By David Futrelle
We’ve watched as the more misogynistic offshoot of the Men’s Rights movements known as MGTOW has gotten more Nazified over the last several years — more friendly to alt-right memes, more open to Nazi ideology. Given that the Men Going Their Own Way is rooted in the hatred of women, it’s not surprising to see so many MGTOWs open to other forms of hate; hate often comes in clusters.
The same thing seems to be happening to the more extreme offshoot of the NoFap movement known as Semen Retention. There’s nothing inherently hateful about giving up porn and masturbation, but many of those who’ve embraced the movement have brought with them a deep suspicion of women and of anyone else who might want to steal their precious bodily fluids.
And so the Semen Retention movement is filled with talk of dark conspiracies — particularly involving the alleged dark motives of those the more hardcore Retainers see as trying to enslave them with porn and rob them of their male energy. Picking up on a talking point widespread among internet Nazis, many Semen retainers end up pointing their fingers at the supposed evil masterminds of the porn industry — the Jews. They’ve also accepted another weird and related antisemitic trope: the idea that Jewish men don’t masturbate — at all.
The basic outline of the “theory is that
- Semen Retention makes men men mentally stronger
- Jewish men don’t masturbate
- Jewish men run the porn industry
- Therefore porn is part of a massive Jewish conspiracy to weaken non-Jewish men and TAKE OVER THE WORLD (which they’ve already taken over)
The idea that Jews don’t masturbate is, I admit, something of a surprise to me. I understand that “spilling your seed” is not exactly encouraged in Jewish tradition (it’s all rather complicated) but I’ve also read Portnoy’s Complaint. Still, the absurd notion that most or all of Jewish men don’t masturbate seems to be accepted as an article of faith by a significant portion of the Retainer community. Some even claim to have been let in on this alleged secret by alleged Jewish friends:
“Jews don’t fap at all,” wrote a Retainer called Spiritual-Monk.
Many of my jew friends stayed away from porn and sexual stuff. And girls come to them like magnet
“I had a jew friend in the equiviliant to high-school in my country,” wrote another r/SemenRetention commenter.
He was pretty ugly tbh, but a lot of girls liked to talk to him. … I remember him asking me at the end of the last year how much I jerk off. I said ”Maybe three times a week (While it was closer to 9-10 back then)”. And he said that he never jerks off, ever. He never really gave a direct answer to why.
But plenty of Retainers think they know why: to dominate the other “male races.” According to one NoFap conspiracy theorist,
the only real difference between Jewish men and all other men is that they don’t masturbate. Of course many do, hence why not all Jews are successful. But with their religious beliefs being anti-masturbation, it encourages a greater proportion of Jewish men to follow this rule. Could this be why Jewish men are walking over all other male races right now?
A commenter in the Semen Retention subreddit takes this conspiracy theory a little farther:
Men who ejaculate daily and spill their vital fluid on a regular basis are inferior to women yet those who practice semen retention demonstrate better mental performance, which means they are superior to both weak men and women. They reach faster brains compared to constantly mediocre female brain! Doesn’t that prove that men are inherently superior.
Judging from the “logic” here, no.
The only way for women to win is corrupt male psychology. Do you see the conspiracy? You are slowly and steadily being made to believe that you are inferior by toxic feminism which benefits Jews who don’t masturbate most. I am not an Anti-Semitic but can you see the indirect love triangle?
A commenter called AfricanSocialist was even blunter:
jews want us to fap to weaken men, Zionist jews. not the normal ones
And so, the logic goes, Jews have built up and taken over the porn industry in order to “weaken men” by inspiring them to jerk off.
“Jewish peeps run almost the entire porn industry in the US,” wrote Plz_Save_Us_Trump_2
Maybe not all Jews are involved, but powerful ones push the filth out to the masses, and to what end do you think?
Another insinuated the same thing:
When you figure out who produces 97% of the porn in the world you’ll start to understand not only this war on men but our broken financial system, open borders, endless wars in the Middle East et all
Still another in the same thread begged his “peeps” to speak openly of their favorite enemy:
Name the jew, it’s simple. It’s the (((Kabbal))) and people are waking up.
“I want to share a coincidence,” wrote another.
Jews don’t masturbate but they own all the largest pornographic sites and media.
There are some in the Semen Retention, to be sure, who oppose this blatant antisemitism. But they antisemites get attention and, often, upvotes, and their conspiracy theories have become omnipresent in places like the Semen Retention subreddit, alongside autodidactic takes on eastern philosophy and the regular discussions on the sudden attraction all women allegedly feel for men full of their own sperm.
