Based Camp - How Sex Pests Created The Anti-Masturbation Movement

00:00:00.000 This one's going to piss off, fans.

00:00:01.780 I know. I had to do it anyway.

00:00:04.120 Because it's true.

00:00:05.540 It bothers me.

00:00:06.280 And we are not audience captured.

00:00:06.920 It really bothers me.

00:00:08.300 Hello, Malcolm.

00:00:09.800 I'm very excited to be speaking with you today

00:00:11.980 because anti-masturbation movements are manufactured scams

00:00:15.280 largely driven by extremely sex-phobic people and money grubbers.

00:00:20.380 And they neither track well with religion or science.

00:00:23.440 And on top of that...

00:00:24.840 Well, hold on.

00:00:25.460 Not...

00:00:26.020 Hold on.

00:00:26.540 I think you're wrong here because you went over a little bit.

00:00:28.100 they're not sex phobic people a lot of them are severe fetishists who are offloading their

00:00:34.640 fetishes provably the guy who started it all built a robot to spank him every day no no no no he

00:00:43.120 didn't start at all he did not no he was just one of the followers but we'll get into him of course

00:00:47.700 but it is he was the guy who popularized it it is it is true yeah that the same people you could say

00:00:51.960 that the masturbation that said that masturbation was bad for you did things like use a special

00:00:56.580 apparatus to push large volumes of liquid including yogurt up people's butts as much

00:01:01.520 as 15 quarts a minute malcolm and also send people through mechanical movement rooms full

00:01:07.340 of devices that would vibrate slap and beat them which is just so wholesome yeah yeah these people

00:01:12.980 think that these anti-masturbation people are like these moral paragons who started this movement

00:01:18.240 it's like no they were creepy deejins and now you're part of their creepy deejin fantasy what's

00:01:24.160 crazy though is that people keep falling for it and they've been falling for it for an extremely

00:01:28.560 long time and also it's not the it's not incredibly dumb or low achieving people

00:01:33.940 who are falling for it the first wave of anti-diddle influencers caught up rousseau

00:01:40.220 kant and voltaire for example and then acolytes of the second wave of anti-fap influencers like

00:01:48.260 john harvey kellogg the enema enthusiast with the mechanical movement room included henry ford

00:01:54.640 thomas edison john d rockefeller alfred du pont william howard taft sojourner truth ada tarbell

00:02:01.980 mary todd lincoln and harvey firestone these are like the titans of industry intellectual leaders

00:02:08.780 and they showed up to kellogg's special resort where you could get vibrated and slapped and get

00:02:14.480 yogurt enema and now today even very prominent people are still falling for it thereby showing

00:02:20.760 not only their weak understanding of the science but also if they're christian very poor religious

00:02:25.500 prioritization so let's let's go through this okay um do you want to talk about how things

00:02:31.780 were in antiquity my understanding is that in antiquity before christianity masturbation was

00:02:35.980 mostly a joke or just an afterthought like not a problem and that yeah so i'll give you a bit of

00:02:42.660 context as to how christianity ended up getting incepted with anti-masturbation ideologies which

00:02:49.860 happened i think like the third century or the fourth century you you you're going to go into

00:02:54.620 this in more detail but it's one of those instances where uh if you're looking through

00:02:59.100 ancient texts the only religion that was really thoroughly anti-masturbation um certainly not

00:03:05.800 judaism um was uh zero astrianism really zero astrianism was very firmly anti-masturbation

00:03:13.240 and uh they were the religion that ended up making jews anti-masturbation about the second or third

00:03:20.480 century uh ce um when the jews were living among zero astrians and to be clear here the old

00:03:28.440 testament talks about semen emission masturbation and it puts it in the same category as a regular

00:03:35.120 recurring thing like in terms of uncleanliness as a woman having her period. It was considered

00:03:41.500 a normal part of life. We don't see really strong condemnation of it until around the 6th century,

00:03:48.800 which is when they were living among Zoroastrians. And I need to be clear here

00:03:52.240 about the New Testament. While we don't know if there was the word for masturbation in ancient

00:03:57.760 Hebrew, we do know that there was definitely one in ancient Greek when around the New Testament

00:04:03.940 it was written, and it's never mentioned, never mentioned in the Bible. What we do see mentioned

00:04:09.480 is, again, emissions, which is treated as the same category of negative thing as a period.

00:04:16.700 And I'm going to note here, along with all of this, I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's as

00:04:20.580 bad as any other type of masturbation, like playing video games or reading a pointless book

00:04:27.300 or anything that you do just to feel good to simulate some experience of actual efficaciousness

00:04:34.900 was in your life but to signal out this one thing that is a weird partially modern there was some in

00:04:43.460 the medieval period which we'll talk about phenomenon and not a particularly good one

00:04:48.820 because i think it causes people to not understand the dangers of other forms of masturbation

00:04:54.900 where they sink into other types of imaginary forms of success or efficaciousness. Again,

00:05:03.400 not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying that treating it as a unique thing causes a person to

00:05:09.540 not see the dangers of all the other forms of masturbation in their life. But where did it

00:05:15.660 come from in Christianity? It actually came from ancient Greece, which then made negative ideas

00:05:21.520 around masturbation within ancient rome yeah so if you go to ancient greece this is the the first

00:05:27.460 civilization other than within zeroastrianism where you see negative ideas about masturbation

00:05:32.300 the problem is is that we can very clearly see what's causing these ideas about masturbation

00:05:39.480 and it's not what you would assume oh the idea is is that masturbation is low class

00:05:45.920 and this comes from the fact that if you were masturbating it meant you didn't have any sex

00:05:53.940 slaves yeah no human fleshlight right yeah it's like what do you what why aren't you using your

00:05:59.560 your boys and your your sex slaves right like what are you talking about right we we all and

00:06:05.720 this happens in a society where you have this status hierarchy right you know in in ancient

00:06:10.480 essence you both had an academic hierarchy but also a very strict status hierarchy and so when

00:06:16.080 you wanted to talk about sexual things to say that you had ever masturbated is to say you don't have

00:06:24.340 any oh are you poor are you poor it's like saying i'm poor right um and then this got carried into

00:06:31.800 roman culture and uh then likewise now i will point out that sometimes positive things have

00:06:38.040 come out of this like judaism used to be polyamorous uh not poly polygynous right like

00:06:44.380 many many wives to one man um and then in our episode when did the jews become monogamous

00:06:49.300 uh we point out that um they they really became monogamous because that was the aspired norm not

00:06:56.960 the always norm but the aspired norm was in roman culture um and when jews lived in roman territory

00:07:02.480 and because christianity was growing within roman territory it adopted norms around monogamy even

00:07:09.000 though and people are like well you have just adam and eve and one woman one man it's like but

00:07:13.460 it doesn't say that and we see lots of women for one man all throughout you know it might be in

00:07:17.720 often negative contexts but it's still shown right like it's still without any condemnation at all

00:07:23.780 and you can see our episode on that uh where we go into like whether if you're just going biblically

00:07:28.140 is it monogamy is it polygyny where are we on this topic but but it is undoubtable that this

00:07:33.740 idea came from the crash of roman civilization into jewish civilization okay hold on note here

00:07:39.720 i was referring to monogamy as the norm instead of polygyny as the norm and simone well i guess

00:07:47.280 i was also talking about masturbation but the core thing i was talking about was monogamy

00:07:50.600 which was inserted into the jewish branch of the theological tradition by its contact was romanism

00:07:59.020 not as an ancestral part of the jewish tradition which is why we see it so frequently in the bible

00:08:04.140 because it's actually a little bit deeper than that and you're gonna see

00:08:08.040 the very roots actually of the very very very downstream

00:08:14.420 folk belief that that masturbating will make you go blind well no hold on i haven't gotten to that

00:08:22.360 yet there is a secondary issue but it was much less important still though it's important to

00:08:27.660 know that greek medical speculation treated semen as a refined brain related fluid and

