Sounds Fake But Okay
Sounds Fake But Okay
Ep 159: An Asexual Perspective of No Nut November
Hey what's up hello! As November comes to an end, we reflect on the ever-present No Nut November. What's the point of this challenge? Who participates? And what does it tell us about how the world views sex?
Episode transcript: www.soundsfakepod.com/transcripts/no-nut-november
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(0:00)
SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)
SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: No Nut November.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod.
KAYLA: M’y oh my.
SARAH: M’ovember.
KAYLA: M’ovember! Novemb’er. Novem’ber. Yeah.
SARAH: Mm hmm.
KAYLA: Mm hmm.
SARAH: Good.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: Hi guys, how you doin’?
KAYLA: This is — we’re giving you some air time to respond. Oh my god, I’m so glad to hear that. Awesome.
SARAH: Or, I’m so sorry.
KAYLA: Awesome, I hope that was a really good conversation for you all. Before we get started today we just have some housekeeping. But the first item of housekeeping is we want to share another podcast with you that is good that you can listen to not in place of us but also—
SARAH: Alongside us.
KAYLA: Alongside us.
PELAYO ALVAREZ: Have you been told you cannot be LGBTQ and spiritual?
MELISSA WEISZ: Forbidden Apple podcast is a space that gives voice to queer individuals to reclaim their spirituality.
PELAYO: Whatever that means to you.
MELISSA: Come find us over at the Forbidden Apple Podcast. I am Melissa Weisz and I grew up in an ultra Orthodox Hasidic Jewish home which was very, very religious.
PELAYO: I am Pelayo Alvarez and I grew up back in Spain also in a very religious Catholic environment.
MELISSA: And now we explore what spirituality means to us as out and proud queer individuals.
PELAYO: Come join us on all streaming platforms.
SARAH: Hey it’s us again.
KAYLA: Hey we’re back. Wasn’t that fun? So yeah, definitely check them out and in the most recent episode, you can hear a little bit of us talking for like 30 seconds.
SARAH: And the episode before that they had Gaby Dunn on.
KAYLA: Which is wild. So clearly an upgrade of a podcast again don’t stop listening to us but that can be the one that you tell people you listen to and ours can be your guilty pleasure.
SARAH: No one should ever feel guilty about their asexuality, Kayla.
KAYLA: No it’s not because of what we talk about it’s because we’re bad —
SARAH: It’s cause we’re bad okay.
KAYLA: It’s cause we’re bad at what we do. Both topics of both podcasts are great. Their intro is superior to ours, they are more professional, they have better — I don’t want to say they have better people on, we have great people on.
SARAH: We have the best people, as Donald Trump would say.
KAYLA: As— yeah.
SARAH: Anyway.
KAYLA: Anyway, other housekeeping is… we recently hit our latest Patreon goal, which is very exciting, which will help us transcribe episodes faster and be able to pay for the upkeep of our website and stuff like that. I’ve decided that our next goal once we hit it, will be to support the US Postal Service by getting 1-2 PO boxes you can send us postcards and buy stamps from the postal service.
SARAH: Us single-handedly saving the USPS?
KAYLA: Yes.
SARAH: Couldn’t be us.
KAYLA: Couldn’t be us. But it will be us once we receive a couple more dollars. So if you want to do that go to patreon.com/soundsfakepod.
SARAH: Do it. Great! Is that it?
KAYLA: No. We are also going to be paneling for an amazing event. You know more about it than me so do you want to talk about it?
SARAH: Yeah, as you know. I have become ARMY on accident and by that I mean I’m a BTS stan.
KAYLA: It really wasn’t on accident, we all knew it was going to happen.
SARAH: Anyway. Kayla’s friend — my friend now also —
KAYLA: Our transcriber.
SARAH: Our wonderful, wonderful transcriber Padya is part of this — it’s called Dream Glow. It’s a lit journal.
KAYLA: It’s a lit journal that’s based on BTS but is meant for artwork and writing that is inspired by BTS.
SARAH: It’s not necessarily BTS.
KAYLA: It’s validating art that’s inspired by other art and being like, just because it’s fan behavior doesn’t mean it’s not high art that shouldn’t be appreciated. They are a lit journal, they have one issue out now, they are doing a professional development where they’re going to have people talk about writing and talk about art and just their crafts so people can watch these panels and learn new skills and we are doing one on podcasting.
(5:00)
SARAH: We are! It’s going to be — I forgot when this is happening. It’s this coming weekend, folks.
KAYLA: Hold on.
SARAH: Listen, let me just tell you, the title is Going Full Jimin. That’s all you need to know. That’s all you need. And Kayla’s just going to be there —
KAYLA: Yeah I don’t know. I’m just going to be there. Sarah’s going to do most of the talking. What is it? There’s panels on STEM and medicine, marketing, visual arts and social justice, clinical social work, religion, education, writing and publishing, so a bunch of really cool stuff.
SARAH: And then us!
KAYLA: And us. So ours is on December 5th at 2.30 PM Eastern, which is a Saturday.
SARAH: Registration.
KAYLA: Registration is free, I’ll put the link to the registration thing in the description of this episode but even if you’re not ARMY you can come chill with me because I don’t think you need to be a BTS stan to understand what we’re going to be talking about.
