NoFap

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NoFap
NoFap logo.svg
Type of site
Private
Available inEnglish
URL
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LaunchedJune 20, 2011;13 years ago (2011-06-20) (subreddit)
Current statusActive

NoFap is a website and community forum that serves as a support group for those who wish to give up pornography and masturbation. [1] [2] [3] Its name comes from the slang term fap , referring to male masturbation. [4] [5] While reasons for this abstinence vary by individual, the main motivation cited is attempting to overcome addiction to pornography, [a] [6] [7] or other compulsive sexual behaviours. [8] [9] Other reasons for abstinence include religious and moral reasons, self-improvement, and physical beliefs that are not supported by medical science. [10] [11] [12]

Contents

The group's views and efforts to combat pornography addiction have been criticized as simplistic, [12] outdated, and incorrect by neuroscientists, psychologists, and other medical professionals. [11] [13] [14] The purported science behind the group's activities is said to come from anti-porn activist Gary Wilson, [15] [16] "an Oregon man with no scientific training or background, who has made a career peddling pseudoscience." [17]

As of January 6,2024, the NoFap online community had more than 350,000 registered members. [18]

Founding

NoFap was founded in June 2011 by Pittsburgh web developer Alexander Rhodes after reading a thread on Reddit about a 2003 study, [5] [19] (which was retracted in 2021 due to overlap with another published article in Chinese), [20] which claimed that men who refrain from masturbation for seven days experience a 145.7% spike in testosterone levels on the seventh day. This hit the front page of a popular forum on Reddit. [5] The website states that some NoFap participants aim to "improve their interpersonal relationships", do a "challenge of willpower – to seize control of your sexuality and turn it into superpowers", but always with the goal of being able to "abstain from PMO (porn/masturbation/orgasm)." [5] The expression fap is an onomatopoeic Internet slang term for male masturbation that first appeared in the 1999 web comic Sexy Losers to indicate the sound of a male character masturbating. [5]

While the website is most commonly associated with men seeking to quit porn and reduce masturbation, there are a minority of females who are users of the website as well, who are nicknamed "Femstronauts"; Alexander Rhodes has estimated that five percent of participants are women. [5] Rhodes appears in the documentary written and directed by Nicholas Tana called Sticky: A (Self) Love Story , in which he discusses his findings and his opinions about masturbation. [21] After this, Rhodes created NoFap as a subreddit forum community on Reddit. The endeavour is sometimes referred to as "fapstinence". [22] [23]

NoFap.com

Users on NoFap's subreddit more than tripled in number in two years, leading Rhodes to build an off-Reddit forum at NoFap.com. [24] NoFap.com is the sister website of the Reddit-hosted NoFap community. [25]

Membership

Demographics

A 2014 internet survey found that 99% of NoFap followers are male, [26] [ unreliable source? ] [11] although Rhodes said that women are also a part of NoFap. [27] The membership of NoFap ranges from atheists, like founder Rhodes, to fundamentalist Christians. [27] [28] However, Rhodes has publicly solicited and received funding from religious groups. [17] The users of the website call themselves "Fapstronauts." [29] [30] [5] Some correspondents have nicknamed NoFap's community members "NoFappers", [31] [29] "fapstinent", [32] or "no-fappers". [33] Some self-described porn addicts seek out NoFap for help, while others join the website for the challenge or to improve their lives and interpersonal relationships. [5]

Beliefs

The advocacy of NoFap can be summarized as "90 days of abstinence from porn, masturbation, and orgasms." [11] A study of anti-porn attitudes among Polish Internet users found that "Despite the suggestive name, the official goal of the NoFap movement is not to encourage complete abstinence from masturbation, but to support internet users in the process of refraining from accessing pornographic materials and achieving various wellbeing goals related to sexual health", [34] and this understanding of NoFap's mission is also acknowledged by other critical sources. [11] After abstaining from porn and masturbation for a period of time, some of NoFap's users claim to experience various improvements in physical and mental health. [22] Some NoFap users say their brains were warped by porn, at the expense of real relationships. [32]

NoFap hosts a wide variety of different opinions on sexual health, and supports users with various goals as long as they are trying to improve their sexual health. [35]

