The #AfterSex Selfie - Is It Pushing Digital Boundaries On The Topic Of Love?

One of the new trends on Instagram is posting a selfie of you and your lover post-coitus with the hash-tag #aftersex.

Had you been unaware of this phenomena previously, most likely, as well as understandably, your initial reaction may be one of shock and disbelief at first.  Albeit after looking at a few examples, it's actually very touching.  Everything from the more tender moments of young or true love to humorous displays of affection, it is, a uniquely human face on sex that can't be denied:

Maybe it's because I've only been exposed to a smaller tamer portion of the #aftersex selfie but overall, it seems to be very artful.  Part of the human experience is investigation and creativity.  This appears to just be an extension of those traits we already possess, behaviors we already do (after-all if not for an act of sex, none of us would even be here), and a vehicle of shared experiences and expressions that had it not been for current technologies, we'd be unable to share.

We can't put the #aftersex selfie in the same vein of a creepshot or Revenge Porn and therefore cannot equate it to that type of invasive imagery, so this is not erape.  As long as they are displayed modestly, the sex portion is overwhelming left to the imagination in these self-portraits - if you even want to bother to imagine it.  Despite the hash-tag, it transcends sex to a degree, it shows you what's leftover when the sex is done.  Which pornography never shows beyond the 'money shot'.  So we can't equate it to porn either!

Some have decried the #aftersex selfie as being 'over-share' or just another symptom of porn culture, but I would argue it's actually a response to the prevalent porn culture.  And honestly, if it's going to be SO ridiculously easy to access pornographic images on the web, what else could this type of graphic self portrait be other than a counterweight to that fact?  There's plenty of gay and lesbian couples posting their #aftersex selfies as well and they display the same kind of love in their afterglow as any heterosexual couple would and it seems those that don't yet understand love is love would benefit from seeing such photos.  Unlike so-called 'Amateur Porn' (the reality show version of porn) this is actual reality being documented and the portion of sex that matters most - what happens immediately afterward.    

A 'selfie' is a spin-off on a traditional self-portrait, but is instead taken by the supposedly novice photographer, and is typically done as a form of bragging that comes across as a selfish or narcissistic act most of the time; available for immediate distribution, it is a form of self-promotion but also a form of self-preservation.  It helps us achieve feelings of notoriety, celebrity, and immortality.  But that is not the only reason or outcome of the selfie.  Feel free to watch the following short videos that explore the topic of the selfie more:

     

        

       

Let's also not forget those on the other side of the digital divide still who don't care what a selfie even is, let alone what #aftersex selfies are.  This is purely a pop culture phenomena that only those with enough disposable income get to partake in.  Which might be why secretly we tend to disapprove them, not everyone's able to take a glamorous selfie.  With all the filters and effects available to us, even the various angles to take them by, selfies can also present a non-reality.  To the point where instead of showing ourselves, we're actually obscuring ourselves.  

We shouldn't be really surprised that selfies mutated a #aftersex version and it is most likely that they are now here to stay, if we like it or not.  

Reading these three articles on the topic really got my wheels turning.  

It seems the real issue is social acceptance when it comes to the #aftersex selfie, however, the real questions are should it even be socially acceptable?--and--if it wasn't for prevalent porn access, celebrity worship, and a hyper-sexual media, would they even be getting taken in the first place?

After all, our own president took a selfie at a funeral, so is there really ever a bad time to take a selfie?

  

America has a very reactionary culture, we don't have a Philosopher King conducting lengthy discussions with academics about the potential effects of our technologies, their benefits or fallout.  I personally find lovemaking a far too intimate act to share such a picture world wide publicly and one wonders if a person who posts too many of these with too many featured partners would get tagged as a sexual hazard.  Being promiscuous may not automatically make you a slut or glut (guy slut), but it will certainly make you more susceptible to some very real STDs and STIs that no filter will ever hide.

Also all of these selfies ultimately don't belong to the person taking them as the documentary 'Terms And Conditions May Apply' exposes:

   

Ultimately a 'selfie' is the essential self reflection of the collective and it is up to the individual to discern whether or not the picture they're taking is doing harm or doing good, not only to/for themselves but to/for others.

So what do you think?--is this something you would do, want to see, or want your kids to do or see?  Have you already taken an #aftersex selfie, if so, why, and did you regret it?  Did taking one prevent you from getting a job or embarking safely in a new relationship?  Is the #aftersex selfie a portrait of free love, a quiet protest against the loveless porn industry that makes sex a commodity?--or is it merely an outgrowth of that industry?  Is this just more proof of the pornification of our culture?  Is it simply the behavior of the ignorant and thoughtless or is this the new face of young love?