SARAH: You don’t, you really don’t, I’m just using Kayla to help me organize my thoughts and to be just the other half of the podcast.
KAYLA: Yeah I’m really here, as we all know, Sarah brings the content and I bring the organization. That’s how it’s always been and that’s how it will be.
SARAH: Kayla brings the organization, I bring a first sentence and some vibes.
KAYLA: Yeah, that’s it. So I’ll put the links, also follow Dream Glow @dreamglowmag on Twitter and Instagram. It’s so cool, Padya is one of the editors-in-chief and the other people are a bunch of people I know from work or friends so they’re a lovely group of people who are all — no not all of them — mostly very queer. I can’t speak for all of them, but I know at least two of them.
SARAH: At least two of them.
KAYLA: Pretty gay.
SARAH: Incredible and excellent. So yeah, that’s a thing that’s happening. Hear me wax poetic about Jimin I guess.
KAYLA: You know you want to, it’s free, so.
SARAH: It’s free.
KAYLA: No excuse not to.
SARAH: Wonderful, okay. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?
KAYLA: This week, oh I should find who gave me this idea, I think it was in our email. This week we’re talking about No Nut November. Yeah so this was an email from someone named Byron who emailed in and said they were talking to some of their online friends about No Nut November or NNN and how they’re talking about how it’s weird and often rooted in weird sex and orgasms are bad, people are incels, women are temptresses, or it’s used by people trying to break a porn addiction or something. But either way, Byron thought it’d be interesting to hear an aspec take on NNN. So, we as experts of nutting, are going to be talking to you about No Nut November.
SARAH: Listen, for me, every November is No Nut November. Let’s be real. But, that’s not true of all aspecs.
KAYLA: Oh no cause it also encompasses — masturbation also counts.
SARAH: Also a lot of aspecs do the schmex.
KAYLA: Do the schmex and do the mex. The schmex mex. I love that personally. In general, I find No Nut November weird but I guess funny to hear people talk about.
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: I think one of my favorites this year is that there is this series on TikTok — I might have saved the TikTok cause I knew we were going to talk about this. But it’s this group of college guys who all are in a Snapchat group for No Nut November and if people fail, they have to leave the Snap group and the people does exit interviews with them, like “what happened? Why did you leave?” which is ridiculous but —
SARAH: It’s set up in a funny way.
KAYLA: One guy was sitting next to some girl, it was his girlfriend or whatever, he was like, “dude why’d you fail,” and he was like, “I don’t know,” and the girl sat next to him and was “mm I don’t know” and the other guy was like, “you know shower times get to you, I’m surprised I made it this far, good luck to all the other guys out there,” it was like a fucking sport. It was — that was entertaining. But, it is weird.
(10:00)
SARAH: It’s such a strange concept that that’s even a thing that exists.
KAYLA: I wonder what’s the history. I’m going to look up and see if there’s a history behind No Nut November.
SARAH: I feel like a lot of times it’s talked about in a joking way with people who are shmexy positive.
KAYLA: It’s always guys. You never hear girls talk about No Nut November. Guys just being like, “I’m not going to nut, I’m not going to masturbate.”
SARAH: I think nut is used less often with women.
KAYLA: Yeah, no, I know some girls that use it ironically because they think it’s a funny way to talk about the female orgasm. I don’t know. But to me, it refers more to masturbation than it does actual sex. It feels like something that guys who aren’t in relationships, “I’m going to try not to masturbate, I fucking love porn, it’s going to be so hard.”
SARAH: That’s a good point, I was thinking of it as more of a sex-with-partner thing but I think you’re right. It is more of a—
KAYLA: So here’s the history. I looked it up on wikipedia.org. Which we’re also on and that’s fine. “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.” So it doesn’t say sex.
SARAH: It does say you can’t have sex.
KAYLA: Which you can, I don’t think.
SARAH: Well, you could do sexual things, you’re just not allowed to nut.
KAYLA: You just can’t finish. You just have to have blue balls for the entire month. I think it’s interesting they specifically say masturbating. “It originated in the early 2010s and grew in popularity on social media after 2017. At that date, its converse, Destroy Dick December, also started to be mentioned.” I’ve never heard of that, have you heard of that?
SARAH: I hate that. I’ve never heard of it.
KAYLA: Okay, here’s the history. And then I will tell you about Destroy Dick December. “No Nut November is an internet challenge” — whatever. “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” — can we please take a minute to talk about how horrible the word “fap” is — ”which encourages its members not to masturbate. The Reddit community /r/NoNutNovember grew from 16,500 subscribers in November 2018 to 52,000 subscribers as of November 2019 and now has 85,000. After some public figures, such as Paul Joseph Watson” — don’t know who that is — “promoted the campaign, E. J. Dickson of Rolling Stone Magazine suggested that the movement has been coopted by the far-right. Vice Media criticized the challenge in 2018 after followers sent threats to” someone’s Twitter. “It’s described as Extremely Online.” I don’t know what that means. Anyway.
SARAH: It doesn’t exist in real life. It only exists online.
KAYLA: Anyway, Destroy Dick December is supposed to follow No Nut November and is the “counterpoint, encouraging participants to take part in sexual activities such as intercourse and masturbation, after abstaining from them during the previous month.”
