The whole talk, website, schitck is all rather disappointingly hetero-normative.

I don't disagree with her commentary, but claiming that this is the "greatest impact of technology on human behavior" is, to be quite frank, absurd, bordering on half-witted. Over the last two centuries, we've witnessed the reconstitution of entire societies in reaction to the expansion of technology, social and material environments have been transformed almost beyond recognition, the organisation of the production and distribution of goods and services has been entirely revolutionised, and this, for her, is what stands out? Ridiculous.

She bears an ironic resemblance to the tantric woman in this sex and the city clip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5WlJPSyhQ4

Hasn't porn been with us since the beginning of time? The oldest profession? Performing for the benefit of a man's titillation is nothing new. Just sayin'. In general, if men want to live non-stop in Fantasy-Land, they have to pay for it. Online or off.

Two thoughts:
With the rise of "sexting" and the ubiquity of home video, amateur porn is very widely available on the internet, and in many cases offers a very realistic view of sex. I've seen some where it was just beautiful how the participants (often a husband and wife) connected through their exhibitionism, and some where it just looked awkward.

Second, we must look at what this is replacing. Produced porn includes many fantasy elements, but it also offers an education on positions and possibilities that many people in the more puritan societies would be unlikely to have otherwise. Is going off of a video that much worse than going off what your friend Joey said you should do? I know my "research" helped improve my early sexual experiences. It's probably not as good as reading the Joy of Sex, but IMO it's better than nothing.

Holy crap am I the only one who thought her introduction to the debate completely undermined her subsequent argument?

Also it's rule 34, not rule 3 /nitpick

An interesting idea, but she's making a lot of assumptions. I think sex writers like Dan Savage, Susie Bright, etc, have a better shot at educating youth. The titillation factor and the fact that both are part of the LGBT community helps and broadens their scope. It's education, but not obviously so and makes youth question things "everyone knows."

Thanks to them, I learned how to figure out what I liked and that is was okay to be different. A website telling me that some women don't like to have semen shot into their faces would have had teenage me rolling my eyes and closing the tab.

I was a bit taken aback with how positive she is about porn in its currently dominant form. It's not only an industry with a male POV, it's an industry with close ties to trafficking, not to mention that the lack of realism almost always comes in the form of violence. I find it very odd how all of that is accepted

I have to wonder how many of the people commenting here are members of, or have had relationships with, the generation Gallop is discussing here. As a 20-year-old woman who mostly has sex with men of the same age, this rang very true to me. Any of the testimonials on the "about" section of her web site could have come from me or someone I know.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/19/mind-reading-the-researchers-who-analyzed-all-the-porn-on-the-internet/#ixzz1MqOaCapQ

I think this interview with some scientists who undertook to analyze the porn habits of "the whole internet" should be quite helpful in establishing how much of the perception of porn is just sampling bias, and how much is warranted. 

What I want to stress is that most men are interested in pornographic videos, and women are interested in a variety of sources (and not so much the videos). In this sense it should be a complete no-brainer that most porn movies are made from a male perspective. Also noteworthy is that truly violent porn is a very small fraction of all the porn out there, and it is not increasing proportionally over time, unlike amateur porn which is one of the three largest areas of pornography and I would conjecture is less prone to some sort of inaccurate portrayal of 'regular' human sexuality (simply by the fact that regular humans are producing it). 

ok, this is funny.  Why?  'cause, see, I come from the pre-internet culture.  From what my daughter tells me, porn is a good thing.  If you grew up in the bad old days, when LGBT was unheard of and good girls really really really didn't like sex, you'd know how nice it is to have a guy willing to go down on you, or to actually consider that you might enjoy something besides him hopping on and pumping away.

Sure porn can be idiotic, but I actually think that the problem has less to do with the fact that porn exists and more to do with the fact that sexually inexperienced young men are just that: inexperienced.  At least porn has pictures, however idealized.  Beats the hell out of "guys in the locker room."

Aoirthoir
An Broc, you are racist, sex negative, caught up in semantics(probably
to avoid getting into a real discussion) and probably a troll.

World peace?.. really?
That part was unnecessary if you ask me.

Porn world is almost, if not exactly, as diverse as the real world. Choosing a the narrow segment of mainstream porn that non-porn-fans are likely to be familiar with is as misleading about porn as choosing to study only the sex and dating habits of college psychology students is about sex and dating.

There desperately needs to be a gay version of Make Love Not Porn!

This was a fantastic talk, and I hope Cindy's ideas gain further popularity. I love that she ended on the point about liberating sexuality leading to world peace... Although I think this theory (which I have been an advocate of for some years) need further justification.

19-year-old gay boy and total slut

does anyone know if there's a transcript of this anywhere??