00:08:33.700 aristotle wrote that that is the region around the eyes was especially fruitful of semen and

00:08:39.900 some pythagorean influenced writers called semen a drop of the brain and that losing it in theory

00:08:45.240 could weaken the head and that's that's humoral physiology but that's the downstream of the whole

00:08:51.060 slave thing but it's also really funny because then i guess like women are just so dumb because

00:08:56.320 they don't have semen i guess i don't i i didn't know in greek society women were thought to

00:09:02.400 masturbate all the time right like the idea was right but they weren't losing semen you understand

00:09:07.300 they weren't losing pieces of their brain yes um big deal which by the way if anyone's wondering

00:09:13.040 no semen isn't part of your brain okay that's that's malcolm you shouldn't have to this is

00:09:18.240 base camp this is not these are educated these are gentlemen of culture i i get some comments

00:09:24.540 and i'm like you are a fucking idiot oh my god malcolm i i don't see i'm sorry i i see this

00:09:31.620 sometimes and i'm just like this is ridiculous well i guess yeah the more you know um fantastic

00:09:35.800 we all know now that no it's not from your head um and by the way if you um the wider point there

00:09:43.380 was actually more to it than what you're saying there was also this concept of softening and that

00:09:47.900 was in roman and greek culture all roles were either a masculine role of penetrating or a

00:09:53.580 role of being penetrated yeah um and uh the as a man you could be penetrated if you were a lower

00:10:00.000 class man but a higher class man was never supposed to allow this to happen to them never

00:10:03.380 um at least grown up and again it's because a high class man is supposed to have slaves

00:10:09.540 right like so this this really comes downstream within these cultures of normalization of slavery

00:10:15.100 as a scientist status um but continue Simone right so anyway basic roots of that but it was

00:10:22.660 yeah it was a class thing to your point totally get it so before the 18th century panic which

00:10:27.980 the first and very recent okay 18th century 1700s um around masturbation it was just understood as

00:10:35.680 obviously a real sin in moral theology but it's really low on the scale of gravity and clearly

00:10:42.340 it wasn't compared to idolatry or murder um or adultery it was a much bigger deal to have like

00:10:49.560 a statue of mary in your house yes yeah or to you know to like not respect your parents you know

00:10:55.540 like some really basic stuff that everyone else right now and you know everyone in general humans

00:10:59.900 are really bad at like masturbation is so below so many more important rules but talk about this

00:11:05.560 because we actually have rankings of how sin punishment works yeah no well then let me talk

00:11:10.180 i have a whole thing okay so about masturbation though specifically so that we can just address

00:11:16.200 it okay there's a biblical story onan or onan uh from genesis 38 it was originally about

00:11:23.380 refusing leveret marriage and coitus interruptus i talked about this in our other episode on this

00:11:28.600 where we go over all the biblical lines and people are wondering to call this about masturbation is

00:11:32.920 being insane yeah it's not i will try to explain this as quickly as possible so in jewish

00:11:38.440 civilization you would have something called a liberite marriage a liberite marriage happened

00:11:41.500 when your brother's wife died and the reason you would do it is you would then impregnate her so

00:11:46.120 that he could carry on the line so that she would have a reason to inherit his estate and keep living

00:11:49.920 because there were very few things you could do as an independent woman within these societies so

00:11:52.800 you needed to conceive a son and to carry on the line and you were the closest genetic link to him

00:11:56.500 so it made a lot of sense to do this um by treating his brother's wife mourning his dead

00:12:03.280 brother as a human fleshlight he had sex with her he just refused to impregnate her to come inside

00:12:10.300 of her that is what was being condemned and that is demonstrably evil by any judgment of morality

00:12:17.260 yeah so that that's a bigger deal and it's not about masturbation and then later jewish and

00:12:23.900 christian writers sometimes would fold spilling seed into a broader condemnation of any form of

00:12:29.600 non-procreative sex and they're just like well fapping is a part of that and augustine treated

00:12:33.960 all lust outside procreative marriage as disordered aquinas ranked masturbation among

00:12:38.900 sins against nature below sodomy and then monastic writers like john cassian and later confessors

00:12:46.240 paid attention to it because it violated vows of chastity which i get right if you're like look i'm

00:12:51.040 not going to do anything sexual yeah then don't do it but like that's a monk's vow okay like any

00:12:56.320 promise you make if you're like i'm not going to eat sugar then you're in big trouble for eating

00:12:59.280 sugar but who cares okay to put it in the context i was talking earlier if augustine or aquinas or

00:13:06.480 monks of this period knew about gta6 they would likely put it in exactly this category of bad

00:13:13.680 the masturbation category of bad or they knew about modern movies or anime or any of the stuff

00:13:22.300 that we use to masturbate different instincts or impulses we have they'd likely put it in this

00:13:27.580 category of bad and that's why we harbor on this point because putting masturbation in a careful

00:13:34.580 unique category causes you to not see all of the other totally inefficacious ways that you masturbate

00:13:42.760 and waste your time on simulations of efficaciousness.

00:13:46.700 And this is where you'll read some studies

00:13:48.220 where somebody will be like,

00:13:49.180 well, masturbating more makes you less sexually satisfied

00:13:52.060 with your partner.

00:13:52.880 And it's like, well, even if you stop masturbation,

00:13:54.700 you're probably not gonna be more sexually satisfied

00:13:56.300 with your partner.

00:13:56.900 The bigger problem is that you want to masturbate

00:13:58.580 instead of having sex with your partner.

00:14:01.240 And that's what you should be focused on.

00:14:03.820 Okay, but a few late medieval manuals

00:14:06.040 like Gene Gerson told priests how to ask about it.

00:14:09.340 and you should just also consider the 10 commandments masturbation is not on them

00:14:14.920 it's thou shalt not have thou shalt have no other gods before me okay that's one that people break

00:14:20.700 all the time thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image really messed up um but the point

00:14:27.280 being is like the second commandment is broken all the time all the freaking time by people

00:14:31.320 People who act like masturbation is like commandment number three.

00:14:35.700 Yeah.

00:14:36.560 Do not take Lord thy God in vain, the name of him, right?

00:14:40.580 Which I do this all the time, okay?

00:14:42.640 That's a bigger deal.

00:14:44.100 I need to work on that first.

00:14:45.760 Remember the Sabbath day?

00:14:46.960 Keep it holy.

00:14:47.980 A lot of people don't, including us.

00:14:50.680 Well, we didn't until recently.

00:14:52.840 Now we actually do the Sabbath.

00:14:54.220 And it was doing this episode and reflecting on Simone saying that,

00:14:57.940 that led us to re-examine the Sabbath more closely.

00:15:01.320 and being like, does the New Testament fully invalidate this?

00:15:06.380 And there are one or two lines that can be argued that it invalidates it.

00:15:10.360 But having one or two lines that could be argued,

00:15:13.280 especially one or two lines after Jesus, who definitely kept the Sabbath,

00:15:17.300 that could only be used as arguments,

00:15:20.140 is not enough for me to throw out one of the Ten Commandments.

00:15:24.480 And it's wild to me that people will use one or two lines

00:15:28.080 as enough to throw out the Ten Commandments

00:15:29.600 and then add additional stuff and act like they're more holy than you

00:15:33.940 while ignoring the very basics.

00:15:37.400 And I see the Ten Commandments as the very basics.

00:15:39.900 And if you're wondering, wait, so they recorded this episode a while ago?

00:15:42.760 Yeah, we recorded this episode ages ago.

00:15:44.520 I just always sit on putting out episodes

00:15:46.860 that I know are going to get us a lot of pushback.

00:15:48.960 But as Simone said, it's true, and therefore we have to put it out,

00:15:52.800 and she did the research for it.

00:15:54.740 So you go, Simone.