SARAH: So my question is, what’s the point? To prove you can? To prove you can abstain for 30 days? It’s not like these people — obviously, some people do have porn addictions or whatever and maybe they’re trying to get past that but then if they’re also participating in Destroy Dick December it kind of defeats the purpose of No Nut November.
KAYLA: It does. I found a satirical article by some college, “Seriously you failed No Nut November. What now?” There are serious articles about what No Nut November reveals about the far-right.
(15:00)
SARAH: Oh man. I mean I can see there being a connection with the whole incel situation.
KAYLA: I think so too. When you think of No Nut November it doesn’t seem like a bunch of TikTok being like who can last longer. That seems funny, as weird as it is.
SARAH: That’s a reality show on TikTok.
KAYLA: That’s funny, as weird as I do think it is to be discussing every moment of when you masturbate with your friends. That I don’t love.
SARAH: Good thing you’re not participating.
KAYLA: Yeah, very good thing. But when I think about the guys who are doing it, it’s incels who are living in their mom’s basement and are mad that no girl wants them so they masturbate all the time.
SARAH: So in protest of the fact that no woman wants them because they like Trump, and they live in their mom’s basement, in protest, they can’t get off for a whole month.
KAYLA: Which doesn’t make sense. Who are you doing it for also?
SARAH: One would think you’re doing it for yourself.
KAYLA: Some people are talking about health benefits.
SARAH: What are they?
KAYLA: I’m pretty sure masturbating is good for your health.
SARAH: I’ve also heard — it’s like a stress reliever.
KAYLA: It’s a stress reliever, there’s other stuff. There’s those old wives’ tales like if you masturbate too much you go blind or something. I think that’s something parents tell teenage boys.
SARAH: There’s no science rooted in that one.
KAYLA: Here’s some other articles. Can I read you some “see also” things from Wikipedia?
SARAH: Oh please!
KAYLA: We can either see also “Masturbate-a-thon,” “National Masturbation Day,” “Wank Week,” or “The Contest,” which one would you like hear about first?
SARAH: Wait what was the last one?
KAYLA: The Contest.
SARAH: That’s vague, I need to know more.
KAYLA: Okay. Oh, this is from an episode of Seinfeld. There was an episode of Seinfeld, they were like, who can go the longest without masturbating. It’s from 1992. This is just an episode of Seinfeld, which I guess could be the very beginning of No Nut November, I don’t know. Let’s read about the Masturbate-a-thon.
SARAH: Is this who can masturbate long?
KAYLA: Let me tell you the logo of the Masturbate-a-thon is quite good. It is a dick with wings but the back of it has legs like a dog and it has a tail.
SARAH: I don’t think I like that very much.
KAYLA: It’s pretty funny. I think it’s funny. “The Masturbate-a-thon is an event in which participants masturbate to raise money for charity and increase the public awareness and dispel the shame and taboos that exist about this form of sexual activity. From 1998 to 2003, the Masturbate-a-thon raised around $25,000 for women's health initiatives and HIV prevention, education and treatment organizations, and has contributed to debates about safer sex and alternative sex methods. The event awards several honors for those who raise the most money.” Okay, but how does it work?
SARAH: I’m just thinking about how Relay for Life and stuff works.
KAYLA: Is it about who can masturbate the most and how do they verify?
SARAH: This person’s like, “I will give $5 for every time you nut.”
KAYLA: “In 1995, a San Francisco” — of course — ”based sex toy shop declared May to be Masturbation Month.” Okay. “Since then, it has encouraged people to get sponsors as a fundraiser for charities with a sex-positive focus.” So it’s like Relay for Life where you get sponsors but how do they?
SARAH: How does the donation aspect of it work?
KAYLA: First, a LIVE EVENT was held at —
SARAH: That’s just live porn.
KAYLA: Okay but how does this work? This is not telling me how it works. This is just an episode about masturbation now, sorry. The first live event? Okay but how? You’re not telling me how!
SARAH: I do think because this has now just turned into an episode about masturbation—
KAYLA: It was recorded as part of a documentary. Okay. Now this I would watch.
SARAH: But I do think it is interesting that — what is that face for? Kayla just made a very—
KAYLA: 2009. Some person won the Masturbate-a-thon for masturbating for guess how long?
SARAH: I — literally an episode of this podcast is me just asking how sex works. How would I answer this question?
KAYLA: Guess. Just an estimate.
SARAH: I can’t.
KAYLA: You have to.
SARAH: No.
(20:00)
KAYLA: It’s less than a day so give me a number of hours.
SARAH: Twelve.
KAYLA: It’s nine and a half hours.
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: Yes. Nine and a half hours this person masturbated for. I don’t understand what that means. Does that mean it took them 9 hours to finish? Or they just kept doing—
SARAH: Over and over again?
KAYLA: And restarting every time? So, they’re still not — oh it was canceled in 2014 due to a lack of registrants. That’s so sad. How does it work though? And how does it work?
SARAH: I don’t know. I do think that it’s very interesting that for men specifically, masturbation, especially for teenage boys, that’s normal, they’re just going to do that if you’re not in a relationship, but as they get older it’s like, “oh haha you’re not in a relationship? You’re just going to masturbate” but then for women this is a thing you don’t— just no.
KAYLA: I did not know that women masturbated until I was in college.
