tropey. And what I mean by that is, as I said, I don't mean what people actually do in the video. What I mean is, and this is really interesting, because access to porn is now so ubiquitous globally and again, Make Love Not Porn is a global platform, so everything I talked about, we're seeing on a global basis, people have unconsciously internalised porn tropes without even realising they're doing it. And so when I say too porn tropey, what I mean is, for example, people think, because this is what they see on the tube sites, we want them to start the camera, the moment they hit the sheets, and turns off the minute they've come. We're going no, no, no! real world sex has context, real world sex has a backstory, it has relationships, start the camera running as early as possible, we want to see how you get turned on. You know, we want to see all of the foreplay, if it's a solo video what makes you want to start loving yourself? and then leave the camera running as long as possible afterwards. We want to see the aftermath, we want to see the conversations, the cuddling, the who gets to sleep in the wet patch, you know, the shower, whatever. And then the other porn trope that people think we want is, again because they see it in porn, they think they have to have genital close ups so we can see it's it's really happening. We say no, no, we know it's happening for real, pull the camera back, we want to see your faces, want to see the interaction, you know, we want to see how you're responding. So that's what I mean, when I say that we do occasionally have to reject just because it's too porn tropey in that kind of way. And what our curators do is just explain why we have to reject this video and make some suggestions for the next time you film yourself. The second reason we have to reject videos is we are not about production values. I mean, this is real world sex, people film themselves on their phones, on their webcams. But every so often, the video is so dark, you can't see a thing. And then we have to say right Okay, guys, really sorry, here are some lighting tips for the next time or we're not gonna be able to publish this video. And then the third reason we have to reject videos is especially frustrating, and we do try and preempt as much as possible. But it's copyrighted music. This is real world sex, people forget that when you have the radio playing in the background with that really popular song in it, I'm really sorry but sadly, we cannot publish that.
Damian Weatherald:I noticed that with one of the videos, I think it was someone doing a striptease, and they said oh we had to mute it because we couldn't put the music in. And I thought I wouldn't have even give that a thought till I read that comment. And it's like, oh, yeah, you've got to think about those things because you gave it all on Instagram and Tik Tok, where you've got to be careful with the music.
Cindy Gallop:Exactly, so we do flag up in our FAQs, we go make sure you don't do this. We send people to libraries, of Creative Commons music that they can use. Or we say, this is your chance, if you've got any friends with an indie band, or indie musician, you can sell their music because this is great music to Make Love Not Porn to, you know?
Damian Weatherald:Yeah. And what I really liked about the some of the videos that I watched was the sensuality, like you say, it was very natural. The couples, you see from the start, there's maybe cuddling and then they get into the foreplay and might have sex, some of them they might not, there's like massages going on. And I just thought, that is what real life sex is all about. And it might not always be sex, it might just be being in a couple in a room being intimate. And, you know, I think that's great because one thing we talk about at Enhance is how for disabled people sex might never happen and intimacy is different for different people. And I just think that is what Make Love Not Porn shows.