00:15:57.640 and thank you for recognizing where we were being hypocrites and not following the Bible closely

00:16:03.180 enough. Malcolm, honor thy father and thy mother. A lot of people don't respect their parents very

00:16:08.580 much. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not

00:16:13.820 bear false witness against thy neighbor. There's a lot of liars out there. And then also, most

00:16:18.840 importantly, and constantly violated, especially per the way that social media works, thou shalt

00:16:23.680 not covet thy neighbor's house wife servants livestock or anything that is thy neighbors i

00:16:27.920 mean with the advent of marketing and in photo albums i mean if you're if you're browsing facebook

00:16:34.440 or tiktok generally especially with like inspiration well porn as they call it right like

00:16:40.280 that is directly being violated yeah or just even if you see a commercial and you want it then

00:16:45.800 you're suddenly coveting that person's thing that's like we just can't watch tv so look all

00:16:50.400 of these things matter more um is masturbation name no it's not it's placed under the sixth

00:16:55.620 commandment thou shalt not commit adultery as a form of unchastity but sometimes under the ninth

00:17:00.560 coveting as well like you're if you're like masturbating to someone then and this again is

00:17:05.540 part of why we belabor this point when you separate masturbation into a separate and unique

00:17:09.360 sin outside of coveting it leaves people who feel very holy because they don't masturbate to still

00:17:15.640 covet all the time because they don't understand that coveting is what's bad coveting is what leads

00:17:22.240 you to destroy your life and take inefficacious actions and to hurt other people coveting is what

00:17:29.160 you should be focused on but but that's only if like look you can you can covet someone in many

00:17:34.400 ways masturbation is just one of them so i don't think masturbation is coveting though like it's

00:17:39.180 well like yeah but if you're coveting someone while masturbating like let's say like you're

00:17:42.940 really hot for you which would be a problem right yes no and that would be but anyway that's it's

00:17:47.720 not the masturbation that's the problem it's the coveting the neighbor's wife and then and then

00:17:51.040 fapping to the idea of her whatever right or like looking at her through the window what i'm more

00:17:55.500 interested in is that catholic writer who tried to find arguments against masturbation in the early

00:18:00.320 church and i'm gonna get to that well you're taking to start with this and then you're starting

00:18:04.700 with the obvious stuff sorry i think a lot of people are missing the obvious stuff and maybe

00:18:09.640 that's why i'm talking about it but okay we'll just skip over a whole lot of stuff go to the

00:18:13.220 show notes they're on patreon and sub stack and thanks for everyone supporting us on patreon and

00:18:17.860 sub stack look i i covered the the dead seven deadly sins and also like there are all these

00:18:22.720 get to the get to the book one of our friends book one of our friends that we met through the

00:18:27.920 podcast heard that we were working on this topic and then shared a book about it called auto

00:18:32.380 Autoerotism, The Moral Problem of the First Christian Centuries by Giovanni Capelli. It's

00:18:40.180 written in Italian. He shared about this book with us. He wrote, a Catholic guy wrote a monograph

00:18:45.140 pulling together the very extant text in the first approximate thousand years of church history

00:18:50.820 that touches on the question of masturbation. He is very thorough and he's Catholic. So you know

00:18:56.120 he's reporting the honest to God truth when he admits that he can't find anything condemnatory

00:19:01.040 before roughly the fifth to sixth centuries in the end he's still catholic so he still spins

00:19:06.660 it up as being anti-masturbation he says it would be wrong to interpret the silence of the fathers

00:19:11.360 as a tacit indifference because the principles of their sexual ethics could easily have led to a

00:19:18.060 condemnation of masturbation but it's funny that somehow they never did he is i think that this is

00:19:23.700 really important when this is something that you know all primates do and note here there has become

00:19:28.840 a weird myth recently that primates only masturbate in captivity, which is not remotely

00:19:33.440 true. They masturbate more in captivity, which is for the same reason humans masturbate more

00:19:38.500 when they don't have a purpose. The reality is masturbation just doesn't feel that good.

00:19:43.020 If you have other things going on in your life, if you have kids, a purpose, something you're

00:19:47.900 working on, that is the strongest control for an instinct like this because it means that you have

00:19:54.240 something that is of better use of your time than something so inefficacious and i think focusing

00:20:01.480 on this one inefficacious behavior instead of seeing it as a warning sign for not having

00:20:07.100 something better to do is problematic uh you dolphins do it too across cultures um and uh

00:20:16.100 so presumably everyone was doing this unless they were told not to do it and yet it's just

00:20:22.940 nowhere and people are like oh well like drawn images right like they wouldn't have had what are

00:20:28.440 you talking about like the very first thing that man did as soon as he could draw was drew naked

00:20:34.140 booby ladies in caves and then carved naked booby ladies right like the idea that they didn't have

00:20:41.080 these sorts of uh scenes or devices or anything like that is uh comical you know we know from

00:20:48.260 ancient greece the these sorts of images being carved on um ceramics and stuff like this uh or

00:20:55.400 other uh if objects we found throughout this region would have been common um it would have

00:21:00.640 been incredibly easy to condemn at any point during this period if anyone had a problem with

00:21:06.520 it it's just that it appears that nobody had a and a note here you could say well the bible just

00:21:13.680 didn't feel it was appropriate to ever talk about masturbation and it's like actually the

00:21:18.020 old testament does talk about masturbation um it talks about the cleanliness rules around

00:21:22.640 masturbation right like with how long does it make you unclean how do you deal with that how do you

00:21:27.760 so like clearly if they didn't want you to do it it would have said around the don't do it

00:21:33.160 but they don't say that they don't say that and there's a scientific reason why you would you

00:21:38.820 should never say that in a religion which we'll get to basically whenever anyone's like well what

00:21:42.900 about porn addiction what about etc if you look at the scientific evidence on this what it appears

00:21:48.000 to show is all of these negative things tied to masturbation like porn addiction and stuff like

00:21:53.100 that only happen in populations that have been told masturbation is super bad yeah um and so

00:22:00.580 when you tell somebody masturbation is bad you make them susceptible to things like porn addiction

00:22:06.660 well but i mean in the very same way that like if if you believe that you slept poorly even if you

00:22:11.900 slept fine you're going to show the symptoms of poor sleep more than someone who actually slept

00:22:15.680 poorly but think they slept fine so yeah it's this idea if you make anything seem unhealthy or

00:22:21.640 unsafe or bad it's going to cause a nocebo effect it's a very well understood well there's also the

00:22:27.580 secondary issue that i think a lot of people who have have trouble with like quote-unquote

00:22:31.280 masturbation is destroying my life or something like that are just like depressed and unmotivated

00:22:34.880 you know i i know because we did a um so you could look at me right and i'm somebody who

00:22:40.640 goes out there and says like i don't see that big a problem with something like masturbation i don't

00:22:44.600 see the big deal at ayla parties when she's giving a speech or something like that she'll do this

00:22:48.060 thing where she lines everyone out by like how many people you slept with how many times you

00:22:52.600 masturbate a week or whatever right um i in the how many times you masturbate a week line i was

00:23:00.240 uh i think the the least guy in that line and i was behind half of the women in the line oh this

00:23:08.080 just the time she did it at um manifest yeah and it's not that i'm not like a horny person or

00:23:14.920 something like this it's just i always have something better to be doing and i think that

00:23:19.440 people who go off the rails with this stuff is that they haven't found purpose in their life

00:23:24.220 and they don't have something better to be doing and again this is part of why we belabor this point

00:23:30.040 is it's so superficial when a person's just like oh masturbation is it's uniquely bad thing take

00:23:35.660 all your time, focus on that. These are the same types of people who end up dedicating their lives

00:23:40.800 to completely inefficacious pursuits, like exercising for something like that. When the

00:23:46.140 reality is what should be the bigger red flag is that masturbation is the best thing that you could

00:23:52.020 be doing in any particular moment. When the reality is, is that's just a huge sign that you

00:23:57.760 don't feel a sense of burning passion and desire within your heart to contribute to something,

00:24:04.780 to do something meaningful that you don't have a purpose or a direction. A person who is doing

00:24:10.240 something like masturbating multiple times a day is doing that because masturbation, again,

00:24:16.240 does not feel that good. They're doing it because they lack something that is a bigger pull to them

00:24:24.460 than that. And that's the far bigger threat and worry in your life than that you're masturbating.