The semen retention subreddit isn’t just a somewhat comical sideshow to the manosphere circus; it’s turned into quite an ugly and hateful place. And I imagine it will only get worse over time, because in our current timeline how could it not?
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@ Dallilama
I’ve read it and I agree. Were its tropes around a mysterious aristocrat tempting people to their destruction (also used by Bram Stoker and Anne Rice) established prior to its publication, or is it the originating work?
Sommelier ? Like Kaiten Sommelier ? (Do not search if you are not in erotic dôjinshi)
> moregeekthan
Well, have you ever see your CPU wanking ? No, even if it plays alone with its bits (sorry, this pun is only understandable in french). That is why it is a fast brain. Science !
By the way, are there women of nofapper conviction ? Does they also retain their precious fluids to get even greater powers than those already hold by said fluids (remember the mental control power attributed to what you know ?) ? Does this allow them to attract “chads” like fire and moths ? Or is nofap a men-only fantasy ?
Not gonna lie, sexual frustrations can be a quite powerful force of mind, it’s just a shame that it’s channelled into so much unconstructive whining…
@occasional reader
It seems there is a mixed consensus. On the one hand, the majority seem to say that women cannot take part. However, I recall that in a last ditch attempt to pretend he wasn’t sexist, a troll we had a while ago claimed that women could take part, but seemed genuinely confused about what it would entail.
@ everybody:
The mysterious aristocrats tempting people to their destruction all descend from Lovelace in Clarissa. Lovelace was the invention of an author who was also a printer (Samuel Richardson) and he’s usually taken to be an outgrowth of the 18th-century middle-class mind in the full furor of its irritation with the aristocracy. (Consider what most people now think of bankers and ‘entrepreneurs’ and you’ll have some clue.)
Clarissa is an excellent read. It’s not conspicuously Gothic but it does share the Gothic’s concern with ultimate phenomena (salvation, damnation, kinkiness*, and so forth) and since it was published earlier than any of the English gothic novels (including Ontronto) it seems to me that it’s their parent in that way. Clarissa is also a very long read — it clocks in at more than a million words; so, if you start in on it, make sure to have some supplies laid in.
*This part is very much soft-pedaled, though Lovelace does set Clarissa up in a bordello, where she pines in effectual captivity for page after tiny-type page.
@ bekabot
Thank you for the heads – up, much appreciated.
@ Allandrel
I’d recommend Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories; they’re sort of like creepy fairy tales, *very* ambiguous in their interpretation. I’m especially fond of ‘The Christmas Banquet,’ ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ , and ‘Feathertop.’
Oh also—I’m not sure it’s Gothic exactly, but I like Bulgakov’s The Master and Marguerita, whose plot can basically be summed up as “In Soviet Russia, Devil have sympathy for you” (it is supposed to have inspired the Rolling Stones song “Sympathy for the Devil”). It has comic and satirical aspects as well—I think most people’s favourite character is the giant, demonic black cat Behemoth, who cheats at chess and is careless with firearms and paraffin stoves.
OK, I love recommending stories, so here’s a bunch more (many of them findable online through Project Gutenberg, etc):
Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873) Lots of short ghost stories, often set in Ireland, and several novels—the one I’ve read is Uncle Silas, which is a classic girl-meets-house gothic novel. The plot requires the heroine to overlook more red flags than a communist May Day parade, but this is somewhat justified by her having had a really isolated upbringing that’s left her unable to distinguish between benign weird and creepy weird.
Agatha Christie wrote some supernatural short stories as well as her better-known mysteries – ‘In a Glass, Darkly’ may be the best-known. She also wrote a number of supernatural detective stories, in which the protagonist Mr. Satterthwaite comes to recognize that any time he runs into his mysterious friend Mr. Quin, it means events are reaching a crisis and it’s up to him to solve an old murder or prevent a new one. Mr. Quin is pretty clearly not quite of this world, and as such is only allowed to drop subtle hints to his human friend. Anyway they’re rather atmospheric (and when you run out there are some good fanfics inspired by them).
Marjorie Bowen (1885-1952) wrote a lot of stuff including short supernatural stories, but the one that most fascinates me is ‘The Sign-Painter and the Crystal Fishes,’ which feels exactly like coming in on the last half-hour of a 1970s British horror/fantasy teleplay and trying to figure out what led up to this dream-like situation.
