No Nut November: The Hands-Off History and Strange Science of Anti-Masturbation
Spoiler alert: it's mostly nonsense
I’m convinced there’s a mysterious force at work, like gravity or dark matter, pulling us forward in a certain predictable direction. If you haven’t noticed, most things on the internet started as jokes and then, suddenly, a thousand tiny, imperceptible shifts transformed those jokes into something serious. What were jokes hiding in the obscure corners of the internet in 2014 are now serious movements with self-help groups and loud defenders with bullhorns in the streets.
Let’s call it Duncan’s First Law of the Internet: if you joke about something online for long enough, eventually, people will think you’re serious.
I sense this is what happened with the strange concept of No Nut November.
I can’t help but assume what started as a trollish gag among a tight-knit inner circle eventually expanded beyond those it was intended for, and, suddenly, it was construed as a serious proposition.
We’re going to stop masturbating! Here’s to your health!
Eventually, those behind the ruse (probably trolls) stepped away laughing while millions of men embarked on a quest not to masturbate instead of actually paying attention to anything substantial.
For those who haven’t heard, No Nut November is a bizarre, annual month-long holiday (if you can call it that) when people, usually young men, stop masturbating for an entire month. It’s like the holiday month of NoFap, a similar movement and even LLC (one that’s frequently abusive and rife with misogyny, racism, and hate), that also pushes the anti-masturbation narrative.
All I can think of is: ummm….why?
What is this wankery (or lack thereof)?
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Forgive me if I sound like a curmudgeon laughing silly ideas out of existence with a wagging finger as I bark, “Kids these days!” but when I was young, no one would’ve ever thought to intentionally stop themselves from masturbating, let alone quitting porn. It never crossed any of my friends’ minds, we were horny teenagers who’d let someone slice off one of our fingers—without anesthetics—if it meant getting a quick peek at a pair of boobs.
Why on earth would we want to subject ourselves to such sexless torture willingly?
I have no idea.
Alas, skip forward a decade and some change, and here we are. Anti-masturbation and anti-pornography messages have proliferated across the globe thanks to this beautiful disaster machine we call the internet.
Thus, I feel it’s pertinent to address these communities and claims seriously and apply a crucial analysis to what we know about masturbation abstinence and what we don’t know so people can reach their own conclusions about their sexual health.
A Hands-Off History of Anti-Hedonism
In a nod to the Ancients, today’s young men lure others into the ideology with a promise of health, vitality, and rigor, superior performance that can’t be matched anywhere else. Yes, since ancient times, abstinence from masturbation has been recommended as a cure-all for countless health issues totally unrelated to sex.
Anti-masturbation attitudes have existed probably for as long as there were humans and certainly, in some sections of the various societies that have sprawled across the earth, for as long as there have been civilizations. The writings of the ancients leave us no shortage of people demonizing masturbation, even people we often (wrongly) think of as enlightened, like the Ancient Greeks.
Far from the zealously hyper-sexual bunch that they’re often portrayed as being, many ancient Greeks were quite the sexual prudes. Here’s a brief list of Ancient Greeks and their bizarre, sex-shy beliefs that led them to conclude that masturbation was detrimental to your health and even thinking.
Consider it a Hellenic walk of shame.
Hippocrates the Hideous
Most of us know Hippocrates from the “Hippocratic oath” that doctors take today, stemming from the ancient doctrine of the Greek physician Hippocrates and his oath to “do no harm.” Hippocrates was arguably the first doctor whose teachings came down to us through another author who, as Plato did for Socrates, wrote down his teachings. His name was Polybus (Πόλυβος, which means “Phoenician”).
Early medicine was important and we should pay it due respect. But it was far from an intelligent science. He believed that both women’s vaginal fluid and men’s ejaculate were the same thing, saying:
If [the woman’s] desire for intercourse is excited, she [emits] seed before the man.
He also believed that the ejaculate literally contained a tiny version of the entire human body that would grow up into adulthood with sufficient nurturing in the womb.
According to Hippocrates, if we can trust Polybus, we’re all fully grown, bipedal, sometimes-critically-thinking wads of jizz who can use cell phones and do math.