Porn, shame, and a solution
How men are mastering arousal
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Porn is a deep source of shame for the vast majority of men. It’s screwing with us in ways that scientific studies have a hard time pinpointing, but it’s correlated with a huge rise in erectile dysfunction (now 26% of men under 40) and sexual intimacy reaching a 30 year low. This newsletter is about what men are currently doing about porn, why that approach ain’t it, and what the rare men who feel they’ve mastered their relationship with arousal are doing.
Why I think porn is an issue
Scientific studies have had a hard time proving causation for any porn related consequences, which is nuts to me considering we’re talking orgasm brain chemicals getting released in response to an activity a majority of men engage in more or less all the time. Anecdotally though things are clear. I facilitate men’s groups, including for a men’s sexual health company. I’ve listened to hundreds of dudes describe what gives them shame in life and simply put, porn comes up all the time. It’s right up there with mom and dad issues. I can count on one hand the number of men I’ve talked to who have said their relationship with porn is healthy.
And let me get specific about what I mean by “shame.” I’m not referring to the Christian-style “I’m going to hell” kind of shame. These are grown men from all kinds of religious backgrounds who didn’t find porn to be an issue for the first 5, 10, or 20+ years of regular use, until it then started negatively affecting how they’re showing up in relationships and in the bedroom.
We need a better solution
The response to this is almost always “I gotta stop watching porn” and sometimes masturbation as well. The No-Fap community on Reddit - a community of men devoted to abstaining from masturbating to porn - is currently getting extremely hyped for “No Nut November”. The memes are fun, supportive, and even inspiring. But as countless entries in the forum will attest, it’s extremely difficult and the result is a restoration of normalcy - not exactly the coolest looking trophy.
And this is where I see the limits of western mindsets regarding men’s sexual health. The playbook for overcoming shame, of improving sexual performance and attitudes, is to stop. Stop porn. Stop masturbation. Kill the urge. As a piece of persuasion, it does not inspire. It’s zero percent fun and I think it completely misses the point. We need a better paradigm.
Will Rex save us?
Rex came to my attention perusing the Humans of New York Instagram account. The photo caught my attention until I read the caption. The caption blew my face off.
I once provided thousands of orgasms over a five-year period, without ejaculating a single time. It’s called Mantak Chia’s Microcosmic Orbital Energy Raising. It’s a Daoist lovemaking technique where you don’t release your seed. You pull all your vital energies back into you, and spiral your electric body, to create a really powerful connection. Too powerful, honestly. It needs to be disclosed. Because most people don’t even realize you can take sex way deeper into an abyss of orgasmic pleasure.
I’m not even including the bit where Rex claims a woman had a shrine to him in her bathroom. Rex is the kind of self-proclaimed ladies man we don’t often see anymore. His confidence is approximately a 14 out of 10. Most of me thought he was way over the top and bullshitting, but in the off chance this guy was on to something, I had to know. So I started looking into this Mantak Chia guy, and man am I glad I did.
A new paradigm
The works of Mantak Chia are exactly the kind of thing that excites New Age dudes with bald heads, expensive sandals, and Japanese tattoos. And it is exactly this dismissive disdain I have for all things New Age that prevented me from ever considering if they were on to something. I am extremely reluctant to say this, but at least on this count, I think they’ve got a paradigm that could pull a lot of dudes out of the sexual health ruts we currently find ourselves in. Here’s what I mean by that.
Chia cowrote a book called The Multi-Orgasmic Man in 1996. Over the decades it’s become well known in sexual health circles for helping men achieve exactly what it purports to do. Part of its success is due to the practical exercises anyone can pick up and do - stuff like breathing, building pelvic floor strength (kegels), and building mind/body connections through self-pleasuring. But the main focus of the book is about gaining awareness of one’s sexual energy. This is described as “Sexual Kung Fu” (“kung fu” I learned is just the English translation of “practice” or “time spent doing hard training”). Sexual Kung Fu is an offshoot of Chinese Medicine, where everything from food to mindset to body temperature becomes a medicinal practice. Sexual Kung Fu dates back more than 2,000 years, and The Multi-Orgasmic Man is simply a highly distilled version of this marketed towards English speaking audiences.
Here’s my takeaway: sexual energy is a thing that can and should be cultivated as a matter of health. With practice one can circulate it throughout one’s body for the benefit of everything from sex to getting things done to the overall enjoyment of life. The book has a number of exercises and diagrams that describe how to do that. I recommend getting the book for learning what that looks like. What struck me philosophically though was that it interprets arousal as a channel for giving. This is in contrast to the term I am used to for describing sexual energy: horny. Within 5 pages of reading this book I realized how much of a dogshit term “horny” is as a catch all for arousal. “Horny” implies the point of sexual energy is to release it through sex or masturbation - it interprets arousal as a taking energy.
And this is where Sexual Kung Fu becomes more than just a manual for better sex. Erich Fromm, author of the 1956 classic “The Art of Loving,” makes a big stink about how the act of giving is the most powerful expression of aliveness. And yet in the time we spend outside of work we’re often too tired or lazy to engage in giving and intimacy. I found the ethos behind Sexual Kung Fu to be the first practical guide to reversing that mindset in the context of arousal.
But don’t take it from me. Take it from Kevin Gates, the hip hop artist behind mid - 2010s hits like “I Don’t Get Tired” and “Two Phones.” The man has reinvented himself as the official spokesman for semen retention, giving countless interviews on the subject. He reiterates a lot of similar points regarding cultivating energy for health and “life force” reasons. He’s somehow made New Age Guy tactics cool among young men, which has to be my favorite pop culture twist of 2023.
Combatting disembodiment with Kung Fu
What Kevin Gates, Rex, and Mantak Chia are all advocating for is dudes feeling connected to their bodies. It’s an antidote for a life spent increasingly online, which tends to widen the gap between body and mind. Porn is perhaps the most dramatic version of this. It takes bodily sensation out of masturbation and puts it into the head.
What I find exciting about Sexual Kung Fu is that it’s not trying to “fix” anybody. It’s a practice where the goal is self mastery. A major theme of this newsletter is that men are not served as well as they could be when the goal is fixing deficiencies. The vast majority of mental health tools marketed to men - including therapy, pills, meditation, and even psychedelics - are marketed to fix deficiencies like depression and anxiety. I’m glad these options exist! But the focus on “fixing” can lend itself to an attitude of wanting results immediately and feelings of shame if quick results are not achieved.
I think men are better served when the goal is a skill we care about, and we have the tools to build those skills. Instead of trying to fix issues with porn, intimacy, erections etc by stopping certain behaviors, the goal becomes channeling energy in a giving way by doing exercises a few minutes a day. It’s a way more exciting goal that gets at the root cause of the myriad sexual wellness issues men experience today.
New online course for emotional intelligence
Speaking of tools, I’ve created an online course for men’s emotional intelligence tools. It’s cheaper than therapy, and the focus is foundational skills in service of the emotional intelligence holy grail: to show up how we want to show up in any given circumstance. The first cohort kicks off December 5th, and subscribers to this newsletter get $50 off.
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This Kevin gates interviews are so. Good.