E. F. Benson (1867-1940) ’s ghost stories, especially ‘The Room in the Tower,’ a particularly good take on the precognitive recurring dream trope.
Pretty much anything by M. R. James (1862-1936), Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965), Joan Aiken (1924 – 2004).
Question to others—do Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels count as gothic? I’m not sure how else to class them, though they also might be partially parodic. The friend who introduced them to me called them “Dickens meets Hieronymous Bosch,” which is as good a description as any, though there’s a bit of an Edward Lear vibe in there as well.
@ Allandrel et al
You might like J B Priestly’s An Inspector Calls.
On one level it’s a straight ‘drawing room mystery’ detective story; but it’s also very much, I think, a bit of Gothic horror. Can’t say more without spoiling.
“Question to others—do Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels count as gothic? I’m not sure how else to class them, though they also might be partially parodic.”
I would class them as Gothic…they are parodic, but then so is Ontranto.
I love it when one of the earliest examples is already a parody of the genre. I guess The Old Dark House is the movie equivalent.
I’m quite fond of “Varney, the Vampire” and “Wagner, the Werewolf”. They do get kind of graphic, however.
Thank you all for the recommendations. Most of what I’ve read so far has been short fiction by Poe, Hawthorne,* Lovecraft (although his Gothic stories were obviously overshadowed by his weird fiction), Hodgson, and a few others.
*I was required to read The Scarlet Letter in high school and loathed every page of it. This put of of reading Hawthorne’s other worked for many years, which was a crime almost as dreadful as making me read the book in the first place. “Young Goodman Brown” is fantastic. Why can’t that be the required Hawthorne reading?
Quoth the raven: What the hell did I just read?
Came here to check up again on Nazi semen retainers, stayed for the Gothic lit recommendations. I love this place.
Also: wow, you really meet NoFappers in the weirdest places. I just saw a comment by one in a thread of the Imsorryjon subreddit (which is about reimagining Garfield as a Lovecraftian monstrosity and/or other dark subversions (weekends allow non-Garfield stuff to be posted, it’s a gold mine of weird and creepy shit)). I think he was triggered into TL;DRing about it by the name the thread creator uses (BeaterOfMeats).
Modern Nazis are such a weird mix. On the one hand they enforce their puritanical morals, probably in part trying to return to their imagined past, so that makes sense. But on the other, they thrive on the edgiest of online platforms and pump out memes — the most modern of recruitment tools — like it’s nobody’s business.
“I was required to read The Scarlet Letter in high school and loathed every page of it.”
That’s not an uncommon reaction. High schoolers are forced to read The Scarlet Letter for the same reasons Silas Marner and The Great Gatsby are pushed off on them — they’re all short books and for that reason are thought to be suited to the attention spans of kids; plus, their vocabulary hovers at about what is expected to be the eighth- or ninth- or tenth-grade level. But, trying to teach kids these specific books is mostly a mistake, and when it’s not, IMO it’s due to a fortuitous match between a particular book and a particular kid. I, for example, loved The Scarlet Letter, but I couldn’t help noticing that nobody else did, and I hated Gatsby with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Gatsby is one of my favorite books now, but it wasn’t then, and to get to like it as much as I do now I had to overcome my initial reaction.
There are reasons not to try to teach these three books to youngsters. Here they are:
1. The Scarlet Letter is an awfully heavy trip to lay on a thirteen-year-old’s head. Eighth grade is already the worst year in many people’s lives. Why make it harder? Most kids that age like to shocked and startled and they enjoy the piquant, but they’re not ready to have their souls harrowed or lacerated or flayed. Give them the experience later (if at all) when they won’t be pre-programmed to interpret it as random sadism. Kids don’t need to be exposed to a misery they’re going to perceive as senseless; they already get that in middle school all day long.
2.Silas Marner is too subtle for kids that young. The perceptions of teenagers are often bitingly keen but they’re not usually delicate, and a refined, exact, almost scientific way of thinking is what Silas Marner calls for. Without that equipment, what Eliot has to say comes (for the most part) across as anodyne preaching of no particular interest. Not only that, but an understanding of parts of the plot of this book depends on some knowledge of the English class system, with which American middle-schoolers are unfamiliar. (They understand caste well enough but they didn’t grow up under the sway of the version of it presented in this book.)
