As a woman, I realize I will never understand completely the relationship between a man and his penis. I like my genitalia. I like the way they feel during sex, but most of the time I don’t think about them, unless there’s something wrong with them—and that can happen all too often, between UTIs and yeast infections and other such unpleasant things(my husband’s theory is that the woman’s plumbing was designed by Porsche and assembled by Wal-Mart). I don’t obsess about my vagina or my clitoris or wonder how they compare with those of the other women my husband has slept with. I am more likely to notice that another woman has a better ass or nicer boobs than I am to wonder whether my pussy is better than hers—and I really don’t spend a lot of time comparing my body to other women’s because I just don’t care. My genitals are just part of me, like my red hair and fair skin and large breasts, something that are just there. I certainly can’t imagine a woman writing a song about her clit the way the members of Monty Python did for their penises here:
Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis?
Isn't it frightfully good to have a dong?
It's swell to have a stiffy.
It's divine to own a dick,
From the tiniest little tadger
To the world's biggest prick.
So, three cheers for your Willy or John Thomas.
Hooray for your one-eyed trouser snake,
Your piece of pork, your wife's best friend,
Your Percy, or your cock.
You can wrap it up in ribbons.
You can slip it in your sock,
But don't take it out in public,
Or they will stick you in the dock,
And you won't come back.
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/...
Most recently the relationship between a man and his penis reared its head (if you will pardon the irresistible pun) during a conversation with my neighbor, whom I’ll call Tom. He’s a good guy, who thinks his wife is the most beautiful woman in the world and a wonderful mother and frequently marvels that she married him. He’s a great father to his two boys. A classically trained chef, he is knowledgeable about wine and food. Not, basically, the average Southern working class male. We’d tried to arrange a time for he and his wife to go with us to see Watchmen and finally gave up and saw it alone—schedules just didn’t mesh. So after we saw it, my husband and he were jamming on their guitars and over a couple of beers, the Packhorse recommended it highly. I wasn’t there, but this is the gist of the conversation.
Packhorse: "Great movie. Well done. Good special effects, solid acting."
Tom: "I don’t know if we’re gonna go see it. I hear there’s a guy with a big blue thingy. I don’t like seeing other men’s thingies."
MY husband reassured him that there were no close-ups of said glowing blue dick, nor did they linger on it nor was it erect. The character is simply so detached from humanity that he no longer thinks about his body or human modesty. He could have made a good case for the necessity of the nudity in artistic terms, but didn’t bother.
Tom’s whole attitude was summed up in one line: "I don’t look at cocks."
My husband reported this comment with a shake of his head and an amused laugh. He said he managed to restrain himself from bursting out laughing. My husband is the least homophobic man on the face of the earth, so he was both amused and a trifle boggled by an intelligent guy like Tom being so threatened by a glimpse of another man’s penis. To make it sillier, it isn’t even Billy Crudup’s actual penis. It’s a stunt cock, not unlike the appendage donned by the Wahlberg brother who starred in Boogie Nights. Crudup was in a light suit in order tog et the blue glow. What you’re seeing is a very well-done set of plastic or silicon penis and testicles. Didn’t matter to Tom that it wasn’t real. It was still a cock. A naked penis. I’d like to say this is a White Southern Male Thing, but a non-homophobic male pal in New England reported that some of his SCA buddies reacted in the same way: a fake penis sent them into spasms of disgust.
Homophobia like that doesn’t make any sense to me, nor to my husband. It’s a phenomenon as alien to our way of thinking as being a fundamentalist Mormon polygamist or a member of the Taliban, and it’s just as illogical. We have gay friends, have attended drag shows one appeared in, and dressed and undressed around gay people when we’ve done performances. No one ever leered or made a pass at either of us. No problems.
The most interesting thing about the phenomenon of homophobia is that the same men who freak over seeing a brief glimpse of a penis get furious if women object to some of the tackier forms of porn featuring not women, but female body parts—magazines like Jugs come to mind. If we find it unpleasant to be treated like just a pair of breasts, they call us prudes or jealous or feminazis. And they don’t understand why some women don’t enjoy porn films with gynecological close-ups of female genitalia (For the record, I have no problems with well-done erotic photography like the stuff in Playboy or with decently filmed adult movies. I DO dislike Jugs and Hustler and the low-end video crap, mostly because it’s boring and badly done and insulting to women). Apparently, it is just fine for men to freak out over a naked penis but not for women to object to being reduced to a collection of parts.
I would be willing to shrug it off except that homophobia seems to be among the two main causes of denying gay people equal rights (the second reason is religion). I understand that you’re either aroused by something or you’re not, and that anal sex squicks a lot of guys, especially on the receiving end (what one of the gay Kossacks called "the ick factor"). I also get that they are afraid a gay man will make a pass at them (the answer is to thank the man politely and Just Say No) which means someone will think they are possibly gay, and they can’t handle that. What I don’t get is why they are so obsessed with what other people are doing in their bedroom that the very sight of a naked non-erect plastic penis makes them break out into hives, and why (other than religious teaching) they think being gay is such a terrible thing. When men like Tom, sensible, intelligent and decent, can stop freaking out over a glimpse of a naked cock, we’ll be on our way. When we can get past that, we’ll see a lot less objection to gay rights, fewer gay bashings and fewer teens committing suicides after being bullied by homophobic classmates.