people have been demonizing it for most of the AD years i think but it’s quite pleasant really. are there any proven negative effects?
Religion
I’d like to go a bit deeper.
I don’t think people invented socially controlling practices because they found religion, I think they found religion to frame the invention of socially controlling practices.
Masturbation is a gratifying act that relives pressure to settle into a rigid domestic arrangement that serves to make more workers and soldiers, and create dependents that need fed, and whose well-being would be threatened if a parent became defiant and provoked the ire of elites.
Masturbation is good for the individual at the expense of the nation and its rulers. So it’s inevitable that priests would decry it as an affront against god, as that’s historically been their purpose.
I’d like to go a bit deeper.
go on…
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Defeat the ruling class… jerk off
Citation needed.
Their statement started off with “I don’t think” which generally means it’s an opinion that may or may not have evidence. As long as they don’t present it as truth and fact, it doesn’t really need a citation.
That an opinion lacks evidence does not alleviate the requirement that its factual allegations be supported by evidence. “I don’t think the surface of the earth is curved” may be an opinion, but it’s a provably wrong assertion, and adding a disclamitory phrase to it doesn’t excuse the statement from evaluation.
this is a message board not a dissertation, nobody has to do shit
Yeah, my bad. I forgot how cool it is to just spout whatever bullshit you want. Hurray for ignorance.
No wonder humanity is doomed.
Ejaculation lower the risk of prostate cancer, so masturbation should probably be medically advised to all men.
4-7 times a week is a good number according this study
deleted by creator
Oh… there’s an upper limit? Is 4 times a day not healthy then?
At least 4-7 times a week. I have not read anything about an upper limit so go for it.
Im going to live for ever!
Username checks out
Because you enjoy it. If you’re fixing your issues, it must be through pain and suffering. If it doesn’t involve pain and suffering, then it isn’t fixing your issues. The “Protestant work ethic” doesn’t come right out and say that, but it’s the implication.
See also: denial of LSD and psilocybin for mental health purposes.
For the seminal analysis of this topics, there’s Max Weber’s book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”. But it is really dry reading, so I would suggest finding some YouTube essay video that summarizes it.
Masturbation is totally normal and healthy, and you’re spot on that it shouldn’t be demonized or shamed. In men, it might even reduce the risk of prostate cancer.
At the same time, it’s important to have a balanced and psychologically flexible relationship with masturbation and sexuality. As psychologist Steven Hayes, a leading expert on psychological flexibility, explains: getting too fixated on any one activity or coping mechanism, even a healthy one, can lead to psychological inflexibility if it is used to avoid experiencing your life fully (For a thorough explanation of how this works, feel free to check out A Liberated Mind by Steven Hayes). Psychological inflexibility here means getting stuck in rigid behavior patterns to the point that it messes with living a full and meaningful life.
So while I’m totally with you that masturbation is healthy and that bullshit social taboos against it should be rejected, it’s also good to be mindful about your motivation behind doing it. Are you doing it because you’re escaping pain? Or are you doing it because it aligns with your values and makes your life meaningful? If you rely on masturbation too much and don’t have ways of accepting your emotions and connecting with the world, it could potentially tip into unhelpful psychological rigidity and a frustrating life. The key is to be able to experience masturbation while still staying flexible enough to show up fully for the rest of your life too.
What if I’m masturbating because my body demands I masturbate when I look at porn, even though I’d rather just look at porn without masturbating?
Thanks for the response. What you’re describing - feeling a bodily urge to masturbate when viewing porn, even if you’d prefer not to - is very common. We’re kinda designed so that our bodies respond to sexual stimuli. Many people can relate to that internal tug-of-war between an impulse and a conflicting desire.
From a psychological flexibility perspective, the key is to approach those urges with mindful acceptance rather than struggle against them. Fighting with or trying to suppress an urge often just makes it grow stronger, like a beach ball you keep trying to push underwater - it keeps popping back up with greater force (1). Instead, psychological flexibility invites us to open up and make room for the urge, observing it with curiosity and letting it be fully present in our awareness.
This doesn’t mean you have to act on the urge. In fact, by giving it space to exist without resistance, you gain the ability to unhook from it and consciously choose how to respond in line with your values (2). You might say to yourself “I’m having the thought that I need to masturbate right now” and feel the sensations of that urge in your body, while still maintaining the freedom to decide if acting on it is truly what you want.