00:24:32.240 It's so that masturbating is the best thing that you can do at any given point in time.

00:24:37.120 That is the threat.

00:24:38.960 And when you can recontextualize, wait, why don't I feel purpose?

00:24:42.640 Why don't I have a mission right now?

00:24:44.680 Why aren't I driven by something?

00:24:47.080 That is the real fear and the thing that you should be focused on in spending your time worried about.

00:24:52.900 And we belabor it because stopping masturbation will not create the meaningful thing in your life.

00:24:59.160 It will not create the purpose in your life.

00:25:01.740 that is a separate and holistically more important task and so many people out there

00:25:08.760 learn to control something like masturbation but then just fit spend all their time exercising to

00:25:14.340 look buff and they've lived just as purposeless a life or spend all their time building this big

00:25:20.640 rule set for themselves and they follow all the rules really fastidiously but they don't actually

00:25:24.580 create anything they don't actually do anything they don't build a relationship they don't build

00:25:27.820 a family. They don't build a company, a project, a purpose. And people can say in the lineup story,

00:25:33.880 oh, Malcolm, you're just very low libido. But people know my history. I'm not. I'm an incredibly

00:25:38.440 high libido person. I just also have a burning sense of passion and desire. And there's something

00:25:44.320 that I was put on this earth to do. And every moment you spend trying to control the symptoms

00:25:50.940 of not feeling that purpose is a moment that you're losing part of your life because you only

00:25:56.840 get one short time here on earth and every moment of that you don't spend on some overwhelming

00:26:05.520 thing of greater purpose to yourself is a moment that you will never get back and even even if

00:26:13.000 you're like well i'm just genetically uniquely susceptible to this and take naltrexone yeah

00:26:17.900 that's i've actually yeah i've been i was just having a conversation with someone about that

00:26:21.420 I'm like, look, just that's why Neltroxen's out there.

00:26:24.280 Anyway, as our friend puts it, he is forced to admit, quote,

00:26:27.880 as numerous concordant indications show, Christian authors of the first centuries,

00:26:32.680 as far as sexual sins are concerned, keep chiefly in view those of an interpersonal character.

00:26:38.220 Indeed, for them, it almost seems that sexual sins in the strict sense are those of a relational

00:26:42.700 character, those that in some way imply the presence of another person.

00:26:46.480 Because, duh, that's when you're actually causing damage.

00:26:49.300 If you're just doing something by yourself for five minutes, is it really going to hurt

00:26:53.240 people?

00:26:54.120 Anyway, the first anti-masturbation wave came around 1712 or 1716, and it was an anonymous

00:27:03.300 London pamphlet called Onania, or The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution.

00:27:08.800 And it just appeared sometime between 1708 and 1716.

00:27:13.060 The title, as a reminder, is a reference to the biblical story of Onan, which, as a reminder,

00:27:18.280 was originally about refusing leverant marriage

00:27:20.940 and coitus interruptus, not solitary sex.

00:27:23.400 So even like just off the bat, this is ridiculous.

00:27:26.660 Somehow though, it became a bestseller

00:27:29.380 and went through dozens of editions

00:27:31.140 and it fused the old language of Onan with a new claim

00:27:34.540 that masturbation was not merely sinful,

00:27:37.180 but a specific deadly disease

00:27:39.100 that produced wasting and impotence

00:27:42.560 and epilepsy and insanity and early death.

00:27:46.140 Of course, you're going to die.

00:27:47.560 um and it was i'm not blind yet i'll tell you that it was the first piece of writing to claim

00:27:52.640 that masturbation will make you go blind it listed dimness of sight and disorders of the eye

00:27:59.000 among its frightful consequences but but what i find interesting is that in every masturbation

00:28:04.440 wave we've seen the arguments against it have just been demonstrably false yeah just yeah like

00:28:11.980 yeah the onan thing no that's not what it was about blindness no it's gonna happen not gonna

00:28:16.780 happen. Another thing that these have in common, importantly, is they're selling something because

00:28:21.640 it also sold expensive cures like the strengthening tincture, which was sold by the bottle for 10

00:28:28.360 shillings, which is about 130 to 160 USD in our time. The prolific powder sold by the bag for 12

00:28:36.560 shillings. So again, like over $130. And the pamphlet presented them as remedies for the

00:28:42.620 supposed physical damage caused by masturbation, including nocturnal sexual urges. And then this

00:28:49.240 sort of got solidified and boosted by a Swiss physician named Samuel Auguste Tissot, who

00:28:56.520 published another Onania-style write-up called, let's see, Le Onanisme in French. And it was

00:29:08.120 published about 50 years later in latin in 1758 then in french in 1760 and it gave this concept

00:29:14.500 medical prestige because he was a doctor and he treated semen as this vital essential oil

00:29:21.720 tied to the nervous system so losing it in quantity i know i know he said it would produce

00:29:28.260 quote a perceptible reduction of strength of memory and even of reason blurred vision plus

00:29:34.780 also gout rheumatism and a long list of other disorders and um well i also want to point out

00:29:42.140 here right like not only is the other side just like lying in the past but if you look at people

00:29:47.840 today who run these campaigns um they're lying like a lot of them that i have seen uh they're

00:29:54.640 they're unmarried men frequently um they go we're gonna cover it malcolm can we get to that but can

00:29:59.600 Yeah. I want to, I want to at least make this. Oh my God. People who are like, Oh, if you engage

00:30:08.160 in this behavior, you're going to be a failure. You're not going to achieve anything. You know,

00:30:12.840 you're going to send up the sitting in bed all day doing this. You're not going to build anything.

00:30:16.840 You're not going to, I have multiple companies. I have a wife and five kids, hopefully six on the

00:30:24.700 soon right like if things go well um and i have a very strong relationship with my wife this this

00:30:31.280 belief that like uh that it's pushed that this is going to destroy your life is generally pushed

00:30:38.200 by people with demonstrably worse lives than somebody like me i wouldn't trade spaces with

00:30:44.260 them to be fair anyway tissot argued that the loss of semen was equivalent to a massive loss

00:30:50.500 of blood and vitality and that solitary sex was uniquely harmful because it was secret and

00:30:56.680 unlimited and driven by imagination and then enlightenment figures oh no imagination yeah

00:31:02.200 and Kant and Voltaire really just took this and were like oh no Kant called it worse than suicide

00:31:09.580 don't do it the solitary vice as they came to call it um ultimately stood for something

00:31:17.700 that this new commercial literate private society both valued and feared that there was this

00:31:25.360 autonomous desire and imagination and solitude and this absence of social limits and you could

00:31:30.620 just imagine anything you want you could just you could just imagine anything and did it yourself

00:31:34.440 um and then there was you should try out rfab.ai reality fabricator you can google it it is our

00:31:40.720 ai chatbot site where you can really create any scenario you want any situation you want in terms

00:31:45.380 i've been able to like really improve the brainstorming features for working on your

00:31:50.360 scenario and got them working with fable even in not safe for work so we're selling you our

00:31:56.260 tincture right like we're we're making money from this um yeah but it's not it's it's it's pro it's

00:32:02.760 pro fap it's not anti-fap yeah but we're still monetizing it anyway it's it's with the victorians

00:32:08.000 that they got kind of weird which i guess always is when the victorians come in that's when it

00:32:12.620 gets weirder um and this is when especially in the usa people started blaming masturbation for

00:32:18.320 pretty much any nervous digestive or moral ill like if something was wrong with someone it was

00:32:24.120 because because of masturbation so they called it spermatoria involuntary loss of of semen um it was

00:32:32.280 it was a medical diagnosis and then this is when you start to see the mechanical devices

00:32:36.960 and the genital cages and the forced circumcisions and even clitorectomy clitoridectomy clitor

00:32:43.600 whatever you know what it is that became used and then finally we get the the health food influencers

00:32:50.000 because now suddenly if digestion um and and masturbation are weirdly connected well then

00:32:56.080 health food people come in so first we have sylvester graham who's a presbyterian minister

00:33:01.340 and temperance lecturer and in 1830 he became america's top clean living influencer he believed

00:33:06.880 that stimulating food produced stimulating sex so like all of your favorite foods malcolm this is

00:33:12.980 your problem your favorite food is like kick you in the face flavor and no no no so he held that

00:33:19.680 meat gravy spices pepper coffee tea alcohol tobacco increased the con soupy con scoopy scent

00:33:29.300 excitability of the genital organs bland plant-based food calmed the gut and the nerves

00:33:36.060 and therefore lust.

