Inspired by men's accounts of how awesome not masturbating is, I decided to try it out for myself.

In a recent Vice article called "The Scientific and Personal Benefits of Not Masturbating," writer Ed Smith spent 1,000-odd words praising the practice of masturbatory cessation. In summing up a three-week period of time in which he successfully abstained from whacking off, he said this:

It turned my life around; I got work done, I kept my house clean, I finished off personal projects that procrastination had always forbid me from finishing. I realized that a self-enforced period of blue balls can actually be a lot better for the mind, body, and soul than I'd first assumed.

"Woooow" I thought when I read that. "I want to clean my house and get work done and stop procrastinating, too."

Problem is, I'm a vagina-clad chick. And, unlike Ed, I am completely without access to scientific or personal accounts of how refraining from masturbation affects women. See, while the internet is plastered in e-literature convincing men to lay off the stroking because of all the immense health benefits it brings, there is a gaping void of information about what not masturbating does for women. Instead, pretty much every article on female masturbation I've come across encourages women to masturbate more.

… Which is great. Female masturbation has a countless number of proven benefits like stress reduction, increased libido, pain management, sleep improvement, depression alleviation and the ability to help with body image issues. Google it.

But, while masturbation seems to be this magical cure-all for women, men get all these cool benefits from not doing it. In fact, semen retention (as it's sometimes called) is actually an ancient, much-documented practice believed to improve men's focus and confidence, increase their health and vitality, and improve their sexual prowess. It's so widely accepted as a method of male self-help that we at Rooster even published our own article about why men should try it. "It make sex better" we told people. "It gives you more powerful orgasms!"

There's a clear, gendered difference in how society and science approaches masturbatory cessation. But that seems stupid to me. I'm all for masturbatory equality. So, being the human science experiment that I am, I wanted to see if women (me) can derive the same benefits from not masturbating as cessation as men do.

But before I go into what kinds of sick and twisted discoveries I made, know that I am someone who masturbates a lot. I can get away with it near you, I'll do it. Fuck, I might be doing it right now, there's no way of knowing. That shit is fun. If I had to put a number on it, I'd say twice a day (national average for women is 3-5 times per week).  I'm telling you this mildly over-personal gem of information because, in order to conduct an experiment like this on yourself, you have to be a chronic masturbator so you can find out out much of an effect not doing it has on your life. You feel me?

Now, most men usually take between 5-7 days off from choking their dicks, so I decided that's how long I'd give my pussy a break for too. I also decided I'd abstain from the sex, which wasn't hard because my boy was out of town and my fuckboi is a figment of my imagination.

So, with an unbreakable determination and an undying interest of furthering society's masturbatory knowledge, I embarked on my lonesome, pussy-less journey.

This is what I found.

1. I couldn't focus on anything. Usually, when I'm distracted, I get horny and I masturbate. But without that ability, I was like WebMD's definition of ADD. I was restless. My attention span was … Look, there's a kitten in my yard! Without some big distraction like a phone call or an appointment I had to go to, I'd routinely get lost in spirals of non-attention and working with focus and clarity was a hilarious joke. I was less productive than I've ever been except when I was just born and I was useless except as a heating pad.

This was me:

2. I was fucking pissed. I don't know, I just got snappy. I had a short fuse. My mom called me while I was working, and my response to this lovely woman that gave me life was "I AM WORKING. I HAVE A JOB. I HAVE BILLS. I DON'T JUST CHILL." She was like, "Okay honey! Love you!"

3. I was starving. Without masturbation, my body craved some sort of satisfaction, so it automatically defaulted to food. The less I tried to think about sex, the more my brain wanted me to know that two burgers and a kiddie pool of ramen would be cool things to put inside of me in lieu of any dicks or similarly-shaped objects. I straight up destroyed my fridge and also the life of the Chipotle employee who had to figure out how to a roll the burrito I ordered with "Extra rice. No, like more rice. A lot of rice, please."

4. Sleep deprivation … alright! I could not fall asleep. Usually, I masturbate into a Lunesta-like coma in order to fall asleep, but with my vagina on Don't-Touch-Me Island, I was fucked. When I finally did fall asleep, I dreamt I was a hot dog, so.

I don't know what image to put for this.

5. I was SO HORNY. It sucked ass. I guess if you're having libido problems, not masturbating might frustrate you into friskiness, but I also imagine that if you're not horny, you're not masturbating anyway. Snafu.

My feelings exactly:

6. My energy level was the same. Semen retention supposedly gives men a burst of vital energy, like the meth of masturbation or something. Not so for me. I was equally as lethargic as when I was a happy masturbator.

Story of my life, regardless of come-frequency:

7. I was maybe a little funnier, and maybe a molecule more creative. Because I was so on edge, I compensated for my discomfort with humor. I gave no fucks because I was internally exploding, so I just let whatever wanted to come out of my mouth come out. A very small percentage of those things made people chortle with more gusto than usual, which was chill. There's definitely something to be said about how struggle increases creativity.

Another benefit of semen retention for men is that, when they finally do jack off or have sex, their orgasm is supposedly extra-super-stupid amazing. All that hard work not masturbating pays off with one mega-splooge, and the world is right again. Greeaat.

Now, let's see what happened to me when my week of death was up and I was finally able to make sweet and spicy love to myself.

… Jack shit. Nothing. I had an orgasm, but it was hardly the Vesuvius of orgasms I was expecting it to be. It was like any other orgasm I give myself on the drive to work or while listening to my aunt tell me about how she feels Blue Jays peanuts on the phone. I guess the only way I can rationalize this disturbing insult to my clitoris is that female arousal, unlike male arousal, builds on itself. The more orgasms a woman has, the stronger they get. Female arousal and orgasms are also intensely mental; if you're not in the right mind frame in the right setting, your orgasm pales in comparison to the ones you have when you are. I don't think I was in the right frame of mind to orgasm like a champion, because at this point my mental health had decayed to the point of PMS-like symptoms and I felt pretty obligated to cum.

Plus, when men stop masturbating, a whole bunch of fluid and shit gets backed up in their little vas deferens-thingies, and their pipes quite literally become clogged. With ladies, there's not a backing-up of fluid and sperm … hence the lack of explosiveness I was hoping for. Masturbation just doesn't work the same for men as it does for women.

So really, there was no point to this week. The most I got out of this was the knowledge that I can accomplish excruciating physical feats because I want to impress the 12.5  or so people that'll actually read this article. So, the resounding and really irritable answer to the titular question is "Fuck no, not masturbating does not benefit women like it does men." My advice to you after putting myself through this sort of sadism is: masturbate much. Masturbate as much as you can. There's a reason women are strongly encouraged to whack off, and that reason is because there does not exist in this world a sufficient supply of cow to satisfy their sexually frustrated burger cravings. By they, I mean me.

If I could re-do that week. I'd spend every waking second of it getting myself off, and then we'd see how focused and energetic I am and how strong my culminating cum was. Sounds like a great idea for next week to me. If you need me … find someone else to do it.