Leave your comments below!   

'Cause I gotta go, I need to take a selfie.

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Disney Princesses: Then Vs. Now; PLUS - Why Is Hot Topic Selling GIRLS Lingerie? In 2014, It's Time To Move Beyond Anatomy

Why Lovelace's Ordeal Is Our Ordeal

The Commercial Sexualization of Children: 'Corporate Pedophilia'

slutty selfies - ( a poem)

Kakenya Ntaiya & Belle Knox Should Meet Each Other - They're Joined By Two Very Different Educational Journeys

Belle Knox is running the media circuit and while on The View she admitted to Barbara Walters that she began watching porn at age 12.  With that admission, people should start to discredit a teenager that claims she's doing this as a prevention against the loss of her sexual autonomy instead of it merely being a non-conventional way to pay costly college tuition, as she's also claimed as being what spurred her to pursue this 'profession'.  If you've read my post on Linda Lovelace you will see that Knox is subscribing herself to predatory patriarchal capitalism and has been effectively brainwashed into deluding herself that she's living out a sexual fantasy of her own instead of being groomed to live out a kyriarchal fantasy that was imposed upon her delicate psyche from unchecked externalities.  

Knox also said on The View "...in porn, I’m in a safe, controlled environment where I set the boundaries, I set the rules," but that is a blatant lie.  Because had you read 'The Duke University Porn Star, Adolescentophilia, and Predatory Capitalism Connection' and all of the included hyperlinks, you would already know she had tearfully compromised such boundaries thus proving that Knox is in a controlled environment where she follows rules and does not set them.   

On the Bethenny show Knox discussed her future aspirations of becoming a civil rights lawyer! Bethenny understandably responded: “Those are two very different brands: being a civil rights lawyer and being a porn star.” Knox tried to draw parallels between the two professions, saying both 'professions' were about First Amendment rights and women’s rights advocacy.

 

I wonder if civil rights lawyers ever need Handlers?  If you are wondering what a Handler is, it is another porn occupation that thanks to Shelley Lubben of The Pink Cross Foundation I'm aware of.  A Handler is a person that moves, positions, transports, and basically babysits the porn actress who is so fucked up on drugs or alcohol while on set that they aren't even in charge of their own autonomy much less sexual autonomy anymore and therefore requires a Handler.  I'm unable to find the exact video where Lubben sheds a light on this other porn 'profession' that doesn't get as much chatter as say a job as a Fluffer does and I know that Lubben's foundation gets a lot of flack sometimes but her website with its wealth of information is not one to easily dismiss, so if a reader would like to determine the legitimacy of that profession of Handler, I can only direct you to the trove of videos on Lubben's site to sort through on your own.  She's a born-again Christian so be prepared for ideologies of that vein but it should not discredit her industry experiences or insights, they still should be objectively heard out.     

Knox also dangerously fails to realize that she's fallen into a lobster trap of a 'profession', even Jenna Jameson after swearing to never do porn again and keeping that vow for five years, ended up breaking it.  And Jameson, by all consideration, 'made it' as a porn starlet.  However by November 15, 2013 Jameson in an interview with Entertainment Tonight said she hadn't seen her kids in four months because she has to pay a mediator $600 an hour just to spend time with them.  In the same interview she went on to say she has no car, and is homeless thanks to her estranged husband.      

Hopefully had Knox had more life experience she'd come to the conclusion that pornography is a failure of the labor market, plain and simple.  She'd also realize her own crass sexploitation.   Knox would also realize that it was a mere six years ago that she was 12 and that what she's now submerging herself in, isn't going to lift any other 12 year old girls up.

Kakenya Ntaiya born in the small village of Enoosaen, Kenya and engaged at age 5, had to strike a deal with her father that she would undergo the traditional Maasai rite of passage of clitoris circumcision if he would let her go to high school.  Ntaiya went through the ceremony about the same age that Knox began watching porn.  Ntaiya continued her education and went to college, she eventually negotiated with her village elders to build a school for girls in her community and that changed the lives of an additional 125 women.  In her TED Talk she explains that she grew-up living in a world where mothers are blamed for their daughters rapes and out of wedlock births, and that mothers are punished and beaten for such offenses of their daughters.  Ntaiya comes from a culture where often females are robbed of their sexual autonomy and are subjected to sexual violence.

When Ntaiya came to America she proclaimed she realized that, "I did not have to trade part of my body for an education."

