The Unnatural Vice

Are Men Fapping Their Power Away?

In ancient times Yom Kippur, the Jew’s most sacred day, meant extensive preparations for the High Priest. It required a week-long prayer and discipline regiment to be ready to fulfill his offering of an unblemished bull in the Holy of Holies as expiation for his people’s sins. On the final night, the High Priest would spend all night in prayer and contemplation, not daring to fall asleep in those last drowsy hours. He often needed help from associates who made disrupting noises to keep him on his feet.

While this sounds like a deep piety to make himself worthy of giving the offering, it was mainly for a different reason. If the High Priest ejaculated on that last night through nocturnal transmission, he would be considered unclean, unworthy until he purified himself and therefore unable fulfill his religious duties. Men, often to their chagrin, have no control over these “wet dreams”. They just happen.

Granting a mystical aura around male seed has been around since antiquity, a manifestation of man’s life essence, sometimes literally. One of my more popular notes told a story of my High School history teacher who spent a couple years as a missionary to a remote tribe. He and his wife shared a tent, a practice culturally taboo to these people. One day a few men approached him and said that they liked him and thought it their obligation to explain that his wife was a witch draining the life out of him. They thought men has limited sperm, it was a source of their life energy, and the missionary couple was having nonstop sex every night for months.

Even in modern times, there is a discipline of this generative seed being retained. While it is seen in Christianity as a spiritual discipline rather than due to its specific cosmic power, the behavior is the same. Married Orthodox priests are required to practice sexual abstinence a day before offering the Eucharist. Catholic priests are, of course, largely unmarried and therefore totally celibate. In Christian tradition, celibacy has always been seen as superior to sexual relations, as it shows a disdain for the world and self-mastery, a sacrifice to direct oneself towards higher things. It’s also emphasized there is nothing wrong with sexual relations in its proper place, and that the vast majority of mankind will not have the radical temperance to forego sex completely.

Yet it’s incorrect to assume celibacy entails a rejection of one’s manhood. Every boy entering his teenage years understands the years his entire sense of self transforms. He gains strength and aggression, his mind forming an insatiable urge to act upon the world. Competition becomes fiercer, energy and angst skyrockets. You constantly want to run through a wall or punch something.

Every parent knows when the time comes and often find healthy outlets for their sons. I once talked to a dad to the background noise of his teenage son banging away at his drum set. Even though it was in a garage separated from the house, he made a huge ruckus. I asked about it, and he replied with calculating reserve, “it will keep him from getting some chick pregnant.”

While attraction to women is overpowering their senses, sexual virility is only a subset of their transformation. As puberty hits, young men’s obsessions turn to other things besides girls. The first test of male resolve is to harness that primal fuel for something other than chasing tail. Some will spend hours learning the guitar, some use their newfound aggression to dominate in sports, and others will seek reckless adventure. There’s an insatiable need to hone themselves, to dominate their environment, to crush their opponents. They are proving their worth to themselves and the embryonic male hierarchy.

It’s commonly asserted that men would do nothing without women to motivate them to action, that all human achievement is due to men wanting to get laid. When one reads the just-so stories of evolutionary psychology, it’s littered with such assumptions, but history shows how bogus this is. While the urge for sex is powerful, it’s not the only instinct. Countless monks who willingly chose celibacy built grand monasteries and amassed huge amounts of wealth. Rich men who had plenty of sex at home decided to sail to the far reaches of the world for personal glory. There are countless scientists and engineers who burn the midnight oil, much to their wives’ chagrin, solving stupefying but fascinating issues. The ubiquity of guys foregoing sex to play war games online with their bros is so common it’s a meme.

In a world with no women, it would be a far more violent and unsafe one. While disappearance of the fairer sex would leave some weaker souls lacking any resolve to continue, most would simply pursue other things. They might conquer another tribe for glory. They might band together and master the natural world through scientific methods. They might go to Mars just because it’s there. While the will to sex is an incredibly strong force, it’s only a subset of men’s underlying will to harness their generative powers to shape the world. To dominate.

To modern ears, domination sounds deeply immoral, and men have been relentlessly pathologized due to this discomfort. You’re supposed to peaceful, rule-following, docile. Open conflict is disrupting. You’re supposed to have an empathetic, calm conversation. The fact nothing often gets accomplished is irrelevant. Direct competition in schools has been removed in favor of tests. Battles of will in business have been replaced with consensus manufacturing. Tasks and clear goals are unimportant while social stability is paramount. Mental health concerns have removed the ability of most institutions to truly test their recruit’s resolve.

It’s no secret that this pathologization has stunted male efforts to exercise their natural impulses, both with regard to sexual relations and leaving their mark on the world. While sexual licentiousness was very prevalent in previous generations, fewer and fewer couples are copulating now. Far from such abstinence being a moral success, it masks an even deeper moral failure. Men are tut-tutted to see their aggression as immoral, and women are trained to see male virility as unsafe and to be avoided. As the doors have closed on anything smelling of agency, more and more men are retreating to what was once called “the unnatural vice”, masturbation.

