Tag Archives: Penis

Weinergate, penis pics, and the longing to be hot

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In response to Anthony Weiner’s press conference yesterday in which he admitted using the internet to send semi-nude pictures of himself to young women, Irin Carmon suggests at Jezebel that this latest scandal is — like many others before it — rooted in male narcissism.

All over the Internet, men are photographing their own bodies and sending the shots to women who are maybe not their wives and girlfriends. It’s a risk for most any non-professional, but it’s one that predictably costs male politicians like Anthony Weiner — and the men before him — so much more. So why do they do it?

“Hottttt.” That’s the Facebook comment on a video of Weiner speech that launched Meagan Broussard’s Internet flirtation with the Congressman, complete with cockshots clothed and maybe less so. “You’re so hot,” was Rielle Hunter’s opening line to John Edwards; eventually, he thought it was a good idea to make a sex tape with her.

In the Venn diagram of narcissism, the overlap of men in political office and men whose sexual narcissism verges on self destruction is increasingly visible. If you want to blame the Internet for anything, blame it for manifesting — and giving an outlet to — what surely must have always been present: Men (and they are still overwhelmingly men) who not only want your votes but for you to adore their waxed pecs. And they think they can get away with it.

Carmon isn’t entirely off base. But she misses the key point, though it’s one she hints at. “Hot” has such extraordinary power in these men’s lives not because they are all narcissists (though some may meet the clinical definition of that term) but because they so rarely hear the word. Powerful men who risk everything to send pictures of their penises or pecs to strange women aren’t filled with cocky self-regard. They’re filled with a desperate hunger for a very specific kind of validation.

In a piece I wrote for the Good Men Project in March, I suggested:

So many straight men have no experience of being wanted. So many straight men have no experience of sensing a gaze of outright longing. Even many men who are wise in the world and in relationships, who know that their wives or girlfriends love them, do not know what it is to be admired for their bodies and their looks. They may know what it is to be relied upon, they may know what it is to bring another to ecstasy with their touch, but they don’t know what it is to be found not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but worthy of longing.

I’ll bet Anthony Weiner doesn’t doubt his own intellectual or political abilities. Like many men who are good at what they do (and Weiner has been one of the most able members of the Democratic caucus for years), he exudes a confidence that borders on arrogance. I don’t think that’s feigned. But like so many men sliding towards middle age, there’s an unmet hunger for sexual validation. Men like Weiner know women may be attracted to their power or their status, but they want more — they long for validation that their bodies aren’t gross and disgusting. They want to be “hot.” Continue reading →

Penis myths at SRCC

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My (work-safe) post on the “top five penis myths” is up at Sir Richard’s Condom Company blog. Sample:

3. Myth: “A hard dick has no conscience.” I’m often asked whether erections take blood from the brain, thus inhibiting decision making. Though erections are indeed caused by blood flow into the penis, the body has more than enough blood to support the operation of every other organ during physical arousal. There is no scientific evidence that a hard-on impairs cognitive function. In other words, guys can’t justify assault or infidelity based on biology. A penis may have no conscience (flaccid or hard), but the moral center of the brain (the frontal lobe) does – and that moral center keeps right on working, no matter how turgid the erection. By the way: women get clitoral erections. But I’ve never heard anyone claim that a swollen clit has no conscience.

The Indispensable Penis: Louisa’s story

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The topic of virginity came up again in my women’s history class yesterday, and I referenced this old story. This post originally appeared in December 2008. Scroll to the end for the post-script.

One of my former youth group kids came to talk to me last week after reading last week’s post about sexual identity. Louisa, 19 years old, has been out as a lesbian since she was in ninth grade, and has been with her girlfriend for two years now.

Louisa is in love with her gal. But lately, she finds herself questioning her self-identification as a lesbian. Though she describes having always hated the label bisexual for what she saw as its wishy-washiness, she talked about her growing curiosity about what it would be like to be (sexually, if not romantically) with a man. Louisa has never done more than simple kissing with a guy, and she finds herself wondering whether she ought to “try something” with a man just to find out what it’s like. She admits she’s been driving her girlfriend crazy with this hemming and hawing about having an experience with a fellow. But her curiosity, more so than her libido (though she’s savvy enough to know that those two are often enmeshed) is causing her to be, in her words, “mildly obsessed” with knowing what it’s like to be sexual with a man.

Louisa has taken my gay and lesbian studies class. She has read her Adrienne Rich; she knows about the reality (not just the theory) of growing up in a culture of “compulsory heterosexuality.” And she knows very well that if she were with a man, she might feel far less psychological pressure to experiment with a woman. “We don’t make straight women prove their straightness by having sex with girls”, Louisa said, “so why do I feel so compelled to prove I’m lesbian by trying something with a guy? It’s like I feel I have to earn my queer credentials.”

