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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15 Crazy Facts About Sperm

Sooo…recently I read this crazy article About How CBS Will Publish Fun 'Facts' About Sperm  But  Not About Vaginas and I couldn’t believe it, so, I read all three articles.  The one aforementioned, this one about VAGINAS,and this one about SPERM.    

Ladies and gentlemen-who-started-in-the-womb-as-ladies, please allow me to tear the article on sperm apart like a demented premenstrual lioness.

Ahem, the article opens up indicating that knowing things about sperm means you won’t know interesting things about sperm, you’ll know ‘crazy’ things about sperm.  Okay.  We’re also told that they are “amazing little wrigglers” and that without sperm “the world would be a very lonely place”.  Okay.  I erroneously thought that a world without mothers would be a very lonely place but, go on, you crazy sperm article you.  Then in the introduction of what is essentially an extremely unnecessary slide-show, it suddenly gets clarified that these are not crazy facts but “fascinating facts” via a professor of urology (not an actual practicing urologist) Dr. Craig Niederberger.  It’s also established for us that people have an agenda when it comes to sperm.  Really?!  The agenda where men should be on birth control?  The agenda where rapists and pedophiles should be chemically castrated and/or rendered infertile?  The agenda where in the mass media grants PMS a made-up ‘disease’ merit and airtime but the notion that testosterone  might as well be seen as a major impediment to the evolution of civilized society, especially when more men commit more and most of crime, and how that’s conveniently practically never discussed?  That…that…agenda?  Oh no, you mean, to impregnate or not impregnate, that is thee questionable agenda in 2013 (so I’m rounding up).        

Fact #1). Abnormal Sperm Is Normal.  Okay.  Whew.  Glad I learned such a crazy and fascinating fact there CBS and Professor Niederberger.  There are 14 more of these?!  Wait, 90% of the sperm in a male’s ejaculate are deformed???  Come again?  Pun absolutely and totally freaking intended if clarification on that was needed.  Why yer boyz so fucked-up Prof?  “It’s the price of monogamy, Dr. Niederberger says.  “For those species where more than one male’s sperm can find itself in a female at the same time, the sperm are much more uniform in appearance,” he says.  “In humans, Joe and Sam’s sperm don’t usually find themselves in Betty at the same time.”  Usually.  Wow, what is the copyright date on the textbooks you’re telling your students to order Prof. Nitaberger, 1950?  And thanks for the subtle DP imagery.  Firstly, there was a recent study conducted that found only 15% of men weren’t able to be monogamous to their mate.  Secondly, sperm can live up to five days inside the vagina and part of the reason for this is to enable the man who regularly coats the inside of his partner’s vagina with his baby juice can fight off and actually kill ‘invader sperm’.  Which means, yeah, in humans, Betty might be with Joe most of the time but sometimes she’s with Sam and maybe Eddie too.  Even the shape of the male penis is designed to scoop a rival male’s jizz out.  But yeah, us wenches trying to make you randy wild males settle down and only screw us are to blame for 90% of your warrior sperm being deformed.    

Crazy Fact #2).  Half A Teaspoon.  ‘That’s how much a man typically ejaculates.  It isn’t much, but – for better or worse – it often does the job.’  If I’ve personally bore witness to 3-4 tablespoons of this stuff, is that abnormal?  And I just <3 how the allusion to marriage (which is obviously painted to be heterosexual in nature) is juxtaposed with biblical capitalism.  Half a teaspoon = 18 years of child support.  Heavy stuff for being so light.

Fun Fact #3).  Sperm Wear Hardhats.  So did Mark Mussler.

Also, sperm actually work in unison to eat through the outer shell of the egg.  The first sperm to the egg is not the one most likely to impregnate it, perhaps helping to explain 90% of sperm being deformed.  Double-heads, double and corkscrew tails won’t make ya first.  Which is completely counterproductive to an ideology of biology as machinery, evolution as survival of the fittest, and if “you’re not first, you’re last” machismo.     

Crazy Fun Fact #4).  Sperm vs Semen.  They are shockingly not one in the same and “Fluid from the prostate contains chemicals that cause semen to liquefy once it’s inside the female.  Without it, sperm would be locked in place and unable to swim.”  So semen is how sperm swims inside the female.  So lubrication assists in sperm movement.  I wonder how effective, efficient arousal of the female is to successful fertilization.  It sounds, very.  I wonder then how callus—including today’s nerve damaging vibrators and fetishizing of sodomy —we have been against female sexual development and gratification at an impediment to the continuance of our very species?  How nihilistic.  How sadistic.  How pathological.  How psychotic.  How…crazy.      