00:33:37.620 So what you need to eat, Malcolm,

00:33:39.240 is just a bunch of flavorless slop

00:33:41.700 and your whole problem will go away.

00:33:44.480 And so he held that masturbation,

00:33:47.240 aka self-pollution,

00:33:48.480 was the worst of the sexual sins.

00:33:51.320 He said it inflamed the brain

00:33:52.920 more than ordinary intercourse

00:33:54.920 and caused indigestion, consumption,

00:33:58.020 spinal disease, epilepsy, insanity,

00:34:01.760 ruined eyes, and early death.

00:34:03.620 He also viewed married sex as barely tolerable. He thought that men should be virgins until age 30, and then you should have sex no more than once per month. No more than that. And in a lecture to young men on chastity in 1834 and on self-pollution, he hammered this at length.

00:34:22.840 And his endorsed lifestyle was one that was vegetarian, two meals a day, small portion, lots of water, daily bathing and exercise.

00:34:32.860 His signature food was?

00:34:34.960 Beans?

00:34:36.200 No, it's the graham cracker.

00:34:38.180 It was this bread made of home, coarsely ground, unsifted whole wheat graham flour.

00:34:45.120 Not like the white flour and certainly not the sweet cookie cracker we all know to be graham crackers.

00:34:51.520 it's kind of this really big insult to graham like he's rolling in his grave every single day

00:34:57.320 because of this sweet cookie that everyone's eating that's all spiced and stuff because like

00:35:01.060 a good graham like trader joe's sells amazing graham crackers yeah sparkly and cinnamon they're

00:35:06.000 just drenched in sugar he would have an aneurysm um but anyway uh he wanted you to eat the most

00:35:12.320 boring terrible yes we're talking about a a dry unsweetened hard biscuit like an edible rock

00:35:19.200 that is that is what he wanted you to eat um and perhaps that would to calm your

00:35:23.700 but i love that these ideas caught on so much that we all eat kellogg and graham cracker today

00:35:29.320 exactly yeah let's get to let's get to kellogg because one of one of the people who read graham's

00:35:33.520 work was john harvey kellogg who fully assimilated these theories about bland foods and this is one

00:35:39.820 of the reasons why he developed cornflakes in the 1890s as part of this deliberately bland

00:35:44.000 anti-aphrodisiac diet and he also went way further into it when it came to masturbation he

00:35:51.900 was not presbyterian he was a seventh day adventist physician who lived in a celibate marriage with

00:35:57.740 his wife ella who on his honeymoon with her he wrote plain facts for old uh and young a massive

00:36:05.220 600 page manual mourning against the supposed evils of sexual activity and masturbation so

00:36:11.060 it's like this sick burn on poor ella like i should be clear that like kellogg did play a

00:36:17.040 large role in in normalizing a lot of this this guy was not against masturbation he was against

00:36:22.480 sex with your wife and you have internalized her he's like they're i don't know where they are

00:36:29.460 niagara falls like in a hotel and he's like writing about how how horrible it is to have

00:36:34.780 i know i need to go back to my machine that spanks me

00:36:38.000 um but yeah in in in this book that he writes on his honeymoon he blames the solitary vice for

00:36:44.980 wasting the most highly vitalized bodily fluid hence impotence epilepsy heart disease uterine

00:36:50.880 what does impotence matter to him he's not having sex with his wife i it's yep yep um in 1879 he

00:37:00.000 was named superintendent of the battle creek sanitarium which was basically the canyon ranch

00:37:05.980 of its time like it extends insert expensive health spa here that was kind of affordable

00:37:09.980 by the way it's at this time because i also decided to go into this that mormons uh got into

00:37:14.200 like masturbations of sin for mormons who are unaware of this we have hundreds of years of

00:37:20.160 your church's history and nobody brought it up once and then 1920s it really started in the 1890s

00:37:26.800 at the very first mention that it might be bad but this was during one of the waves

00:37:29.940 where it really became normalized was around the time of Kellogg

00:37:33.260 and if you're aware the line that is used

00:37:37.700 to condemn it is Joseph Smith's

00:37:41.960 warning against prostitution which is like a very reasonable thing

00:37:45.760 to warn against yeah like well especially on your mission right it was like please don't see

00:37:49.520 prostitutes on yeah I think it was don't see prostitutes instead of doing your mission

00:37:53.360 or on your mission or something like specifically here the text that mormons cite is alma 39 in the

00:38:03.800 book of mormon almond the younger is rebuking his son caratheon who left preaching assignment

00:38:09.100 in among the zoemites and went after siren the heart lit isabel so it that is what happened and

00:38:17.040 again i attribute this as joseph smith because i think he made all this up but you could say

00:38:21.080 it wasn't joseph smith's it was corinthian the whatever but the point is is that's all you've

00:38:27.220 got textually everything else is made up and the reason why i harp on mormons is because mormons

00:38:33.460 are one of the most anti-masturbation of the christian sects and they don't realize that

00:38:39.080 their guys just picked it up because it was a popular trend in the 1920s not because of anything

00:38:44.540 theological and they somehow during this kellogg wave when it became cool and everyone was eating

00:38:51.660 graham crackers and kellogg's like they still do um yeah except no because both of them i think it

00:38:57.560 was a kellogg's brother that like sort of took the cereal and ran with it and there was actually

00:39:01.640 quite a bit of conflict around the sugar so both of them were slaps in their faces which is yeah

00:39:06.500 apt i guess or i guess no for graham a slap on his butt would he wouldn't mind that

00:39:12.760 the keyword one you told me reading about his life he kept putting himself in sexual situations

00:39:20.000 you said it felt like he was constantly edging himself like that that seemed yeah this this

00:39:24.540 idea of like well okay let's talk about some of the things that he talks about first off just in

00:39:29.860 his wording um this this idea of like don't let it out don't let it out like and and yet and yet

00:39:36.780 here are things that he advocates in his honeymoon book plain facts for old and young here are

00:39:42.880 symptoms and things that he recommended um circumcision without anesthesia for boys so

00:39:47.940 that quote the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind

00:39:53.300 especially if it'd be connected with the idea of punishment which is pretty wonderful yeah um also

00:39:59.800 silver wire sutures through the foreskin drawn over the glands twisted shut so the erection

00:40:06.740 becomes painful or impossible like this is torture um for girls it's not it's bdsm he's

00:40:13.360 in a bdsm i swear it's yeah for for girls and women pure carbolic acid that is phenol painted

00:40:20.100 on the clitoris um to allay abnormal excitement including what he called mental masturbation or

00:40:27.400 orgasm from thought alone and in ladies guide for severe nymphomania he encouraged cool enemas

00:40:34.540 blisters or other irritants on the genitals and in extreme cases removal of the clitoris uh and

00:40:41.260 labia minora and then also electrical currents some accounts describe a urethral electrode he

00:40:46.860 also mentioned a shock as a deterrent and then was a big fan of genital cages like the kind that

00:40:51.620 were made in the victorian times and tying children's hands which at first there was like

00:40:56.320 sorry his genital cages because you described them to me when you first read about them