Louisa, who has known me since she was 13, wanted one thing from our conversation last week, and it’s something I don’t know if I was able to give to her. She wanted help discerning whether this fascination with having sex with a man (specifically, losing her heterosexual virginity) was something rooted in her own psyche or whether it was a response to the dominant cultural narrative. I pointed out the obvious — that for most, those two things (natural or inherent longings on the one hand and the socially-conditioned ones on the other) are incredibly difficult to separate. A lot of us spend a great deal of time working through this process of discernment; it’s one of the toughest tasks of young adulthood, and not a task everyone succeeds in completing. But the fact that it’s difficult doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Clearly, most of us believe that our internal bundle of desires has innate and cultural-constructed elements. For example, we might say that for someone like Louisa, an attraction to women is largely innate while her attraction to partners who have dark eyes and like anime is largely conditioned. Continue reading →

Good men and foreskin restoration

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Somehow, it always comes back to penises.

Laura Novak has a great piece up at The Good Men Project Magazine today: The Foreskin Renaissance. It’s about the foreskin restoration movement (which has ancient roots, for example in Jewish philo-Hellenism), and about the wrinkle (sorry) that this trend adds to the ongoing and intense circumcision debate.

I’m pleased Novak quotes me as saying “Dude, get over yourself.” My students, especially in my men and masculinity course, tend to hear that a lot.

Here’s the original 2006 post I wrote about getting circumcised as an adult, and here’s the 2009 piece from New York Magazine on my story.

Shame, mystery, and vulnerability: a very long post about the penis and the longing for acceptance

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As I’ve mentioned before, this semester I’m teaching my Humanities course on “Beauty and the Body in the European-American Tradition” again. I’ve only taught it once before, four years ago, and frankly, it feels as if I’m teaching it for the first time. I always love the rush of a new course; as much as I enjoy my core Western Civ and Women’s Studies courses, the material is so familiar to me that I long for new challenges from time to time. “Beauty and the Body” certainly brings that.

We’re using a variety of texts in the course, including Susan Bordo’s The Male Body. Her first full chapter, famously, is about the penis. Not the phallus, mind you, that phantom symbol of patriarchy that haunts courses in psychoanalysis and literature. (In the underworld, I will be forced to sit in a Lacan seminar for four hours on Friday afternoons. Ask me how I know that this constitutes hellishness). Bordo is talking about the “real” penis, that flexible appendage which is a source of so much desire, anxiety, pleasure, distaste, and sheer bafflement. And so yesterday afternoon, we had what I rather roguishly enjoy referring to as “penis day # 1″. (My lecture schedule calls for two more over the course of the semester.) More below the cut (hah), and though there are no images, the topic is obviously a, uh, sensitive one. Continue reading →

Pilates and perfomance anxiety: of penises and the pelvic floor

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Last night I did my regular Tuesday night Pilates workout. I’ve been working out with Stephanie, for my trainer, for nearly two years. Slowly but surely, I’ve gotten more and more advanced.

Pilates is all about training the body’s core. And while I’d spent years doing crunches and side bends, it was only when I started doing Pilates that I began to discover a whole set of muscles that I had never imagined existed. Until 2005, I never knew that we all have something called a “pelvic floor”. I didn’t know about my transverse abdominus, or my psoas. And I certainly didn’t expect my strongest muscles to become those below my navel, above my pubis, and between my pelvic bones. I can say that after a couple of years of serious work, I’ve developed some pretty strong lower abs.

As I was talking with Stephanie last night, we discussed how few men do Pilates (even though Pilates is named for its male founder.) Our conversation turned, and it occurred to me how very few men I know (particularly young men) feel a sense of connection with their own bodies. We are trained in American culture to think of the male body as a performance machine; men evaluate their body’s worth based less on aesthetics than on functionality: does the body have the strength to lift heavy objects? Does the penis perform on command? Men call their arms “guns”; they refer to their penises as “rods” and “pistons” that “screw”. It’s the language of war, of car repair, of carpentry.

Many men are intensely anxious about their bodies. Though an increasing number of men struggle with eating disorders and a culturally imposed pressure to have perfect abs, even more men worry about their sexual performance. We live in a culture of epidemic male anxiety about erectile “dysfunction”; three hours watching commercials during a football game or fifteen minutes reading the ads in the sports section will make it clear that the worry about “getting it up” is nigh on universal among sexually active men. (I posted a bit about erectile dysfunction in May of last year.)

