Should You Say NO to No-Nut November?

This is the last day of Locktober, which brings us right into another month dedicated to restraining the libido: No Nut November. And while we love Locktober because it's a chance to experiment with D/s dynamic in your relationship, quite a few of us at the Stockroom look at NNN with a skeptical eye.

Locktober vs. No Nut November: A Kink Makes the Difference

At first glance, that might sound a little hypocritical. After all, isn't the goal of Locktober and No Nut November basically the same? They're both focused primarily on cis guys keeping their hands away from their penises for a whole month at a time.

But once you push past that basic similarity, there's a lot of difference between the two. Locktober is a chance to explore a relationship between two people in a D/s context. Chastity is about a person making a commitment to their keyholder; a commitment that can only come about through a lot of discussion and trust on both sides.

It's also a great opportunity to think about penile health in a way that often gets glossed over in our culture. Dicks are looked upon as kind of simple things that don't need that much consideration — either in caretaking or the sensual sense. But a person who's had their dick locked up has to take very deliberate care of it to prevent sweat, urine, and oils from building up and creating irritation and infection. That's a lot more than the casual swipe over the balls and shaft a lot of men give during their morning shower.

No Nut November, on the other hand, doesn't encourage that kind of intimacy — either with a partner or your own body. On the contrary, advocates for NNN lace their rhetoric with heavy helpings of sexual shame.

There is no single, definitive set of rules for No Nut November other than you're forbidden from ejaculating for the entire month of November. Some people will tell you that you're allowed to edge your way up almost to climax, while others will claim that masturbation of any kind counts against you. And for a lot of people, just watching porn counts as a fail.

That's where we get to the big difference between NNN and Locktober: while Locktober is an exploration of sexuality, NNN is about denying your sexuality. For the next month, social media is going to be full of guys claiming that if you stop jacking off and watching porn, you'll feel stronger, have more focus, and generally feel more manly.

There's a reason that No Nut November is primarily targeted at young, heterosexual cis men: a lot of that stuff about how abstaining will make you look and feel like more of a MAN is based on the idea that being with women will make you weak.

When the No Nut November stuff starts coming across my social media every year, it doesn't remind me of the many sex workers, kinksters, or educators that I've associated with over the years. The first person who comes to mind is General Jack D. Ripper, the mad Air Force officer who orders his wing of nuclear bombers to attack Russia in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. Ripper believes that the International Communist Conspiracy is diluting the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans through fluoridation programs.¹ He explains to Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) that he first understood this when sex was followed by "a profound sense of fatigue."

Sterling Hayden as Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

"I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake," he says. "Women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence."

Presumably few participants in No Nut November have access to the nuclear codes. But when talking about the supposed health benefits, the rhetoric sounds very similar to Ripper's ideas about maintaining "purity of essence." It should be no surprise that No Nut November has traditionally had a very enthusiastic following in incel communities.

History: Where'd NNN Come From?

Like so many things on the internet, No Nut November started as a joke. Know Your Meme traces the first public mention of it to an Urban Dictionary post in 2011, although it almost certainly appeared in smaller forums before that. At that point, it was still seen as primarily satirical.

It started to really catch on in 2017, thanks to social media. Because it's the internet, increased popularity led to increased toxicity: In 2018, tube site xHamster was flooded with antisemitic imagery and calls to "kill all pornographers." Individual sex workers have reported an increase in online harassment around No-Nut November as well.

Whether you participate in NNN or not, please leave sex workers alone and give their work the respect it deserves.

Health: Is No Nut November Bad For You?

Followers of NNN claim that the benefits include everything from increased focus to telekinesis. Whether that last claim is serious or not (this is the internet, after all), this recent graphic from Reddit is an excellent demonstration of some of the supposed benefits.

But there's no science backing any of this up. While there's been little research done specifically on No-Nut November, a recently published study concluded that participating in NNN had no measurable effects, positive or negative, on long-term sexual pleasure.

Most of the participants in the study were young white men, with many 18 or younger — in other words, right when you're horniest and trying to figure out what all this sex stuff is.

Other medical professionals have talked about the psychological stress that can be caused by forcing yourself to go without release for a whole month, and of course, the possibility of epididymal hypertension (aka "blue balls").

But in the end, only you can know when and how much you need to come. That's a negotiation that needs to happen between yourself and your body. (And your partner, if you're involving them.) It certainly shouldn't be decided on the basis of an internet challenge to impress your social media feeds. Whether it's No Nut November or Destroy Dick December, that's perhaps what can cause the most damage. We here at the Stockroom encourage you to educate yourself about your body, your desires, and come when you need it — not when the internet says so.