For modern man, this would seem to be morally better. After all, no one’s getting pregnant from going to YouPorn. It doesn’t hurt anyone, and women remain “safe”. They aren’t causing trouble, so socially it’s no big deal. In older times though, men had a far darker view of it.

St. Thomas Aquinas likely had the most negative view on “the unnatural vice”. He considered it going against man’s very nature, a middle finger to the created order. A man is, of course, supposed to use his generative faculties to towards to end of procreation. “The Unnatural Vice” is lust pushed inwards towards self-pleasure. Fornication, adultery, even incest and rape direct these generative energies outward, consistent with man’s nature, as horrific as their objective behavior. “The Unnatual Vice” does not and is an affront to God himself, which is why Aquinas considered it worse than all others.

Article 12. Whether the unnatural vice is the greatest sin among the species of lust?

I answer that, In every genus, worst of all is the corruption of the principle on which the rest depend. Now the principles of reason are those things that are according to nature, because reason presupposes things as determined by nature, before disposing of other things according as it is fitting. This may be observed both in speculative and in practical matters. Wherefore just as in speculative matters the most grievous and shameful error is that which is about things the knowledge of which is naturally bestowed on man, so in matters of action it is most grave and shameful to act against things as determined by nature. Therefore, since by the unnatural vices man transgresses that which has been determined by nature with regard to the use of venereal actions, it follows that in this matter this sin is gravest of all. After it comes incest, which, as stated above (Article 9), is contrary to the natural respect which we owe persons related to us.

To be frank, Aquinas considered jacking off to porn spiritually worse than banging a prostitute, though he would consider both mortal sins. He would even consider rape better, though he would also admonish the State to hang you for this crime without hesitation.

I’m not asking you to agree with Aquinas. Even Tradcaths find his conclusion hard to swallow. There’s a reason Scholasticism is seen as absurdly autistic, as beautiful and elegant as it can be. There is, however, a fundamental truth he is expressing far more in tune with reality than the cucked platitudes preached from the pulpit today.

Aquinas saw man as the generative sex, the active souls. Because of his basic nature, he seeks to outwardly impose his will on the world. Woman, on the other hand, are passive souls. The world imposes itself on her. Both the psychological and material makeup of the sexes make this distinction clear. Because God is the celestial active, generative force, men are closer to God in nature than women. This creates a natural and spiritual hierarchy of:

God → Men → Women → Children

This isn’t to say dominion is for the man’s pleasure. The book of Genesis portrays the fall as man’s original power over nature turning into a burden.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It also doesn’t mean those under him live to serve his selfish whims. In Christian tradition, he was tasked to use his strength with prudence, showing compassion for the weak and justice towards his subordinates. Just like there are good kings and bad kings, the form might be the same, but the substance varies. In order to have dominion though, one must have authority. In an ideal world, one is trained by elders at a young age to wield such power, and when they sunset a young man sits ready to rule. In the modern world, you’re lucky to get an inheritance at all. Those who want to find their fortunes in adventure have found the world entirely pacified, subject to an empire that will quash any attempt to change the current order with violence, no matter how justified. Inquisitive minds are stifled by the banality of academia. Even aspiring monks are being pinched, as I know a monk whose monastery is looked on with suspicion by the Vatican for being too traditionalist.

Technology and the social sphere continue to suffocate male spirit, but nothing is as disastrous as modern marriage. Once an opportunity for a man to have a small kingship of his own, man has been delegated to ever-increasing responsibilities with no authority, all for the impossible and unwanted demand for equality.

When Lila Rose says men don’t need sex, and abstinence is spiritually beneficial, every husband turns red with rage. It’s not because it’s untrue, per se, but because she’s trying to give her listeners moral latitude to ignore their husbands’ already openly maligned authority. While railing against feminism with their lips, even deeply religious women constantly want to refuse their husband’s reasonable demands and speak to the manager (God). Don’t expect the priest to take your side either. Most churches edit out that pesky wifely submission stuff from the readings now.

This is also why women tut-tutting porn use infuriates men. Like before, it not that they’re wrong, but most have no interest in men’s issues and are only trying to fulfill their natural desire to focus men on their needs. It’s pointless to call them out though, as most have no cognition of their underlying motivations. Women aren’t the problem, and they’re not solving this. When a typical pastor tells young men to man up and put down the porn, he is simultaneously terrified of preaching St. Paul’s views on marriage. Like the women, he is not looking for their spiritual well-being, but to maintain the inverse hierarchy where men are subject to women’s authority. They place women as spiritually closer to God, then they demand every man live with the self-discipline of monks without even the benefit of a monastery.