But the paradox is obvious: we live in a society where there exists tremendous male anxiety about sexual performance (as measured by drug company profits alone). At the same time, very few men bother to connect their sexual function with the health, strength, and well-being of the rest of their body. It’s as if they think of the penis as quite literally “standing alone”, like a house without a foundation. And in the rush to seek medical solutions to impotence and poor sexual control (premature ejaculation, weak erections), they ignore the very basic reality that strengthening the muscles of the lower core, particularly the pelvic floor, can have a dramatic and powerful effect on one’s sex life.

There’s a line between candor and gross “TMI” (what my cousin Dinah calls an “over-share”), and I’m not going to cross it in this post. I will say, however, that my sense of myself as a sexual person has been radically reshaped by an intense commitment to Pilates! My wife (who has also beecome an active and advanced Pilates practitioner) has noticed the difference, and our intimate life has deepened and intensified as a consequence. Though we’ve both been athletic for years, like most Americans we didn’t connect our sexual lives to our entire bodies. Too often, we thought of sex as involving primarily the brain, the genitalia, the heart. Committing to Pilates has been revelatory in more ways than one.

My core exercise is running, and as long as my hips and knees hold up, I’ll keep doing that. But I’ve decided to drop the boxing component of my work-out rituals; I’ve been training thrice weekly at a local boxing gym since January 2006. I’ve certainly learned a lot about the sport. But while my upper body is stronger, and my shoulders broader, I can’t say I feel as if I feel fundamentally transformed by the discipline of learning to hit things well. (Heck, I’m pretty ambivalent about hitting things to begin with; my neo-Anabaptist pacifism makes me question the whole world of amateur boxing.) Working out on the “reformer” and on the balls and mats with Stephanie not only tones and shapes me, it teaches me about the profound interconnectedness of my body and my soul.

In developing my core muscles as they’ve never been developed before, I begin to understand that though my body is indeed mortal (as opposed to an eternal soul) it is not(as so many of my brothers believe) a “machine to be maintained.” It is not a bag of bones and muscles and fat that carries my brain around. In my younger years, and even until recently, I had a sense that my body was always betraying me. It would get sick at the least opportune time. It would fail to do as I wanted it to, particularly early on in certain intimate relationships. It would suddenly overwhelm me with its imperious demands for food, sleep, sex. I felt as if I alternately indulged and disciplined my body, as if it was some sort of hyper-active child who needed to be placated, monitored, and periodically spanked.

My spiritual growth, my commitment to doing “deep work” on masculinity and pesonal transformation, my adoption of a vegan diet, and my now two-year long commitment to Pilates are all connected. I’m a fierce (and to many readers, tiresome) proponent of the idea that everything matters. What we put in our mouths matters; what comes out of our mouth matters; how we make love matters; how we spend matters; how we treat our bodies matters. Every action we take, no matter how small, is a vote — it either builds a more just society and helps us become the person we are called to be, or it takes us further away from those goals. Pilates doesn’t make me a more generous person per se; it does teach me (like nothing else) of the profound interconnectedness of my physical, psychological, sexual and even spiritual well-being.

I write from a place of profound privilege. I can afford a vegan diet. I can afford private Pilates training. I am not smugly demanding that others do as I have done. But there are inexpensive alternatives, and I ought to do more on this blog to publicize those. And it’s worth pointing out that we spend a fortune in this country on pharmacological treatments for erectile dysfunction (I know men whose spending on Viagra or Levitra would pay for a number of Pilates classes). Only a fraction of the men pumping these drugs into their system have no alternative. Most cases of erectile dysfunction, particularly in otherwise healthy men, are connected to performance anxiety rather than a genuine organic malfunction. And a huge part of the problem for many, many American men is that they are ignorant of the reality of how their penis works. It rises up from a man’s core, and as I (and anyone else who does serious Pilates or yoga work) can attest, it functions in harmony with the muscles of the lower core and the pelvic floor. The link between strengthening the deep core muscles of the body and enhanced sexual pleasure for both parties in a relationship is obvious and dramatic. And too many men are fundamentally ignorant of this basic physiological truth.

There are some good books out there on male bodies: David Friedman’s fine A Cultural History of the Penis and Susan Bordo’s The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. (I use both in my men and masculinity humanities class — I’ll be teaching it in the fall!) But as I advance as a Pilates student, my own sense of the male body is being transformed. And there’s a need out there for some good writing that synthesizes the wisdom of Pilates (and its companion discipline, yoga) with solid contemporary research on men and masculinity. Most men who lead lives of quiet desperation feel some of that despair because of the perceived failures of their flesh. Reaching them is vital.

