The NoFap website states that "using the NoFap Marks as a generic word for quitting porn or abstaining from masturbation" isn't an authorized use of the trademark.
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So, I threw up a forum on Reddit and that's where NoFap was born.
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The tenets of the NoFap website state that it's merely trying to help people break porn addiction by abstaining from masturbating.
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But Ley and Stripchat are hesitant to even mention NoFap in announcements, because they fear harassment from people in that movement.
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Rhodes founded NoFap in 2011 after—as he tells it in the lawsuit—a lifelong addiction to porn beginning at age 11.
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Unlike NoFap and semen retention, No Nut November focuses on the temporary challenge of not nutting, instead of any purported health benefits.
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And since the group exploited any divisive social issue, it's not totally improbable that they'd eventually set their sights on the nofap agenda.
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NoFap is most commonly associated with #NoNutNovember, an online challenge in which men try not to masturbate or otherwise orgasm for a month.
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"If somebody posted that image on our website's forum, our community moderation team would remove the images and ban the poster(s)," a NoFap spokesperson told me.
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The owner of the NoFap trademark and website, Alexander Rhodes, is suing a neuroscientist for defamation, claiming that she has made "numerous false and defamatory statements" about him and his work.
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He began a porn recovery site called NoFap to try to help others free themselves from compulsive porn use; he isn't a therapist, but in the process he's cultivated a community.
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NoFap is a movement that started in 2011 as a spinoff subreddit from a Reddit thread on r/todayIlearned about testosterone increases during masturbation abstinence that made it to the front page.
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Sex educators, adult industry groups and therapists told Motherboard that they are scared of legal action from NoFap, and some of them weren't willing to speak openly about masturbation and the stigma of watching porn.
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A 20163 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Sexualities found that members of NoFap online communities don't see women in porn as "real women," and that "real sex" is seen through the predominately male, heterosexual worldview of its members.
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Read more: Re-Examining 'Casting Couch' Porn in the Age of #MeToo Although they're separate communities with different modes of thinking, I asked NoFap and Semen Retention moderators whether they approved of the kind of messaging seen in these images.
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"We have always maintained that the best way to combat pornography's negative effects is through educational resources that will give individuals the information they need to make informed choices about their consumption of pornographic material," a spokesperson for r/NoFap, who I first contacted via Reddit, told me in an email.
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") The second level is the swearing-off of masturbation (known online as "nofap" or #NoWanks) combined with a "cereal beat-in" — if you want into the group, you have to get beaten up while successfully reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, because "defending the West against the people who want to shut it down is like remembering cereals as you're being bombarded with ten fists.
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In 2017, an Independent article called "Inside the Community of Men Who Have Given Up Porn" noted that an alternative subreddit, /r/pornfree, is different from 'NoFap' as members abstain from pornography but not necessarily masturbation. Another Independent article, from 2018, described /r/pornfree as less 'extreme' compared to /r/nofap. A study of NoFap reddit users found that NoFap members were most likely to also be members of TheRedPill, seduction, and similar men's right and pick up artist Reddit groups. Another study reported a similar pattern that NoFap Reddit members also were likely to be supporters of American president Donald Trump.
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A 2020 study reports that "virtually all NoFap followers (99%) are male". The membership of NoFap ranges from atheists, like founder Rhodes, to fundamentalist Christians. However, Rhodes has publicly solicited and received funding from religious groups. Women are also a part of NoFap, although the community is sometimes viewed to be a part of the androsphere.
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A 2020 study found that while NoFap claimed to be science-based, the more that NoFap followers believed that they should abstain from masturbation, the more they also reported "lower trust in science". Social psychologists Taylor and Jackson, who analyzed the content of NoFap forums, concluded in their study that some NoFap participants not only rejected pornography, but also radical feminist critiques of pornography. They also stated that members of NoFap frequently utilized and redeployed familiar hegemonic masculine discourses (e.g. men as dominant seekers of pleasure and women as the 'natural' suppliers of this pleasure), in turn reproducing societal expectations of gendered sexual dominance and submission.