SARAH: Really?
KAYLA: Yes. I remember vividly having a conversation with some guys in our freshman dorm about it and I was like, “ew what, no women don’t do that!” To me, it was a thing that guys did.
SARAH: Yeah cause it’s only talked about in regards to cis dudes.
KAYLA: Yeah I had no idea.
SARAH: Which is part of the reason I think the whole No Nut November thing is very much based around cis dudes because if other people of other gender identities were to be more open about it, it wouldn’t be seen as a joke thing, it would be seen as “why the fuck are you talking about this?”
KAYLA: But it’s just weird to me because I think we should normalize masturbating obviously and especially for women. To me, it’s almost over normalized.
SARAH: Especially for teenagers I think. Like you feel like you have to.
KAYLA: I was friends with a lot of quite religious people in high school and I remember this one girl asking my guy friend, she was like, “well you obviously masturbate right, like all guys do,” and he was like, “no I straight up don’t,” which I don’t know if he was lying or not but he was like, “religiously it’s not right to me I don’t masturbate,” and she was like, “yes you do you’re a guy in high school, of course you do,” which I think religious people is one thing but for people that are ace, that are very repulsed by that kind of thing. A lot of ace people do masturbate but a lot of ace people don’t. That’s why I also think, for ace guys, there are already a lot of stigma around guys are supposed to be very sexual. So for me, the thought of No Nut November makes it seem like oh we’re all doing it all the time so No Nut November is going to be super hard. But for some people, No Nut November is every month.
SARAH: Yeah. I think it’s also just like, as an aspec person, as a woman as well, I don’t actually have a grasp on what the averages for masturbation are. I don’t even know if those could be reliable.
KAYLA: It would be a self-report.
SARAH: It would be a self-report. People won’t be honest.
KAYLA: Apparently on average, 78% of Americans aged 14 and older say that they have masturbated at least once.
SARAH: But, I want to know how regularly.
KAYLA: That’s what I want. I want to know what’s the normal frequency of masturbation.
SARAH: The average.
KAYLA: The International Society for Sexual Medicine, well that seems normal. Okay, there is no normal. Okay, I get that.
SARAH: Give me an average. There is no normal, I get that, normal’s not real but also I just have no concept of anything.
KAYLA: Health Magazine said that some research from Harvard said that men who masturbate 21 times or more times a month could cut the odds of prostate cancer by 33%.
(25:00)
SARAH: What’s the science there?
KAYLA: You’d have to ask Harvard. I think that shows that it does have health benefits though like you were talking about. How often do Americans masturbate? Please. I want to know, please tell me. They only surveyed like a thousand people. This is fun. “What do Americans fantasize about?”
SARAH: That doesn’t answer my question.
KAYLA: It doesn’t but I think it’s interesting. Give me an answer.
SARAH: This is off-topic but the other day I was talking to someone who, one of the people they knew from high school was texting them trying to get them to join a pyramid scheme called Pure Romance and they sell a lot of things but they sell sex toys and we were looking at them. There is one that is a very blue dildo and it’s called Hey Mr. DJ and I didn’t like that about it.
KAYLA: I don’t love that name either. Sex toys are fine and great but you have to name them correctly. This survey is saying overall the average is 12 times a month. I don’t know how accurate this survey is.
SARAH: Is that men? Women?
KAYLA: I think both. Okay here’s something from women’s health. Okay. 5% of women ages 25-29 do it 4 times or more a week.
SARAH: A week?
KAYLA: That’s only 5% of women. That’s the high end. 20% of men do it 4 times a week.
SARAH: I feel like that kind of makes sense. It’s more efficient for men. It’s less of a process.
KAYLA: I think generally men are able to do it faster but also as you get older it’s harder.
SARAH: Yeah that’s fair. I say as if I know anything.
KAYLA: As a young woman. Without a penis. 21% of women and 25% of men do it multiple times a month. So it really doesn’t seem — “The older we get the more likelier we are to report not masturbating at all.” I guess that makes sense. It seems no one’s trying to give me a straight answer here.
SARAH: What about a gay answer?
KAYLA: Yeah I didn’t get that either.
SARAH: I mean.
KAYLA: You would think that as aspecs we would be hyped about the concept of a No Nut November but I just feel like—
SARAH: I feel the purpose of it is not pure.
KAYLA: It’s vague to me and it also seems hypocritical.
SARAH: It seems hypocritical and it’s also super heteronormative and normative with ideas of masculinity.
KAYLA: It just hypes sex up even more to be like, “oh my god I can’t even go a month without nutting.” I’m sure for some people they can’t. I’m sure for some people it’s genuinely hard.
SARAH: Sure, sure.
KAYLA: But make it this whole — and I get that this started as a joke and I do think the joke is funny, just going into it so everyone calm down.
SARAH: This is going into people who actually legitimately—
KAYLA: Are taking it seriously, not doing it as a joke. It makes it seem like it’s such a big deal and again you have aspecs who are like, “I could really go without it forever” and it amps up the thing of like, “oh my god you must be missing out it must be so hard.” But then also it seems hypocritical for people to be like, “how can you be asexual and never have sex or never nut or masturbate or anything” okay like you did it for a month and you’re not less of a human so you know what I mean?
SARAH: Yeah, like you’re fine.
