If you want to throw the word pseudoscience around, can you post any scientific evidence that beatin the meat causes porn addiction? I’ve been doing it my whole life and hasn’t caused me any issues, just ask ur mom after I banged her last night.
Yeah beating the meat doesn’t cause any addiction. Just like drinking alcohol doesn’t cause addiction? Or injecting drugs into your body? Do you even know the definition of addiction.
If you are a man, just masturbate 3 times a day, and then don’t masturbate at all for a while. You will see the difference. You don’t need some expert validation for simple shit like that
Bro do you really think masturbating is the same as alcohol or drugs addiction lol. If you genuinely believe that, then idk what to tell you, you’re just wrong. Please try to look for a single scientific paper that supports this absolutely wild view. I will pay you in a million uplemmys.
“For the longest time, it was: The male is the provider,” he said. “I was that guy. But now I’m not ashamed to say this is who I am in my life. That’s what Covid did. We had a lot of downtime to reflect and think about what’s important.”
The real silver lining of Covid is that lots of us realized how much more we can get out of life if we didn't focus on being busy and commuting to work. I know that for myself I can finally focus on the life I really want to live since I work from home and see the value in simple pleasure at home. I never thought it about it changing traditional gender roles but it makes sense that anyone at home can do cleaning and cooking for the entire household.
This is a typical internet story where a moderate space about reducing porn consumption and then it gets taken over by extremists. NoFap is typical sex negative talk packages for men and young boys for the internet age. It focus on something simple like reducing porn use until it becomes a full sex negative no masturbation's and no sex philosophy.
The shame around masturbation is immense even if you don't get it from church. This is an attack male sexuality and reduces it into a simple phallic centric ejaculation focused instead of a whole body pleasure focused. This also ties really well into a female centric sex negative attack on porn in general which doubles up on the shame on men. The two together help support and create this false "cheating" definition and jealousy of toxic monogamist relationships. The idea that since we are monogamist neither of us has any other attraction is an insane and is impossible for both men and women. This ties into the PIV procreation focused sex that is the only "correct" sex which leads the both people unsatisfied with women's pleasure completely ignored and men's pleasure reduced to a single second and the "thrill of conquest". These dovetail create to shame men for taking care of their own needs with porn and masturbation to focus on guilting and coercing their spouse into giving them low pleasure sex.
Moreover, this is super kink negative with the idea that kinky sex and porn being an escalation and not an innate part of humans sexualities. While men may not be kinkier than women they for sure get their kinks earlier. These kinks are almost explored in a visual medium since most require one or more willing partner and technical skills. These kinks should be explored this way as it starts until all partners find out what they want, learn the technical and emotional skill without causing lasting emotional or physical damage to both partners.
While there are some problems in mainstream porn since its used a replacement for real sex education and is built for some misogynistic viewers. However, there is more ethically created porn out there. Ironically NoFap usually attack the most ethical created porn in OnlyFans which gives the power directly to the female creator instead of the generally male lead mainstream porn industry. Porn is always going to exist and if people actually cared about human trafficking and ethical treatment of women they would support those who create it well.
Please, stop purposely misunderstanding us and keep perpetrating us this pro-porn propaganda. The NoFap community is a MASTURBATION ADDICTION RECOVERY COMMUNITY, not a place where we tell people that masturbating is inherently bad!
Humans have been masturbating since they’re on this planet basically, but it has never been a problem until porn on the internet. With all the things you see on mainstream social media of course 13year olds are going to be masturbation addicted, everywhere they go on the internet is either full of borderline soft porn or people claiming that masturbating 10 times a day over some random mysogynistic adult content is fine. Masturbation is healthy, but with limitations and without overstimulating yourself with all this content. You don’t even need to access porn sites to find sexually arousing content and most of the times it’s one of the kind of contents which companies and mainstream social media profits on because it makes us slaves to the screens
I don’t understand why would you even purposely misunderstand the statement that destroying your life with porn and insane masturbation rythms is bad for your psychophysical health. The “90 days” are not a ritual, but the days most of the nofap users needed to actually get rid of the addiction and all its related effects and actually start a recovery journey. Also, we consider having actual sex a GOOD thing. NoFap is not about sexual abstinence, it’s about ADDICTION RECOVERY
NoFap saved my life, I would probably still me as miserable as I was in my early teens if I’ve never discovered that community. You don’t understand it because you either haven’t tried it or just never been addicted.
