No on NoFap

‘I want that power back’: Discourses of masculinity within an online pornography abstinence 

Abstract This article examines the ways that men actively construct masculinity within an online pornography-abstinence reddit forum, NoFap. Of central interest is how members of NoFap negotiate possible contradictions between abstinence and presenting themselves as masculine subjects. Utilizing discourse analysis, we illustrate the ways in which forum members employ idealized discourses of innate masculinity and the need for ‘real sex’ to justify their resistance to pornography use and masturbation. However, we also highlight the paradox of having to perform ostensibly innate characteristics, and the outright rejection of feminist critiques of pornography use as it pertains to masculine conduct. As such, this article offers an alternative approach to the popular ‘user effects’ paradigm that suggests that users reject pornography because of internal biological drives interfering in their lives. Instead, we suggest that some users reject pornography to reconcile pornography use with particular expectations of normative masculinity.

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The sub-reddit selected for the current study is NoFap (see reddit NoFap, n.d.). This site specifically hosts secular conversation threads about abstinence from masturbating to pornography, predominantly catering to self-identifying pornography ‘addicts’. As such, overt discussions (or threads) concerning the effects and perceptions of pornography use are prevalent, and these directly address the subject of how pornography impacts individuals. While NoFap had reached over 260,000 registered members at the time of writing, actual demographics of this NoFap membership are very difficult to ascertain. In 2014 a member of NoFap created their own survey which was administered to the sub-reddit, and received some 4882 responses,2 and while there are a number of issues with the survey (many of which the creator readily points out), it is the closest and most recent demographic snapshot that we have been able to find, and follows a similar trend as a previous survey distributed in 2012.3 At the time of the 2014 survey 13% of respondents identified as under 16 years old, 46% as aged 17–21, and 32% as 22–28 (the remaining 8% were aged over 28). Furthermore, the survey indicated that the membership of NoFap at this time was predominantly made up of males (99%) who identified as heterosexual (94%).

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Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the demographics already mentioned, NoFap also has a strongly heterosexual, male tenor. While women and gay men are explicitly catered for within the forum (for example multiple threads featured on NoFap remind forum members that women are also welcome to use the space) it is implicitly assumed that forum members are heterosexual men with users employing fraternal language (hailing each other as ‘brothers’ for example). Moreover, it is noteworthy that there appears to be an unspoken agreement about the type of pornography users are abstaining from. That is to say that genres, gender representations, and sex acts often remain nebulous and ill-defined. While this may be a function of the rules of the forum itself (as graphic sexual descriptions are discouraged because of the possibility of them ‘triggering’ other users5), unless stated otherwise the only discernible uniting element of the pornography discussed appears to be a presumption of heterosexuality, appealing to men, and being relatively ‘mainstream’.

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In this article we aimed to contribute to a body of literature that focuses on the pornography audience while moving beyond a negative-effects model to engage with more complex and nuanced work around the experiences of the users of pornography. In particular, we sought to illuminate the ways that participants in an online pornography abstinence forum negotiated masculinity and their pornography use/abstinence. Whereas a website committed to the rejection of pornography might have been expected to be a site of ‘progressive’ or ‘unconventional’ expressions of masculinity aligning with anti-pornography feminist concerns, our research indicates that the members of NoFap cited in our analysis frequently utilized and redeployed familiar hegemonic masculine discourses. In particular, the construction of men as dominant seekers of pleasure and women as the ‘natural’ suppliers of this pleasure within the data (through both ‘innate masculinity’ and ‘real heterosexuality’ discourses) simply reproduced ‘common sense’ sexual expectations of gendered dominance and submission (Gavey, 2005).

Moreover, across the data presented, forum participants used autonomy and heterosexual agency to account for their refusal of pornography, as opposed to ethical or moral concerns about the content of pornography itself, which remained, somewhat ironically, amorphous and unexamined. In line with Gabriel Cavaglion’s (2009) study, users expressed a widely held concern around loss of agency through pornography’s apparent power over them, which manifested most explicitly as concerns that pornography use was somehow interfering with the users’ ability to achieve a sense of normality by attracting women. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising that users utilized discourses of agency, as they struggled to reconcile their confessions of a loss of sexual self-control with their positions as masculine subjects (Terry, 2012). Importantly, how abstaining from masturbating to pornography would increase users’ masculinity, and why women would find this appealing remained largely uncriticized.

However, unlike Cavaglion (2009), we suggest that pornography users are acutely aware of normalizing pressures, which on the one hand situate coupled heterosexual sex as a prototypical ideal and on the other position pornography use and masturbation as well outside of this ‘charmed circle’ of valued sex (Rubin, 1984). Notably, users deployed discourses that involved both strong desires for ‘real’ sex alongside discourses of monogamy, and their distress over an apparent inability to achieve a fairly stereotypical relationship or sexual experience. Whereas Simon Lindgren’s pornography users celebrated the hedonistic pornography consumption and masturbation as a badge of masculinity which makes ‘men into men’ (2010: 183), the users of NoFap discussed masturbation and pornography as an imminent threat to ‘real’ sexual relationships and the realization of an idealized, yet elusive masculinity. Interestingly, in both NoFap and in Lindgren’s pornography fan forums the maintenance of a homosocial environment almost eclipses the main topic of conversation, such that whether men are celebrating or rejecting pornography, a sense of approval from other men is paramount.

Scholarship on pornography is inherently political and often controversial, and as such, research that asks standard questions, uses standard research methods, and frames pornography use in the same ways will continue to find results that confirm popular assumptions (McKee, 2009). Our findings suggest that beyond the labelling of ‘excessive’ pornography use as pathological are fraught negotiations of how to perform and convey ‘appropriate’ sexual desires and how this conduct relates to idealized masculine behaviours. Our analysis highlights the struggle by forum members to gain (or regain) control over their masculinity, espousing selfcontrol, self-actualization, the rejection of feminist criticism, and the need for ‘real sex’ in order to justify their resistance to pornography use and masturbation. Here, men’s control over themselves and the repetition of an aspiration to appropriate (hetero)sexual conduct emphasizes the efforts that are afforded in maintaining such a ‘natural’ state, while leaving the paradox of having to struggle to uncover an innate tendency unconsidered. In essence, the ‘user effect’ of pornography that NoFap members were most concerned about was its ability to highjack their sexuality, and as such, to impinge upon their ‘real’ masculine subjectivity. While user distress might well be described as pathological by some, we suggest that pornography scholarship must continue to ask questions about the ways that pornography use can be incorporated into individuals’ meaning making, a focus too frequently sidelined within dominant psychological research paradigms.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1363460717740248