Some of the group's beliefs cite the work of Gary Wilson, an anti-pornography activist who has no medical or scientific training. [16] [17] Wilson's work is pseudoscientific. [17]

The NoFap forums are rife with antisemitic posts and conspiracy theories. They accuse Jews and the Illuminati of unleashing porn in order "to undermine white men". NoFappers think that quitting porn is the magical solution to all their problems. [16]

Political and religious motivation

According to various sources, the overwhelming majority of all websites and YouTube channels devoted to anti-masturbation and anti-porn addiction propaganda, channels, and websites supporting NoFap are owned by far-right, religious fundamentalists, and conservatives who are biblical inerrantists, and also are entirely political in nature. [4] [36] The NoFap community is sometimes viewed to be a part of the manosphere  –online groups credited with propagating misogyny. [37] [38]

Psychologists, MDs, and social scientists noticed that the traditional Christian obsession with combating sexual activities, including masturbation, [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] is unhealthy and unwholesome. This also applies to secular advocacy of anti-pornography and anti-masturbation, [44] [45] including 16 US states' legislatures which have declared that pornography is a "public health crisis". [44] [46]

The American Psychiatric Association had by then already dismissed such moral panic ("political stunt") [44] in DSM-5 (published in 2013), [6] and DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022, does not recognize a diagnosis of sexual addiction (which would include internet pornography viewing). [47] [48] [49] [50] Neither ICD-10, nor ICD-11 recognize sex addiction or porn addiction as a valid diagnosis. [47] [50]

Reception

Therapist Paula Hall for The Huffington Post was asked about NoFap claims of "physical health benefits mentioned including renewed energy, greater focus, concentration, and better sleep" and responded "there is little medical evidence for any of these changes". [14] Therapist Robert Weiss for The Huffington Post sees NoFap as part of a tech backlash. [51] The endeavor has also been criticized as generating embarrassing side effects such as prolonged or unwanted erections in men or an excessive libido. [52] Psychologist David J. Ley wrote: "I'm not in opposition to them, but I do think their ideas are simplistic, naive and promote a sad, reductionistic and distorted view of male sexuality and masculinity". [12] Ley criticizes NoFap supporters as amateurs who are using "bad data" and "extrapolations on weak science to argue that porn has a disproportionate effect on the brain" and claim that porn use causes erectile dysfunction. [12] Ley has stated that the website is a continuation of the anti-masturbation movements from the past, such as Swiss doctor Samuel Tissot's 18th-century claims that masturbation was an illness that "weakened the male spirit" and led to immorality; American doctor Benjamin Rush, who claimed that masturbation caused blindness; and W.K. Kellogg, who developed corn flakes as part of his anti-masturbation efforts. [12]

Research concerning NoFap forums and followers

NoFap appears to oppose science. Their website includes legal warnings that scientists are prohibited from conducting research on them, and they have threatened to sue scientists who do. [34]

A 2021 qualitative study found that NoFap's approach to pornography appears to be harmful. Specifically, the scientists studied "members of the online NoFap/PornFree self-help communities" and concluded "commitment to abstinence, framed by the notions of recovery and relapse, was found to be a major factor for maintaining distress." [53] A 2021 research article concluded with a warning, saying that "the mythical articulations that emerge from contestations over concepts like NoFap have the potential to galvanize young men into horrific, real-world violence." [4]

A 2020 study found that while NoFap claimed to be science-based, the more that NoFap followers believed that they should abstain from masturbation, the more they also reported "lower trust in science". [11] Social psychologists Taylor and Jackson, who analyzed the content of NoFap forums, concluded in their study that some NoFap participants not only rejected pornography, but also radical feminist critiques of pornography. They also stated that members of NoFap frequently utilized and redeployed familiar hegemonic masculine views (e.g. men as dominant seekers of pleasure and women as the 'natural' suppliers of this pleasure), in turn reproducing societal expectations of gendered sexual dominance and submission. [32] Another 2020 study stated that the forum represents itself as a source of medical information, which seems to discourage members from seeking actual medical advice and instead encourages self-diagnosis. [54]