You don’t know the brain fog, the inability to even speak properly o to even make noarmal logical connections. You don’t know the pain of always feeling the urge and feeling sleepy 24/7 and the heart fatigue related to it. NoFap increased my self esteem, my willpower and even fixed my sleeping schedule. Same for other people I know who have found themselves in the same situation
Always remember that a lot of these articles but be financed by porn companies, that’s the only explanation. You don’t need to be a genius to understand it
EDIT: Y’all are making a big deal over the term “addiction” and not over the issues that it brings
Yet just removing that fixed everything. If I do it again, the symptoms come back. It’s porn, period. Just at least try to listen to our stories and not only to these nonsense articles
Science doesn’t say much because all the studies that have been made were like “we take 3 healthy individuals, we make the fap once and then see what happens next”. It’s that we do not have enough studies in this regard, maybe if science would try to make different cases involved in their studies we would know more
Well whatever you may have personally gained from it, that doesn’t change the fact that it has an awful lot of members who are both far-right and pushing embarrassingly bad pesudo-science.
One University study suggests that primates have been masturbating for around 40 million years. I think it’s safe to say we’re probably ok beating our meat a little now and then (though obviously excessive masturbation can be an issue). Interestingly, prevalence of masturbation seems to go up with primates in captivity, which to me suggests it’s either a stress response (relieving tension), a reaction to the more limited activities available (boredom), and/or a reaction to the safer environment (more free time not worrying about getting killed).
But isn’t the point of nofap that porn conditions our thoughts to imaginary situations that might be unlikely in real life? Like impossible body standards or performance standards or just unnatural interactions.
I know that anecdotes are bad quality evidence, but there’s a hell of a lot of anecdotal data that sex tastes have changed over the last 60 years. Are there alternative theories about what caused it?
Frankly? Way too much oversharing with friends of all ages. That’s why it’s anecdotal, but it’s even changed in my time having sex. It’s just not something that I’ve seen studied by someone other than Christian mom groups.
Edit: I can’t reply in a comment, so here’s my answer to azuth
Well that’s a way of dismissing it, yes. However, I as the person involved in the conversation can tell you that is not the case. I’ve heard some incredibly over detailed and overshared information from older people. I’ve also fucked them, and they’re not as kinky ime, but that’s like four people instead of thirty. Foot fetishes don’t seem to be meaningfully more common among youth, but likelihood to have had anal sex, likelihood to have tried fisting, choking, or non-spanking painplay are much higher.
I used to go to munches before the pandemic, and there’s obviously a lot of old people in BDSM, but it’s wild how much more quickly people discover it now. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a little concerning for me at least. My tastes have expanded with time, as most peoples do, but what’s going to be left at 70, if I’m getting ownership tattoos at 35? It’s cool to say, “whatever it is, I’ll enjoy it,” but there’s a physical cost to a lot of sex acts, especially extreme ones. Things like breast flogging are considered probably safe, but we don’t actually know if there’s lasting damage.
Then there’s the people who don’t go to munches or participate in the BDSM scene, but still engage in a “lighter” form of it with partners. I and about half of my similarly aged friends have been at some point surprise choked by a partner, which as a description feels euphemistic, because it’s so much more dangerous than anything else. Doing it by surprise is something that I react to like it’s attempted murder, because someone’s putting their hands around my neck without a safe word or any built up trust, or even warning. My peer friends who aren’t in BDSM are all caught way off guard by that and tend to think I’m overreacting. Older vanilla friends see it mostly the same as I do, whereas kinky friends are universally bothered by it.
Didn’t want to make a whole post just for this, but looking at the sidebar,
Men at the top of society enforce a system (patriarchy) that ends up repressing the average man.
I don’t agree with this statement. I don’t think patriarchy is enforced by “men at the top of society”, but by most (if not all) men. Sure there is a spectrum of how much of a… patriarchy reproducer a man can be, but that doesn’t mean it’s only men “at the top” hurting the “average man”.
I get what you’re saying and while you’ve got a great point there’s something to be said for the way you’ve quoted there too.
Consider a monarchistic kingdom. The king enforces the system but the people uphold it by going along. If they gathered together they could easily topple the kingdom but without that effort it persists.
But in modern patriarchy that kingdom exists because of a combination of tradition and a few voices being given a lot of extra credence.
At the same time it all comes with assumptions about the participation level of men at large. That’s difficult to discern because of how much of it is internalized. Removed from all of that would they choose to continue oppressive behavior, fight against it, or somewhere in between?
I think for a lot of men it’s unconscious. They participate without considering. We often have to fight against deeply held beliefs being wrong, so if we know we’re good people and *ism is bad we must not be. So someone saying we are must have a reason for trying to make us think we are.