KAYLA: It’s fine for you to do it for a month as a joke, but to do actually do it because I certainly have no interest then I’m weird.
SARAH: Yeah. And that too can apply to people who aren’t aspec. People who aren’t aspec and no interest in masturbating that applies to them too. It’s not solely an aspec thing. The norms are dumb and I hate them and that’s not news to anyone but I do hate them.
KAYLA: I think that it’s a harmful norm for everyone, aspec or not that sex is that important necessarily. I recently saw a comment on one of ~my new videos on TikTok~ of someone being like, “I’m definitely not aspec, I’m attracted to people a lot all the time, but sometimes I’m randomly sex-repulsed.” They were like, “is that okay?” People realize that they don’t have to be on the asexual spectrum to sometimes just not want to fuck, to not like the idea of it. That could be a more normal thing.
(30:00)
SARAH: You don’t have to want to fuck every minute of every day.
KAYLA: Yeah.
SARAH: If you do, I’m honestly a little worried about your—
KAYLA: How do you get anything done?
SARAH: Your productivity, mostly.
KAYLA: And as we know, in America, productivity is the number one priority so.
SARAH: Our worth is defined by our productivity and capitalism.
KAYLA: Now that I’m thinking about that, we all know that in capitalist regimes such as America, productivity is the most important thing ever. And I think if you argue that sex and relationships detract from your productivity, I am famous for saying that my Twitter gets less funny when I am in a relationship. This is a proven fact. It’s true.
SARAH: Factual, completely objective.
KAYLA: Ask our friends. Because my brainpower that goes into relationships gets funneled into Twitter comedy when I’m not. So you’d think that America would be super dope and all kinds of into asexuality and aromanticism because you have more time to be productive. But everyone is saying we’re wrong and stupid.
SARAH: I think what it is is this precarious balance where obviously our worth in our society is only defined by our productivity and our benefit to this capitalist system but we don’t want to admit that right?
KAYLA: True.
SARAH: People are like, “on the other hand you have love and relationships and that’s why we live” and blah blah blah. So we put the two next to each other and they say, “okay these can co-exist because if you don’t have love and relationships what’s the point of living?” But also, you need to live to be productive to society.
KAYLA: You also need to make children so they can work in factories and also be part of capitalism.
SARAH: Did you know that Sounds Fake But Okay is now a socialism podcast?
KAYLA: I mean, are we surprised? No Nut November canceled due to COVID — I looked up No Nut Novemb just to look up if someone was doing a serious article. I tried it here’s my experience, ooh that seems like an interesting read. The first thing that popped up in my search bar: “No Nut November canceled due to COVID.”
SARAH: Now that doesn’t — are they just saying that cause people are bored?
KAYLA: So there’s multiple articles of “is No Nut November canceled?” Now that’s just — take a little clicky click.
SARAH: I mean, I can see why people would want to cancel. There are two reasons. One, it discourages — no but see you still can’t. I’m just trying to think of like — having sex with other people is not necessarily the safest thing if you’re not in the same bubble. But that doesn’t really impact, it’s not really impacted by No Nut November because No Nut November is really more about masturbation.
KAYLA: So this article explains No Nut November.
SARAH: Who published this article?
KAYLA: This is from H-I-T-C dot com.
SARAH: hitc!
KAYLA: Yeah, I don’t exactly know. So it says, “It is unsurprising for people to come up with any excuse to not complete the challenge, but this year, the explanation may be reasonable.
The online communities are considering canceling ‘No Nut November’ due to the Coronavirus. With the tighter lockdown restrictions, it means that once again, people have to stay home with not much else to do, so it’s unfair to take this away from everyone.”
SARAH: Unfair? It’s a voluntary thing.
KAYLA: “2020 has already been rough so don’t make it even harder!”
SARAH: I would think they would say, do make it harder.
KAYLA: Now people are saying, “it’s Non-Stop Nut November.” It seems like people are writing funny tweets of No Nut November’s canceled, we’ve all been through enough.
SARAH: But then they made an actual article.
KAYLA: Hold on, someone on Reddit —
SARAH: That makes it seem like something the government forces on to us.
(35:00)
KAYLA: The way this article’s written seems that whoever runs the No Nut November Reddit made an official post and was like, “fellas, it’s over.” It seems like people have been making funny tweets about “yall it’s canceled” and then — hold on I’m going to Reddit. Going to Reddit/No Nut November. I’m doing it for you all. Sometimes I look us up on Reddit just to see if anyone’s chatting about us.
SARAH: Do they say anything about us?
KAYLA: Sometimes.
SARAH: What do they say?
KAYLA: Sometimes people recommend it in r/asexuality.
SARAH: Nice.
KAYLA: Let me type — no, not November. There’s 87,000 people in this. Official No Nut November flag competition. This person on Reddit is Nut Chief Nut Daddy.
SARAH: Ohh. Kay.
KAYLA: Oh so they’re trying to come up with a flag. There’s a role call, there’s people saying they’re just doing it. Also, how can you — “To soldiers still in, do not,” so this was posted 16 hours ago. “To the soldiers still in, do not turn back now. Victory is right in front of us. We must continue to have the same high morale that kept us in the fight all month long. Disappointment of losing now will be immeasurable. So hold on the remaining days of November. You’ve all proven strong for most of the entire month. Don’t let it fade away our hope will persevere.” And there’s a bunch of people commenting “I’m still in!”
