Behind Closed Doors: Are Sex Tapes Mainstream Now?

About a week ago, SnapChat and Twitter star Lena (pronounced Leh-na) Nersesian posted a video on her month-old YouTube account saying she would drop a sex tape of herself if she got to a million followers. Considering the nature of Lena's work - she refers to herself as a cam girl on SnapChat - this doesn't seem particularly surprising.

It has seemed that there's been a shift over the past few years, as more and more people are able to post and purchase sexual content on a multitude of platforms (including this one, eyyy oh). Before camming was so popular, you didn't release your own sex tapes if you weren't a porn star and make headlines for it - sex tapes were released of you without your consent. The latter is still a pervasive problem in the realm of revenge porn and celebrity hackings, but in this day and age, people are releasing sex tapes of themselves at their leisure - and they're profiting from them, both financially and cathartically. 

Consider MakeLoveNotPorn, Cindy Gallop's start-up that lets users upload photos of themselves having sex with the promise of both reshaping the pornographic landscape and guaranteeing submitters that their content wont multiply across the web against their will. Then there's the PornHub Community, a place us regular civilians can upload our own home videos and garner views and shares. Or perhaps just plain ol' XHamster, the tried and true home of amateur content.

Images via @lenatheplug

The last few years have inducted us into the Golden Age of self-publishing, when anyone can take to the entertainment stage in hopes of procuring an audience. Bloggers become writers, comedians and entertainers snag massive audiences and professional gigs by launching their own YouTube channels and podcasts. (To be clear, I'm not bashing any of those things - in fact, I've done them all.) And now, in the midst of yet another sexual revolution that has helped partially alleviate double standards, empower women in their sexuality, improve the porn industry, and normalize kink, we see the rise of something new: Self-released sex tapes so nonchalant they might as well be Facebook Live videos. 

Some come from shrewd men and women who realize they can make money with their newly liberated sexualities without needing a porn agent, and some are married couples who thrill in the taboo of exhibition, hoping for nothing more than a little zing in their sex lives. Millennials who grew up in the age of laptops and smartphones are so accustomed to taking and sending nude photos and videos to lovers that they assume many of them already are floating around the internet. (They are right, more often than not.) Some platforms, like YouTube, still restrict nude sexual content, but that doesn't stop people like Lena and her beau Adam22 from teasing it on both of their channels. To see the good stuff, you'll need to follow Lena on Snapchat (uraveragehoe) and Twitter (@lenatheplug), and dole out a monthly membership fee for her private Snapchat account, where she and her roommate/best friend Emily post sexy (and sexual) videos. 

Kim K. was able to parlay her sex tape into a billion-dollar career. Countless celebrities have sex tapes online that have done nothing to damage their images. I have many friends who've played around with posting their own sex tapes on various platforms, and nearly everyone I know has taken one for fun for their own viewing. It seems like with the most recent wave of unabashed sexuality and the increasingly private nature of social sharing content, everyone has a sex tape, and to see a video of someone you know (IRL or via social media) would be titillating but not terribly scandalous. I'm a bit more desensitized than most, it's true, but the upcoming generations have little more to say to a consensually released sex video than "you go girl!" 

So what is so notable about Lena's willingness to release a sex tape? The derogatory nature of the video's comments. Perhaps it's the political temperature these days, and perhaps it's the wording - to say you will exchange a tape for followers seems more degrading to some than releasing it for nothing to others, I guess. Regardless, almost every single comment on Lena's video is unkind and judgemental. Who knows? It might be her choice of platform, since YouTube isn't a go-to for pornographic content, but I suspect it's the incorrect (and very repressed) assumption that a woman would never want to be open about her sex life unless it were for money or status - when in fact, there is plenty of evidence to refute the idea right on her channel. 

In her very first video, she describes her entrance into the adult community: After growing up in a very conservative family, she discovered feminism in college while she dated a woman for four years. She grew out all her armpit and leg hair, went to grad school, volunteered - all signs of an intelligent and strong woman. When the dogma of keeping her sexuality to herself finally conflicted with her own ideas about sex, she decided to do what many of us did: Fight back. Be open. Be honest. Be authentic. 

And it's working for her. Camming and social media are her career now, giving her unprecedented fun, freedom, and flexibility. Some might say the commenters on her video are jealous - I certainly would.

I have to wonder what all of this means for the future of sex tapes and where we're all moving as a society. Despite the prevalence of many conservative sexual stances today, we're seeing an unprecedented number of men and women posting their own sexual content online and experiencing far less shame and judgment for it. Will posting our own sex tapes be the norm within the next 10 years? Will voluntarily nudity and the #FreeTheNipple movement finally begin to take? Will a woman be able to be upfront about her sex life and sexuality without experiencing verbal abuse and threats in response, and perhaps most importantly, will people soon not be seen as less for being sexual creatures? That's the kind of world I want to live in, which means it all starts right here. So go follow this woman, I say - and be the kind, supportive commenter that we all need, whether you would release your own sex tape or not.