     

Fact #5).  One Testicle Is Enough.  Lance Armstrong nutted out two babies with one ball.  Fascinating.  They fail to mention that pissing into a female pregnancy test is a good way to screen yourself for testicular cancer.  If you test pregnant, and are a male, congratulations, you have a tumor.  It’s kinda similar for some of us gals sometimes, that horrifying realization of positive  - only times a million; a man doesn’t  get to abort his  nutt tumor, sometimes some of us gals can’t either.  Imagine that type of surprise, pain, and realization.  And loss. 

Fact #6).   200 Million Competitors.  The average ejaculate contains 200 million sperm.  Why are they spun as competing with each other when I’ve already stated, in two different ways, it is scientifically known that sperm cooperates with each other to hatch through the shell to impregnate the egg and they all work together like an army against invader sperm.  Jim’s sperm is going to destroy Bob’s sperm so how would Jim’s sperm fight against Jim’s sperm when they need to fight Bob’s???  I call bullshit. 

Fact #7).  The Factory Never Closes.  Despite women being born at birth with all the eggs we’ll ever have, men produce sperm all day every day, throughout their shorter life span lives.  And even though as men age, and their sperm might become ‘a little’ sluggish and their DNA ‘a bit’ more fragmented, hey buddy, the factory never closes.  Even though, our eggs don’t have an expire date nor need daily production, something, I personally find far more fascinating, the jackass that put this shitty slanted slideshow together quotes Stephen King, “Hope springs eternal.”   Why.  And why yet another allusion to work as reward? 

Well Known Fact #8).  Sperm Are Tiny.  They are actually microscopic.  That word is not used once, microscope, yes, microscopic, no.  But apparently if you stretched out all the sperm ‘a guy’ has in one ejaculate, it’d go six miles.  That’s a long stretch.   

Fact #9).  Sperm Need Protection.  Since sperm are lacking in a normal abundance of DNA their presence in a female looks suspicious to the female body’s immune system.  So to keep our womanly wrathful immune cells from killing the sperm that is invading our bodies, “testicles employ specialized cells to surround them with a sort of “picket fence.””  The technical name of these cells whose metaphor invokes an impression of 1950’s 2.5 kids, when .5 meant dog, is never given.  Plus I could’ve thought of a better metaphor like, testicles employ specialized cells to surround them with a sort of protective shield like when someone in a bulletproof vest has to escort a woman on a walk to an abortion clinic entrance.  More contemporary imagery.

Crazy As Shit For Real Fact #10).  Dead Sperm Can Make Live Babies.  Holy SHIT?!  With in-vitro, sperm does not need to swim, sometimes they beat the sperm to death with the injection needle because the only thing that matters about sperm is the DNA inside of it. 

Fact #11).  Which Way Do We Go?  Lots of sperm can’t even swim in a straight line, only half do.  The other half is swimming in circles or bobbing in semen.  Here it’s revealed that cilia in the body of the female is counter conducive to the likely survival of the sperm and successful fertilization of the egg.  It’s like bitches don’t like sperm on the molecular level dawg.   

Not Really A Fact At All Fact And More Like An Average #12).  Sperm Live For Days.  “How long can a sperm cell live once inside a woman’s body?  About two days.”

[Insert creepy ass picture of a woman with man arms and hands holding a face clock in her underwear with no head or shoulders].  About two days?  Okay. 

Fact #13).  The Y Stands Alone.  Like the cheese does?  The Y chromosome has no counterpart, it’s passed along essentially unchanged from father to son, meaning, the main and perhaps even only function of the Y chromosome is to create another Y chromosome, males need males to make males and females only need dead DNA to make females; or something?

Fact #14).  Refrigerator Testicles.  Cold balls make good sperm, that’s why what would’ve been your ovaries are hanging outside of your too hot male body, ya need frigid weather to make more boyz too probably.  The article kindly reassures at this fact that “lots of guys who cross their legs become dads”.  Aww.

Fact #15).  Two Months To Make Sperm.  I did not omit ‘It Takes’.  The sperm is again equated to industrial manual labor “just like an assembly line” and that there’s no sense in “waiting for a truck” and it’s suggested at its conclusion to “get busy” - which either meant, get back to work, get back to masturbating, or get back to wanton impregnation of all those chicks that are out of your league which is why you were masturbating and working so hard in the first place.   

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