JOIN USTeach your children about sex, don't leave it to porn
Even after so many years of talking about the importance of sex education, parents are finding it hard to talk about it with their children. According to Cindy Gallop, British entrepreneur and founder of MakeLoveNotPorn company, it is the lack of communication between parents and children about sex that porn is becoming a default sex educator.
“This issue is same all around the world. Parents face a problem in talking about sex with their children. India is no different from other countries, including the US and the UK. Very small population of parents talk about sex with their children, knowing that it is important. They are too embarrassed,” Gallop tells Metrolife.
Fifty six-year-old Gallop founded MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP) eight years ago, after realising the problem herself. As she is on and off in casual relationships with younger men (around 20 years old), she observed that their sexual desires seemed to be influenced by porn. She wanted to take up the issue into public domain. Now, the website MLNP has many objectives, one being the question of ‘porn world’ vs ‘real world’. Ever since its launch, the website is highlighting other concerns as well.
The likability quotient of the website made Gallop famous, and she gave talks all over the world about the absence of sex education, female orgasm and lack of communication between partners that leads to long-term sexual dissatisfaction.
“Teachers are not the right people to discuss sex with children, because they take it as their ‘job’. They have too many rules and regulations. And sex is such an intimate topic that the details are never transferred to the child,” says Gallop.
According to her, even good friends don’t talk to each other about the problems they have in bed. Her ideas are strengthened by “thousands of graphic emails” she receives every day. She receives emails from parents of 10-year-olds, who are exasperated to find that even after ‘parental controls’ on their computers, their son still found porn.
“Parents find their children watching porn and they are shocked, but there is nothing to help them start a conversation. They cannot start suddenly, out of the blue,” says Gallop.
She is now reaching out for funding for MakeLoveNotPorn Academy, which is an extension of the website. It works only for parents, the motto is, “we don’t do it for you, we help you to do it yourself”. Depending on individual requests Gallop offers solutions to parents. Many also find her 2013 Ted talk on YouTube extremely useful for starting a conversation.
She says that MLNP is as useful for Indian parents as worldwide. This year she is trying to spread her reach in India and she came for a talk for MTV Youth Marketing Forum 2016 at The Many Me Project conference.