3. You can’t get the point of Gatsby at all without knowing about the huge cultural collapse which literally shook the globe around the outbreak of World War I. (WWI itself wasn’t the cause, but rather a symptom, of the cave-in). It’s not a coincidence that Gatsby and Carraway bond over their regimental reminiscences at their first meeting, before Carraway recognizes Gatsby or knows that he’s his host. Without that background of loss and waste, Fitzgerald’s characters’ gyrations look pointless, which they’re sort of/kind of meant to anyway, the problem being that they look artlessly pointless instead of artfully pointless, and what kids infer is that they’re being subjected to an extra portion of grown-up futility and nastiness for lulz.
4. In addition, all these short books are written in a very compact, compressed style, which most middle-schoolers can’t be bothered to unpack.
I agree with you about “Young Goodman Brown” — pretty much the same thing might be said about loads of Hawthorne’s stories. Hawthorne’s stories ought to be taught alongside Poe’s stories, and Hawthorne’s novels should be left for the delectation of grown-up people (JMO).
Finally, someone who agrees with me about the literature that was shoveled at us in school.
The basic, underlying commonality here is that none of that stuff is very relatable to a teenager. A 40-year-old who’s had to bury someone (likely a parent or grandparent), had and lost jobs, been in a romantic relationship where questions of cohabitation and finances and children-vs.-careers and suchlike have arisen, etc., can relate to a lot of things that are just going to bore, confuse, or discombobulate someone a third of that age who hasn’t left home or had to self-support yet.
Add in the cases of anachronism and this is simply squared. A comedy of manners that’s only funny if you understand the persnickety details of a complex code of etiquette that hasn’t been extant for 200 years is unlikely to amuse any contemporary audience, etc.
It’s no surprise the faves tend to be the actioners, or at least the ones that tell of experiences sufficiently un-universal in the author’s own time and place that they explain more about what’s going on. A lot of which end up being sea stories: Treasure Island, Moby-Dick, and so forth, though with exceptions (Heart of Darkness, e.g.).
I think they’d get more out of stories with relatable characters with relatable motivations, with the understanding that relatable is relative. There’s a reason YA fiction with teen and young-adult protagonists is so popular with the same audience when they get to actually choose what to read. They should find some subset of that that is of good quality, create standardized interpretations and tests of those, and base the curriculum on those. Except scratch the standardized-interpretations-and-tests bit. The thing to do to pass should be simply to read, comprehend what the story said happened, and show the ability to think and try to understand the underlying character motivations, whether or not the result is the same interpretation as someone else’s. Perhaps even the ability to argue for their interpretation over another, or to concede to the other’s arguments, either way it turns out. It’s not like the important skill here is to know why character X took action Y; the important skill here is to be able to reason about that kind of thing, and more generally to understand that the people around you have inner lives and motivations of their own and how you might try to infer these through observation without being able to be them for a while.
Or something like that.
Of course, the cynic in me says “the education system was designed circa Henry Ford’s era to turn out obedient factory workers who would submit meekly to the boss’s instructions and not think too much about, say, why the boss gets to have a fancy house and car on his pay but you don’t on your’s, and the literature part is intentionally designed to leave a bad taste so as to discourage as many students as possible from voluntarily studying the humanities as adults, so there’ll be fewer pinko commies throwing around frightening words like ‘nationalize’ and ‘unionize’ and ‘expropriate’ down the line, and fewer people agitating about segregation or the patriarchy or the unjust imperialist wars, too”.
One of the most idiotic decisions made by my school’s English department was that the one, single Charles Dickens book that they made required reading was Great Expectations. The novel probably best described as “Dickens deconstructs Dickens.” If you’re not already familiar with most his most popular works, it is impossible to appreciate anything about the novel. You just don’t have the necessary background.
I once saw someone give a geek comparison of “Imagine introducing someone to superhero comics with Watchmen, or to mecha anime with Neon Genesis Evangelion.”
I remember reading The Great Gatsby, Outsiders, Scarlet Letter, and Brave New World for school. I don’t remember the plot of any of those, only a vague impression of the themes involved. For that matter, I don’t think I even understood the plot of The Great Gatsby anyway.
I didn’t encounter Great Gatsby until I was in my fifties. That definitely helped.
My high school gave us Ethan Frome instead. For a California born teenager, Frome was almost unintelligible – just move somewhere else, where the earth doesn’t die every winter.
Then again, looking back, literature was like logarithms or syncopation – something that I had no intuitive understanding of of, and therefore could not learn anything about.