A 2020 study analysing discourse on pornography, published in the journal Social Forces , stated regarding NoFap: "These claims do not necessarily come from scientific experts. Instead, we find that newspaper articles draw from a variety of professionals who are not scientists" and that "Rhodes is quoted repeatedly reflecting that he was 'addicted to internet porn' and shares the personal consequences." They conclude "journalists and political actors are overextending scientific findings to advance their media markets and political agendas" in support of gender and sexual norms. [55]

A 2020 paper stated that NoFap appears to have been specifically targeted by far-right groups, writing, "the struggle for the 'remasculinization' of white men by overcoming porn (addiction) had to be an antisemitic one: a fight against 'Jewish pornography' and 'Jewish filth,' in which other current anti-porn actors such as NoFap should join". [56] Cultural studies scholar Simon Strick stated regarding NoFap that a "racist culture war...was already implied in the call to join the 'movement' by becoming abstinent". The chapter continues, "NoFap present themselves as a search for non-toxic and progressive gender roles, even as they partake in gendered and racialized narratives that are no less violent". [57] A paper in 2021 which analysed a large corpus of Tweets about NoFap found subject positions linked to myths including anti-feminist and anti-Semitic themes. [58]

NoFap supporters are "known for vitriolically attacking female scholars not sharing their view". [59] Sociologist Kelsy Burke stated that "Rhodes and a small staff manage NoFap.com and its brand full time". [60] She states, "There is no scientific evidence that supports the idea of these superpowers. Yet hundreds of thousands of NoFap users insist they experience them." She critiques similar gender problems in groups including NoFap, stating, "The scientific and spiritual gets muddled together as participants reinforce damaging gender stereotypes—those of hypersexual, biologically ravenous men who are simply "wired differently" than women. Women whose sexuality exists only in relation to male desire...porn addiction recovery reproduces the worst lessons of porn itself." [60] NoFap forums are described by a 2020 paper as a place where "men's sexual entitlement to women was left unquestioned". [61]

Claims of the semen retention community as well as those of the NoFap community are among the least accurate in respect to men's health. [62]

The medical orthodoxy attributes the sufferance of NoFap users to various mental disorders, rather than caused by PMO (porn, masturbation, orgasm). [50] [63] Prause and Binnie note that the NoFap forums are overloaded with conspiracy theories seeking to explain this away. [50]

Journalistic descriptions of NoFap

Several journalists have criticized NoFap. [64] [65] [66] [67] Some of them report that the forums were filled with misogyny, stating that "there is a darker side to NoFap. Among the reams of Reddit discussions and YouTube videos, a fundamentally misogynistic rhetoric regularly emerges", [66] and that "the NoFap community has become linked to wider sexism and misogyny, reducing women to sexual objects to be attained or abstained from and shaming sexually active women." [67] NoFap followers have posted videos on YouTube that regularly feature anti-homosexual and anti-woman values, such as "stop being a little bitch" demands. [15] A New York Times story by Rob Kuznia expressed concern about white supremacists promoting the belief that pornography is a conspiracy of Judaism. [68] Scientist Shane Kraus, PhD, speaking to CNET describes there is "no scholarship" supporting the Reboot claims of NoFap. [69]

Der Spiegel reported that some NoFap adherents also belong to groups with members who have been connected to hate crimes and terrorist murders, arguing that there is a general potential for radicalization within the manosphere. [70]

NPR published an article that the NoFap forum is rife with racist, misogynistic and violent posts. [16]

Litigation

NoFap has been involved in legal actions filed or threatened by its founder, Alexander Rhodes. After threatening two scientists with litigation, the scientists published a letter defending the need to be allowed to criticize NoFap: "As [NoFap] operate in the public sphere, however, we deem it not only as legitimate but necessary to acknowledge and cite them as one prominent voice in the debate around masturbation abstinence—everything else would be an unjustifiable muting of their stand." [71] NoFap threatened to sue The Spectator for writing about their association with right-wing, antisemitic groups. [72]

Alexander Rhodes sued his own mother because she accused NoFap of getting involved with extremist organizations. [16]