SARAH: I don’t understand the purpose, I don’t understand the purpose for people who genuinely do it. It seems like a lot of these people are genuinely doing it as a joke. But what’s the point of that? You could just lie.
KAYLA: These people could easily — this guy says “Still in, about 4 days, counting today left. Good time to reflect on this month. What you did right, what you did wrong. Best of luck to those still in and better luck to those who have fallen. Stay strong everyone.” What do you mean reflect?
SARAH: What you did right and what you did wrong? What you did wrong is if you jerked off you failed.
KAYLA: “Three more days! Remember where you were three days in? We felt good, we felt strong, we felt worthy that feeling comes back today friends, still in.”
SARAH: I have a question about the word worthy.
KAYLA: It’s a sport and they’re doing it.
SARAH: It’s like they’re worthy of Jesus because they’re not nutting.
KAYLA: It’s a weird pre-football game hype. This man says “still in, less than 100 hours to go my cumrades.” That’s — I have to give it to them, that’s very good. “Nearly at the end of the tunnel but this is also dangerous times. Remember not to edge. Avoid as much porn content as possible, and most important, remember the supportive community we have created, we’re a big international family that one the 1st of December will join in a huge and glorious nut.”
SARAH: Remember not to edge!
KAYLA: “Thanksgiving got the best of me, see you boys next year.”
SARAH: Here’s the thing though. On one hand, it’s funny and a lot of these people aren’t taking it seriously. But on the other hand, I have issues with it.
KAYLA: This is the thing. I can’t tell if these people are being serious or not. I think a lot of these people are kidding but I’m sure there’s a lot of people that are literally not kidding.
SARAH: Honestly I think a lot of people in there are both kidding and not kidding.
KAYLA: I think it’s one of those things that you start ironically and then—
SARAH: And then you’re like well it’s November 27, might as well make it through.
KAYLA: “I’m really looking forward to seeing my girlfriend again in the first weekend of December.” I’m really hoping this person means that they haven’t been able to see their girlfriend and not that they just decided not to see their girlfriend all of November. Can you imagine being like, “sorry baby, I’m not going to see you for a month because you’re too tempting.”
SARAH: And then her being like, “I wanna fuck.” And then him being like, “I wanna fuck too, but I won’t.” I’m doing this stupid meme.
KAYLA: That’s just like even more objectifying. I can’t even hang out with you or go out to lunch because —
SARAH: I can’t look at your shoulder.
KAYLA: Then that’s just—
SARAH: Tempestuous.
KAYLA: The only reason you have this girlfriend is to fuck and you won’t even have a conversation with her.
SARAH: Yeah that’s a grand point.
(40:00)
KAYLA: I love these comments. Oh no, “Thanksgiving is over, those turkeys were looking hella thick so I could’ve easily lost but thankfully I didn’t. Victory is near.”
SARAH: Now when they say “those turkeys were looking hella thick,” do they mean a whole turkey? Cause you gotta stuff the middle of the turkey. Is that what they mean?
KAYLA: I don’t know. This man is saying that he woke up super horny and spontaneously ejaculated and didn’t even do anything. It just came out. We’re going to have to put a warning on this one. If you don’t like hearing about masturbating, this is not one for you.
SARAH: I know the listeners can’t see me — and often when we sit here silently I get rid of some of the pauses — but I gotta weave all these in so you can understand that for the entirety of the time I’ve been sitting here silently I’ve just been sitting here with my face in my hands contemplating life.
KAYLA: I don’t know how I haven’t been reading these comments all month. This could have been so much entertainment for me all month reading these men talk.
SARAH: And it seems to me like all men.
KAYLA: I’m assuming. I can’t I saw one comment that was like, “lads and lasses” but everyone else seems to be just.
SARAH: I have some questions about the hypermasculinity complex we have in this world. That’s a song I wrote just now.
KAYLA: You can get badges if you’re part of a Reddit community, it puts a little thing next to your name. Apparently, if people win they get a badge on this Reddit next to their name. And then every other Reddit you go to, you can say, “look guys I didn’t nut for a whole month, I’m very proud of it.” They keep talking about something called “the big nut” I don’t know what that means.
SARAH: I am assuming that it means on December 1st they’re just going to go crazy. One large nut with all the cum-rades. I hate myself.
KAYLA: I don’t like these memes. I would not recommend, there’s just a lot of memes about cuming.
SARAH: I wonder if there are religious organizations that support No Nut November.
KAYLA: There kind of either has to be right?
SARAH: Yeah I mean in theory they would be all about it.
KAYLA: One of the rules of this subreddit is no porn or nsfw content because it will cause people to lose. I mean they have an official Discord. There’s a nonutnovember.org. Shuuut your penis. There’s a countdown. Journey so far. This is a poorly made website, just in case you’re wondering. Oh my god, someone is fully blogging. “Dear diary, today was the best decision of my life. I promised myself I would do 30 days of No Nut November and if I failed I would chop off my benis. The first day wasn’t too hard. I went through www.nonutnovember.org and read the advice page, so I’m woke as fuck now. Now I’m texting my wife to let her know I’m breaking up the marriage. I can’t risk losing and now she’s mad as usual, nagging and saying stuff like think about the children, how can we do this, where are we going to live, please let us in, we’re cold.”