It’s within these contexts we need to look at pornography. Society has said man’s instinct of dominion is disordered, and therefore man’s entire nature. There are no outlets available to satisfy the average man’s nature, so he seeks something to take the edge off.

Like the comment Hannah Spier, MD shared, no one but the most wayward degenerate is proud of jacking off to porn. It doesn’t satisfy in any meaningful way, and the short rush of pleasure is soon replaced with a deep emptiness. He didn’t do any great deeds, conquer anything, or have anything to show for himself. The only positive is it’s pacifying nature. His normative masculine energy evaporates, and he can function in modern society again. Masturbation, far from being a normal impulse, is the reaction of a man to a caged life. It’s not even a simulacra of sexual conquest like hiring a call-girl. It’s the dissolution of man’s will into the void.

While it is natural for a man to get aroused by a naked woman, there is nothing natural about a man jerking off watching another man’s conquests. In the most charitable interpretation, it’s trying to live vicariously through the actors on the screen, reveling in an ecstasy he can’t have. In reality, it’s equivalent to sitting in the cuck chair. He’s degrading himself. He knows it, but just wants the insatiable, uncomfortable male energy to dissipate.

While men have it hard, which is a strong reason for pornography’s ubiquitousness, it has also only exacerbated the doom cycle of modern times. The natural impulses that would encourage a man to get out of his plight likely don’t rest in him anymore, literally rubbed out in front of a screen. Hence the unceasing negativity and shouting into the void, the complaining without doing. The feeling of helplessness without the sense of agency. If men weren’t jacking off constantly, we would have already burned everything to the ground.

It’s not a coincidence most men who quit porn feel like a veil is lifted from their eyes. Their focus improves; there’s mental acuity where dullness once reigned. It’s like their spirit reenters their body. Life returns, and their will emerges from its slumber. While ceaselessly joked about, the No-Fap movement has worked to direct men’s urges towards self-mastery, to understand themselves instead of running to a sedative to numb the angst away. Outside of a total religious awakening, Nofap and gym culture has likely had practical benefit to get men out of their stupor than anything else. There’s a celebration of the small victories, and the realization of something better being attainable. As one NoFap participant put it:

And here’s the part people don’t like admitting: when you always choose jerking off over real interaction, you’re not “protecting your energy” or “working on yourself.” You’re avoiding discomfort. You’re choosing the option that asks nothing of you.

I didn’t wake up one day and decide to be confident. What happened was more boring and more real: I stopped edging. I stopped escaping into solo fantasy. And suddenly that energy had nowhere to go except outward.

At first it was awkward as hell. I made moves on women I would’ve previously overthought for months. Sometimes random women. Sometimes women I’d known for years but never acted on because I was “not ready yet.” Spoiler: you’re never ready.

Some interactions went nowhere. Some were clumsy. Some surprised me. And yes — some led to sex. Not because I became some alpha overnight, but because I was finally present, imperfect, and actually there.

Quite frankly, a world without porn but littered with prostitution would be better than what we have now. At least men would use their primal energy in a properly external way, even if disordered. Augustine said something along the same lines, and Aquinas seemed to agree.

What is filthier, uglier, and more disgraceful than whores, procurers, and such-like plagues of humanity? Remove prostitutes from the social order, however, and lust will destroy it.

De Ordine, Book 2

Want to end porn use? I’m all on board, but what can make that happen? Can open competition in schools make a comeback? Can heated conversations in the office become acceptable again? Can youthful shenanigans be done without fearing years in prison and a ruined life? Can men join martial organizations without getting overrun with feds? Can our military do cool stuff again? Can men have real authority and agency over their homes, neighborhood, and communities, even if it scares the old fogies?

Most men want this, and the ones that don’t are either too cucked to be worth our attention or enemies working at the highest echelons of power. This isn’t to say it can just happen though. The State has maintained a massive propaganda apparatus for decades, and anyone who thinks porn is not pillar of this structure is deluding himself. The pacifying nature of porn is well known, which is why when the IDF once rushed into Palestine in the early 2000’s, they broadcast smut on all the stations. If they can’t control man’s will, they will find a means to destroy it, either through extreme violence or the soft glow of a naked woman on the black mirror.

If men stopped fapping, it doesn’t automatically mean massive social upheavals will happen, but they will have the potential to happen again instead of man’s agency wiped out by their very hands. There’s a reason many boxers had a discipline to not engage in sexual activity before a match. That raw energy, that hunger, is how men push forward. We need to get comfortable with the discomfort again.

I will admit we have a chicken and egg question. Men fap from lack of discipline due to the world being subsumed in stasis and safety. To get men to stop fapping, the world needs something worth engaging in, but the creative destruction to form this world requires men to stop fapping. At the individual level, we can do what we can for personal discipline, but the efforts of man alone won’t bridge this chasm. Luckily, channeling this energy literally brings us closer to God, as fixing this mess will likely require Him to intercede directly.

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