00:40:59.700 they had spikes on the top of them yeah like well yeah one of them uh like if you're we we call them

00:41:05.860 whippies in our household if your whippy starts to go up it just hits the spikes and ow like you

00:41:11.700 know that's i'm sure that didn't stop his when you hear all there were cages that the women could

00:41:16.280 you could like pee through them as a woman like they're locked in the back um but you can't reach

00:41:21.460 yourself um so i don't know how that worked with menstruation but yeah he had that the mechanical

00:41:27.980 room where you, I mean, so like the way that things would work at his health resort is you would

00:41:32.740 take vigorous walks in the morning, you'd have your bland food there, there, then you would go

00:41:38.460 through, sometimes he advocated for quite a few enemas per day. There were the saltwater enemas,

00:41:45.180 there were the yogurt enemas, there were the, the, oh yes, he called the, the yogurt ones,

00:41:51.380 Bulgarian basilisk bowel treatments. And then there was the mechanical movement room that had

00:41:56.580 feeding machines vibrating chairs so it's just like it sounds incredibly kinky to me that like

00:42:02.240 you're at this resort it obviously is all you're like don't masturbate participating in this guy's

00:42:08.580 weird let me shove this thing up your anus and and like shove large amounts of yogurt and salt

00:42:15.500 water up you 15 gallons a minute don't forget or sorry sorry 15 quarts a minute not gallons

00:42:20.060 let's be reasonable here there are mechanical limits but then also like i'm gonna have you

00:42:24.660 get vibrated and slapped so many times and then beaten a little by my machine in my mechanical

00:42:31.380 movement room i mean like this is way kinkier than any of those creepy bdsm airbnbs you could

00:42:36.900 find scattered across you this is like the kinkiest thing i've ever heard i swear to you

00:42:42.200 yes truly so like something was going on i thought it was kind of cute all this it's like you're a

00:42:48.480 a sexual deviant you disgusting child now hold on i need to go to my room where i built a bunch

00:42:54.560 of machines to spank me every morning but here's actually the problem so while he and his wife had

00:42:59.960 a celibate marriage they adopted maybe even over and fostered um maybe over 40 children

00:43:06.420 and then when i like was reading about all the things he advocated for i started getting real

00:43:11.620 scared that he was like genity genitally mutilating these children so now i'm like

00:43:16.040 like at first i was like oh that's sweet like okay both of these people were very sex negative or

00:43:21.660 like very kinky in a way where they were just always like oh if vibrate me just shove it up

00:43:26.480 my butt but like it's cute like fine like they're compatible but like if they're pulling a bunch of

00:43:31.100 kids into this it makes me concerned so anyway especially he i mean he advocated for female

00:43:37.000 circumcision right like yeah putting carbolic acid on that's super not cool dude and and the

00:43:42.940 wire through the let's not reread it i think we all have our sensibilities and whatnot but oh so

00:43:48.380 he's like a serial like pedophile like he's like an actual bad guy we don't know what we i couldn't

00:43:55.760 find accounts from his child like his either adopted or fostered children so i can't come

00:44:00.680 out and say he did this to his own children and a lot of the treatments like the the unmedicated

00:44:06.120 circumcision for like adolescent boys can you imagine right um that was only for boys who were

00:44:13.500 like problematic who he believed were doing that now if i was being fostered or adopted by the

00:44:19.860 kellogg family and i had an interest in human sexuality in some way i would certainly not let

00:44:26.960 them see it right so like presumably only his most hapless children this actually works in

00:44:34.420 these people because we've seen this in the mormon community is they just use it as a generic attack

00:44:39.140 on people like wives when they're mad at their husbands will say they don't like you so you have

00:44:43.780 a porn addiction when you're mad at your kid like where yeah i mean this is how that lady who

00:44:47.720 brainwashed all those women um eight passengers lady yeah ruby frankie yeah um is is you just

00:44:53.580 convince them that anyone you disagree with must be masturbate must must have a porn addiction yeah

00:44:58.100 even though that's like no it's yeah it's the generic i'm not happy with you um it's it's very

00:45:04.040 true so the modern movement today is is really not very different the the it really emerged first

00:45:10.780 like the the new wave of it started with nofap and i didn't actually know the origin story of this

00:45:16.100 but what happened is that a guy named alexander rhodes founded nofap after posting on reddit a

00:45:23.160 til about a study doing a week-long challenge so this is what the study was it's it's titled

00:45:31.080 a research on the relationship between ejaculation and serum testosterone level in men um it was

00:45:37.820 it was posted in china in december of 2021 what they did with a very small sample of 28 male

00:45:46.740 volunteers was after an ejaculation measure serum testosterone every day um through two abstinence

00:45:53.820 periods and the design was observational they would just watch testosterone while the men did

00:45:58.360 not ejaculate then see what happened if abstinence continued past the first week there was no porn

00:46:04.000 condition there was no control group of men who kept ejaculating on a schedule and no long-term

00:46:08.940 follow-up for some sort of month-long retention what they found was day two to five after

00:46:15.040 ejaculation there was little change in testosterone but then at day seven there was this peak at 145.7

00:46:21.920 percent of baseline, which means about 46 percent above the starting value, not a 145 percent

00:46:28.680 increase, which is important because guys online don't know the difference and keep saying there's

00:46:33.780 145 percent increase. Internet posts often say like, T goes up 145 percent, don't fat for a week.

00:46:39.860 That's not true. The author's own reading was even more narrow. They said that they think

00:46:45.740 ejaculation starts roughly a seven day clock and then the seven day bump at the end of that cycle

00:46:51.800 is not a new higher set point it's just a bump and then after ejaculation before day seven they

00:46:57.500 said it resets the clock so at after that peak there's no second regular peak if they keep

00:47:02.680 abstaining like if you abstain from from masturbating for longer than a week there's

00:47:06.860 no benefit that they found at least in this very small study what's so interesting to me about this

00:47:13.000 is testosterone is something that its effects on your behavior you can override with self-control

00:47:19.320 so they are presumably advocating for additional self-control in one area to make self-control

00:47:27.060 easier in another area well and a billion things affect testosterone as well not not just that but

00:47:32.380 also your diet if you're losing in life if you're winning in life whether your relationship is open

00:47:37.340 or closed if you're in a very secure monogamous relationship whether or not you have kids like

00:47:42.820 there are a billion things like why are they focusing on the fat part yeah for example if

00:47:47.260 you are in a committed monogamous relationship your testosterone drops if you have a lot of kids

00:47:52.920 with that monogamous partner your testosterone drops with each kid um like your life if your

00:47:58.560 life is about maximizing your testosterone levels well then maybe just take testosterone you can get

00:48:03.340 a doctor to prescribe it yeah we're gonna freak out that much just take the freaking pill anyway

00:48:08.600 the paper importantly was retracted Springer retracted it because the same work had already

00:48:15.080 been published in a Chinese language journal, so they didn't like the duplicate overlapping

00:48:18.720 publication. But then Snopes also notes that the journal did not retract it for Cook numbers. It

00:48:23.080 was just for that. But sex researcher Nicole Proust later found that when she asked for the

00:48:28.680 data from the researchers, they wouldn't provide it. And then two of the four listed authors

00:48:33.240 couldn't even be found in a translation version. A fake Chinese paper? Well, who knows? Because in

00:48:39.380 china there's a lot of research fraud so also one translation of the chinese version reportedly

00:48:45.320 have had a different author and a different day count in the abstract so there's a lot of just

00:48:50.780 shady stuff going on with this meaning that i wouldn't really like i i would question it plus

00:48:57.220 there's a i wouldn't build my scientific foundation especially when we know about the harm

00:49:01.480 and and i will point out here um like just not masturbating is not that big a deal if you just

00:49:07.080 want to live a life without Matt. Like that's fine. What ends up causing most of the psychological

00:49:11.540 damage, porn addiction, stuff like that is believing that masturbation is something that