Similar sites

In 2017, an Independent article called "Inside the Community of Men Who Have Given Up Porn" noted that an alternative subreddit, /r/pornfree, is different from 'NoFap' as members abstain from pornography but not necessarily masturbation. [73] Another Independent article, from 2018, described /r/pornfree as less 'extreme' compared to /r/nofap. [74]

A study of NoFap reddit users found that NoFap members were most likely to also be members of TheRedPill, seduction, and similar men's rights and pick up artist Reddit groups. [75] Another study reported a similar pattern that NoFap Reddit members also were likely to be supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. [76]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ↑ Though the term 'addiction' is frequently used, a pornography addiction is not an addiction in the true sense of a brain disorder, and is instead more congruent with a behavioral addiction. Addiction to pornography, behavioral or not, is not recognised as a legitimate medical diagnosis.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sexual abstinence</span> Act of refraining from sexual activity

Sexual abstinence or sexual restraint is the practice of refraining from sexual activity for reasons medical, psychological, legal, social, philosophical, moral, religious or other. It is a part of chastity. Celibacy is sexual abstinence generally motivated by factors such as an individual's personal or religious beliefs. Sexual abstinence before marriage is required by social norms in some societies, or by law in some countries. It is distinct from asexuality, which is a sexual orientation where people feel small or no sexual attraction.

Pornography addiction is the scientifically controversial application of an addiction model to the use of pornography. Pornography use may be part of compulsive behavior, with negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, or financial well-being. While the World Health Organization's ICD-11 (2022) has recognized compulsive sexual behaviour disorder (CSBD) as an "impulsive control disorder". CSBD is not an addiction, and the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 (2013) and the DSM-5-TR (2022) do not classify compulsive pornography consumption as a mental disorder or a behavioral addiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marty Klein</span> American sex therapist

Marty Ralph Klein is an American sex therapist, author, educator and public policy analyst. Klein has spent his career supporting the healthy sexual expression of men, women and couples in a wide range of ways. He is critical of censorship, the concepts of sex addiction and porn addiction, as well as the anti-pornography movement. He believes that public policy relating to sexuality should be driven by scientific data rather than emotion, "tradition" or popular but untrue myths. He has been a participant in various state, federal and international court cases dealing with the First Amendment, obscenity, censorship and "harmful to minors" laws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opposition to pornography</span> Overview of opposing views to pornography

Reasons for opposition to pornography include religious objections and feminist concerns, as well as alleged harmful effects, such as pornography addiction and erectile dysfunction. Pornography addiction is not a condition recognized by the DSM-5, the ICD-11, or the DSM-5-TR. Anti-pornography movements have allied disparate social activists in opposition to pornography, from social conservatives to harm reduction advocates. The definition of "pornography" varies between countries and movements, and many make distinctions between pornography, which they oppose, and erotica, which they consider acceptable. Sometimes opposition will deem certain forms of pornography more or less harmful, while others draw no such distinctions.

Antisexualism is opposition or hostility towards sexual behavior and sexuality.

Sexual addiction is a state characterized by compulsive participation or engagement in sexual activity, particularly sexual intercourse, despite negative consequences. The concept is contentious; as of 2023, sexual addiction is not a clinical diagnosis in either the DSM or ICD medical classifications of diseases and medical disorders, which instead categorize such behaviors under labels such as compulsive sexual behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pornography</span> Portrayal of sexual subject matter

Pornography is sexual subject material such as a picture, video, text, or audio that is intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolved from cave paintings, some forty millennia ago, to modern virtual reality presentations. A general distinction of adults-only sexual content is made-classifying it as pornography or erotica.

Internet sex addiction, also known as cybersex addiction, has been proposed as a sexual addiction characterized by virtual Internet sexual activity that causes serious negative consequences to one's physical, mental, social, and/or financial well-being. It may also be considered a subset of the theorized Internet addiction disorder. Internet sex addiction manifests various behaviours: reading erotic stories; viewing, downloading or trading online pornography; online activity in adult fantasy chat rooms; cybersex relationships; masturbation while engaged in online activity that contributes to one's sexual arousal; the search for offline sexual partners and information about sexual activity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Masturbation</span> Sexual stimulation of ones own genitals

Masturbation is a form of autoeroticism in which a person sexually stimulates their own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm. Stimulation may involve use of hands, everyday objects, sex toys, or more rarely, the mouth. Masturbation may also be performed with a sex partner, either masturbating together or watching the other partner masturbate.

