Halloween isn’t the only thing making people squirm in October. Locktober keeps genitals locked up until November.
For the uninitiated, Locktober is the annual challenge where people willingly padlock their junk for thirty-one days. We’re talking cages, belts, and hardware-store chic devices that make TSA scanners a nightmare.
What started as an in-joke on fetish forums has grown into a full-blown season, complete with hashtags, leaderboards, and people bragging about how long they’ve gone without so much as a half-hearted tug. On Reddit, subs trade pictures of their padlocks like baseball cards, logging the days since their last orgasm with a mix of pride and masochism.
And the numbers keep climbing. Clips4Sale, the massive fetish marketplace, named chastity its 2025 Fetish of the Year after sales of related content spiked 71 percent in one year. Interest is up another 22 percent this year in the U.S.
Nebraska tops the chart, where “chastity” is the most searched fetish. Pennsylvania comes in hot, too. What once lived in the shadows has started showing up everywhere. You can view the full map here.
‘Locktober’ IS ‘No Nut November’s Horny Cousin
“Denied orgasm, the entire body becomes an erogenous zone,” Avery Martin of Clips4Sale said. “Chastity is ultimately about submission and, as millions of people are discovering, giving up control can be incredibly sexy.”
Meanwhile, the manosphere has its own abstinence calendar event. No Nut November has bros bragging about “semen retention” with the same intensity they brag about bench press numbers. Adult director Aiden Starr once mocked the overlap, pointing out that kink subs and online alpha males are basically chasing the same dry spell in very different costumes.
Google searches for Locktober are breaking records this year, which means more people are locking up and leaning in. The whole thing now rolls directly into No Nut November, creating a two-month chastity marathon where America gets hornier by not getting off.
Some people do it for discipline, some for control, and plenty for the erotic kick of being denied. Whatever the reason, October has officially become the horniest dry season of the year.
The post Meet ‘Locktober,’ No Nut November’s Kinky Cousin appeared first on VICE.
