Sex, Porn, and Knowing the Difference — with Cindy Gallop

Cindy Gallop, the founder of sex tech platform MakeLoveNotPorn, joins Scott to discuss how porn shapes young men’s understanding of sexual intimacy. She also shares the challenges and opportunities she’s seen in the emerging sex tech space. Follow Cindy on Twitter, @cindygallop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Scott Galloway?

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• 1:03Scott Galloway?

  Episode 185. Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder recorded "We Are the World" in 1985. People born in 1985, Cristiano Ronaldo, my son's favorite soccer star Bruno Mars, and Lana Del Rey. Why can't Stevie Wonder see his friends? Because he's married.

• 1:22Scott Galloway?

  Go, go, go!

• 1:32Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 185th episode of the Prop G Pod. The dog is out of the office all month. That's right, I'm howling at the moon somewhere. I'm taking some time off. I'm sniffing other dogs' butts, and I'm just eating kibble all day. A lot of dog metaphors there. In today's episode, we're sharing our conversation with Cindy Gallop, the founder of Make Love Not Porn, a social sex tech platform designed to promote good sexual behavior and good sexual values. She also serves as a board advisor to a number of tech ventures and works as a personal brand life executive coach and a consultant on brand and business innovation for companies around the world. We discussed with Cindy the relationship between porn and young men's understanding of sexual intimacy. We also discussed the monopoly of the porn industry,

• 2:14Scott Galloway?

  opportunities for investment in sex tech, and the importance of speaking openly about sex. To use her words, "Great sex is born out of great communication." I've known Cindy for the better part of two decades now, and I've just always found her to be a really interesting thinker. I used to be charged with pulling together something I called "Nine," which was a session at orientation for the incoming first years at the NYU Stern School of Business, where I would bring nine speakers in for nine minutes, sort of like a mini TED thing, it was meant to be inspiring, and I would try and find the most interesting faculty members and people from the community, and I would always bring Cindy in. She's just a kind of a fearless provocateur and has just a really unique spin on things, and also is a, she's just kind of a fun person to be around. Anyways, with that, here's our conversation with Cindy Gallop.

• 3:00Scott Galloway?

  Cindy, where does this podcast find you?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Oh, in my apartment in New York, on 5th and 39th.

• 3:04Scott Galloway?

  Nice. So let's start right into it. We think a lot about young men, and a big theme of the show is that how do we create more economically and emotionally viable young men? Talk about the relationship or the evolving nature of the relationship between porn and young men in American society.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Sure. Well, you know, as you know, Scott, I have a very personal take on this because I date younger men. As someone who's never wanted to marry, never wanted children, is not a relationship person, cannot wait to die alone, I date younger men casually and recreationally for sex. And so I've had the opportunity to see firsthand what happens when we don't talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world, which is that porn becomes sex education by default in not a good way. And I was realizing this 14, 15 years ago, that led me to start what I do, Make Love Not Porn. But I think, you know, the very important thing there, Scott, is to make it clear that porn is

• 4:07Speaker 02

  only one dynamic in a whole realm of them in popular culture that do not encourage men to be open, emotional, and vulnerable, especially when it comes to sex and relationships. You know, I very much wish society understood the opposite of what it thinks is true. Women enjoy sex just as much as men, and men are just as romantic as women. Yet neither gender is allowed to openly celebrate that fact, and we'd all be a lot better off if they were. And so what we have is a scenario where the one universal area of human experience that we all enormously enjoy and are riveted by is the one area that we are almost universally

• 4:51Speaker 02

  fucked up about. And in a world where sex education is such a fraught topic, there is one very easy source of finding out more about sex, and that is online porn. When there is no counterpoint, or historically there hasn't been, then that is absolutely where people take their cues from about how to behave around sex. This is exacerbated precisely because we don't talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world. Because we don't, sex is an area of rampant insecurity for every single one of us. We all get vulnerable when we get naked, sexual egos are very fragile.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  People therefore find it bizarrely difficult to talk about sex to the people they're actually having it with while they're actually having it. Because in that situation, you're terrified that if you say anything at all about what is going on, if you comment on the action any way at all, you will potentially hurt the other person's feelings, put them off you, derail the encounter, potentially derail the entire relationship. But at the same time, you know, you want to please your partner, you want to make them happy. Everybody wants to be good in bed, nobody knows exactly what that means, and so you will seize your cues on how to do that from any way you can. And if the only cues you've ever seen are in porn, because your parents never talked

• 6:17Speaker 02

  about sex, because your school wouldn't teach you, because your friends aren't honest, those are the cues you're going to take to not very good effect.