SARAH: Okay. Like on one hand that’s very funny. On the other hand, it’s so heteronormative, just leaning into all of the stereotypes. We’re cold.
KAYLA: I mean I just — anyway.
SARAH: I have a lot of thoughts and I don’t understand what they are but I do. You know, like I can’t really explain them well, but my thoughts are, funny but also I hate it, y’know?
KAYLA: It’s funny but I think the concerning part is, why is it funny?
SARAH: Right. That’s it, very succinct. Thank you for that addition.
(45:00)
KAYLA: You know me just organizing your thoughts. It’s like — I do think it’s funny, the competitions, and people are meme-ing it and not taking it too seriously. I think it’s funny but also it’s like, why do I think it’s funny? Why is it only white men? It’s just weird.
SARAH: It’s a group of people who aren’t marginalized in other senses, are free to talk about this and joke about this in whatever manner they like. And other people who are not part of this group, who are part of marginalized groups would not be free to talk about and joke about these things. So it wouldn’t be funny for them because it would be a thing.
KAYLA: Cis straight men have so much sexual freedom that they have decided to restrain themselves for a month.
SARAH: And not even for kinky reasons, just for fun.
KAYLA: And then there’s other communities who are like, “I can’t even talk about it,” and there’s gay men who are like, “If I talk about sex at all, people think I’m disgusting,” and then there are these straight men who are like, “you know what’d be funny.”
SARAH: Yeah, and don’t even get me started on women and non-binary people.
KAYLA: So bizarre.
SARAH: They’re like, “yeah we have all this privilege, what do we do with it? Not nut.”
KAYLA: Take it away from ourselves for a month but not really.
SARAH: Just for fun. But we’re in charge of it so it’s fine.
KAYLA: It’s fine, it’s whatever.
SARAH: Very strange. Okay. Do you have anything to add on this concept of NNN?
KAYLA: No, not really.
SARAH: Great. What’s our poll this week?
KAYLA: Maybe an open-ended “what are your thoughts on No Nut November?”
SARAH: Yeah. That’s good.
KAYLA: I would like to hear it.
SARAH: Yeah, okay. Kayla, what is your beef and your juice this week?
KAYLA: Hold on.
SARAH: My beef and my juice this week is. My beef is that it’s been almost 2 weeks, I still don’t have my COVID test results, I’ve just accepted that I’ll never know. My other beef is that my nose bled thrice yesterday. Yesterday was Thanksgiving, it started bleeding right when we were eating Thanksgiving dinner and the bathroom looked like I murdered someone. It would not stop bleeding. My mom at one point came in and was like, “oh my god!”
KAYLA: When did these nosebleeds start to happen so frequently? I feel like you’ve had nosebleeds —
SARAH: Like senior year of college.
KAYLA: Like I’ve known you to have nosebleeds so I feel like it keeps getting worse and worse.
SARAH: When I was younger, I pretty much never had them and my sister had them all the time. And then there was one weird week when I was at band camp freshman year I had a nosebleed everyday. But, I wasn’t the nosebleed person in our family, it was my sister.
KAYLA: So weird.
SARAH: Suddenly, now, just constantly getting nosebleeds so I just had to leave Thanksgiving dinner to do the murder in my bathroom and get blood off of the wall.
KAYLA: It was on the wall?
SARAH: Yeah — they were asking me something in the other room and it had like — guys, it was in my mouth and I looked like a vampire and when I said vampire, the p popped and I splattered all over the wall.
KAYLA: Nooo.
SARAH: Anyway, this has been blood stories with Kayla and Sarah. Anyway. Those are my beeves. My juice is my sister’s dog Rosie.
KAYLA: Rosie is so cute.
SARAH: She is so bitey. She’ll bite your arm off. But she’s very cute. You can’t lay on the ground cause she will bite your hair. She kinda tore up my arm a little bit, but she’s very cute and I like her very much. And also it seems like my sister’s cat Arugula likes me, it’s a great start.
KAYLA: That’s very exciting.
SARAH: Also my other juice is noodles. Carbohydrates. I like them, I think they’re good. Kayla how about you?
(50:00)
KAYLA: My beeves are I went to Dollar General the other day and a woman engaged me in a conversation about religion and then started telling me how much of a sinner I am. It was very uncomfortable. I hated it.
SARAH: I received a text from Kayla that said “call me,” and I was like, oh no, what’s happening? So I called her.
KAYLA: It was just so I could get away from this woman.
SARAH: And I was like, is she unsafe? Is something happening?
KAYLA: Kind of.
SARAH: It’s just a woman telling her she was a sinner.
KAYLA: Sarah did a very good job because at the beginning I was pretending she was Dean and being like, “oh I got the car back from the shop so I can come pick you up,” and Sarah did the very good thing of like, “okay how far away are you?” Sarah did an excellent job. I was too awkward to tell this woman to fuck off. I was telling one of my other friends this story and he was like, “I would have just walked away.” I just couldn’t for some reason. I made Sarah call me. My other beef is that I hate the Marriott hotel, that we’ve been staying in for 3 weeks. Two days ago, our ceiling started leaking so we had to move rooms.
