Last year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ran a challenge to ‘Develop The Next Generation Of Condom’, looking for designs for condoms that were easier to apply, maintained pleasure or made for female use in the hopes that more people would use them, curbing the spread of HIV and other diseases. Eleven teams have won grants of $100,000 each and have 12 to 18 months to develop their products; the most market-promising condoms will be awarded up to $1 million dollars.
That’s a really laudable initiative, Bill and Melinda – but it’s not enough. Before you change condoms for the better, you have to change people’s attitudes towards using them, desire to use them, and behavior around using them, for the better.
MakeLoveNotPorn exists to inspire what every society in the world so badly lacks: an open, honest, healthy dialogue around #realworldsex. Condoms are, and have to be, a crucial part of that dialogue.
Everywhere in the world today, easily-accessed internet porn is now the default sex education for young people – and for people, period. In #pornworldsex there are no condoms – or if there are (relatively rarely in straight porn, more the norm in gay porn)….suddenly the condom’s on! Jumpcut! Where did that come from? At the opposite end of the spectrum, if condoms feature in sex education classes in schools, they do so in an artificial ‘put the condom over the banana’/death-disease-disaster-prevention scenario that fails to acknowledge the realities of #realworldsex.
There is a huge gap in the middle that nobody’s delivering on, discussing and, most importantly, demonstrating, and that is absolutely critical to preventing HIV, STDs and unwanted pregnancies: how you make condom usage HOT.
We want to help fill that gap by introducing a new sociocultural meme – #condomhot. We want to showcase the hottest, most arousing #realworldsex videos that eroticize condom usage. What’s the hottest way you can introduce a condom into the action? Put it on? Take it off? Dispose of it? We want to see the most creative and ingenious ideas possible for those awkward condom moments we all encounter. Because if more of us were exposed to more creative ideas on how to make those awkward condom moments hot and arousing, there’d be a lot more safe sex happening, a lot less sexually transmitted diseases, and a lot fewer unwanted pregnancies.
This week, we’re publishing a special edition – MakeCondomhotLoveNotPorn. We’re delighted that in the course of our first year of existence in public beta, a number of our MakeLoveNotPornstars have submitted #realworldsex videos featuring condoms.
Going forwards, we’d love as many of you out there as possible to join them and us in communication through demonstration – showing everyone through your #realworldsex videos that not only do condoms not get in the way of great sex, they can be a fundamentally integral part of great sex.
And by the way, even if you are in a relationship and don’t use condoms – please feel free to get some condoms and have fun with them. We welcome any #realworldsex ‘fun with condoms’ videos that will help other people feel less awkward around them and inspire seriously #condomhot sex.
I feel particularly strongly about this because of my own dating model. I date younger men, casually and recreationally, as I explain in Playboy’s 60th Anniversary issue:
That means I operate very much on the frontlines of condom usage – because not only does #realworldsex for me always feature condoms, my encounters also enable me to experience firsthand young male attitudes towards and behavior around condoms.
Many of us, if we are fortunate, are born into environments where our parents and our families teach us good manners; accountability; a sense of responsibility; a strong work ethic. But – because of our embarrassment and awkwardness around sex and our reluctance to talk about it – nobody ever brings us up to behave well in bed. They should; because empathy, generosity, sensitivity, kindness, and honorable behavior are as important in sex as they are in every other area of our lives and work where we are actively taught to exercise those qualities.
Going into sexual encounters equipped with condoms and happily and proudly using them is a key part of great #realworldsex etiquette.
MLNP.tv is only one year old in public beta, but we have built up a wonderful community (214,000 members at the time of writing, and many more supporters of our mission – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.’ – all around the world). When you support MakeLoveNotPorn, you are making a statement about your beliefs and your values as they relate to #realworldsex. Quite frankly, as far as we’re concerned, being a member of MakeLoveNotPorn naturally = great in bed. #condomhot is a key part of that.
When you MakeCondomhotLoveNotPorn, when you make sure you always carry condoms with you, when you know how to have fun with condoms in bed in a way that makes things easy and non-awkward for your partners, whether it’s a relationship or a casual encounter – THAT’s great in bed.
This is the first in a series of posts we’re planning on MakeCondomhotLoveNotPorn. In my next post, I will write in detail about my experiences with condoms in my own sex life and how I like to MakeCondomhotLoveNotPorn. We’d love to invite those of you who submit #condomhot #realworldsex videos to guest blog about your experiences too.
Oh, and Bill and Melinda – any time you want to support and fund our #condomhot initiative, we’re happy to talk! cindy@makelovenotporn.com