• 6:23Scott Galloway?

  You talk about the social sex revolution, what do you mean by that?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  So, you know, make love not porn came out of my observation, as I mentioned earlier, that, you know, we don't talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world. And by the way, Make Love Not Porn is an accident. What is no accident is that I've spent thirty seven years working in advertising, thirty seven years working in the business of communication. So I know that everything great in life and business is born out of great communication. Sex is no different. Great sex is born out of great communication. And so our mission is to make it easier to talk about sex. And so in that sense, we're socializing sex. So when we call ourselves the social sex revolution, the revenge part is not the sex. It's the fact we're making it social.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  And we're doing that by taking every dynamic in social media and applying them to this one area of universal human experience no other social network platform will allow.

• 7:21Scott Galloway?

  How has the industry evolved or devolved? And what niche are you trying to carve out with Make Love Not Porn?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  First of all, I'm not in the porn industry. Make Love Not Porn is pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-knowing-the-difference. As I said, we're the badly needed complement to porn, which is the Real World documentary. But I have inevitably, in thirteen years of working Make Love Not Porn, found myself becoming something of a champion and advocate for the porn industry. Because the porn industry is dominated by a monopoly that not many people realize exists, which is that a company called MindGeek owns everything. Pornhub, YouPorn, RedTube, et cetera. And, you know, if this were any other industry, antitrust legislation would have kicked into play many years ago. But a monopoly in porn is doing what a monopoly anywhere else does.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  It's strangling individual creative vision. And so I have friends who are brilliant, female queer pornographers. They are creating really innovative disruptive porn. And they can't get the traffic revenue numbers they deserve because of MindGeek's dominance of the industry. And I would love to see that change because there is as much opportunity to disrupt the future of porn as there is to disrupt the future of anything else.

• 8:44Scott Galloway?

  And tell us how you're trying to disrupt it. Would you categorize, when people say what industry is Make Love Not Porn in, is it a media company? How do you describe it?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I describe us as a sex tech venture. I actually wrote the definition of sex tech eight years ago because I needed to legitimize my own category. And sex tech is any form of technology or tech venture designed to innovate, disrupt, and enhance in any area of human sexuality and human sexual experience. And that is a massive sector. I've spoken around the world for years about the fact that this is the next trillion-dollar category in tech because we haven't even begun to see what it can be when it gets the same funding and championing and resources that every other sector in tech does.

• 9:30Scott Galloway?

  And why do you think it doesn't? Is it because of the taboo? Is it because of the people who predominantly are funders are not comfortable backing a sex tech venture? What has been the friction or the inhibiting factor here?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  The biggest obstacle for funding for sex tech is the social dynamic that I call fear of what other people will think, which operates around sex more than any other area. And in VC, there are too many stakeholders, too many partners, too many LPs. And by the way, I've spoken to VCs over the years who've said, I think you're on to something that could be really big. If I talk to my partners, they go, what are you on? So the other challenge, and this is my challenge, but it's also the challenge for the sector as a whole, is I know that my investors are out there. There are a ton of them in every country in the world. They're impossible to find by the usual means because they all have one thing in common: your willingness to fund Make Love Not Porn or any other sex tech venture is entirely

• 10:27Speaker 02

  a function of your personal sexual journey. It's a function of your personal lens on sex and sexuality, driven by your own experience. And I have no way to research and target for that, especially because sex is the one area where you cannot tell from the outside what anybody thinks on the inside. The people who look like they would totally get it, don't. The people who look like complete prudes, do. And so my strategy for years has been to put what I'm doing out there all the time, you know, promote, make up more across my social channels, do every media interview I'm asked to, every podcast, because I have to rely on making synaptic connections that will attract those investors to me. And the good news is in the past couple of years,

• 11:10Speaker 02

  that's been happening more and more. But it is the challenge for all of us doing anything sex related, the backers, the funders, the champions, the door openers, they are really, really hard to identify in the way that any conventional tech startup would.