SARAH: When are you moving into your place?
KAYLA: Tuesday.
SARAH: So December 1st.
KAYLA: Yeah, but we won’t have all of our stuff. The truck with all of our stuff coming between the 1st and the 5th so I don’t know how long we’ll be living without — we have an air mattress, and that’s it so. My juice is that we’re moving soon. That’s very exciting. Instant mashed potatoes are good. We had a small Thanksgiving with some of Dean’s coworkers that are already in our pod I guess. And one of them made instant mashed potatoes and I was like, who made these they’re so good. And the guy was like, “I did but they’re just instant mashed potatoes.”
SARAH: It’s instant, wow. My other juice is the amusing image of my family — my family we usually have everyone and there’s like 40 people there. Obviously, we didn’t do that this year although we did do a drive-by drop off of some Thanksgiving foods. So it was me, my parents, my sister, her girlfriend, and we had a 14-foot-long table, and I sat on one end, my mom and dad sat in the middle and my sister and her girlfriend sat at the other end so we could eat with our masks off.
KAYLA: What room were you in?
SARAH: It was in our dining room but it went into the living room.
KAYLA: How many tables did you have to put together?
SARAH: We had one table we put the extra leaf in to make it long and then there was a 6-foot folding table.
KAYLA: That’s very wild.
SARAH: So. Then my nose bled everywhere.
KAYLA: Love that.
SARAH: Anyway sorry I interrupted you while you were juicing.
KAYLA: I was just talking about mashed potatoes, I was done.
SARAH: Okay cool. You can tell us about your beef, your juice on our social media @soundsfakepod. You can also support us on Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. Again very grateful to all our lovely patrons who help us out. Next goal is save the USPS singlehandedly.
KAYLA: And we also have a Paypal — it’s paypal.com/soundsfakepod — it’s on our website you can find it.
SARAH: Doesn’t Paypal just ask you for the email? soundsfakepod@gmail.com.
KAYLA: I don’t know it’s linked on our website, but a very nice person named Peter gave us a very nice donation. I think Peter has not caught up all the way, maybe they’re not going to hear this for a while, but Peter, thank you so much.
SARAH: Peter we appreciate you. You know who else we appreciate? The rest of our patrons.
KAYLA: That’s true.
SARAH: We have a new $2 patron Maddie Lim, thank you, Maddie.
KAYLA: Hi Maddie.
SARAH: We appreciate you! Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Perry Fiero, Dee, Quinn Pollock, Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Changeling MX, Derrick and Carissa, Simona Sajmon, Jamie Jack, Jessica Shea, Ria Faustino, Daniel Walker, Livvy, Madeline Askew, Lily, James, Corinne, AliceIsInSpace, Skye Simpson, Brooke Siegel, Ashley W, Savannah Cozart, Harry Haston-Dougan, SOUP, Amanda Kyker, Jacob Weber, Vishakh, Rory, Amberle Istar, Rachel, Kate Costello, John, Ariel Laxo, Ellie, Tessa, MattiousT, Courtney Pritchard, Chris Lauretano, Dia Chappell, and Sam. Chris and Sam are new. Thank you.
KAYLA: Welcome to our very quick rap of patrons.
SARAH: Oh, I’m a rapper. It’s me Jay-Z.
KAYLA: Can we write a rap?
SARAH: No.
SARAH: Our $10 patrons are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote Tabletop Games, anonymous who would like to promote Halloween, Sarah McCoy who would like to promote Podcast From Planet Weird, my Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Haven, Cassandra who would like to promote their modeling Instagram @liddowred, Doug Rice who would like to promote the book "Native" by Kaitlin Curtice, Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote her dogs Leia, Minnie, and Max, H. Valdís, Purple Chickadee who would like to promote ichliebevogel.wordpress.com, Barefoot Backpacker… do we?
KAYLA: Oh, there was something.
SARAH: While you’re doing this I’ll do the rest, Ashlynn Boedecker, who is @shlynnbo everywhere, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to promote the horror movie reviewer NyxFears, Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T.H. Hernandez, and Derek and Carissa who bumped up from 5 and who would like to promote the overthrow of heteronormativity and they do so in support of: Melody, the Hamster - who is scheming to do just that.
KAYLA: Barefoot Backpacker this week is promoting getting a paycheck.
SARAH: I love a paycheck.
KAYLA: I miss getting a paycheck.
SARAH: Productivity? Capitalism?
KAYLA: Someone give me a job.
SARAH: Anyway, thank you for bumping up, Derek and Carissa. They bumped up so we would cross our goal. And Melody the hamster is indeed very cute and is indeed scheming to overthrow heteronormativity. We appreciate that about Melody. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote Being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote mental health, Miranda Denton who would like to promote Casa Q, Leila who would like to promote their Instagram @leilaofpaper, Shrubbery who is new — thanks Shrubbery, we messaged you, let us know what you want us to promote.
KAYLA: Hi Shrubbery.
SARAH: And Dragonfly who this week is going to promote eating your weight in simple carbohydrates.
KAYLA: Love that.
SARAH: Also, yall, it’s Thanksgiving and also it’s 2020. Eat the food. Don’t feel bad about eating fucking food.
KAYLA: Who even cares y’know.
SARAH: Anyway, thanks for listening, tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows.