Human sexuality covers a broad range of topics, including the physiological, psychological, social, cultural, political, philosophical, ethical, moral, theological, legal and spiritual or religious aspects of sex and human sexual behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Effects of pornography</span> Influence of pornography on an individual and their intimate relationships

Pornography has been defined as any material in varying forms, including texts, video, photos or audio that is consumed for sexual satisfaction and arousal of an individual or partnership. The effects of pornography on individuals or their intimate relationships have been a subject of research.

Religious views on pornography are based on the broader views of religions on topics such as modesty, dignity, and sexuality. Different religious groups view pornography and sexuality differently.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Maltz</span> Sex therapist

Wendy Maltz is an American sex therapist, psychotherapist, author, educator, and clinical social worker. She is an expert on the sexual repercussions of sexual abuse, understanding women's sexual fantasies, treating pornography-related problems, and promoting healthy sexuality. She has taught at the University of Oregon and, up until her retirement in 2016 from providing counseling services, was co-director with her husband, Larry Maltz, of Maltz Counseling Associates therapy practice in Eugene, Oregon.

On the social news site Reddit, some communities are devoted to explicit, violent, propagandist, or hateful material. These subreddits have been the topic of controversy, at times receiving significant media coverage. Journalists, attorneys, media researchers, and others have commented that such communities shape and promote biased views of international politics, the veracity of medical evidence, misogynistic rhetoric, and other disruptive concepts.

In China, including the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan), the pornography laws and definitions vary depending on the governing authority. In the PRC there are criminal laws which prohibit the production, dissemination, and selling of sexually explicit material, and anyone doing so may be sentenced to life imprisonment. There is an ongoing campaign against "spiritual pollution", the term referencing the Chinese Communist party's Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of 1983. Although pornography is illegal, it is available via the Internet. Nationwide surveys between the years 2000 and 2015 revealed "more than 70 percent of men aged 18 to 29 said they had watched porn in the past year".

On many occasions spanning over a century, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have taught that adherents should not masturbate as part of obedience to the code of conduct known as the law of chastity. This denomination within Mormonism places great emphasis on the sexual behavior of Mormon adherents as a commitment to follow the law of chastity is required for baptism, and adherence is required to receive a temple recommend, and is part of the temple endowment ceremony covenants devout participants promise by oath to keep. A 2011 church manual quotes former church president Spencer W. Kimball who taught that the law of chastity includes "masturbation ... and every hidden and secret sin and all unholy and impure thoughts and practices." Before serving full-time missions, young adults are required to abandon the practice as it is believed to be a gateway sin that dulls sensitivity to the guidance of the Holy Ghost. The first recorded public mention of masturbation by a general church leader to a broad audience was in 1952 by apostle J. Reuben Clark, and recent notable mentions include in 2016, 2019, and 2021.

No Nut November, also known as and abbreviated to NNN, is an annual internet challenge of sexual abstinence and not masturbating during the month of November. It originated in 2011 and grew in popularity among male users of social media during and after 2017. Destroy Dick December serves as a counterpoint.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fight the New Drug</span> American anti-pornography nonprofit organization

Fight the New Drug (FTND) is a nonprofit, secular, and non-legislative anti-pornography organization that is based in Utah. The group was founded in Utah in 2009. FTND describes pornography as analogous to a drug and argues that it is a public health crisis. It describes itself as asking people to "consider before consuming", rather than advocating anti-pornography legislation.

The effects of pornography on young people are a topic of significant concern and ongoing research, as it encompasses a wide range of psychological, social, and behavioral impacts. As access to the internet has grown, so too has the exposure of young individuals to pornographic content, often before they are emotionally or cognitively prepared to process it. Adolescents turn to pornography for various reasons, including insufficient sex education, sexual arousal, as a coping mechanism, entertainment, alleviating boredom, and exploring their sexual and gender identities.