00:49:17.620 you should never ever do. Which is the big thing that this movement does. Cause a lot of these

00:49:21.000 people try to not fap and then they fap and feel bad about it. Just not doing it because you build

00:49:27.280 yourself in a direction where you don't want it, or you take naltrexone with it. And so you

00:49:30.700 build a disinterest in it from opioid agonists all of that doesn't cause any negative as far as

00:49:37.320 i'm aware right like there's there's some minimal benefits to masturbating but they're not really

00:49:42.280 that big the the really negative stuff is all of the stuff like addiction and stuff like that that

00:49:48.000 comes from the belief that it's bad yeah so anyway what what um roads read this a study and then

00:49:55.820 posted it on Reddit ultimately wanted to do and decided to do himself. And then just kind of a

00:50:00.500 movement sprung around it was just a reboot. Um, he wanted to go 90 days off porn and often

00:50:07.000 masturbation is what a lot of people went through to, to reset dopamine and dopamine resets are

00:50:11.080 real. Like I'm all for that. That's fine. I think this is the most reasonable facet of it all

00:50:15.000 more dedicated people would just do no orgasm at all. Even with a partner Rhodes said that the end

00:50:20.180 state could be moderate porn-free masturbation like that was his goal it was to not masturbate

00:50:25.980 or sorry it was not to never masturbate it was just to basically enjoy masturbation more

00:50:30.580 to reset because once you get to like you dopamine fasts are really helpful right right this this

00:50:36.820 actually does have science to back um all of the science that shows that i have ever because i did

00:50:42.360 a for our sexuality book a really deep dive into it and any paper that shows some marginal and you

00:50:49.840 these do exist uh like demonstrable negative effects from masturbation show it alongside

00:50:55.840 pornography consumption i have never found i mean i'm not aware of a single study ever published

00:51:02.220 anywhere that shows negative effects from masturbation without pornography yeah yeah

00:51:08.900 which makes sense i mean the same thing also like these these dopamine resets work with

00:51:13.680 incredibly salty foods with highly processed foods with gaming with tv and social media

00:51:19.520 consumption like it this is an across the board thing so this is the thing that gets me that makes

00:51:24.080 people look incredibly stupid when i hear this people will be like don't you know it activates

00:51:28.540 the same pathways as drugs oh for goodness sake don't you know chocolate activates the same

00:51:34.640 with your family all activate the same pathways as drugs make sure you never see your family again

00:51:41.700 don't you know that hugging your child activates the same pathway as a drug

00:51:47.140 anyway here are like the actual bad players now onania 5.0 or whatever because we've been

00:51:54.940 through onania so many times these are creators that are all about semen retention and they're

00:52:00.860 not even really about semen retention they're about selling you stupid products so some of

00:52:07.220 the really prominent people on this are hamza ahmed aka hamza 97 he has this large self-improvement

00:52:14.040 channel do you remember our hamza episode i do i do king idiot this guy but anyway he pushes

00:52:20.380 nofap and semen retention bundle by the way this guy had a perfect relationship and he blew it up

00:52:26.260 because he wanted to act more masculine and sleep around this is the these are the people like okay

00:52:32.340 who's a pro masturbation team guy with five kids in a stable marriage who's the anti-masturbation

00:52:38.960 team a single guy who blew up his marriage to sleep around right like anyway he he sells a

00:52:45.000 paid community called the library of adonis and also level two which is more expensive and a

00:52:50.520 training on building online content business which is like all of this stuff he actually sells is

00:52:56.400 just stupid social media influencer slop stuff it's not even real useful products and it's also

00:53:01.740 not about masturbation. He just uses it because it's a message that people want to hear. And it's

00:53:06.000 a bad message. And I want to really belabor the point Simone is making here. This is something

00:53:12.720 that people want to hear. Because when you hear that masturbation is the problem, instead of you

00:53:18.320 don't have anything better to do, you don't have more purpose that is driving you towards something

00:53:23.080 bigger. And that is the problem. Masturbation is only the symptom of that problem. That is a much

00:53:30.380 harder thing to hear and a much harder thing to deal with in your life. And so people look for

00:53:35.700 the small, easy things like, well, I'm going to stop masturbating and I'm going to start exercising

00:53:40.500 this amount and I'm going to clean my room. And it's like, no, all of those are symptoms of you

00:53:45.980 not having purpose and finding purpose is the bigger issue. Finding something that's more

00:53:52.100 important to you than your personal pleasure is the bigger issue. And so even things that are

00:53:57.840 tied to self-control, like you need to exercise more or you need to stop masturbating. These can

00:54:03.280 still be very simplistic and very hedonistic answers to people's problems in life. And while

00:54:09.780 it's not going to earn us acolytes for saying this on our channel and people will attack us

00:54:14.080 for saying this, it is something that will hopefully help some subset of the people who

00:54:18.600 hear this and can be like, oh, the issue is that I think that something of such little pleasure,

00:54:25.980 of such a little call, it's so distracting to me is a sign that I don't have purpose in my life.

00:54:34.360 And that is what I need to fix. Then there's Ranveer Alhabaida or Beer Biceps, who's an Indian

00:54:43.460 interview and lifestyle host who's posted semen retention clips invoking Ayurveda, that semen

00:54:49.000 nourishes the brain and gives you a photographic memory. This sounds exactly like the earlier stuff.

00:54:54.960 he sells online courses called beer biceps skill house because that sounds like the smartest course

00:55:00.160 you're ever going to take no no but these influencers these are people with names like

00:55:05.060 beer biceps yeah there's also ice cold jt elemental growth um there is brazil's matthias

00:55:13.040 coppini japan's onakin coaches like they're all over the place all of them are selling something

00:55:18.680 that's all you really need to know and it's all about no but so are we no sex i i run a not

00:55:24.840 safe for you run you make money from a not safe for work website so stop saying they're selling

00:55:29.300 something i don't make money from that you don't make money from that our non-profit makes money

00:55:32.900 from that so far our aspiration is one day we take money from it and yeah i would love that i would

00:55:38.040 love for it to pay for health care at least that would be amazing anyway but the point being is

00:55:43.280 the question is is the thing that you're selling what i can say is the thing we're selling actually

00:55:49.960 creates very good horny content the thing that they're selling i don't think it does you can say

00:55:56.240 is it good for you i'm gonna say i don't think it's good for you i don't think it's good for

00:56:00.520 you i've been able to make uh well the stuff that they're saying yeah uh the the the the we've been

00:56:05.900 able to get fable to make horny content guys this is the most advanced intelligence on earth right

00:56:13.060 now and we've been able to turn it horny well but i my dream is that people come some people come

00:56:19.300 to our fab for the fapping and then they discover all the other tools that you have no no no like

00:56:25.100 the vibe coding agents of our users now by the way don't use the website for not safe for work

00:56:29.600 stuff i just joke about that i know i know but my hope is that you can we can take people who

00:56:33.460 use it for nsfw and then they're like oh wait you can use ai to like do productive things

00:56:37.520 huh and then they actually just start using the that's my goal and vibe coding stuff and all the

00:56:42.580 other stuff so anyway i think it's kind of i want to set them into improving their lives that's that's

00:56:46.940 I think some of the site analytics might suggest that.

00:56:50.560 So I think that's wonderful.

00:56:51.540 Anyway, the TLDR is that people want to believe clearly.

00:56:56.060 Voltaire, Kant, Ford, whatever.

00:56:57.960 No, it's not just people.

00:56:59.440 It's me.

00:57:00.180 So what a lot of people don't know is when we wrote our book, The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, the way that I wrote it is I would often write a chapter based on my intuitions.

00:57:10.960 then i would go look up research um as into like okay are those intuitions

00:57:17.220 and note here i don't trust scientists i'm not something like blind scientist truster i think

00:57:22.000 scientists are mostly foolish so when i'm looking up research i am you know cross-referencing i'm

00:57:27.140 looking at original data sets i'm looking at data sets from different periods i'm looking at like

00:57:31.580 i like i'm very sorry about this so i had actually written the chapter on masturbation

00:57:38.180 before I attempted to determine if it was true.