Foreskins and fidelity

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Still feeling poorly, I’m taking another day off from working out.  It’s always hard to stay away from the gym and the trails — my fears about losing fitness can become overwhelming.  But where in my younger years I might have staggered through a workout, wheezing and sneezing, I’ve become far wiser in my old age.

I am not feeling so poorly as to avoid the task of taking down the Christmas tree. It is Epiphany, after all, the day by which all good Mennoscopalians ought to have all holiday decorations taken down.  Given that the tree is now tinder dry, leaving it up a moment longer would be a fire hazard…

Anyhow, among the many topics in debate here is circumcision.  In particular, whether any serious comparison can be made between male circumcision and what is sometimes called female circumcision, but more often referred to as female genital mutilation.

Yesterday, I tried to make the case that in gender studies we needed to avoid competing in the "suffering Olympics", with each sex trying to make the case that their pain was greater than the other’s.  I stand  by the argument I made.  But I must confess that as a a pro-feminist, I was deeply and profoundly troubled by the equation of the removal of the foreskin of the penis with female genital mutilation as it is practiced in Africa and elsewhere.

For information on female genital mutilation (usually abbreviated FGM, or FGC), see the Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project.  More can be found here.

I’m not a cultural relativist.  I have no problem dismissing FGM as barbaric, and no problem seeking to have all varieties of female genital mutilation banned.  The near-universal purpose of FGM seems to be control of women’s sexuality, and there can be little doubt that the vast majority of FGM practices (as detailed on the sites above) are intended to make sex less pleasurable for women.

On the other hand, there is no hard evidence that male circumcision reduces male sex drive or pleasure.  Indeed, if that were so, we would be hard-pressed to explain the tremendous interest in sex that millions of circumcised American men display! 

But I’m not entirely untroubled by male circumcision, either.  Even if the physical repercussions are negligible for circumcised men, it is difficult to defend the involuntary imposition of real surgery on defenseless infant boys.  In the men’s movement, we must guard against the notion that boys are somehow tougher and more resilient than girls.  Boys can be victimized and wounded too!

In my Western Civ courses, we briefly cover the Abrahamic covenant, which is where male circumcision first appears in the Torah.  I offer my students three ways to think about male circumcision in this context, suggesting that elements of truth may be found in all three.

1.  Circumcision was intended to ensure male domination in Hebrew culture.  If only men have foreskins, and the removal of the foreskin is a mark of God’s promise to the Hebrews, than only men can "sign" the covenant.  Women, in this sense, are like minors in our culture — needing a parent or guardian to legitimize contracts.  If God had told Abraham to pierce his nose or his nipple, then women could have done that as well; male circumcision is virtually the only requirement that every man could meet and than no woman could.

2.  Alternatively, circumcision is intended to honor women.  In order for the "chosen people" to go on, women will have to give birth.  They will give birth in pain, and they will give birth in blood.  But that pain of childbirth is fundamentally productive; it is a sacrifice that leads to new life.  Requiring male circumcision means that men (or in most cases, infant boys) will also experience (though only once) pain and bleeding from the comparable part of their own bodies.  In some sense, circumcision may be men’s way of saying to women:  "We too will sacrifice, we too will bleed, we will honor (or appropriate) your pain by wounding ourselves in solidarity with you."  Just as the human race can only continue through childbirth, so the "chosen" can only continue through circumcision.  Both sexes will sacrifice together.

3.  But perhaps, circumcision is really about obedience and fidelity in the most private sphere of our lives.  It is axiomatic that nothing is more "personal" to a man than his penis.  In strictly religious Western cultures,once he hits adolescence, few people (if any) other than himself will hold his penis and look at it, with the exception of his wife (and in the modern world, his physician).   Many men in many cultures struggle with sexual fidelity; they struggle to honor their commitments (to chastity or to marriage).  Circumcision is a visceral, visual, tactile reminder that even in this most private area of a man’s life, God is still present.  Circumcision is about dedicating one’s body to God, and in particular, dedicating the very part of the body most renowned for inspiring men to act selfishly and destructively.   Our ancestors were well aware of the calamity and destruction that sexual infidelity could bring to the community; they may well have intended circumcision as an important token to remind every man of the colossal importance of his commitments.  (Of course, in modern culture where circumcision has lost its religious meaning, it’s difficult to imagine that most circumcised men would have this reaction to an absent foreskin!)

This is hardly an exhaustive list of all of the possible "reasons" for male circumcision.  But I must confess (without sharing any details of my own body — that would be far too much information) that I am immensely sympathetic to this third way of thinking about the meaning of the removal of the male foreskin.