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Since 2009, I’ve been praising Cindy Gallop in my lectures for her brilliant website makelovenotporn.com and this witty TED talk. She tells ABC news she noticed when she would have sex with younger men, they would have “porn sex” instead of “real sex” and that porn seemed to be the new default sex-ed for millennials. So, she created a website which compared sex acts seen in porn with how they might be received in real life. This site became wildly popular among sex educators such as myself, for its ability to highlight the differences between porn sex and real sex. However, Cindy’s next endeavor seems to have deviated from that a bit, in my opinion. She launched makelovenotporn.tv in January. It is a site that will only showcase real people having real sex. This is an extremely refreshing concept. However, it is still porn. It is just regulated amateur porn. Which is much better than most mainstream porn in terms of depictions of sexuality. However, frequently seeking out any sex on the internet will still be extremely problematic for some and potentially problematic for teens or anyone who frequently does so (due to the way one’s brain reacts to porn vs. sex). Unfortunately, I don’t think makelovenotporn.tv is the perfect antidote to internet porn. We still have to learn how to have intimate sex with people (if we want successful relationships), and we don’t learn how to do that from masturbating while watching others get it on. We can really only develop those skills from experiencing vulnerable sex with another human being.
A new academic journal called Porn Studies which will be published by Routledge will be debuting in 2014. I have been reading academic literature on the topic of pornography since 2007, and it seems as if the number of articles published in the area of pornography doubles each year. So, a journal solely dedicated to the study of pornography is long overdue. However, this journal has already sparked some controversy before its first volume even goes live. There is a petition that is circulating to replace the board of editors with a more balanced membership, because the current board is too “pro-porn.” I have very mixed emotions about this new journal and the upheaval surrounding it for four reasons: (1) Having only a pro vs. anti perspective on pornography is extremely un-academic as well as counter-productive for the progression of evidence-based knowledge in this area. (2) It is also extremely un-academic to use colloquialisms in journal titles, such as “porn” instead of “pornography”. This would be comparable to starting a journal about marijuana and calling it Weed Studies. (3) It seems that an editorial board should reflect a multifaceted outlook on the target subject, and not have a collectively homogenous record in research. Yet, (4) I think it is most appropriate to wait until the first volume comes out to see if the editors are truly too biased to publish articles on all outcomes of pornography’s influence on our lives and relationships.
Another TED talk! That didn’t take long. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, yes the same guy who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment, discusses “The Demise of Guys”. This talk makes me wonder, “Is excessive pornography use like sexual ADD?” On a more serious note, I think boys and young men are really being underserved in our culture. We need more avenues for boys and men to explore aggression and competition in healthy ways, instead of compulsively doing so with technology. Furthermore, unless you are Jewish, we really don’t have a
cultural right-of-passage from boyhood to manhood, except maybe through fraternities and gangs. How does a boy know he is a man in our culture? Also, if we could make a conscious effort to foster healthy masculinity what would we want healthy masculinity to be? You can also check out the website that was launched in response to this talk for some more exploration of this topic. I am a TED talk junkie. Expect to see a whole lot of TED talk videos on this blog. I'm also a fan of Gary Wilson's website: yourbrainonporn.com. However, I do wish the information mentioned was cited in a more formal way. You really need to put on your detective hat to find the original data, but it is there. Please let me know what you think. When I discuss these concepts in my lectures, I find people are both blown away and eager to learn more as they apply this process to their porn use or to someone they know.
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About this Blog:I'm here to help us discuss sexuality, gender, and media by integrating information from academic and mainstream sources. I hope this resource produces more sexually competent people who raise sexually competent kids. 
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