Imagine for a moment that a dear friend or loved one came to you struggling with this same dilemma. How would you respond to them? Most likely with compassion, understanding, and encouragement to be kind to themselves as they navigate this very human challenge. We could all benefit from extending that same caring response to ourselves.
At the end of the day, you’re the expert on your own life and what matters most to you. By practicing acceptance of your inner experiences, unhooking from unhelpful thoughts and urges, and clarifying what you truly value, you can develop psychological flexibility to pursue a rich and meaningful life - whatever that looks like for you. That means that there’s no one “right” way to relate to masturbation and porn. The invitation is to approach it mindfully and make choices that align with the kind of person you want to be.
(1) You can check out the “rebound effect” or “ironic process theory.” It’s been studied extensively in the context of thought suppression. The seminal paper on the topic is Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5
(2) This meta-analysis reviewed laboratory-based studies testing the components of the psychological flexibility model, and how psychological flexibility techniques increase behavioral flexibility. Levin, M. E., Hildebrandt, M. J., Lillis, J., & Hayes, S. C. (2012). The impact of treatment components suggested by the psychological flexibility model: A meta-analysis of laboratory-based component studies. Behavior Therapy, 43(4), 741-756. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2012.05.003
I mean that’s definitely just a checkout aisle self-help book, though. Psychology, along with nutritional science and some other softer, more survey-based fields, has been suffering a pretty massive replication crisis, where something like 50% of papers are totally incapable of being replicated, depending on the journal and subject.
So I dunno, I’d generally be pretty skeptical of anything a book like that says about how you have to live your life or what you should be doing or how you should be doing it. Even if it’s something like “mindfulness”, right, generally thought to be a therapeutic practice, which we’re extracting from zen buddhism or whatever, just like carl jung travels around and extracts a bunch of “archetypes” from other cultures and then supposes that they’re universal when really it’s all just kinda some schizo bullshit canon he’s coming up with on the fly.
I uhh, I don’t like the scientific paint that is painted onto psychology and psychotherapy, is I guess what I’m saying. The attempt at formalization. What is just as good for one person, to be mindful, is probably something that someone else should rather not think about at all. Maybe even as a functional adaptation, a functional delusion that they can go on believing, and still end up having a fulfilling and uplifting life for everyone around them.
I mean that’s definitely just a checkout aisle self-help book, though.
Hayes is not a checkout aisle self-help book lol he pioneered multiple major branches of CBT. that’s like calling the Rolling Stones elevator music
I’d generally be pretty skeptical of anything a book like that says about how you have to live your life or what you should be doing or how you should be doing it
I admire the skepticism but you haven’t read it and clearly haven’t taken time to fully understand it. he isn’t making prescriptive claims. he’s speaking on behavioral science. “A happens, then B tends to happen. C happens, then D tends to happen. do what you will with this info.”
I don’t like the scientific paint that is painted onto psychology and psychotherapy, is I guess what I’m saying.
i understand the apprehension about psychological research but it is fundamentally a subjective science - psychology is what makes subjectivity possible, after all! and we humans clearly need treatment. if everyone listened to the ideas you planted in here, then what would we do? not try any treatments at all? not test our treatments? not seek evidence that our treatments are working and improve them? not share our findings?
the issue fundamentally is that you need to learn more about reading and interpreting scientific literature. you’re presenting a pseudo-intellectual skepticism which is admittedly a healthy protective mechanism from many things online, but is not going to be a useful attitude for all kinds of growth
im sorry im being a dick but this thread has funked up my barometer for crazy and i probably misinterpreted your level of it, be well
Hayes is not a checkout aisle self-help book lol he pioneered multiple major branches of CBT
I mean, both can be true, right. It’s not uncommon for pretty popular scientists to get into kind of the grift economy after a little while. Jordan peterson has how many citations to his scientific papers or whatever? But then he still rolls around and spews a bunch of bullshit that’s sort of framed under the guise of his psychological background, and you can still tell is pretty easily influenced by his jungian type bullshit. I dunno, been a while since I actually looked into him, but it shook my ability to trust psychology more as a field, after that one.