Gary Bruce Wilson was an American writer and anti-pornography campaigner.

References

  1. ↑ Cowell, Tom (September 17, 2013). "No fapping, please, it's making us ill". The Telegraph . London, England: Telegraph Media Group. Archived from the original on June 10, 2015. Retrieved May 22, 2015. So why are men doing it, and what happens when they do? 'Why' can be answered two ways: some see a medical problem in chronic masturbation, others a spiritual one.
  2. ↑ McMahon, Tamsin (January 20, 2014). "Will quitting porn improve your life?: A growing 'NoFap' movement of young men are saying no to porn and masturbation". Maclean's . Toronto, Canada: Rogers Media. Archived from the original on May 2, 2015. Retrieved May 22, 2015. Despite the evangelical tone, NoFap is fundamentally different from traditional campaigns that view masturbation as an assault on religious values. Instead, it is developing as a secular movement popular among young men, many of whom identify as liberal and atheist. The majority of NoFap members are men in their teens and early 20s, though there are women, too, says Alexander Rhodes, the 23-year-old web developer from Pittsburgh who founded the movement two years ago. He estimates about 60 per cent are atheists; the site is also home to a fair number of Christians and some Muslims, all in broad agreement that porn is harmful.
  3. ↑ Imhoff, Roland; Zimmer, Felix (April 30, 2020). "Men's Reasons to Abstain from Masturbation May Not Reflect the Conviction of 'reboot' Websites". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 49 (5): 1429–1430. doi: 10.1007/s10508-020-01722-x . ISSN   0004-0002. PMC   7300076 . PMID   32356083. We recently published a paper titled 'Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality' (Zimmer & Imhoff, 2020) in which we tried to explore correlates of men's motivation to stay abstinent from masturbation. In motivating the study, we pointed to existing discourses around the topic and cited different protagonists within this debate (e.g., the Web sites 'nofap.org' and 'rebootnation.org').
  4. 1 2 3 Burnett, Scott (May 2021). Barber, Kristen; Bridges, Tristan; Nelson, Joseph Derrick (eds.). "The Battle for 'NoFap': Myths, Masculinity, and the Meaning of Masturbation Abstention". Men and Masculinities . 25 (3). SAGE Publications: 477–496. doi: 10.1177/1097184X211018256 . ISSN   1552-6828. LCCN   98659253. OCLC   321242407. S2CID   236603234.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Love, Dylan (November 28, 2013). "Inside NoFap, The Reddit Community For People Who Want To Be 'Masters Of Their Domain'". Business Insider . Archived from the original on July 9, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  6. 1 2 Weir, Kirsten (April 2014). "Is pornography addictive?". Monitor on Psychology. 45 (4): 46. ISSN   1529-4978. OCLC   612512821. Archived from the original on April 5, 2014.
  7. ↑ Allez, Glyn Hudson, ed. (June 4, 2014). "Chapter Ten. The pleasure, the power, and the perils of Internet pornography". Sexual Diversity and Sexual Offending: Research, Assessment, and Clinical Treatment in Psychosexual Therapy. Karnac Books. p. 161. ISBN   978-1-78181-368-3 . Retrieved April 27, 2019.
  8. ↑ "NoFap". Reddit. "About community" section. Retrieved May 16, 2021. A porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior recovery peer support forum.
  9. ↑ "NoFap Website". NoFap. Second line (after slogan). Retrieved May 16, 2021. NoFap™ is a secular community-centered sexual health platform designed to help you overcome porn addiction, porn overuse, and compulsive sexual behavior. We're here to help you quit or reduce porn use, improve your relationships, and reach your sexual health goals.
  10. ↑ "What to know about the possible benefits of NoFap". Medical News Today. September 29, 2020.
  11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Zimmer, F.; Imhoff, R. (March 4, 2020). "Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality" (PDF). Archives of Sexual Behavior. 49 (4): 1333–1343. doi:10.1007/s10508-019-01623-8. PMC   7145784 . PMID   32130561. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 20, 2020. As visible from zero-order correlations and multiple linear regression, motivation for abstinence was mostly associated with attitudinal correlates, specifically the perception of masturbation as unhealthy. While there were associations with hypersexuality, no significant correlation with behavioral markers such as maximum number of orgasms was found. Higher abstinence motivation was related to a higher perceived impact of masturbation, conservatism, and religiosity and to lower trust in science. We argue that research on abstinence from masturbation can enrich the understanding of whether and how average frequencies of healthy behavior are pathologized.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Ley, David. "The NoFap Phenomenon". Psychology Today . Archived from the original on March 4, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2015.
