Cith the usual indignation, I find that the universe is once again conspiring to make me feel old. It’s a recurring phenomenon: the world rubs me in the face that things haven’t just changed since I was born. They changed in a ridiculously radical way. Which means I’m not just from another time: in fact, I’m from another planet. The most recent outrage consists of the following: apparently, the internet is full of young gurus of a new concept of masculinity, which stipulates that being a man implies rejecting masturbation and practicing total sexual abstinence, in order to retain the greatest possible amount of semen in the body. Now, none of these 2025 theories are new to me, since, in the 80s, I attended a school of Vincentian sisters who dedicated themselves to prescribing me strictly equal treatment. It is likely that the sisters had carefully read the Bible, including some episodes that the church should have had the charity to spare them, as is the case of what is reported in chapter 38 of Genesis. Er, son of Judah and husband of Tamar, dies. It is the Lord who kills him, because he does not like him, presenting no other reason than that to justify the application of the death penalty. It is then that Judah orders Onan, Er’s brother, to marry Tamar. I quote his exact words: “Marry your brother’s widow; fulfill your obligation as a brother-in-law, and give offspring to your brother.” It turns out that Onan, realizing that in this way he would father Er’s legitimate heir, proceeded with caution: “Onan, however, (…) every time he married his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.” The Lord, who didn’t have much imagination when it came to solving problems, killed him too. This story raised countless questions for me, which the sisters were reluctant to answer. In my opinion, God had punished Onã for not fulfilling his plan to get his sister-in-law pregnant. But the sisters were convinced that the punishment was specifically due to the spilling of semen. I tried to explain to the sisters that if God were to punish everyone who spilled semen with death, no man in the Bible would have survived puberty. It didn’t help. They maintained their interpretation. And they started to exempt me from reading the Bible.