             

But why is Belle Knox trading part of her body for an education and why is she touting that sale as a sexual liberation?  And why are other women inclined to celebrate Knox's proclamations of 'empowerment'?  Because the world of porn and sex-work isn't a one size fits all world.      

For every 'success story' of 'female empowerment' through 'sex-work' there are thousands upon thousands of other stories of the more real coerced, exploited, trafficked, and desperate, for male or female, adult or child, voluntary via kyriarchal externalities or involuntary via kyriarchal repressive sexploitation, that don't include personal successes or empowerment for the people that work in sex to live. I'm all about social change but Knox is selling herself two times over, and for her to think that she can just leave the whirlpool of porn whenever she wants and just go be a lawyer when drug addicts and ex-criminals and gay people and those that have seen combat and those that have filed bankruptcy face job discrimination everyday is mind boggling.  

The only real interview I want to see Belle Knox have in the foreseeable future, is one across the table from Kakenya Ntaiya.  Because if Knox was overweight, homely, and going to a community college instead of Duke--nobody would give a shit if she was doing porn or not to achieve a required income since most of us all lack a guaranteed income. 

I didn't really want to write about Knox again but Kakenya Ntaiya's story was inspiring, whereas Knox's story is incidence.  

ALSO READ:

The Duke University Porn Star, Adolescentophilia, and Predatory Capitalism Connection

Does Porn Aide In The Creation Of Sexual Serial Killers?

The Price of Pleasure: Porn, Sex, and Silence - Part I

The #AfterSex Selfie - Is It Pushing Digital Boundaries On The Topic Of Love?

When Sally Met Harry And Then She Met Steve - America, Are We Done Repressing Female Sexuality?

Gender Disparity In Medical Research - Damsels In Real Distress

Over two decades ago The National Institute of Health (NIH) Revitalization Act of 1993 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton, supposedly setting the stage for major advances in women’s health by requiring that all NIH-funded medical research include women and minorities. Yet despite the expanded mandate, disparities still remain.  

The Revitalization Act of 1993 mandated, for the first time, the inclusion of women and minorities in research funded by The National Institutes of Health. Before then, medical researches--working on every scientific stage from early discovery to clinical trials--were encouraged to include women but, as it was never enforced, rarely did. Male mice were almost exclusively used in laboratory experiments.

The now notorious "baby aspirin study", which found that taking a baby aspirin a day helps prevent heart attacks, was found to be conducted entirely on men and in application?--the women taking aspirin had about the same number of heart attacks as the participants taking a placebo.  It was later found in a different research study that the risks of regular aspirin intake outweighed the benefits.

Before 1990, the term “women’s health” was limited primarily to reproductive health. To the extent if there was any interest at all in the field, it was in terms of family planning, maternal and child health, and abortion. While these are important aspects of women’s health, they are not the drivers of the women’s health field, which, thanks to the Revitalization Act connotes the overall health of women, including an acknowledgement of sex differences in the physiology of men and women down to the molecular level.

According to Dr. Paula Johnson--a study co-author, on the 'Sex-Specific Medical Research - Why Women’s Health Can’t Wait' report from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital that found fewer women than men are still involved in clinical trials on new drugs and medical devices despite the 1993 legislature--that there are sex differences throughout every organ system.

In this short interview with Dr. Johnson, she outlines the need for a women's heath equity plan and has been a pioneer in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease, Dr. Johnson conceived of and developed one of the first facilities in the country to focus on heart disease in women.  This is an extremely important endeavor that the good doctor has accomplished, especially when cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women.  So yeah, maybe instead of the hyper-focus on the encasement outside of women's chests, we should really be caring about what's happening behind them.

(Instead of "Save The Boobies" - shouldn't we be hearing more"Stop Breaking My Heart", so we can finally have a future free of breast cancer ads that look suspiciously* like lesbian porn?)

Women that are non-smokers are three times more likely to die of lung disease then men who are non-smokers and we still don't know why.  Despite me being a medical novice I'll ignorantly point out that the "health and beauty" industry caters more to women with all of their innumerable beauty products that are probably chock full of cancer causing antigens.  But apparently getting medical funding to prove or disprove my theory will be hard to come by.

Medical research does not account for sex differences, and that could have major public health implications for both genders in the long and short-term.  We are failing American females in the study of cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, depression, Alzheimer's, and even pregnancy induced disease.  And there is a virtual laundry list of pregnancy induced diseases and complications.  

