It’s No School November in New Jersey, a tradition that dates back to my childhood at least and apparently results in a very crowded Disney World. With the second week of the month often including Election Day, Veteran’s Day, and the annual meeting of the state teacher’s union in Atlantic City, many districts close for the whole week. Fun when I was a kid, slightly less fun as a mom with a lot of work to do.
It’s also No Nut November which as far as I can tell has never been fun. Every year I write about the absurdity of this annual anti-celebration in which men are told to refrain from masturbation or possibly ejaculation altogether. My apologies in advance if I tell the same stories or make the same jokes. I fear there are only so many things to say about NOT choking the chicken.
When Seinfeld and his friends tried to be “masters of their domain” and made a bet to see who could keep their hands off themselves the longest, I laughed really hard. It was the 1990s and no one was talking about masturbation publicly. Plus, it was the first episode of the iconic show that I’d ever seen. And I found it hysterical that Elaine caved early after taking an aerobics class (Were we still doing aerobics in the 90s?) behind JFK, Jr. He was pretty dreamy.
This yearly celebration of no-fap culture, however, does not come from a place of humor. Nicole Prause, a sex researcher who studies the origins and harms of the NoFap movement traces the non-celebration to a 2004 post on a body building forum. The poster explained that his girlfriend was going away for 49 days and had demanded he not ejaculate until she got back. (Had she never heard of phone sex?) He continued to post about the daily challenges of following her mandates.
Prause has long noted the overlap of NoFap ideology with misogyny, and this inaugural discussion proves that point. In an article on her Medium page, Prause writes, “Commenters in the thread were vicious. A number referred to the girlfriend as a ‘bitch.’ They recommended that he cheat on her while she was gone, or sexually assault her when she returned to teach her a lesson for being so unreasonable.”
The no fun really begins a few years later when the first NoFap subreddit is started in 2011. Read Prause’s history for more information, but just to give you an idea of who these guys and their followers are, one of them left to start a new subreddit focused on “men extracting sex from women” and the other created a NoFapArmy “where members would be given military ranks, grouped into warring armies, and listed as ‘dead’ when they masturbated or failed in some other way.”
These forums and the thousands that spun off from them are known to promote misogyny, antisemitism, false conspiracy theories, and violence. They blame women and porn for why they want sex but aren’t getting any. Remember, the Proud Boys are proud anti-fappers who have a strict rule that members can only masturbate once every 30 days and only if there is a woman less than one yard away who has consented and who is “not a prostitute.” I still can’t wrap my head around why anyone would want to join a group this concerned with whether and when they stick their hands down their own pants.
I also can’t wrap my head around why anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed by the incels and no-faps would want to participate in No Nut November. Masturbation is one of the very few things in life that is pretty much all upside—it feels good, relieves stress, and comes with numerous proven health benefits while at the same time being free, readily available, non-caloric, and carrying no risk of pregnancy and STIs.
When my older daughter was about 2, she let go of my husband’s hand in a busy parking lot. He ran after her, scooped her up, and explained that holding hands in a parking lot was non-negotiable. She replied, “No Daddy, it’s not not non-negotiable.” I think she needed one more not to get to her real point, but her phrase (and her fabulously high-pitched little kid voice) keeps coming to mind. Let’s celebrate Not Not Not No Nut November.
New Antibiotic May Work on Resistant Strains of Gonorrhea
There could be a new antibiotic to treat gonorrhea on the market as soon as 2025, which is important because the wily bacterium that causes this second most common bacterial STI have already become resistant to pretty much everything we have thrown at it over the years.
As early as the 1940s, the bacterium was resistant to sulfanilamides; by the 1980s it was resistant to penicillins and tetetracyclines; and in 2007 the CDC stopped recommending fluoroquinolones (the class of drugs that includes Cipro). This left cephalosporins as the only effective treatment. The CDC currently recommends an injected dose of ceftriaxone sometimes combined with oral azithromycin. While we haven’t seen uncurable cases, some infections are become more difficult to treat and there have been cases, even in the U.S., of strains that show resistance to this treatment protocol.