Cindy Gallop:Exactly, Damien, you know, we are role modelling all sorts of things that people would enormously benefit from learning. And to touch a couple aspects of that, one thing that you've spoken about that is enormously important, and again unique to Make Love Not Porn, is that our videos celebrate real world emotion, love, intimacy, feelings. And the reason that's that's so important is because all around us and popular culture, you know, TV, movies, Netflix, we see many creative expressions and narratives of relationships, but we never see the actual sex. On Make Love Not Porn, you see the actual sex, but you also see the relationships. Because in our videos, those two things are indivisible. And by the way, when I say that, I don't just mean that you see wonderful healthy relationship dynamics, you know, coupled partner, threesome, whatever videos, you also see in our solo masturbation videos, what it's like to have a healthy relationship with yourself. With your own body, your own sexuality, your own genitals, and that is transformative, you know. In fact, amongst our many solo videos, we have male, female, trans, non binary masturbation videos. A number of those Make Love Not Porn stars have deliberately shared their real world sex in order to make themselves feel better about their own bodies. And by the way, the vast majority of Make Love Not Porn stars have never filmed themselves doing anything sexual before ever. They're doing it for us because they believe in our social mission. And so one of our newer Make Love Not Porn stars, a woman, shared a video a few weeks ago, where she said All my life I've been told my vulva is too big, it's too gross, it's too flappy, it's too whatever. She said, I completely disagree. I think my vulva's wonderful. And so I decided to share a video of myself on Make Love Not Porn and I would love to know what you guys think. And our community is amazing. The pile on of love, like literally within the first hour, are people going, you're beautiful, you're wonderful. And our Make Love Not Porn stars are so blown away by the affirmation they receive from our community. So this is the really interesting thing, they tell us that socially sharing their real world sex will Make Love Not Porn is as transformative for them and their relationships, as socially sharing everything else has been for the world at large. And so our solo Make Love Not Porn stars, as I said, they tell us that doing this made them love themselves more, it enhanced their sexual sense of self, their sexual self esteem. Couples tell us it transformed their relationship because when you decide to film yourselves having sex, you have to talk about it. And when you talk about doesn't actually matter how long you've been together, the conversation goes places, it's never ever gone before. You know couples write to us and say, we thought we were open but doing this just took our relationship to a whole new level. That's wonderful.
Damian Weatherald:It's great and let's just hope it keeps growing and growing and more people feel comfortable to submit videos, because I think at the end of the day, sex is a natural thing and pleasure should be something that everyone can have. But yeah, I think we just live in that society now where things like this can only help people be more comfortable with themselves. And again, it's an education thing, I think that's where we need to look at.
Cindy Gallop:Damian, you're so right. We are sex education through real world demonstration. And by the way, you know, I will just ask you this question. As I said, we fight a battle just to keep going, because I have tremendous challenges, raising funding. You know, my biggest obstacle raising funding, finding investors, is the social dynamic that I call fear of what other people will think, because it is never about what the person I'm talking to thinks. You know, when you understand what we're doing and why we're doing it, nobody can argue with it, the business case is clear. It's always their fear of what they think other people will think, which operates around sex unlike any other area. And so, you know, I would love you to bear us in mind if there are any philanthropists with disabilities in the UK, any organisations that make charitable grants, I mean, I know we're a For Profit business, but I created our revenue sharing business model, not just to democratise access to income, but also because we have to be a self sustaining business because it's so difficult to find funding. But equally we look for donations and philanthropy and grants from bodies and institutions that get how enormously important it is that Make Love Not Porn continues to exist. And so we welcome all help from anybody who understands how important it is to fund us.
Damian Weatherald:Hopefully someone listening will get in touch with you, Cindy, and we can give you some financial help to keep it going because it needs to be there, I really do believe that. It has been an absolute joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for being a guest and if anyone wants to check out Make Love Not Porn, it is Make Love Not Porn.tv There are some amazing videos on there.
Cindy Gallop:And Damian, we have an offer for your community. And so again, we would give you a promo code but because we have such battles with our tech development, we're not able to operate promo codes, but we would love you to check out Make Love Not Porn and so if you email disability@makelovenotporn.com and start an account, okay, email us from the email address that you open your account with, and we will give you a free credit to watch a video for free to get you started. So it's disability@makelovenotporn.com, email from the email address you open your Make Love Not Porn.tv account with and we will give you a free credit to watch a video for free.
Damian Weatherald:Thank you so much for that Cindy and hopefully our listeners will have a look and then get hooked on some of the videos.
Cindy Gallop:I sincerely hope so and consider as and when you can, please do share your own real world sex because we want you to Make Disabled Love Not Porn and show the world what that looks like.
Damian Weatherald:Hopefully someone will take you up on that offer. Thank you so much, Cindy.
Cindy Gallop:It's been a pleasure, Damien. Thank you.
Jennie Williams:Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like any more information about the work we do under the Undressing Disability campaign, then go on to our website at enhancetheuk.org and click on the Undressing Disability tab.