  13. ↑ Coon, Dennis; Mitterer, John O. (2014). "11. Gender and Sexuality". Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior (14 ed.). Cengage Learning. p. 363. ISBN   978-1-305-54500-7. Archived from the original on June 14, 2020. Retrieved January 7, 2017. Is there any way that masturbation can cause harm? Seventy years ago, a child might have been told that masturbation would cause insanity, acne, sterility, or other such nonsense. 'Self-abuse,' as it was then called, has enjoyed a long and unfortunate history of religious and medical disapproval (Caroll, 2013). The modern view is that masturbation is a normal sexual behavior (Hogarth & Ingham, 2009). Enlightened parents are well aware of this fact. Still, many children are punished or made to feel guilty for touching their genitals. This is unfortunate because masturbation itself is harmless. Typically, its only negative effects are feelings of fear, guilt, or anxiety that arise from learning to think of masturbation as 'bad' or 'wrong.' In an age when people are urged to practice 'safer sex,' masturbation remains the safest sex of all.
  14. 1 2 Galager, Sophie (August 19, 2019). "The Rise Of NoFap: Why Young Men Are Quitting Masturbation The NoFap community has grown alongside the rise in internet porn – but is it helping anyone?". HuffPost UK. Archived from the original on November 2, 2020. Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  15. 1 2 Hartmann, Marlene (June 28, 2020). "The totalizing meritocracy of heterosex: Subjectivity in NoFap". Sexualities. 24 (3). SAGE Publications: 409–430. doi: 10.1177/1363460720932387 . ISSN   1363-4607. S2CID   225765798. The most influential account of the causal relationship between PMO and the emergence of masturbatory subjectivity, which I mainly refer to in the following, is given by Gary Wilson ... Nevertheless, Wilson's talk is of vital importance to NoFap.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 Hagen, Lisa (February 3, 2024). "Masturbation abstinence is popular online. Doctors and therapists are worried". NPR. Retrieved August 13, 2024.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Watson, Brian (2020). "The New Censorship: Anti-sexuality Groups and Library Freedom". Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy. 4 (4): 19–28. doi:10.5860/jifp.v4i4.7177. hdl: 2022/25773 . S2CID   238069109.
  18. ↑ "NoFap®". NoFap®. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  19. ↑ "TIL when men don't masturbate for 7 days their testosterone levels increase by 145.7%. • r/todayilearned". Reddit. June 21, 2011. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
  20. ↑ Jiang, Ming; Jiang, Xin; Zou, Qiang; Shen, Jin-wen (December 10, 2021). "Retraction Note to: A research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men". Journal of Zhejiang University Science A. Zhejiang University Press. doi: 10.1631/jzus.2003.r236 . ISSN   1673-565X. S2CID   245084121.
  21. ↑ "Sticky: A (Self) Love Story: Trailer 1". Archived from the original on February 3, 2019. Retrieved June 7, 2017.
  22. 1 2 Gander, Kashmira (October 5, 2016). "A man who gave up masturbation for 700 days says it gave him superpowers". The Independent. Archived from the original on July 9, 2019. Retrieved April 4, 2020.
  23. ↑ Treacy, Christopher John (May 24, 2017). "The Grumpy Ghey: The Fap Flap". The Public. Archived from the original on July 9, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2020.
  24. ↑ Eck, Ian. "The Men Who Would Not Wank". San Francisco Magazine. Archived from the original on March 2, 2017. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
  25. ↑ Israelsen-Hartley, Sara. "Adolescent addiction: When pornography strikes early". Deseret News. Salt Lake City, UT. Archived from the original on June 23, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2015.
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