Originally published at: Participating in anti-masturbation groups tied to depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts | Boing Boing
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Someone should extend these poor persons a helping hand.
Maybe their own.
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“If you cant love yourself, then how in the hell are you gonna love anyone else?”
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Does anyone know how this compares with the effects of relapse in the context of other obstaining-from-behavior objective groups? People whose gym memberships go unused within a month or two; addicts who start drinking again, that sort of thing.
I would not be even slightly surprised if a self help group that promises people who feel inadequate in various ways improvement through strict sexual purity taboos and stemming Gen. Ripper’s loss of essence skews more dysfunctional than average; but I would also tend to assume that people who have failed to achieve some objective on which they’d pinned hopes for improvement are unlikely to be just overjoyed about it regardless of what those objectives are, what the desired areas of improvement are, and whether there’s good evidence that the behavioral objective will lead to the desired improvement or not.
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No surprise. Anyone who would be in such a group clearly is starting with a fixation on guilt and self loathing. And the group ethic just reinforces it.
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I would imagine the overlap between “no fap” groups and incel groups is significant. The incel community is notoriously mysoginistic (which attracts a lot of the other -ists) and their form of “self-help” is generally self-loathing. So, too, it seems is the case in no fap groups, where, unlike an AA or something, falling off the wagon is seen as a failure of will; i.e., you relapsed because you’re weak and pathetic (and that of course is the opposite of helpful).
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I suspect the organizers of these groups are a bunch of wankers.
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Seems a decent psychological thesis topic to ask these people the very simple question: “What do you believe abstinence from masturbation gains you?” (“Bayesian prior: 37% suppressed religious guilt, 43% ‘self-abuse’[snirk] masochism, 20% ‘other’”)
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It’s all about shame, which sells fad diets, gym memberships, all sorts of luxury goods, and so on. Belonging to an unsupportive internet community just exacerbates the problem.
By coincidence, I just read this book, which has some interesting things to say about good and bad forms of shaming.
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And unhelpful wankers, at that. LOL
But seriously. I’ll certainly agree it’s possible to have problem behaviors around masturbation and porn. But those problems are symptomatic of more important underlying trouble with issues like self loathing, misogyny, social personality disorders, and such.
By not addressing those causes professionally groups like these can only do far more harm than good. Just as with the sad and dangerously toxic Incel groups
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They’re basically an anti-support group. And yes, there is a large overlap.
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Hopefully.
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Like the christian church?
By the 3rd grade I was already going through cycles of anguish over “when am I going to be able to stop this”; wish I could go back and reassure myself: “never, might as well get over it”
I recall that Seinfeld episode referenced the old saying “your body isn’t an amusement park”, with which I beg to differ; it’s the best fucking amusement park ever invented.
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“If only there were some way to relieve the stress of being in this anti-masturbation group.”
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Can I get an amen?
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You can!
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“But can’t I keep doing it just till I need glasses?”
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gee, ya don’t say.
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Now I’ve had my cataracts fixed, I won’t need glasses. Except for watching videos on my phone screen… 
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