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If you spend a
lot of time in certain Extremely Online corners of the internet
ecosystem, you’ve likely stumbled onto #NoNutNovember, or just #NNN for
short. An annual challenge encouraging men to refrain from masturbating
(or even, for many, having any sex) for the month, No Nut November was
initially created as a parody of internet-borne phenomena such as the
Ice Bucket Challenge or Movember, skewering the silliness of viral
internet challenges along with the more extreme claims made by
proponents of NoFap, an anti-porn subreddit with half a million
members. (No Nut November has no connection to NoFap, though the two
are often conflated and NoFap will sometimes post #NNN memes on its
social media pages, says Matthew Plummer, a community manager for
NoFap.)
For most participants, the challenge is essentially an excuse to
shitpost, as well as tweet memes skewering some of the more exaggerated
purported benefits of abstaining from masturbation. But there are many
who take it seriously, with at least 52,000 people as of this writing
diligently documenting their day-by-day progress (and setbacks) on the
subreddit r/NoNutNovember. r/NoNutNovember moderator /u/yeeval
estimates that approximately 90% of the posts are from people “actively
participating, and also there’s the occasional fallen member who stays
on the subreddit for the community and laughs.”
On its surface, No Nut November is a fairly innocuous challenge: while
it may seem silly to abstain from masturbation for virtually no reason,
some of the memes are pretty funny, and a month of abstinence (whether
it be from sex or masturbation) certainly isn’t going to kill anyone.
u/yeeval says the goal isn’t to demonize porn or masturbation per se,
but to prompt men to examine their own masturbation habits. “In my
opinion, most originally participate in NNN for the meme aspect of the
challenge but as the days go on people begin to see how big their porn
or masturbation dependency is,” he says. Plummer too says the general
goal of NoFap is not to discourage masturbation in general, but to
encourage men to temporarily abstain from the practice and return to
“moderate, porn-free, non-compulsive masturbation.”
Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap
between the general ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut
November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted
the principles of masturbation abstinence. Because the challenge is
associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the
movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on
social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications.
“In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this
ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult
performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the
industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far
right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”
A new meme brings these implications into sharp relief. Coomer is a
reference to a meme of an unkempt, skeezy-looking bearded man in a
white tank top with vaguely Semitic features, accompanied by
descriptive text like “doesn’t even know anything about politics,”
“extremely aesthetic right arm (huge muscle),” and “has never heard of
NoFap.”
The term has also been used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on
the “OK boomer” meme, in response to tweets critical of No Nut November
or masturbation abstinence in general. “It’s positioned as this epic
battle between the weak beta masturbators and the strong, alpha
NoFappers,” says Hawkins.
Like most memes,
“coomer” carries with it more than a tinge of irony, and it’s not
always easy to determine whether it’s being used flippantly or to
actually deride men who masturbate. But the implication is clear:
masturbating is an urge that should be resisted at all costs. David
Ley, PhD, a clinical psychologist and sex therapist who studies
pornography and mental health, saw the meme after he tweeted his
criticism of No Nut November, referring to it as “a creepy little
smorgasbord of insecurity-driven hate with anti-Semitism, misogyny, and
homophobia all rolled up in one,” he tells Rolling Stone. (Ley has
partnered with the cam website Stripchat to do AMAs about sexual
health, and plans to appear in one debunking some of the myths
associated with No Nut November.)
The idea that there are significant health benefits from abstaining
from masturbation is partially based on the (primarily
internet-propagated) theory that semen retention is linked to an
increase in testosterone and male virility, an idea that has been
widely debunked. For the most part, however, the idea that masturbation
is somehow feminizing is “rooted in extremely antiquated ideas of
masculinity,” many of which are also promoted by far-right groups, says
Ley. The Proud Boys, for instance, a far-right extremist group known
for its propensity toward violence, has long advocated for its members
to abstain from masturbation on the grounds that it boosts testosterone
and makes them more appealing to women; indeed, founder Gavin McInnes
gave a shoutout to NoFap in a 2015 article for the far-right
publication Taki’s Magazine. (The organizers of NoFap have strongly
refuted any connection to the Proud Boys.)
An even more extremist version of this far-right anti-masturbation
philosophy has been promoted by David Duke, the former head of the Ku
Klux Klan, who has propagated the conspiracy theory that Jews dominate
the porn industry and use pornography as a way to control white men. On
far-right threads on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, this
sentiment is fairly widespread. “Jews not only control most of the
pornography industry, they also rely on the goyim to maintain a routine
of ejaculation in order to stay docile and non-violent,” one comment
reads. Another shared a viral Pornhub tweet poking fun at viewers who’d
failed No Nut November, writing, “the Jew mocks you as they poison the
minds of millions.” (Pornhub is owned by the Canadian company MindGeek,
the CEO of which, Feras Antoon, does not appear to be Jewish, even
though there are numerous 4chan /pol/ threads speculating as such.)
This anti-Semitism is also often accompanied by healthy doses of
homophobia and racism as well: on these threads, you’ll frequently see
users deriding men who masturbate to heterosexual porn, on the grounds
that being aroused by another man’s penis makes you gay (even if said
penis is depicted going into a vagina). And because mainstream porn
often features white women paired with black men, there’s also a
virulently racist element to much of this discourse, such as the
suggestion that interracial porn is intended to steer white women away
from procreating with white men and toward men of color.