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Several journalists have criticized NoFap. Some of them report that the forums were filled with misogyny, stating that "there is a darker side to NoFap. Among the reams of Reddit discussions and YouTube videos, a fundamentally misogynistic rhetoric regularly emerges", and that "the NoFap community has become linked to wider sexism and misogyny, reducing women to sexual objects to be attained or abstained from and shaming sexually active women." NoFap followers have posted videos on YouTube that regularly feature anti-homosexual and anti-woman values, such as 'stop being a little bitch' demands.
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NoFap has been involved in legal actions filed or threatened by their founder, Alexander Rhodes. After threatening two scientists with litigation, the scientists published a letter defending the need to be allowed to criticize NoFap "As [NoFap] operate in the public sphere, however, we deem it not only as legitimate but necessary to acknowledge and cite them as one prominent voice in the debate around masturbation abstinence—everything else would be an unjustifiable muting of their stand." For publishing a critique of NoFap's fundraising efforts, Rhodes sued ScramNews in the UK. ScramNews is a small outlet, had no lawyer to defend itself, and was forced to close by Rhodes' lawsuit. NoFap threatened to sue The Spectator for writing about their association with right-wing, antisemitic groups.
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The overwhelming goal of members of the NoFap forums is to stop masturbation entirely, and that this goal is due to their "perception of masturbation as unhealthy". After abstaining from porn and masturbation for a period of time, some of NoFap's users claim to experience various improvements in physical and mental health. Some NoFap users say their brains were warped by porn, at the expense of real relationships. NoFap hosts a wide variety of different opinions on sexual health, and supports users with various goals as long they are trying to improve their sexual health.
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They threatened to sue a blogger for using 'NoFap' as a trademark. NoFap also threatened Wikipedia with litigation, claiming that Wikipedia editors are secretly part of the porn industry. Rhodes' aggressive litigation has had a chilling effect on free speech, as "Sex educators, adult industry groups and therapists told Motherboard that they are scared of legal action from NoFap, and some of them weren't willing to speak openly about masturbation and the stigma of watching porn." The lawsuits appear largely funded by the elders from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Morality in Media, religious organizations seeking to ban all pornography.
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The 'science' cited on NoFap is said to come from anti-porn activist Gary Wilson, "an Oregon man with no scientific training or background, who has made a career peddling pseudoscience".
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Users on NoFap's subreddit more than tripled in number in two years, leading Rhodes to build an off-Reddit forum at NoFap.com and begin other plans to better serve the website's fast-growing factions in Brazil, Germany, and China. NoFap.com is a forum-style website where individuals who have committed to abstain from pornography and/or masturbation for a period of time can talk about their experiences and engage in challenges to help them recover. NoFap.com is the sister website of the Reddit-hosted NoFap community. NoFap.
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A 2020 systematic review of the media on pornography, published in the journal Social Forces, described "These claims do not necessarily come from scientific experts. Instead, we find that newspaper articles draw from a variety of professionals who are not scientists" and mention that "Rhodes is quoted repeatedly reflecting that he was 'addicted to internet porn' and shares the personal consequences." They conclude "journalists and political actors are overextending scientific findings to advance their media markets and political agendas"..." to codify gender stereotypes and normative heterosexuality". A 2020 paper stated that NoFap appears to have been specifically targeted by such groups, writing, "the struggle for the 'remasculinization' of white men by overcoming porn (addiction) had to be an antisemitic one: a fight against 'Jewish pornography' and 'Jewish filth,' in which other current anti-porn actors such as NoFap should join". NoFap has been described by a researcher as a "racist culture war...was already implied in the call to join the ‘movement’ by becoming abstinent".
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Therapist Paula Hall for The Huffington Post was asked about NoFap claims of "physical health benefits mentioned including renewed energy, greater focus, concentration, and better sleep" and responded "there is little medical evidence for any of these changes". Therapist Robert Weiss for The Huffington Post sees NoFap as part of a tech backlash. The endeavor has also been criticized as generating embarrassing side effects such as prolonged or unwanted erections in men or an excessive libido. Psychologist David J. Ley wrote: "I'm not in opposition to them, but I do think their ideas are simplistic, naive and promote a sad, reductionistic and distorted view of male sexuality and masculinity".