I admire the skepticism but you haven’t read it and clearly haven’t taken time to fully understand it. he isn’t making prescriptive claims. he’s speaking on behavioral science. “A happens, then B tends to happen. C happens, then D tends to happen. do what you will with this info.”
No yeah for sure I haven’t read it, don’t claim to have read it, I’m just extremely skeptical of that kind of book, which presents science to the public at large, because most of the experiences I’ve had with that sort of thing have been damaging psuedoscientific bullshit that I slowly have to talk my friends out of. Which becomes much harder when they think they know things on a topic because they’ve read like one book about it. I don’t even try to talk them into a different stance, I just try to talk them out of the kind of, oversimplified takes which they tend to get from these types of books. Steven pinker type books, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” type books, “The Bell Curve” type books, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, “Poor Dad, Rich Dad”, shit like that. Admittedly not all of those are science guys, and some of that shit’s kind of old, but, you see what I’m getting at, it all blends together for the public. Pop psychology, that’s probably the term for that specific type of book, and uhh, yeah, that book gave me that kind of vibe.
If I’m really being skeptical, than, not evaluating anything else, because I just got up and still haven’t finished my coffee, the first study at the end of your post has two experiments. The first has a sample size of 34, the second has a sample size of 44. I dunno if I would say that you can really extrapolate anything from such an incredibly small sample size, to be honest. Especially one that’s like, taken from standard college campus volunteers. I know there are lots of scientific studies that rely on sample sizes which are pretty small, and I would throw that criticism at those studies, too. Shit happens in nutrition and exercise science too, I know for sure, which is why you see shitty fad diets circulate so much. I dunno, maybe I’ll read the rest of the paper, but that’s just like my general, me throwing shit at psychology as a field, right? But, maybe more, like, maybe more to, I think, some sort of point, if I have it, right:
and we humans clearly need treatment.
Like what do you mean by this? Because you’re looking at this through “treatments”, right, and I dunno if that’s the correct lens with which to view most people’s problems that they have in life. I mean it’s not a fuckin, incredibly new take, right, but like, you have a society where you’re expected to work 9-5, probably more, hours, five days a week, probably go in on a rental with your significant other, or increasingly, with your significant others, for like, 60 something years of your life? It’s not a shocker when we’re experiencing increasing amounts of depression at large, then, to me. That people have problems with that. I mean like, does changing society at large, qualify as a kind of patient treatment? I suppose my problem, if I’m really trying to have one, is just kind of that like, there’s not really any amount of psychological help which makes it better that your fingers are getting crushed in industrial machinery. Psychological help, in that case, just looks like copium. I don’t think psychology can help a lot of those problems, I think the best it can do is put a band-aid over a crippling tumor, which is nothing.
If you were to ask me what we were to do with the mentality I have, I’d probably want to incredibly balloon sample sizes and drastically increase the amount of evidence that we’re collecting, compared to just like, some guy’s written observations on like 50 people in some random experiment. Probably though, this is impossible, because school funding does not look to be going up anytime soon and google isn’t gonna share their massive amounts of data they’re collecting on people, and even if we had a glut of data to go through then we’d probably still be having to come up with and apply some sort of framework to it. At which point we just end up with a bunch of hacky bullshit, where you just take the noise and draw something in it and then say that this was somehow a natural occurrence, so you’d also need more rigorous standards for what conclusions we’re actually able to draw from the noise.
Then, even if you were able to do that, you’d still have no real way of distinguishing, say, one set of noise from another set of noise, to compare the two and draw a conclusion, because we’re just playing with like, one set of data, in a vacuum, compared to another set of data drawn from a vacuum, and there’s too many variables which might effect one outcome compared to another. So you’d probably need to be gathering pretty rigorous data over the course of many years before you’d be able to draw a real conclusion. Even then, the data might not be good enough, I dunno if you’d have enough information.
I’d maybe lean more into neuroscience to try and cut out some of the external noise, some of the factors that might fuck your shit up, but then that’s also not quite a good method because it doesn’t really cut out the external noise so much as ignore it, and you can still end up finding FMRI signals in a dead fish.