• 11:27Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

• 11:31Scott Galloway?

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• 12:34Scott Galloway?

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• 13:41Scott Galloway?

  So, I mean, you've been at this a while. You're as successful as anyone I know in this space. And yet, the space, it just doesn't command, or maybe the economics are there and I just don't know about it. But I can't think of an industry that has this much attention in terms of time spent by everyone up and down the income stack. You know, I just assume, and I might be wrong here. I assume everyone watches porn. It's just a question of how many people admit it or don't admit it. And the delta between what I'll call attention of capital, attention of legitimate research, attention of the public markets, it still does, in a weird way, seem taboo. And at the same time, I've been watching Euphoria.

• 14:24Scott Galloway?

  I think that is just very well-budgeted, highly-produced porn. I mean, it has more story, but as far as I can tell, it's pretty much porn. My sense is, without the sex, it just wouldn't command the attention. Is it that porn isn't... Getting the attention it deserves or just being disrupted by traditional mainstream media? You wouldn't have seen Girls 20 years ago, you wouldn't have seen Euphoria, I don't think, 10 years ago. Is it that it's the disruptor is traditional Hollywood?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  No, no, it's not actually, Scott. The one thing that is inhibiting what you're talking about in terms of opening up what should be an industry that, as I said earlier, you know, should welcome and reward individual creative vision. The one thing holding it back is infrastructure. And I have to tell you that this was a revelation to me when I began building Make Love Not Porn, because I did not realize the battle I and my team would fight every day, because every piece of business infrastructure, other tech startups get to take for granted. We can't, a small print always says no adult content. And this applies to anybody working in adult as much as sex tech.

• 15:38Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, credit cards, bank accounts, you can't even get a bank account, right?

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't advertise, you know, every tech service that I want to use, the terms of service always say no adult content, hosting and coding and encrypting. I can never get to use best in class of anything. And this is why, to be frank, one of the things I'm talking to investors about is that where the real unicorns are to be found is in building the ecosystem for sex tech. You know, I want to, and this is not on my product roadmap for investors, because there are too many variables, but I've been monitoring fintech for 13 years. I want to find the fintech startup that sees the potential in being the stripe of sex tech.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  I want to build it, buy it, acquire it, merge with it, because enabling the ecosystem for legal, ethical, transparent sex tech and adult ventures, and by the way, everything is legal, the opportunity is enormous when you open up the infrastructure everyone relies on to build their businesses. That's what will really make everything sex tech and everything adult fly.

• 16:44Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's interesting. It just makes so much sense when you said it. I think of the marijuana industry as a parallel, that here's an industry in many states that's legal, a lot of people have a lot of good reasons for wanting THC-based products, and the businesses can't operate. In some states, they can't open a bank account. I'm curious what you would think. I want to give you two demographics here. A woman who's in her 30s, who's dating and increasingly frustrated by Tinder, or just says there aren't a lot of economically or emotionally viable men. And then a young man who is coming into the real world, quote unquote. How do you think porn and the evolution of porn or the devolution

• 17:27Scott Galloway?

  changes their dynamics in terms of relationships?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  So I can give you a very straightforward answer to your question because I am my own research lab. As I said, I date younger men myself. I see for myself exactly how this plays out in the real world. And so, for example, I'm very select about the men I date. Above everything else, they have to be a very nice person. I have a great rate of very nice people. I only date utterly lovely younger men. And nevertheless, in bed, I see them modeling the body language that says my dick is the center of the universe. Because that's what they've internalized. And so for a young woman dating at the moment, she is going to find that there is an expectation that it's all about, I mean, we're talking heteronormatively here, but it's all about him. And it's all about whether he comes.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  And it's all about what he wants in bed. And with a young man, he's going to go into those scenarios going, unconsciously, it's all about me and what I want. And neither of them are learning. Watching is porn, by the way. You learn this if you watch Make Love Not Porn. But the single best feeling in the entire world is to be in bed with somebody and know they're having a bloody amazing time because of you. And that is a pleasure that not enough people are accessing. And it's absolutely, by the way, what Make Love Not Porn is designed to inspire and help perpetuate.