Last week, researchers released the results from a late-stage clinical trial of a new drug called zoliflodacin which is the first in a new class of antibiotics called spiropyrimidinetriones. The clinical trial included 930 participants with gonorrhea at 16 trial sites in five countries including the United States. Participants were randomly assigned to get either the single dose of oral zoliflodacin or a shot of ceftriaxone combined with oral azithromycin. For the most part, the new medication was as effective as the existing drug though the study did find that zoloflodacin was less effective against gonorrhea of the throat than it was for infection of the genitals or anus.
While we might normally want a new drug to be more effective than what we have now, in this case just as good is just as important. Widespread use of this new drug could cut down on the spread of antibiotic resistant strains of gonorrhea. Moreover, because the drug was specifically created and will only be used to treat gonorrhea, it should take longer for the bacteria to develop resistance. In contrast, ceftriaxone and azithromycin are used against other infections, and the more they are used, the more opportunities bacteria like Neisseria gonorrhoeae have to develop resistance to them.
Zoflilodacin is being developed and tested by a partnership between the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership—a nonprofit set up by the WHO—and U.S.-based Innoviva Specialty Therapeutics. The goal of the nonprofit was to help encourage the development of new antibiotics because this is a place where the free market system has failed to encourage innovation.
Companies are not eager to spend multiple millions of dollars to create a drug that cures people after 10 days when they could put their R&D money into developing daily drugs for chronic disease or those that make you thinner or happier or harder. As Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (aka the new Anthony Fauci) told NBC News, “Treating gonorrhea, it’s not going to be your next Ozempic.”
Profit motives aside this is a huge breakthrough as there are an estimated 1.6 million cases of gonorrhea in the U.S. each year and 82 million worldwide. Left untreated gonorrhea can lead to ongoing health issues including infertility.
Cocaine Hippos Won’t Stop Going Berserk; Colombian Government May Stop Them For Good
When the hippos in Sandra Boynton’s classic board book went berserk, the worst thing that happened was that six hippos were left quite distressed (seemingly because the hippos they were hitting on left without putting out, but maybe I’m reading too much into this children’s classic). When drug lord Pablo Escobar’s hippos went berserk, however, they changed eco-systems, threatened agriculture, hurt people, and just kept making more hippos.
The hippos have been causing problems for people around the Magdalena River since their owner was killed in a 1993 shootout with police. Escobar’s estate was auctioned off and many of the exotic animals that he’d smuggled into Bogota were shipped off to zoos in other countries, but the four hippos—one male and three females—were deemed too big to move and too expensive to keep. They were essentially allowed to roam free in an area where they had good living conditions and no predators. (Four hippos all alone…) Big mistake. Thirty years later, there are approximately 160 hippos wandering the area, and the Colombia government has had enough.
When we first discussed the cocaine hippos in 2021, the government was being thwarted in its attempts to use a contraceptive on the hippos called GonaCon, which was developed by scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Service. GonaCon is a vaccine given to both male and female animals that prevents the body from making sex hormones thereby rendering the animals infertile and possibly less frisky. We’ve used it on squirrels, rats, swine, wild horses, and elk in the United States, but it had never been tried on hippos. An animal rights group sued on behalf of the hippos. Among other things, they wanted the Colombian government to stick with a different contraceptive that had a proven hippo track record.
While I haven’t been able to find information on which contraceptive method they ultimately went with, the recent announcement from the government suggested that hippo birth control had failed to sufficiently cut down on hippo babymaking. In March, the government officially declared the hippos an invasive species, paving the way for them to take more extreme measures.
Last week, the measures were announced—while some of the hippos will be transferred to other countries (about 60 of them are going to India), the remaining animals may be surgically sterilized or even euthanized. So much for going berserk.
With my sincere apologies to Sandra Boynton:
60 hippos act like beasts gets shipped off to the Far East
50 hippos spared the trip stay around and get the snip
40 hippos start to fear they’ll end up with the spear
6 hippos on the pill hope they will avoid the kill
4 hippos alone once more miss their cocaine over-lord
Nice work. I honestly (somehow, don’t know how...maybe a very big degree of media selectivity?) have avoided hearing about most of the anti-masturbation activities happening this month. But I find myself less and less surprised with each passing year how weird and dangerous some men can get. Sigh...looking forward to your next piece.