So, I dunno, probably I’d just use science for maths and astronomy and physics, stuff like that, and then otherwise I’d dismiss it, in looking for philosophies and methods with which to live my life or shape my being around. Or, you know, try to take it as it comes, and not really accept claims at face value. I’ve tried mindfulness, and I’ve found it wanting, because it just caused me to dissociate whenever I encountered an outcome I didn’t really like, and then instead of responding to things naturally, and flying by instinct, it causes me to kind of be like, the guy who smokes weed and then becomes hyper-aware of everything they’re doing but then their actual behavior devolves into nonsense.
Then, when I got farther than that, and I started to observe that behavior in the abstract, then it just sort of struck me as like, none of this realistically gives you a particular value judgement, right. It’s fine enough to just say, like, ah, well, think about it more, evaluate your life more, think about the long term consequences a little more. But, that train of thought doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to be making the correct judgements, and even over a lifetime, it might very well be that I could try everything and still come to the wrong conclusions, wrong judgements, or the right conclusions and right judgements, or whatever. I could be a hyper-conscious CEO evaluating my own life totally inaccurately and still be getting by fine and dandy, and I could be a homeless guy with accurate takes but still have a shit life. It’s basically nonsense, to just be like, oh, well, think about it a little bit harder, just be a little bit more conscious, because that isn’t nailed down to anything in particular.
I respect your skepticism and I can see why you would mistrust the field broadly based on those figures in it. I just don’t think we need to throw out the whole field because of bad actors. Someone like Jordan Peterson is widely discredited in the field.
Treatment IS important. There are REAL problems with roots in our own psychology. It is not purely psychological, but always biopsychosocial. Disregarding the psychological is not the way to treat biopsychosocial issues. In fact, it is one of the only ones we have any real agency or control over. And the more we develop psychology, the more just our understanding becomes. Think about 50 years ago when almost everything was just called “schizophrenia” and we treated people by shocking the shit out of them. That’s where we’d still be if we didn’t do this kind of work.
When someone comes to me writing in pain from traumatic flashbacks, or wildly out of control of their lives due to mood swings, or losing grasp on what is real or not, or paralyzed with anxiety from the rat race you’re talking about, or they just plain cannot enjoy anything anymore and want to kill themselves… it is a low priority for me to discuss systemic issues with them. We can acknowledge them as a tool for alleviating shame and guilt surrounding mental disorders, and we can brainstorm ways to work around them, but expecting a suicidal client to begin marching in the streets? That is not going to be a sustainable means of making their immediate lives better. It is often more of a distraction than anything. Systemic justice and advocacy work is the kind of thing you do for no singular client in particular, and usually done in addition to the individual work.
But mental health treatment is how we help people find peace right here and now. It is how we empower people to find agency in their own lives, and help make them strong enough people to go out and support others in the longer term. It’s the people who do not treat their mental health that end up devoting themselves to bizarre causes. I mean, think about how many Q anon supporters have addictive or psychotic tendencies.
If you acknowledge that there are real mental disorders (with both internal and external etiology), and you acknowledge that treating the individual can be a positive step towards addressing systemic issues, then the question becomes what kind of treatment should we use? That’s where the scientific method comes in too. Yes there will always be problems and questions, but we do what we can with what we have.
I have seen people make real progress and really turn their lives around. That includes the masturbaters too lol, who do come through from time to time. I don’t care if there are swindlers out there - as long as there are real people who are really helping others. Helping people figure out what is truly important to them can help them find strength to endure the shit they cannot change. Helping people build tolerance for and even appreciation for pain can help them make decisions that give their lives greater meaning. It helps people free themselves from the grasp of addiction and start giving back to others. It helps people find reasons to live. It is doing an immediate, person-to-person good. I don’t know what kind of world you dream of, but I hope it is one with room for that kind of justice.
Thank you for your thoughts on all this!
Psychological inflexibility here means getting stuck in rigid behavior patterns to the point that it messes with living a full and meaningful life.
Rigid behavioral patterns like having to work 40 hours a week, shop, feed yourself, clean, do laundry, go to the doctor, pay bills and so on, over and over and over again for the rest of your life?
