Do Your Balls Hang Low?

Is Ballmaxxing the Next Big Thing In Testicles?

Last week it was well-balanced vaginal microbiomes. This week it’s overflowing scrota. (I looked it up; the plural of scrotum could be scrotums or scrota. The latter was clearly funnier.)

Before we get into that, however, a quick update, a preview, a thank you, and an ask.

The update is basically that there is no update. Alito extended his stay for three extra days leaving mifepristone access untouched until tomorrow at 5 pm. We still don’t know what the court will do after that.

I’m traveling this week, so I wrote this earlier than usual and don’t have time to fully dive into the Oval Office photo op on maternal health. I do know that Trump was caught on camera asleep at his desk again, that Dr. Oz thinks one out of three Americans is under-babied, and that a website to help you find prenatal care is less than useless if you’re one of the 7.8 million people Republicans are kicking off of Medicaid to fund their tax cuts for the rich. We can talk about the details in our next issue.

In the meantime, I wanted to thank you for reading Sex on Wednesday and ask you to share it with friends, families, and coworkers (except maybe Lindsey from HR—she might give you a lecture of what is and isn’t workplace appropriate).

I’ve turned on a referral program. If you share this or any other issue with friends and a few of them subscribe, you’ll receive discounts on your favorite Sex on Wednesday tees, totes, or stickers.

• Get 5% off total merch order for 3 referrals.

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Just use the share button to send a link in text or email, or post it to social media. Substack does the rest. Get enough referrals, and you could be drinking out of your very own That’s Not How It F**king Works mug every morning like I do.

Thanks for your help. I have a literal ballbuster for you this week. Enjoy.

Is Ballmaxxing the Next Big Thing in Testicles?

Remember when Tucker Carlson told men to start tanning their testicles to improve (or was it prove) their masculinity? Well, the balls are back and this time instead of getting heated with a special red light that retailed for $1,650, they’re being filled with run-of-the-mill saline solution. And a lot of it.

Multiple media outlets—from Fox News to Forbes—ran stories last week on ballmaxxing, the practice of injecting saline into your scrotum to make it bigger. If we’re to believe the hype this offshoot of looksmaxxing is sweeping the nation (or at least reddit) and endangering the lives of young men. I’m not convinced, but I never miss an opportunity to talk testicles.

The buzz started with a Men’s Health article by Arrielle Domb. The article includes first-hand accounts from six ballmaxxers and references to the subreddit r/salineinflation, which has over 8,700 members. These redditors apparently share tips and pictures and wax poetic about the amazing experiences they’ve had with their swollen sacs. For example, “Jack” told Domb that “Watching it happen and feeling it in real time is intense. The whole buildup is electric. It’s similar to really good foreplay.” Another maxxer said that it made him really horny especially when he walked around in public knowing that people could notice his enlarged package. The article also quotes a post in which a redditor wrote, “I felt so manly, manly man.”

Ballmaxxing is a DIY practice in which you essentially insert a needle into your scrotal sac and attach it to an IV bag full of saline, glucose, and dextrose. The process can take half an hour or an hour and a half depending on how much liquid you want to get in there. Maxxers acknowledge that the needle can be painful and that the liquid can burn as it goes in. The engorgement lasts anywhere from 24 to 48 hours before your body naturally reabsorbs the liquids and your scrotes go back to their normal size.

The procedure has risks. One maxxer who spoke to Men’s Health said he overfilled once which caused burning in his groin. The same man said he once hit a vein with the needle and caused so much bruising that his scrotum turned blue. (I guess blue balls do exist after all.) Redditors have also posted about internal burns caused by microwaving the IV fluids for too long as well as less serious complications like itching, bruising, blisters, and cysts. Urologists warn that the practice can also lead to long-term nerve damage.

We’ve talked about penis enlargement on many Wednesdays. Men will go to great lengths (pun intended and probably used before) to get a bigger dick because they’ve been culturally conditioned to think bigger is better, and they hope a large member will impress others whether it’s guys in the locker room or sexual partners of any gender.

Some ballmaxxers appear to have similar motivations. They think women will like a bigger package and want to feel like they have more to offer, but others do it for the sensation. Maxxers say that being heavier than normal enhances sex and feels good even when they’re just walking around. The mix of pleasure and pain has a BDSM element to it.