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The users of the website call themselves "Fapstronauts." Some correspondents have nicknamed NoFap's community members as NoFappers fapstinent, or no- fappers. Some self-described porn addicts seek out NoFap for help, while others join the website for the challenge or to improve their lives and interpersonal relationships.
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NoFap techniques are sometimes cited as a self- improvement method by members of the manosphere, and by others as a way to counter the effects of "death grip syndrome",Infante, Scott Wayne. A Systematic Review of the Psychological, Physiological, & Spiritual Effects of Pornography on Males. Trevecca Nazarene University, 2018. an issue with penis sensitivity which some men attribute to overly aggressive masturbation.
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NoFap was founded in June 2011 by Pittsburgh web developer Alexander Rhodes after reading a thread on Reddit about a 2003 Chinese study which claimed that men who refrain from masturbation for seven days experience a 145.7% spike in testosterone levels on the seventh day. This hit the front page of a popular forum on Reddit. The website states that some NoFap participants aim to "...improve their interpersonal relationships", do a "challenge of willpower – to seize control of your sexuality and turn it into superpowers", but always with the goal of being able to "abstain from PMO (porn/masturbation/orgasm)." While the website is most commonly associated with men seeking to quit porn and reduce masturbation, there are a minority of females who are users of the website as well, who are nicknamed "Femstronauts"; Rhodes has estimated that five percent of participants are women.
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The expression "fap" is an onomatopoeic Internet slang term for male masturbation that first appeared in the 1999 web comic Sexy Losers to indicate the sound of a male character masturbating. Alexander Rhodes appears in the documentary written and directed by Nicholas Tana called Sticky: A (Self) Love Story, in which he discusses his findings and his opinions about masturbation. After this, Rhodes created NoFap as a "subreddit" forum community on Reddit. The endeavour is sometimes referred to as fapstinence.
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NoFap is a website and community forum that serves as a support group for those who wish to give up pornography and masturbation. Its name comes from the slang term fap, referring to male masturbation. Reasons for this avoidance vary by individual, and may include religious and moral reasons, self- improvement, and physical beliefs that are not supported by mainstream medicine. The group's views and efforts to combat pornography addiction have been criticized as simplistic, outdated, and incorrect by neuroscientists, psychologists, and other medical professionals.
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Introductory psychology textbook authors Coon, Mitterer and Martini, passingly mentioning NoFap (former pornography users who have since chosen to abstain from the material) speak of pornography as a "supernormal stimulus" but use the model of compulsion rather than addiction. A number of studies have found neurological markers of addiction in Internet porn users, which is consistent with a large body of research finding similar markers in other kinds of problematic internet users. Yet other studies have found that critical biomarkers of addiction are missing, and most addiction biomarkers have never been demonstrated for pornography.
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Climate protest sign referencing No Nut November No Nut November is an internet challenge revolving around abstinence, in which participants abstain from masturbating or having an orgasm during the month of November. Although No Nut November was originally intended to be satirical, some participants claim that abstaining from ejaculating and watching pornography has health benefits. An Urban Dictionary entry for No Nut November was published in 2011, and, in 2017, the movement started to gain popularity on social media. It is associated with the NoFap community on Reddit, which encourages its members not to masturbate.
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Ley criticizes NoFap supporters as amateurs who are using "bad data" and "extrapolations on weak science to argue that porn has a disproportionate effect on the brain" and claim that porn use causes erectile dysfunction. Ley has stated that the website is a continuation of the anti-masturbation movements from the past, such as Swiss doctor Samuel Tissot's 18th-century claims that masturbation was an illness that "weakened the male spirit" and led to immorality; American doctor Benjamin Rush, who claimed that masturbation caused blindness; and W.K. Kellogg, who developed corn flakes as part of his anti-masturbation efforts.
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