No fap, anti 🌽 and very online
The online movement against p*rn consumption
Hi Everyone,
Happy hump day and thanks so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter! If you’re enjoying it, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed!
This is a weekly newsletter from me, Dani Faith Leonard , a comedy writer, film producer, and performer, based on the live comedy show ADULT SEX ED that I’ve hosted since 2018. If you want to know more about this newsletter, here’s a description on substack.
Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
Two weeks ago, I wrote about movie sex scenes, including two scenes in the recent blockbuster Oppenheimer that I described as “notably strange.” Well, he was a strange guy. But for one tiktok creator, the scenes proved to be just too much.
Tiktok creator Jourdan K (@thatsnotlove) created a video answering a follower’s question: “Any advice for my husband and I wanting to watch Oppenheimer but being fully afraid of the Florence Pugh scene everyone is talking about?” Instead of wondering what the fuck this woman would be so afraid about, Jourdan told her followers that she and her husband came up with a game plan that would involve him closing his eyes and putting his head on her shoulder. Yes, a grown man.
The post went viral and it turns out that she’s an anti-p*rn content creator. In 2022, Jourdan discovered that her husband of ten years watched p*rn more than one time and she assumed he was addicted. P*rn addiction is a real thing that people struggle with, but is better diagnosed by a medical professional. Jourdan joined a movement whose core belief that watching p*rn is not only addictive but an unethical infidelity. They gather on tiktok in the comments section, using use the word “corn” and corn emojis 🌽 so their posts don’t get taken down.
This particular community has a tendency to conflate what consenting adults do on camera with human trafficking, CSAM, and pedophilia. But, the scenes from Oppenheimer aren’t even p*rn: they’re two of the least horny sex scenes I’ve ever seen. It is the first Christopher Nolan film to feature nudity, and all we’re actually seeing are bare breasts. Anti-p*rn activists might not agree though, since they could “trigger” someone with an addiction, and activate a “trauma response” in their partners. Rolling Stone did a great break down of Jourdan’s specific anti-p*rn movement, and how they use “therapy speak” to connect with a community online HERE.
The online anti-p*rn community as a whole has many different factions and belief systems. There are real movements out there to regulate p*rn, so that it’s as ethical as possible. But the online anti-p*rn movements that I’m writing about today focus on consumption, not creation.
Historically, anti-masturbation and p*rnogrpahy movements are as American as they come. The origins of sex education in America were rooted in popular preachers and reverends going on anti-masturbation speaking tours, like a fap-free Tony Robbins! It’s natural to associate right wing movements with the anti-masturbation/p*rn trend, and that’s mostly true. The right-wing website Focus on the Family published its own film review of Oppenheimer that wasn’t so different from the corn-hating on tiktok. The reviewer wrote “Oppenheimer’s biggest content issues arise from its sexual content and crude language, the latter of which is due to the film’s many uses of the f-word.” That’s a bigger content issue than…setting off an atomic bomb??!
The anti-p*rn consumption movement hasn’t just been right-wing. In the 1970s, an anti-p*rn movement pushed by the organization Women Against Pornography (abbreviated as WAP, no joke) divided feminists, as some believed that their remedies limited civil liberties and sexual expression.
As far as internet movements against p*rn consumption are concerned, it’s not just women’s voices leading the charge. An annual month-long challenge called “No Nut November” started in 2010 and gained in popularity. Much like Seinfeld’s “The Contest,” men on the internet abstain from watching p*rn, masturbating, and even ejaculation in general. Unlike Seinfeld, the NNN contest had been co-opted by far-right activists just a few years after it began.
No Nut November’s roots were on Reddit, part of a larger “No Fap” movement. If you’d like to be master of your domain for longer than one month, the No Fap community has a website, so naturally I paid them a visit. No Fap promises to help you “get a new grip on life,” which is hilarious, but unfortunately this isn’t a parody. On the homepage, a user writes, “Amazing that a forum like this exists as a support group for people without even having to leave their homes.” I assume if you’re struggling with a p*rn addiction, having to leave your home would be a plus! On the blog, another user bragged that since No Fap, he was able to stop objectifying women. He could have also just…stopped objectifying women! But don’t worry, No Fap claims to be rooted in science.
I signed up for the newsletter, which comes with a No Fap Handbook. I was hoping to walk away with some immediate science-backed tidbits on how to tame my horniness, but the handbook was more of a community manual. Members are called “fapstronauts.” Abstaining from p*rn, masturbation, or sometimes even orgasm altogether (even during sex!), is called “rebooting,” as in “rebooting” a smartphone or computer “back to default factory settings.” If this sounds culty, it’s because it is. While they claim to be a sexual health platform, there is no scientific basis to their claims. Just like many other movements of this kind, it’s rooted in a core belief that sexuality and masturbation are inherently bad and addictive.
There is an even darker side to the online no fap movement. Many of the message boards contain misogyny. They are also populated by hate groups that claim that p*rnography is a Jewish conspiracy, to control the West by using p*rn to render white Christian men impotent. Hahahahaha. As a Jew, hateful nazis never seemed to need my help to seem impotent. While it sounds funny to me, the Jewish p*rn conspiracy was in several mass shooting manifestos. The Proud Boys encouraged abstaining from p*orn, and while their founder claimed it wasn’t for anti-semitic reasons, the online comments sections proved otherwise.
Of course p*rn should be interrogated, regulated (for safety and to make sure that minors can’t watch it or be exploited). We should look into addiction, as we do any compulsive behaviors, and also how p*rn is affecting pleasure. But there are so many questions that are hard to answer: What counts as p*rn? Are movie sex-scenes p*ornography? I certainly don’t think so, but who should get to decide this? Can there be such a thing as ethical p*rn? The one thing that I’m always certain about is that it’s hard to have a nuanced conversation about this, especially with social media fapstronauts.
Don’t miss a newsletter!
Subscribers can access all issues here. Here are some newsletters related to this one:
As always, please share the newsletter with friends!
I love your articles. You’re bringing grey back into the picture. Everything is so needlessly black and white, I appreciate your perspective.