Happy Monday!
I’m very excited to answer the very first question I received to Dear Cindy:
“Thanks for following your passion and bravery through the years. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to share the email that you replied to that boy about having sex with his girlfriend or if you’d ever write a book with sex advice?
Cheering you on from Canada!”
This question is referencing my ‘Dear Cindy’ introduction post:
‘in amongst the many emails we get at MakeLoveNotPorn every day telling us how we’ve changed people’s lives, one theme continues: people write to ask for advice.
And over the years, no matter how much I’ve been up to my eyeballs in #startupstress, I’ve responded.
Because I can’t ignore emails like the one years ago from the teenage boy who wrote, ‘I’m having sex with my girlfriend. I want to know how to make love not porn. Please tell me, because my parents sure won’t.’ You bet I replied to that one - at some length. He subsequently emailed to say that his pleasantly surprised girlfriend had said, “Where did you learn THAT from?” 😂
I would be completely willing to share that email - if only I could find it 😥 I’ve been digging around in my email archives, but alas, I can’t find it. That’s because it was one of the avalanche of emails I received between 2009-2013 in response to my 2009 TED Talk launching MakeLoveNotPorn, and MakeLoveNotPorn’s original iteration, as a ‘Porn World vs Real World’ public service announcement-style site. Here are just a couple of those slides - you can find the full set on our homepage at MakeLoveNotPorn.tv, and it’s a sad indictment of the state of sex education, that they were so welcomed, and that one young man wrote to me saying, ‘This site has taught me more about sex than any other form of sex education’:
But that was back before MakeLoveNotPorn.tv launched in 2013 as the world’s first social sex video sharing platform, turning ‘Porn World vs Real World’ into sex education through real world demonstration 🙂 In the early days, we used a different email client, and sadly I find I can’t access those archives.
However, to answer the first part of your question, I can safely say that I know I would have responded with something along these lines:
‘Go slow and be gentle.’ Take your time to appreciate, kiss, stroke, caress every part of your girlfriend’s body. Great sex is not about sticking it in as quickly as possible. My female ‘cheat sheet’ I recommend to women for use in the bedroom is the three things I’ve had to say most often: “Slower”, “Gentler”, and “Don’t touch me down there until I’m begging you to touch me down there” 😂
‘It’s all about the clit.’ To give your girlfriend an orgasm, go slow, be gentle, and work your way down to her clitoris, where it’s even more important to go slow, be gentle, and take your guidance from her as to what feels good, especially when licking her clit. For her to come during penetrative sex, it has to be feeling really good AND there needs to be pressure on her clit, so angle your bodies accordingly and take your guidance from her.
‘Lube is your best friend.’ In the bedroom, there is no such thing as too much lube. Use it liberally, not just for penetration, but for when you’re using your fingers as well.
‘Communicate, communicate, communicate.’ The entire point of MakeLoveNotPorn - ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference.’ We’re socializing sex, to make it easier for everyone to talk about, openly and honestly. Starting MakeLoveNotPorn was an accident - it was the extraordinary response to my TED talk that demonstrated 14 years ago that I’d uncovered a huge global social issue, and inspired me to turn MakeLoveNotPorn into a business designed to do good and make money simultaneously. But it’s no accident that my background is 38 years working in advertising - in the business of communication. I know that everything great in life and business is born out of great communication, and great sex is no different. Talk to each other in bed, laugh together, ask questions about what each of you likes, don’t let anything go unsaid because either of you is too nervous to say it.
To answer the second part of your question - I would actually love readers to weigh in by replying or commenting, because this is, funnily enough, something many people have talked to me about over the years.
I’ve been hesitant, because I’m not a professionally trained and qualified sexologist/sex educator/sex therapist.
However, I am someone who’s had a lot of sex in the course of her 63 years 😂 much of it with younger men where I’ve been happy to tackle IRL everything I started MakeLoveNotPorn to solve; someone who’s found herself giving her own brand of sex advice to many people over the years, especially the past 14 years of MakeLoveNotPorn’s existence; and someone who has unique access, via MakeLoveNotPorn, to seeing every day first-hand how the world has great sex.
People have asked, not only if I would write a book, but if I’d be willing to conduct Masterclasses - personal online or IRL sessions for individuals or groups (quote: “I’d pay a lot of money to book my partner in” 😄). The answer is - yes, if there’s enough demand for my personal lens on your sex life - so please, let me know!
And in the meantime, everyone, keep the questions coming here 🥰
Love, Cindy
Join MakeLoveNotPorn today to support my work to normalize and make it easier to talk about sex. To ask your very own question, please respond directly here or email dearcindy@substack.com. I can’t wait to read!
If you want to read next week’s advice (which believe me, you do), please upgrade to a paid subscription. This is the one free post a month - the other three will be just for paid subscribers.
Sex Advice - and would I write a book?
Please write the book! I remember the furore when Nina Hagen showed everyone how she masturbated live on German TV in 1979. We haven't progressed much since then. Your unique perspectives and the authenticity of Make Love Not Porn make any book you write a vital resource.
Great post and advice, I’m so glad you started a substack. The question I’d love you to answer relates to educating kids about sex. I am a mother to two sons, 9 & 11. We have a lot of open science conversations and where babies come from has been well covered for a few years, including menstruation and physiology. A friend has got pregnant via IVF so we have covered frozen sperm this week too! We are now dipping toes into the realm of pleasure conversations, not pure functionality. They’ve joined the dots that not every act of sex makes a baby! How would you strike the balance of talking about sex with kids this age?