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Sex Lives: How Amber Rose Redefined an Emoji

Photo: Mark Leibowitz/Masterfile/Corbis

Kanye West might have had the most tweets during last week’s Wiz-Kanye feud, but Amber Rose basically won the whole thing with a single tweet.

Now, her butt-shaming response to Kanye’s slut-shaming might not have been the most sex-positive (remember what Gandhi said, Amber: An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind, or pretends they aren’t into butt stuff). But it did succeed in redefining the meaning of a single emoji: The “finger up” will forever be known as a finger up … a certain orifice. At the start of the show, Sex Lives gives credit where credit is due.

The rest of the episode is dedicated to discussing the stigma surrounding another sexual act: masturbation. Nicholas Tana, director of masturbation documentary Sticky: A (Self) Love Story, offers a cultural history of masturbatory shame — and explains why Pee-wee Herman is an American hero.

And finally, a challenge provided by a caller: Can you dream up a pornographic idea so depraved that it breaks rule 34 of the internet? We can. We’re Allison P. Davis, Maureen O’Connor, and David Wallace-Wells.

A new episode of Sex Lives can be found each week on iTunes or SoundCloud.

Sex Lives: How Amber Rose Redefined an Emoji