Make Love Not Porn

My best friend just directed me to the site "Make Love, Not Porn" which is an initiative I am really excited about. The site primarily consists of information about porn norms and how they don't match up to real life. Here is what the author, Cindy Gallop, says her site is all about:

•MakeLoveNotPorn is not about judgement, or what is good vs what is bad. Sex is the area of human experience that embraces the widest possible range of tastes. Everyone should be free to make up their own mind about what they do and don't like.
•MakeLoveNotPorn is not anti-porn. I like porn and watch it regularly myself.
•MakeLoveNotPorn is simply intended to help inspire and stimulate open, healthy conversations about sex and pornography, in order to help inspire and stimulate more open, healthy and thoroughly enjoyable sexual relationships.

Cindy does a good job of not demonizing what we see in pornography, but of emphasizing that it is not necessarily how sex is for everyone. Some of my favorite tidbits of information readers can find while scrolling through the homepage compares the norms regarding pubic hair and gagging while performing oral sex in pornography and real world.

Love Land to open in October in China

China will be opening its first sex theme park in October. Love Land will be offering workshops on sex techniques and information about safe-sex methods, along with displays of naked bodies, genitalia, and "an exhibition on the history of sex".

"Sex is a taboo subject in China but people really need to have more access to information about it," the park's manager, Lu Xiaoqing told the China Daily state newspaper.

I have blogged before about the issues China faces with not being able to discuss sex. Seems like that is still a problem, but I am not sure how I feel about the idea of a sex theme park, especially if the idea for it came from visiting this LoveLand in South Korea.

I have not been to China, and I cannot claim to know what kind of tactics would be effective at getting people to talk about sex in a way that would not only promote pleasurable, but safe sex, but the theme park thing gets to me.

I believe that the intentions behind it are good, especially considering the obstacles that seem to be in the way of talking openly about sex in China. But I wonder if this sort of set up would possibly serve to trivialize sex. The first image I saw of China's Love Land was a dismembered figure of the lower half of a nearly naked woman in the BBC article linked to (top of this post). Coupling things like that with the idea of a theme park, which is supposed to be fun, may make it difficult to have serious discussions on matters like sex. I can see some problems with this design, but it definitely looks like a step in the right direction.

Bret Michaels and Modern "Love"

I am not the only person who writes for this blog who cannot stand Bret Michaels and his show Rock of Love on VH1.

I admit that I watched the first season of Rock of Love. I was intrigued. Bret Michaels is the lead singer of the band Poison. I like Poison. So I watched as this man tried to find love. I quickly became disappointed with Michaels' contradictions.

Michaels' said he was looking for love (which I don't believe one can find on reality T.V.), and at the very same time he made no effort to hide his "rock star" (AKA sleeping with lots of women, drinking, partying, etc.) lifestyle.

He really began to disgust me when he would say that he was looking for a woman with a good head on her shoulders, someone with substance, and then the first thing he would compliment the women on were their "smokin' hot" bodies. It was like he was saying that even if a woman had a great mind, the most important thing (and thusly, the first aspect of her person that is complimented) is her body and her appearance.

Now in its third season, Michaels' seems to be dropping (slightly) the idea that he's looking for a woman with a good head on her shoulders. Now with Rock of Love Bus, it is more obvious than ever that he's just looking for someone to fit his lifestyle...or someone to party and sleep with.

I was most upset with the messed up message about love that Bret Michaels' sent through this show. He made it clear that he was looking for love and that love = having raunchy sex with as many women as possible.

The idea that sex = love is problematic especially for younger people who are likely watching the apparently popular show. Sex does have emotional consequences, and if young people go into a relationship thinking that sex = love, they are likely to dive into sex that their relationship might not be prepared to deal with. And that can lead to other problems with relationships down the road.

Frankly, after seeing this garbage on T.V., coupled with the enormous sex taboo in this country, I am worried. Maybe I'm being pessimistic when I say this, but I don't think people really understand how to have meaningful relationships. Even girls in grade school are trying to be "sexy" to get attention from the boys their age. This idea that sex is the answer to everything in a relationship is messed up, and Bret Michaels' is being irresponsible, and so is VH1 for airing trash that promotes this idea three seasons in a row.