Bro you can’t just list basically every human ADL and say it’s a “rigid behavior”. That’s basically like saying “Oh, you claim to like variety? Then how come you spend every day ALIVE?” thats idiotic, arrogant, cynical
Well excuse the fuck out of me for not having enough free time to actually enjoy my life.
you cant compartmentalize things like that. there aren’t “chores” vs “fun” and everything you have to do is pain and the fun is just the chemical rushes. you gotta learn to enjoy the little things, enjoy yourself while you’re doing your job or your chores, have some gratitude that you still live and breathe. you probably are gonna wanna get screened for depression
I can’t pick and choose what I do or do not enjoy doing. There’s nothing engaging about cleaning or doing laundry. When I first got out on my own there was at least some challenge in figuring out the most efficient way of doing things but that’s all been mastered long ago. My job mostly consists of going down a list of projects and emailing people to find out why they haven’t finished things that should have been done weeks ago. Then when I leave I get to sit in traffic for half an hour. Maybe stop at one of the over crowded, understaffed grocery stores to overpay for food. Get home, work out for an hour, shower, cook food, clean up, do whatever else needs doing. There’s nothing to enjoy about any of that. It’s all tedious as hell. I might have an hour or two after everything else is done to unwind before bed and even then I usually have too much on my mind to really get immersed in anything.
I get how you can feel like that is a fault of the world, but don’t you see any agency in changing any of this? Or you just leave it at “Well I don’t like it so that’s that”
Of the things I listed:
Job - I’m always on the look out for better options, so far nothing has come up that pays more and I’m already not making enough to do the things I want to do.
Cleaning - Already said I have gamified it to get some enjoyment out of it in the past but I don’t see any more room for improvement there.
Traffic - I can leave work early to beat rush hour sometimes but that that only helps a little.
Grocery store - I’ve tried going to different ones but it’s more or less the same issues at all of the ones I’ve tried. I’ve figured out which days are usually less busy but it still sucks.
Working out - I vary my routines to not get too boring but it’s still more or less the same stuff over and over again. It was fun when I was making gains but now my physique is where I want it to be so it’s just maintenance.
Cooking- can try making new stuff but that just takes longer and comes with the risk of waste if I mess it up or don’t like it. Also sharing a kitchen with housemates that tend to pack all the freezer space with garbage they buy from costco.
Free time - I guess I could stay up later but then I’ll feel like shit all day the next day.
I’m open to suggestions but you’re acting like I don’t think about this shit constantly.
So, like, for the bulk of history, the people demonizing it are religious assholes.
They demonized sex out of wedlock, demonized wanking off; and any other kind of sexual release, while simultaneously deciding who you can marry (and therefore have kids with,).
It’s one of their core methods of social control, ensuring wealth is only passed on to children of wealthy and “faithful” families.
We should create a community about that, so we can tell the world how great it was.
I personally just did it it and it was great guys, hope you like hearing about it
I did it twice today. The second time wasn’t as epic, but damn was the one this morning great.
Christianity and capitalism. If it doesn’t make you feel guilty the Christians don’t like it and if you can provide it to yourself for free the capitalists don’t like it.
You kidding? Porn is a 4 billion dollar industry.
You can jerk off without porn. Think of all the advertising and subscriptions on porn sites. Those have nothing to do with masturbation and everything to do with capitalism.
My weiner would disagree
Sorry you’re addicted to porn, G. Get help if you need it.
Probably to sell more Corn Flakes.
To be fair, they really taste better with milk.
Jerking it is fine, but just like any coping mechanism, you can abuse it and get addicted to it, then it becomes a problem.
If you’re doomscrolling porn, for example, then maybe it is having a negative effect on you.
I think people believe that onani leads to looking at p0rn, which is inherently exploitative to those involved (men and women) and a foul industry. Likewise, it can produce exaggerated sexual fantasies that are unhealthy and can create predatory relationships.
It’s hard to imagine jerking without explicit content, and once you have gone from Swimsuit edition to Softcore, it’s hard to go back… From softcore to hardcore, it’s hard to go back… From niche hardcore to regular, boring hardcore… It’s hard to go back…
And it leads to becoming a person who does this frequently… And then, what if you want a family? Do you really want to be taht guy who is looking at crazy stuff and rubbing one out while your infant daughter is sleeping 30 feet away in her room? Do you want to be the guy whose wife is out of action from giving birth and you are like “Oh, OK, I will just look at explicit hardcore content and content myself…”
It’s a bad habit.
It also creates crazy expectations of others which may even lead to so desiring some novel experience that you have an affair or “open” your marriage.
Onani sounds like a manga one would fap to.
