Religious, political and spiritual forces have waged campaigns against masturbation for a variety of bullshit reasons. We dispel the myths spewed by semen-retention proponents and explore why jerking off isn’t just good—it’s good for you!
A lot of guys were told when they were young that jerking off isn’t proper behavior for a young man. That it wasn’t conducive to their Catholic upbringing. Or that it would weaken their immune systems, make them go blind, ensure they’d be homeless and lead them down the road to an early grave. Or at least, that’s how I remember it. When my mom came home early from work one day to find me balls-deep in one of my gym socks, you would have thought I had butt-fucked the family cat face-down in a bowl of Cheerios. It’s no wonder why many of us teenage horndogs ventured into the bathroom, behind the sanctity of a locked door, to whack it with impunity until we could afford a place of our own.
Even in adulthood, there always seems to be someone trying to get men to stop playing with their junk. Religious radicals want guys to think that masturbation is a sin—that sex, as defined in the Bible, is only between a man and his wife, not a man and his hand. Even a certain prominent far-right organization reportedly forbids members from ejaculating alone more than once every thirty days.
Of course, religious zealots and political extremists aren’t the only ones who have theories about not busting a nut. It has been said that semen retention can increase testosterone, boost confidence and help a man get more in touch with his emotions—rage or otherwise. Some athletes have claimed they can’t spank their dicks days before they’re scheduled to perform in their respective sport because it makes them weak and ineffectual losers destined to get their asses handed to them in competition.
“Our high school wrestling coach would always tell us not to jerk off before a match,” Kyle, a 45-year-old farm equipment salesman from Paducah, Kentucky, tells HUSTLERMagazine.com. “He wanted us going to the mat mean.”
There are plenty of borderline masochists out there who’ve experimented with the no-fap practice. Some of them reportedly find that, if a man summons the discipline to not beat his meat, it makes him more studly in the process. “Retention is the shit, but tough to do when you have a habit,” declares Fan, a 25-year-old from Huntington Beach, California. “I use it to have better orgasms and it helps me get women.” When pressed to explain how keeping a wad of gonad goop trapped inside his balls makes him more desirable to the ladies, Fan suggests it has something to do with pheromones. “I think they can smell an abundance of baby-makers or something,” he posits.