It's necessary to develop more stringent government funding to include females in medical studies and report data by sex.  Namely because diseases can look different in women and minorities, the vast majority of medical professionals are not testing for these discrepancies causing unnecessary higher rates of poverty and mortality for females and minorities.  The societal costs to Americans by continuing to neglect the already marginalized health issues of women and minorities morally supersedes any kind of monetary expense it would take to correct such an outrageously myopic foresight. 

The Price of Pleasure: Porn, Sex, and Silence - Part I

This weekend I stumbled upon a 2008 documentary by filmmakers, teacher & scholar, Dr. Chyng Sun, Ph.D, Miguel Picker, and Robert Wosnitzer, 'The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality, & Relationships'.      

While the entire film is definitely worth a thoughtful review and is certainly not for everyone (for instance my domestic partner clamored for it to be shut off almost immediately after pressing play) and even its trailer comes with a disclaimer of: "This trailer contains scenes of sexual activity and aggression from pornographic videos."  (So it is really important to mentally prepare yourself prior to watching it, definitely don't watch it at work or with unprepared impressionable youth around, and if your TV/monitor is view-able at street level, you'd be wise to close the curtains).  

Unfortunately due to time constraints I am personally unable to dissect the entire film, which is good, it's up to the viewer to do that on their own, and will instead only focus on a few highlighted points brought up by observing this truly fascinating and objective documentary.  It was really something that Sarah Katherine Lewis said that resounded the most with me.  For the low income uneducated female a choice between working the fast food or big box chain store circuit and dabbling in sex-work is an easy and understandable choice to make and is nothing less then a failure of the labor market.  Which means it's also an economic failure.  It's also a coerced choice, a byproduct of patriarchal predatory capitalistic rule in a kyriarchal oligarchal plutocracy plutonomy.  It's no choice. 

Even Noam Chomsky said we needed to "...eliminate the conditions where women can't get decent jobs."  And appeared to evaluate pornography as being one of the most depraved acts one could do to a person, equating it to abuse for food.  

Certainly it appeared to be the case for the "Queen of Bestiality", Bodil Joensen who was portrayed in the 2005-2006 UK series The Dark Side of Porn episode 5 of season 2 in "The Real Animal Farm".  Joensen seemed completely cornered by external life events into earning a living wage by engaging in what bestowed her her royal tittle.  Joensen is a tragic figure that should be mourned for her inability to experience human love, not celebrated for a coerced debauchery as a consequence of that fact.  

Emma Green recently wrote about how "...Most people favor legal restrictions on porn, and an even greater number are morally uncomfortable with watching it."   

This is during a time when porn's gone mainstream and is on demand, so do we sense on some level the porn addicts that can put themselves in debt?--question the effects it'll have on our budding generations's sexuality and personal relationships?  Do we all understand on some level how porn can make violence against females - a 'normalized' fetish?  How it's all of us that are extorted for monetary profits at the expense of the fabric of common decency towards each other?  And if that's how most of us feel, why would we continue to remain silent bystanders?    

Susan Griffin published in 1982 her book 'Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge against Nature' and in the opening of her chapter on silence had this to say about not saying anything:

"Our silence. The silence and the silencing of women. The creation of authority in the image of the male. Of god in the image of the male. Rape. The burning of witches. Wife-beating. Laws against women speaking in public places. Against women preaching. The imprisonment of suffragists. Force-feeding. Harassment on the public streets. Scorn for the women who dares to act like man. A woman's love for another woman, unspoken, hidden. Our invisibility in history. The manuscripts of Sappho burned, the writing of women never published, lives of genius spent obscurely, or in domestic labor and child-rearing; the life of the mother, of the housekeeper, unimagined and unrecognized. Woman's word pronounced full of gile. A woman's testimony held suspect in court.

These several centuries of the silencing of women are a palpable presence in our lives -- the silence we have inherited has become part of us. It covers the space in which we live; it is a blank screen, and onto this screen a fantasy which does not belong to women is projected; the silence of women the very surface on which pornography is played. We become other than ourselves.

And the story does not end with this forced silencing. Just as silence leaves off, the lie begins. This lie is not only the lie the pornographer tells, but the lie a woman begins to believe about herself, or even if she does not believe it, the lie a woman tries to mimic. For since all the structures of power in her life, and all the voices of authority -- the church, the state, society, most likely even her own mother and father -- reflect pornography's fantasy, if she feels in herself a being who contradicts this fantasy, she begins to believe she herself is wrong. Wordlessly, even as a small girl, she begins to try to mold herself to fit society's image of what a woman ought to be. And that part of her which contradicts this pornographic image of womanhood is cast back into silence."