Historian is furious about NNN

From i News:

Gather round, ‘tis the time of year again. The nights are drawing in, the clocks have gone back, and idiots around the world are trying not to masturbate for the whole of November because they think this gives them super-human powers.

It’s No Nut November and its now in its 12th tedious year. For those fortunate enough to have never heard of this nonsense, I truly apologise, because I am going to explain what it is, and I fear you can only be made stupider by this knowledge.

I have very strong feelings about this campaign, and, unlike its supporters, I will not be holding back. No Nut November (or NNN) is an internet challenge and its rules are simple: don’t ejaculate for the whole month. (Wet dreams don’t count.) Apparently, it started as a joke, but quickly established itself as a bizarre annual custom, rather like cheese rolling or the nettle eating championships, only far less sensible. Why would someone do such a thing? The reasons vary.

According to Remojo, an app from a British tech developer that hopes to help men “build elite level mental strength” by not watching porn, “it’s a 30-day test of your determination and grit.” While ***, an adult content-blocking app, claims “semen retention is directly linked with energy retention and mood upliftment,” and that No Nut November is “a way to test one’s willpower and discipline, as well as a way to reflect on and potentially improve one’s relationship with sex and sexuality.”

Of course, both these companies are invested in pushing a strong anti-porn, no masturbation agenda because it benefits their product.

According to the NNN Community Reddit page, which has some 151,000 followers, “some do it just for the memes, while others do it for actual self-improvement.”

To be honest, I have no issue with the men who want to hold off from spanking their monkey for a month, just to see if they can, or those who are just in it for the memes (some of which are pretty funny). And I have nothing against those who do it because they think they are storing up an uber orgasm at the end – I hope you go over like a warm pan of milk come December. Nor do I take issue with those who lay off the self-loving because they are worried about compulsive and potentially damaging behaviours.

No, the ones who I would happily launch into outer space are the those who claim that not ejaculating is fantastically good for your health, and that by not orgasming you can preserve your masculine energy. You can see these kinds of claims in the community forums of websites like nofap.com, where users write things like, “when a man ejaculates, he becomes weak, spineless, needy and wimpy”, and that “semen carries creative force.” If you’re wondering what that noise in the distance was, it’s the sound of my eyeballs rolling into the back of my brain. But this is the discourse you can see leaking into the various Sub Reddits dedicated to NNN where followers swap memes and post their progress. What concerns me about it, is that women, even the thought of them, are often framed as the enemy.

The memes may be new, but the concept is not. The idea that belting the batter is deleterious to one’s health is far, far older than No Nut November. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that constantly cracking your marbles was damaging to your health and depleted essential energy reserves. Aristotle thought that too much sex activity would stunt a man’s growth. Plutarch advised men to “store up his seed”, and Plato wrote “if any man retains his semen, he is strong…”. Semen retention has been practiced in Taoism for thousands of years in the belief it preserved essential Jing energy, and is now enjoying a final hurrah in some modern Neo-Tantra groups. But, however it is expressed, whoever is repeating it, whatever their agenda, it is nonsense.

Given it is a very ancient sexual practice you may wonder why I, a sex historian, hate it as much as I do. The answer to that is very simple: because it’s misogynistic bullshit, and it always has been. The root of this drivel is the underlying belief that women are out to steal semen and rob men of their essential manly essence. I think I can speak for almost all women here when I say that we’re really not. Of all the things we are trying to steal from men, semen is pretty low on the list. We would take equal pay and decent pockets over sperm any day of the week.

Of course, it’s not really about semen at all, is it? That’s just a handy metaphor for sexual power and patriarchal authority. This is why medieval misogynists like Thomas Aquinas claimed that demons called succubuses took the form of beautiful women to seduce men and harvest their seed. It’s one thing for the patriarchs of yore to be framing women as semen stealing succubi, but No Nut November is trading in the same tired tropes in 2023.

The idea that resisting sex and/or masturbation is a triumph of self-control plays into the toxic narrative that male sexuality is always ferocious and unruly – that they just can’t help themselves. Therefore, to conquer this terrible beast is the supreme expression of masculine strength. In the quest for self-mastery, porn and “wicked women” are framed as the temptations the No Nut Knight must vanquish if he is to succeed. “Don’t let the power of Pussy bring you down,” one Reddit user posted. Others share photos of women they think are ugly to “help the homies stay strong”. Elsewhere jokes are swapped about which “hot women” are the nemesis of NNN.

The lexicon is highly militarised, with participants calling each other “soldiers”, “cumrades”, and joking about going into a metaphorical war. It can hardly be called a war if the “enemy” doesn’t even know, or care that they are in one. Not wanking for a few weeks is hardly comparable to the D Day landings, lads.

I know that most of the people posting in the various forums are doing this for a laugh. I am also well aware that this challenge is by no means mainstream, but there is a darker side to it. If the misogyny wasn’t enough to get you off the wank wagon, the “masturbating makes you less of a man” schtick frequently crops up in the rhetoric of far-right extremist groups.

For example, The Proud Boys, a far right hate group, have strict rules around their members masturbating, once a month and no more, if you please. Their handbook states that a member “must abstain from pornography during that time and if he needs to ejaculate it must be within one yard of a woman with her consent. The woman may not be a prostitute.” Makes sense. You can hardly be expected to storm the Capitol if you have ejaculated without measuring how far away the nearest consenting women is.

But here’s what makes the whole thing even more stupid: regular ejaculation is good for you. Far from being a health hazard, research from Harvard University has linked not ejaculating with a marked increase in prostate cancer. According to the study: “Men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 31 per cent lower risk of prostate cancer compared with men who reported four to seven ejaculations a month throughout their lifetimes.” An Australian study had similar findings: men who ejaculated four to seven times a week were 36 per cent less likely to develop prostate cancer than men who ejaculated less than two to three times a week.

So please, blow your beans, spank your monkey, diddle your dumpling and pull your pud; orgasm to your heart’s content. It’s medically recommended. But more than that, No Nut November is not “just a bit of fun”. Not ejaculating to prove one’s resolve is a historical hangover from thousands of years of blaming women for men’s desires. It has no proven health benefits. None.

Put simply, No Nut November needs to be tossed off and tossed out.

 

It happens but they're probably in the minority. The trouble is a post blaming women is going to be more popular than someone taking responsibility. Someone blaming women is far more interesting than someone taking responsibility.