• 18:51Scott Galloway?

  And what advice would you give to people in terms of their relationship with porn?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  The most important thing is do not feel guilty about watching porn and masturbating.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  For thirteen years, because of what I do, you know, I have seen up close and personal every single day, I mean, this is in emails, comments, conversations. I've seen up close every day the enormous human misery and unhappiness caused by the shame, guilt and embarrassment that we've imbued sex with. And so, I mean, to the extent, I always remember, you know, this is years ago, I was doing an interview with a journalist, and he began it by asking me very earnestly, Cindy, why do you think it is that we enjoy watching other people having sex? And honestly, I just burst into hysterical laughter, I rolled around the floor, I went, for God's sake, we're all sexual beings, of course we enjoy watching people having sex.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  And so, I would say, absolutely do not feel guilty at all about watching porn, but do seek out, I mean, obviously I'm biased, seek out social sex that make love not porn, actively seek out porn made by women, for women. Um, I have a huge issue with the terms feminist porn, porn for women, um, not at all because of what it is, I have many friends who self-identify as feminist pornographers, make porn for women, but because the moment we describe porn like that, men go, not for me. Those terms marginalize porn, and men have no idea how hot, arousing, creative and wonderful they would find a lot of porn made by women for women.

• 20:26Scott Galloway?

  And in the next couple of years, what do you, what's your vision for make love not porn?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  My vision comes from my own philosophy that everything in life starts with you and your values. And so, I regularly ask people this question, what are your sexual values? And no one can ever answer me because we're not taught to think like that. Our parents bring us up to have good manners, work ethic, sense of responsibility, accountability. Nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed. But they should, because in bed, values like empathy, sensitivity, generosity, kindness, honesty, respect are as important as those values are in every other area of our lives where we're actively taught to exercise them. So this is my vision for a world in which to make love not porn is funded to achieve

• 21:16Speaker 02

  our mission at scale. Parents will then bring their children up openly to have good sexual values and good sexual behavior in exactly the same way that parents currently bring kids up to have the vast majority of every other area of life. We will therefore cease to bring up rapists. Because the only way that you end rape culture, and this really is the only way, is by embedding in society and openly talked about, promoted, operated, and very importantly aspired to gold standard of what constitutes good sexual values and behavior. When we do that, we also end Me Too. We end sexual harassment, abuse, violence, or areas where the perpetrators currently

• 21:57Speaker 02

  rely on the fact that we do not talk about sex to ensure victims never speak up, never go to authorities, never tell anybody. When we end that, we massively empower women and girls worldwide. When we do that, we create a far happier world for everybody, especially men. And when we do that, we are one step closer to world peace. So that's my vision for Make Love Not Porn. It's my attempt to bring about world peace. I'm not kidding.

• 22:20Scott Galloway?

  World peace?

• 22:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:21Scott Galloway?

  I get it. I like it. Cindy Gallop is the founder of Make Love Not Porn, a social sex tech platform designed to promote good sexual behavior and good sexual values. She's also raising the world's first and only sex tech fund, All Things Sky Holdings, where she serves as a board advisor to a number of tech ventures and works as a personal brand life executive coach and a consultant on brand and business innovation for companies around the world. She joins us from her home in Manhattan. As always, Cindy, it's great to hear from you.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Scott, you too. Thanks so much for having me on. This has been an absolute pleasure.

• 22:58Scott Galloway?

  Our producers are Caroline Shager and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.

• 23:11Speaker 03

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• 23:42Speaker 04

  I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment from KQED. Every week, Snap drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line, what do you believe? What do you want? And what would you risk to get it?

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Find out. Tap to listen now to Snap Judgment from KQED on Spotify.