00:57:41.420 This is true.

00:57:42.040 This is true.

00:57:42.400 And it was very anti-masturbation.

00:57:44.300 Masturbation and porn are bad for you, Malcolm wrote,

00:57:47.120 because he was sure that all of the scientific evidence

00:57:49.440 would back it up.

00:57:50.580 And then I started looking through the evidence

00:57:53.340 and the evidence just didn't show this.

00:57:56.680 In fact, it showed the exact opposite.

00:57:59.180 And I felt I had to rewrite the section.

00:58:02.340 I was like, well, and this is the only section

00:58:05.420 in the entire book or in any of our books

00:58:08.040 that i ever i have ever had to do this with i'd ever just was like i was wrong i was just wrong

00:58:13.960 but i think when you say we were shocked we were really i was surprised too because i mean we've

00:58:18.400 i think everyone just assumes and that's the thing people want to believe that masturbation

00:58:22.260 is bad for you because they're like this has to be bad but when you actually stop and think about

00:58:25.720 i'll tell you why i thought it okay i thought it for two reasons i thought it because i saw a lot

00:58:31.160 of communities aspiring for it and then the second reason is is because i saw it as a subject of

00:58:37.320 self-control and i had this perception that more self-control is more discipline better yes more

00:58:44.940 discipline more self-control anything where i can advocate for more of that is going to be better

00:58:51.040 totally um and then i did the research and i was like in this one narrow area it appears to not be

00:58:57.960 true yeah and note here for people who are like oh well how do you prevent yourself from forming

00:59:04.560 these addictions to whatever it's like one again you could just choose not to use porn i agree that

00:59:09.960 could be a major problem but two like your body like all of humans bodies all humans have had

00:59:16.960 hands for hundreds of thousands of years okay and as we know from uh these old sources as we went

00:59:24.240 through nobody advised against masturbation until fairly recently in human history right you know

00:59:29.480 like the very first group you have doing is the zero astrians in the ancient greeks but not really

00:59:33.220 anyone else during that time period um and lose your brain matter you'll the point being is that

00:59:38.760 if it was easy to get addicted to this thing that everyone had access to all the time at any time of

00:59:45.040 day um you that branch of humanity would go extinct yeah um and so i actually sometimes

00:59:54.020 wonder if when i hear specific groups being like i just can't handle this like mormon groups saying

00:59:59.320 this i'm like maybe they lost whatever protection the rest of humanity had to this um oh like that

01:00:07.520 okay so so cultures that went super masturbation negative stopped breeding out the people who had

01:00:12.880 really bad masturbation problems and then now they can't so it's like oh like we bred out

01:00:17.860 kind of like the issue that's happening with um what is that measles or whatever like people

01:00:24.580 aren't vaccinating it anymore now we're all being taken out because because a normal human male

01:00:29.060 you're like so programmed to not want this in a row that you like feel pain if somebody tries to

01:00:36.400 do something after you've orgasmed you're like i don't i don't want to be around that i don't want

01:00:40.980 i don't want to think about that i want to and then you're generally programmed to not want it

01:00:46.680 again for like a day and a half or two days but i know that's clearly not true for some people

01:00:52.360 who need it multiple times a day.

01:00:53.880 No, I don't think it's true for them.

01:00:55.300 I think that the people who do it all the time,

01:00:57.900 generally speaking, are just like depressed

01:01:00.540 or don't have something else in life

01:01:01.900 and are looking for something to fill the time.

01:01:04.060 Maybe.

01:01:05.300 That's my intuition from what I've actually seen.

01:01:09.540 It's something that fills the time

01:01:11.380 when you have a bigger problem,

01:01:13.020 which is that you don't have purpose in life.

01:01:15.260 Well, I think it's very similar with food.

01:01:16.800 There's a lot of people who like,

01:01:18.200 when you eat a big meal, you feel pretty freaking sick.

01:01:20.880 And there's a lot of people who still keep eating.

01:01:22.360 and yeah maybe there's a void to fill i gotta go with kids okay great well and again maybe i'm not

01:01:26.840 i mean even with food i struggle to eat more than a meal a day and often then i don't even eat a

01:01:32.920 meal a day so maybe i'm just not but you're still having steak and green beans tonight right tempted

01:01:38.060 by earthly temptations yeah yeah you think that's what i should have right steak and green beans

01:01:42.460 well you should have the steak because i have two steaks thawed and great to get through them

01:01:47.520 okay i love you very much i love you too thank you so much bye bye this one's gonna piss off

01:01:54.320 i had to do it anyway because it's true it really bothers me yeah it bothers me too because it's it's

01:02:03.480 it's just demonstrably non-biblical it is it is not good for people um which i'll get into in this

01:02:11.860 right it's it's it actually comes downstream from slavery which you'll learn in this

01:02:17.980 oh oh no oh yeah okay i think i think i know what you're gonna say

01:02:23.660 anyway uh dinner i'm making you steak yeah you've got steak i'm open to steak tonight

01:02:29.600 i'm making steak steak by itself or steak with fries or anything else

01:02:32.860 steak with fries fries or green beans oh green beans okay that is what you shall have

01:02:41.860 Part of the chosen, the scar and the fame

01:02:51.080 Gryffindor, golden boy, boring and tame

01:02:54.600 Hall monitor, energy, rule following bore

01:02:58.100 And all his friends are kind of poor

01:03:01.560 But I'm passing the great hall, I hear Potter say

01:03:05.220 He's evil, I knew it the very first day

01:03:08.860 One look at that face and my scars started burning

01:03:12.500 I stopped in my tracks, my opinion was turning

01:03:16.140 When asked who robbed the vault

01:03:18.620 He said it would be easy to find who is at fault

01:03:22.520 He did not even take time to look at clues

01:03:26.180 Four hundred suspects and who'd he choose

01:03:29.880 There's ghosts, there's the staff

01:03:32.320 There's that squib with the cap

01:03:34.040 But one of them stuck out

01:03:35.760 So I went with that

01:03:37.720 Wait, did the boy who lived just say the quiet part out loud

01:03:42.300 In the middle of the hall, in front of the crowd

01:03:46.560 Oh, Potter, your waist, I misjudged you

01:03:49.560 It's true, I thought you were vanilla

01:03:52.040 But you've got a clue

01:03:53.700 You won't call him professor

01:03:55.620 You won't give him a pass

01:03:57.620 The chosen one's chosen to be edgy as I

01:04:01.000 Of those people who border us

01:04:04.160 Even when you control for income, they are more murderous

01:04:07.680 I'm just pattern noticing powder like you

01:04:11.480 So tell me your data, your sources, your view

01:04:15.380 I caught him alone by the lake after dark

01:04:19.020 I said, show me your evidence, show me your mark

01:04:22.800 He smiled kinda hollow and said, I don't need it

01:04:26.320 I learned from my dad when he saw one, he beat it

01:04:30.100 Sirius told me how it all went that day

01:04:33.560 They hung him up high and they watched him sway

01:04:36.880 I asked but what did he do and he said with a grin

01:04:40.600 It's more that he exists and the color he's in

01:04:44.240 But I make the old man look lame

01:04:47.500 When he looked at me wrong during a game

01:04:51.100 I had a friend light him on fire

01:04:54.760 They only shamed that she lacked a fire

01:04:58.380 I'd always said when the display is bigger

01:05:02.240 That's a better way to treat a

01:05:05.440 Wait, what?

01:05:07.480 Your dad beat him into the mud

01:05:10.300 Just because of his blood

01:05:12.000 You had a friend since I'm alive

01:05:13.920 Without even a fight

01:05:15.780 We are not the same

01:05:18.980 And honestly, you're kind of lame

Based Camp - October 07, 2026

How Sex Pests Created The Anti-Masturbation Movement

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