Yeah I believe there’s this weird story about how like… Onani/onanism entered the vocabulary through the Old Testament character and then the notoriously private Japanese adopted the foreign word “onani” to refer to masturb8tion and so it just sticks in my head a bit more and comes out when I feel the need to slightly self-censor in consideration of being on the work net (it’s not an English speaking IT team but, you know how it goes, don’t be the shortest hanging fruit).
You’re not an English speaking troll yourself, “shortest hanging fruit” headass
One major reason is that feminism, which deeply influences culture, posits that all men are rapists in the waiting. For an example here a quote from a prominent and influential feminist.
“Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.”
- Andrea Dworkin
This chills any frank discussion of male sexuality because that would be implicit endorsement of sexual assault.
Ah yes, feminism, an ideology that consists solely of extremist views. I’m not even well versed in feminism and I know that Andrea Dworkin is quite extreme and is a polarizing figure.
If you have reduced feminism to the views of a single extremist than you really need to get your shit together.
It doesn’t consist of all extreme views but many mainstream feminist ideology had extremists views.
Naturally people are motivated by their sex drive, so there are some related consequences. You may be less interested in dating, marriage, hygiene, and prosocial behavior.
I’d be surprised if that’s true. Do we have any data on this or is this just “seems to make sense” stuff.
There are anecdotal reports of antisocial behavior, erectile dysfunction, etc in many small communities. I think yourbrainonporn.com is a good primer and rebootnation is a forum with people trying and failing to stop masterbating even to their own detriment. Make your own decision though.
Sounds like some totally science-based and non-biased sources. I also recommend masturbationwillkillyourdog.com
Citation needed. I know you’re trying to be funny, but there’s actually a lot of evidence going back to 2012 that internet pornography addiction is an actual issue for many people.
Watching pornographic pictures on the Internet: role of sexual arousal ratings and psychological-psychiatric symptoms for using Internet sex sites excessively - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21117979/
Pornographic picture processing interferes with working memory performance - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23167900/
Neural and behavioral correlates of sexual stimuli anticipation point to addiction-like mechanisms in compulsive sexual behavior disorder - https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2006/11/2/article-p520.xml#B12
Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Christianity and Feminism.
Christianity I can understand, but would you mind explaining why you think feminism demonizes masturbation?
Feminism demonizes male sexuality.
That’s not an explanation you just restated the claim they asked you to elaborate on. What have you encountered that led you to this conclusion?
Yes it is, masturbation is a part of male sexuality. If you demonize male sexuality any endorsement of male sexual expression is an explicit endorsement of the harmful male sexuality.
You’ve been clear about what you think dude, we want to know why you think it.
Feminists posit that men are inherently predatory. See “toxic masculinity” debates. Influential feminists like Dworkin have even stated that any sexual intercourse with men is sexual assault.
Mainstream media, which is deeply influenced by feminism, depicts male sexuality as dangerous “any man can be a rapist” while lying by omission about female predators.
Being male is an inalienable trait and “toxic masculinity” inherently is borne from males. Things like sexual assault are “women’s issues” even though studies show men are assault at near parity to women.
The list goes on, really shouldn’t have spent so much time answering because it’s so glaringly obvious so you’re arguing in bad faith.
You’re making a lot of claims about things I don’t think you really have a grasp on. “Toxic masculinity” is not an implication that all men are inherently toxic. It’s a criticism of societal expectations for men that harm them and their relationships.
You’re saying that feminism has seriously hindered acceptance of male masturbation but all you’ve provided here is vague unsubstantiated implications of media bias and a single author’s name. I’m not going to read the entire collected works of whoever Dworkin is to figure out why you think they’re both representative of the entire feminist movement and also hate men wanking it. Give me something tangible here. A quote, a law they supported, a speech, a video, literally anything at all that isn’t just some insinuation that’s only attributable to yourself
I would consider myself a male feminist and I masturbate daily so if the movement thinks that’s wrong I’d like to know so I can stop describing myself as feminist.
are there any proven negative effects?
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The risk of becoming a dopamine addict.
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Your dick gets more and more insensitive. Some day you cannot get off inside a woman anymore, because you need such a strong level of friction that only a hand can create.
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Literally good for you, eh?
Masturbate right before gym, then go train. Note how your performance was. Especially if its a squat or a deadlift day.
