Some Psychobabble - For My Real Die Hard Fans (tw Sexual Assault & Rape)

It has been a while since I posted on this blog. Hopefully the people who like reading me have been reading my newsletter. If not - get on it suckas!

I've been thinking about psychoanalytic readings of male communities recently and thought that I'd share them. Say what you will about the freud-meister, his viewpoint is really fun to play with. Apologies, this is cis/het/male-centric. Both of these are communities which I have looked into, and even ideas which I have ~sort of~ allowed myself to be influenced by in the past.

Reddit.com/r/nofap

A variety of people at various stages of r/nofap, and their testimonials.



Ah the anti-jackin' off community. People who take a somewhat reasonable idea (maybe I shouldn't yank my hog 5 times a day) and turn it into an ideology. I have an interpretation of it which feels pretty solid.

Essentially, Freud's interpretation of fetishism is that it is a fixation on something other than reproduction itself. The idea is that this fixation comes from a moment in a child's life where they gain castration anxiety - IE foot fetish is because you see a foot the moment before you see your mamma's cooch.

So here's my theory for NoFap. In this modern age, that moment is increasingly likely to become associated with porn & masturbation. Instead of early sexuality being a thing that just happens out of sheer imagination, there is a volume of material for a young boy to discover.

Thus porn & the associated act of masturbation becomes the fetish. To an r/nofap person, pornography is given this magical quality of power over their life, if they masturbate, they all of a sudden lose all of their energy, whereas by abstaining they are able to preserve their mana. To a nofapper, porn has the ability to castrate them not just sexually but in life, and thus the only way they can achieve happiness and potency is by avoiding it.

Now what makes this interesting beyond an idle consideration is to think about what happens when the r/nofap faithful 5 months down the road and specifically the next time they are exposed to sexually activity. There are a few possibilities:

A: They come from masturbating, and feel shitty due to the power they have given that act, thus supporting the fetish.

B: They come from masturbating and realize that they are fine

C: They come from having sex - and depending on which part of the act they are fixated, they could feel shitty as in A, and decide that nofap actually means noorgasm.

D: They come from sex but have it separated, and have a normal sex life where they never ever masturbate (this seems unlikely)

(this is the one I'm most curious about) E: They find themselves unable to enjoy actual sexual activity. Part of modern understanding of fetishism is that a kink is something that is optional, while a fetish is something that's necessary. So what happens if someone has fetishized pornography as this ultimate dangerous aspect of sexuality? Will they need to pornograph-ize the sexual encounter? Will they just do what person C did, and assume that sex keeps them from reaching true potential?

What makes this really interesting is that so much of the r/nofap ideology revolves around people with pornography addictions, who feel that porn has desensitized them to sex. I postulate that the absolute avoidance of it has the exact same effect.

OBVIOUSLY, none of this is clinical. But I think it's an interesting way to look at that community.

 

False Rape Accusations

 

This one will be much shorter. I think I know (at least part of) why people fixate on the possibility of false rape accusations (something which is INCREDIBLY common in male-dominated spaces online). I think it's more or less just simple projection and transference.

 

I.E. These Steps

1. Nobody wants to fuck me, and they won't any time soon.
2. If someone were to fuck me, it would have to be some kind of mistake on their part, either due to alcohol or some other distorting tool.
3. Therefore, it is impossible for me to fuck consensually, and if I ever were to fuck, I would be at the mercy of the person's feelings afterwards, which would probably be negative.
4. Therefore I will never fuck, or if I do, I will be called a rapist.

Another group which worries a lot about female sexuality is the exact opposite type of person, IE someone with outward success. For this kind of person, it's still their own insecurity - basically that they are actually not worth more than their success, and thus the only reason anyone could want them is because of their outward facing success, which they would inevitably be trying to steal.

Both of these relate to freud's concept of castration anxiety - essentially people believe that at the fraught moment where they finally get to prove their potency and sexual prowess, they can have everything taken away from them.

I don't think these are necessarily new insights, but I haven't seen them written out before. What's terrifying about these (not uncommon) attitudes, is that they both involve completely ignoring the humanity of an actual partner. Instead, they become an agent of your insecurity. It definitely isn't a revelation to say that people who are intensely concerned with being accused of rape are probably concerned with it for a reason. Further, these are people who feel they do not have power, and thus are most likely to do things to reassure themselves in their power. Creepy stuff.

How does one fight these toxic communities? Somehow, you need to break through these projections & fetishes and create a sense of empathy and connection to humanity of others. But the problem is, these are some of the most uncomfortable people to talk to, and they are quite invested in their neuroses as explanations for why they feel a certain way. All one can do I suppose, is be careful, and if someone has the ability, energy and time to be compassionate towards people like this, try and get them to see a more realistic view of the world.

Anyways that's my little blog post. Sorry if it is offensive, this last section in particular I am afraid is way oversimplifying things. Catch you next time - email me or comment or anything you feel with responses to my analyses or aspects of freud that I'm butchering or similar thoughts.

Ace.