The irony of this strain of the anti-masturbation movement is that,
while it’s ostensibly intended to fight the larger porn industry’s
attempts to brainwash and emasculate white men, anti-masturbation
ideology has historically been used as a tool by fascist figures to
gain social control. Cultural stigma associated with masturbation,
combined with the fact that pretty much everyone masturbates,
invariably leads to a lot of men “developing a lot of internal shame,”
says Ley. “And that makes them open to manipulation and social
control.” As an example, he cited the National Socialist Party in 1930s
Germany, which strongly discouraged Hitler Youth members from engaging
in masturbation. Because anti-porn and anti-masturbation movements tend
to be comprised of young heterosexual males, they could potentially be
viewed by some on the far right as ideal recruitment grounds. The fact
that something like No Nut November appears to be a joke on its face
“appears to serve as this interesting front door recruiting kind of
strategy to bring folks into this deeper, much more insidious and
shaming movement,” says Ley.
Of course, it goes without saying that not everyone who participates in
No Nut November or NoFap is a white supremacist or religious
fundamentalist, and that the founders of these groups explicitly reject
any suggestions of overlap between the two communities. u/yeeval says
he has seen no hint of any anti-Semitic or misogynistic commentary on
the subreddit, chalking any suggestions of Jewish porn conspiracy
theories to “someone trying to make a bad / overtly offensive joke.”
“NoNutNovember isn’t a political movement. We are not anti-porn. We are
not anti-woman. We are not anti-masturbation or anti-sex,” he says. “In
its most simple form NoNutNovember just a fun internet challenge that
has grown in popularity due to many memes that circulate the
internet…However, I also think that the reason that it has become so
widespread is that it has given many the opportunity to look within
themselves and realize that they might be relying on masturbation and
porn for comfort.”
Plummer, the NoFap community manager, says that the subreddit’s
moderators have been “dismayed to see that some hate and fringe groups,
particularly antisemitic groups, appear to be co-opting anti-porn views
as a part of their platforms.” “We’ve only seen a small handful of
antisemitic trolls join our website forum irregularly, only to be
immediately banned by our moderation team,” he says, pointing to the
subreddit’s policies banning misogynistic or anti-Semitic posts. He
characterizes the suggestion of overlap between anti-pornography
ideology and far-right groups as a tool utilized by the “porn industry
and its advocates…to smear people in recovery,” referring to it as “not
only very lazy, fallacious, and disingenuous, but also highly offensive
to those who have been fighting for the official recognition of ‘porn
addiction’ from the mental healthcare field for years.”
The coomer meme is also, at least inherently, apolitical, says Alice
Vaughn, host of Two Girls One Mic, a podcast about porn tropes. “The
concept surrounding ‘Coomer’ is neither right nor left politically. The
urge to shame those with higher sex drives is nothing new, and is a
subject many are uncomfortable with, especially adolescents (which is
predominately 4Chan’s user base),” she says.
But the rise of “coomer,” with its distinctly conservative implications
about male sexuality, would seem to refute that the anti-masturbation
movement is totally innocent or entirely intended in jest. The fact
that it’s often used in the context of “OK coomer,” a play on a meme
intended to skewer boomers’ criticism of Gen Z, also indicates that
this is primarily a youth-driven phenomenon. When you consider how
younger generations have typically adopted a more healthy, progressive
view of sexuality than previous ones, this doesn’t make a lot of
intuitive sense — but it actually tracks with current data, which
indicates that younger generations are having less sex, Ley says.
Usually, this phenomenon is attributed to male millennials and zoomers
(members of Gen Z) spending more time watching porn, and to an extent
this may be true; when it comes to determining the effects of
pornography viewing on male sex lives, research is somewhat mixed. But
it’s also just as likely that sociocultural factors like economic
unrest and fear-mongering abstinence-only education have also played a
role in these declining sexual activity rates. “We’ve spent decades
telling these young kids be afraid of sex, and that only hereto
monogamous sex is OK and moral,” says Ley. “Now all of a sudden they
are really conflicted about sex and their own sexuality.”
That said, there’s also an awful lot of men who are not participating
in No Nut November in earnest, and many more who aren’t participating
at all. In an email to Rolling Stone, Pornhub vice president Corey
Price said that traffic is virtually unaffected by No Nut November, and
few of the adult performers Rolling Stone spoke with said that they
hadn’t seen their engagement go down considerably during the month
either. Considering that annual Pornhub traffic numbers are in the tens
of billions, if there is indeed a wider porn conspiracy to sap men of
their virility, that conspiracy appears to be working pretty well. But
for those who are participating in the challenge, and may have stumbled
along the way, Calvert has a comforting message: “I personally think No
Nut November is very silly,” she says. “Not masturbating for a month
does not make you a better man or a stronger man.”
Editors note: This story has been updated to include comment from NoFap
and the creator of the No Nut November subreddit, as well as to clarify
the masturbation stance of NoFap.
Source:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/coomer-meme-no-nut-november-nofap-908676/
Archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191117145232/https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/
culture-features/coomer-meme-no-nut-november-nofap-908676/
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