Often that reason is because we are and we need to improve but that’s not always easy to hear.
It is undeniable, however, that there are men at the top who stand to gain from its continuance and work to see that happen.
All in all I do both agree and disagree with you. None of this is meant to be upsetting or anything of the like. I could just see an alternative point of view that was both men at the top enforcing and non-enforcing men still hurting each other through the enforced system and wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to consider it.
I would contest that only men are the issue. I have found in my personal life, when I have been vulnerable, or emotional, or distressed, the cost is quite severe socially. Men don’t open up, because often society doesn’t want them to open up. Weirdly enough, it’s the women in my life that have most frequently had a negative reaction to my humanity/distress/vulnerability, guys often have been there and they understand to some extent. They may not always know what to say or how to respond, but you often feel the empathy.
I don’t believe you have to assume men are the cause of all problem to believe in positive tenets of feminism such as that women should be free to be who they are, and achieve what they want and society and governments should accommodate that right and eradicate those things that hold them back.
Great article. I really appreciate that this community generally seems to be able to share articles and engage in discussions about issues facing men without demonizing other groups in the process, at least as far as I’ve seen on my feed. It’s refreshing.
I got a lot of downvotes on Reddit for pointing out that there’s no scientific evidence supporting porn addiction. It’s just the latest version of religious indoctrination. ISIS was using that as part of their recruitment process: men who are sexually repressed are easier for them to manipulate.
As with most things, there are a lot of problems with the porn INDUSTRY that we as a society ignore, and instead tell individual people that all the ills are their own fault.
I guess it makes sense that the psychology community would push back against the claim that pornography fits a scientific definition of addiction. The same deal goes for sugar: many people talk about sugar being addictive, but it’s pretty absurd to classify sugar as addictive substance, and the article raises this point very explicitly:
That isn’t to say that people can’t use pornography compulsively, as you may compulsively eat donuts or bacon every day against the best interests of your heart
And that’s what most people usually mean when they’re addicted to it. So I wouldn’t say that it’s indoctrination or “hive mind”, it’s just how people use the word “addiction” in day-to-day, non-scientifically-precise ways. You’re absolutely right to point that out because people should not seek addiction treatment for porn consumption, but it’s also understandable to seek treatment for compulsive consumption of whatever. Just like sugar and junk food, while the science doesn’t say it’s addiction, it also presents endless evidence on the negative effects of common patterns of consumption.
Idk just because it's "natural" to compulsively consume such both sugar and porn to classify them as non-addiction is a bit wishy washy and kinda stinks to me.
Humans literally have evolved to consume as much sugar as possible and same goes for porn because the human sexual response can't differentiate between real or fake sexual stimulus. Humans see naked bodies, humans get aroused. No matter wether digital imagery or not.
because it’s “natural” to compulsively consume such both sugar and porn to classify them as non-addiction is a bit wishy
Well, that's not the argument I'd make, nor does it seem to be the one presented by the sources for the article. I agree that this would be very wishy washy!
I agree, I thank to all real exhibitionist sharing their normal intime moments with us. Professional porn, even more one pretending to be “amateur” is just awful.
There is. And I've found a lot of couples that are great. But it's hard to find that amid the millions of "found stepsister asleep" quasi-rape fantasies. And of the ones that do seem loving, it often seems to trend towards the common tropes when they try to make a living at it. So I mostly avoid filmed porn.
Back on Reddit’s equivalent community, I enjoyed reading how straight men relate to and experience their masculinity in all those context of life where the default script would be provided by patriarchy. Basically reading about how straight men find ways to overcome that default script. This may be somewhat voyeuristic and I hope it doesn’t make any straight guys uncomfortable to hear, but it is, in some way, healing to witness such instances of non-patriarchal masculinity. It offers hope.
Secondarily, I liked that it served as a compassionate space to talk about sexual and domestic abuse against men of any sexuality. As a gay guy back on Reddit, I found that the gay male subreddits were horrible places to talk about abuse experiences because the patriarchal script was performed to a tee. The MensLib community was far better on this topic.
In summary:
What sort of content and which men’s issues would you like to see more of?
Advice and personal discussion posts, and posts tackling abuse against men.
a change-maker might … repeat and properly attribute a comment a woman made at a meeting that was ignored
Inclusivity benefits men as well as women.
I’m a soft spoken dude - my female boss stopped a meeting where I was being spoken over. It helped my status in the org because it indicated I have useful things to say, and consensus-by-volume doesn’t work.
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