Note down what time you went to sleep, when you woke up, and every meal you ate (all calories, including macros).
Now refrain from masturbation from that day until the next session you have of the same exercise, make sure you go to sleep within the same time the night before, wake the same time the day of training, and eat the same exact meals, go train the same exact exercise, same sets, reps, and weight. Note your performance.
yeah yeah down vote me.
I’m actually curious on this one, I don’t have gym equipment or membership, is there something else I can do to compare performance if I were to masturbate vs if I didn’t?
It’s all old coaches tales. Olympic athletes not only masturbate but actively fuck each other senseless during the Olympics and you don’t see any effect on their performance in the slightest. If you are such a wimp that busting a nut makes you lose your breath sooner when jogging, then you have different medical problems. Cardiac atrophy for example. Masturbating barely even burns calories to begin with.
But to be entirely fair to the guy’s point:
Lots of top athletes have superstitions about abstaining from intercourse prior to events - some are very extreme, with fighters isolating themselves from their spouses and training for months without any release before their MMA fight/boxing match. Some say they do it for, say, just a week ahead of time, etc.
There are a few who have the opposite philosophy and claim to actually do it more in the week leading up to the fight.
It’s really a massive point of contention because some people claim it is a mere superstition while others absolutely will not break their routine.
There is also the famous incident where Bobby Fisher says that he performed poorly at a tournament because he had sex after the first night and the experience totally removed him from his focus…
This might be why it impacts fighters and certain people whose lifting styles are really about maximized performance and not a routine… If concentration is interrupted, it can result in very poor output. Like I can see how someone who is very intense about what they are doing and requires total focus would be interrupted by any form of sexual distraction. This is probably very, very relevant to guys who are fighters…
This might also have to do with perspectives on sexuality - people who ascribe a lot of meaning to it versus those who do not…
Lots of stuff to consider, I think.
That’s a problem with attitudes about sex and lack of impulse control during competition. The same could be said about doing your taxes before a tournament. It can take your focus, but it is not the taxes fault. It’s your lack of impulse control to keep your mind focused on the competition. Bad coaches ignore that there is a strong psychological component to training. But it has nothing to do with the sexual nature of the stimulus, just what you do with it and what is the attitude towards it.
Still, absolutely nothing to do with any physiological element of performance. Jerking one off the night before is not going to knock off anything, much less weight in your lifting personal record, for instance.
I actually think there’s an argument to be made that a lot of top tier athletes are never doing things like their taxes prior to a big match. It’s just really anticlimactic to say “My spouse/manager/dad does all my paperwork and handles my finances before a fight” than to say “I isolate myslf from my spouse and don’t have any orgasms before a fight.”
I also think that they would make the argument that they have plenty of impulse control and focus, it’s just a matter of the extent to which one has it.
It’s one thing to be a man who does not look at p0rn or masturb8 and only sleeps with his wife and another thing to be a monk.
Interestingly if I refrain from ejaculation, the longer I go, the more aggressive my performance is. I was in the camp that it was all BS. This was in my late teens and early 20s. I decided to test this claim after a gym owner/coach/professional bodybuilder gave me his thoughts on his personal journey into gym training, explaining that he would not ejaculate 1 week prior to a set of specific exercises he had planned to PR (hit a new personal record).
I’ve gone so far from refraining to ejaculate (about 6 weeks) that I would literally urinate a mixture of urine and ejaculate - without the orgasm. Reaching this far into refraining, my aggression and focus was noticeable. More interestingly and may have been coincidental, but refraining from ejaculation even eliminated joint pain I had in my elbows from heavy bench and overhead pressing. I’m including this because apparently there’s people who have arthritis (of some sort) and after ejaculation, their arthritis flares up immediately after.
I personally don’t care if people want to call it a myth, but if you’re an athlete, you compete, or simply take weight training seriously, you should maybe test out said myth for yourself.
I joked with my wife that I couldn’t break a 685lbs deadlift, I hit a plateau there - 4 times in a row (4 different sessions) until I decided to refrain from sex for 10 days leading up to my next deadlift session where I was able to smoothly pull a 690, so smooth I debated to go after the 700 (my next milestone) but decided to save it for another time.
That is amazing - really good stuff. I will add that to my anecdotes on this topic.