It’s unclear if maxxers think it makes them look better. In fact, it sounds like many of them lean into how unnatural it looks. One told Men’s Health, “I know it’s freaky and abnormal looking—that’s exactly what I like about it.” Others admitted that their partners weren’t into it, and one man with a history of body dysmorphia seemed to acknowledge that this practice might stem from the same place psychologically. He talked about it as a way to take control over his life and later acknowledged that his compulsion to expand his scrotum eased when he got a better job and started a new relationship.

We’re seeing a lot of body modification right now. Plastic surgery is in style. People are no longer asking for changes that others can’t quite place (did she have work done or is she just well-rested?). They are tweaking, tucking, pulling, smoothing, chiseling, and filling, and they’re proud of it. For Hollywood stars, it’s a necessary part of the job. For the Mar-a-Lago set, it’s proof of their beliefs, their loyalty, and their wealth.

And then there are the looksmaxxers. This group grew out of discussions of appearance on incel forums (dark, dark places that are rife with resentment toward and hatred of women). Looksmaxxers are obsessed with becoming as physically attractive as possible. They focus on their cheekbones, their jawlines, their eyes, and their physique. Apparently, they are also preoccupied with their clavicles or collarbones. One of the “stars” of the movement actually goes by “Clavicular.”

(I like to think that I have nothing in common with these people, but I will say I have a bit of a collarbone obsession. A physical therapist one told me that they were supposed to lay flat across your chest, which mine absolutely do not do. Since then, I’ve noticed people who have flat ones and experienced pangs of jealousy.)

While some looksmaxxers turn to plastic surgeons to “improve” their appearance, others DIY it dangerously. They use steroids, break bones in their legs in the hopes of getting taller, and smash their faces with hammers in pursuit of the chiseled cheekbones shared by every man who graced the cover of Soap Opera Digest in the 1980s.

Looksmaxxers embody everything that’s wrong with the manosphere. In a January article for The Atlantic, staff writer Thomas Chatterton Williams calls the movement “narcissistic, cruel, racist, shot through with social Darwinism, and proudly anti-compassion.” He goes on to say:

If you had to pick a single corner of the internet that best captures the vices of the Trump era, you couldn’t beat the looksmaxxers. Perhaps more than any other group, they reveal the depth of the moral crisis that confronts young men today.

Williams also explains that looksmaxxing isn’t about appealing to sexual partners, it’s about appealing to other men in the movement.

The primary goal of the looksmaxxer is not sexual pleasure or mating prowess… but to mog and achieve status within the pecking order of their same-sex digital community.

For those like me who are unfamiliar with the word mog, it means to look or perform better than others; to dominate; to outclass. According to Merriam-Webster, it’s a word unique to the manosphere that is apparently based on AMOG or Alpha Male of Group. M-W, by the way, defines that manosphere as “a network of websites, online forums, and other digital media typically characterized by anti-feminist and misogynistic views and the promotion of ultraconservative models of masculinity.”

As horrified as I am by the manopshere and looksmaxxing and anyone who calls himself Clavicular, I’m not convinced ballmaxxing is related. If the men talking about it are being honest, the practice is at least as much about how it feels as it is about how it looks. I read it more as a fetish than an expression of narcissism or attempt to gain alpha male status. It’s still disturbing because it’s dangerous, but it lives in a different world in my mind—one that’s closer to autoerotic asphyxiation than looksmaxxing.

Of course I could be wrong. I admittedly hadn’t heard of ballmaxxing until this week, and I’m basing my opinion largely on what the men Dome interviewed for the Men’s Health article said. Second-hand information from a small sample cannot be considered reliable data on which to draw a conclusion, but I have, and I’m going to do it again right now. Ready?

I do not, in fact, believe that ballmaxxing is sweeping the nation. (Nor is babyfishmouth, but we’ve known that for a longtime.)

Every article written last week relied on the same examples from the same six men quoted in the Men’s Health piece that I’m talking about here. And while the subreddit has upwards of 8,700 members, that’s not all that impressive. The top humor group on reddit (r/funny) has 67 million members, r/gaming has 47 million, and r/showerthought which is listed as humor/philosophy has 34 million members. More importantly, we have no idea how many members of r/salineinflation have actually stuck a needle into their scrotum and hooked themselves to an IV. Most may very well just be bigballcurious.

As a sex educator, I must warn that inflating your scrotum with saline is a very bad idea just in case there is anyone reading who might have considered it. But as a long-time studier of news around sex, I’m pretty confident in saying that this is not the next big thing that parents and health care providers should worry about (pun intended and probably used before).