Kimmel - Cultural encyclopedia of the penis

Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis

Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis

Edited by

Michael Kimmel

Christine Milrod

Amanda Kennedy

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom

Copyright 2014 by Michael D. Kimmel, Christine Milrod, and Amanda Kennedy

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cultural encyclopedia of the penis / edited by Michael Kimmel, Christine Milrod, and Amanda Kennedy.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-7591-2312-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7591-2314-4 (electronic)

1. PenisSocial aspects. I. Kimmel, Michael S.

GT498.P45C85 2014

573.6'56dc23

2014025510

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Preface and Acknowledgments

T he penis signifies only in cultural context. That is, people must agree about the meanings attributed to it. As with the thing signified, so too with the signifiers. Our encyclopedia is a cultural and collaborative effort, firstly among the three of us, secondly between ourselves and the editors and authors we have invited to join us on this project, and thirdly between the authorial team and the publishers.

In fact, this was really their idea from the beginning. Initially, Michael Kimmel was approached by an editor at AltaMira Press/Rowman & Littlefield to assess his interest in producing such an encyclopedia. Kimmel agreed to do it only as a collaborative effort with his two colleagues; together, they formed an editorial team that has worked equally and collaboratively. Together, we invited authors, contributors, and several experts as our team.

This collaboration worked remarkably well. The order of the authors was decided randomlywe were each equal collaborators and coeditors. The collaboration with our publisher has equally been a team effort. Our original editor, Wendi Schnaufer, and our current editorial team, Leanne Silverman and Andrea Kendrick, have helped us to shape the volume and produce the best encyclopedia we could.

Aside from our generous expert contributors, we thank Clint Gould and Peter Lehman for their editorial guidance. In addition, Amanda thanks Daryl Kennedy, Sherry Kennedy, Cheryl Llewellyn, Liz Nagel, and Bethany Coston for their support and help during the long process of editing... and for putting up with her endless (and not always funny) penis puns. Michael thanks John Gagnon.

When weve mentioned to friends or colleagues that we were editing a cultural encyclopedia of the penis, weve often been met with uncomfortable sniggering, leering, sideways glances, or a sudden embarrassed preoccupation with their shoes. We hope that the encyclopedia will contribute to a less embarrassed and more enlightened conversation, as we throw the tarp back, chip off the fig leaf, and expose the cultural penis to the light.

A Note on the Cover

The illustration on the cover of this book is Torso of a Young Man by Constantin Brancusi, one of several such sculptures he executed between 191723.

At first glance, choosing to use a sculpture of a torso on a book about the penis might seem strange. But Brancusis primitivist reduction of forms makes it clear that the artist had a certain duality in mind. The truncated formas the catalog copy from the Hirshhorn Museum notessuggests both a partial figure and male genitalia. For a cultural encyclopedia, what could be more apt? The sculpture highlights the relation of penis to phallus, the layered meanings of each, the way the penis becomes a signifier for the body, andvice versathe way signifiers can often hide in plain sight.

As Brancusi himself noted, What is real is not the appearance, but the idea, the essence of things.

Introduction

T he penis may be the original cultural signifier. Graffiti, drawings, and painted images of oversized and engorged organs have graced the cave dwellings of Neanderthals and the walls of ancient Greece and Rome, just as they continue to do in mens restrooms the world over. The penis, used in images and texts to carry some definitive cultural meanings, has meant reproductive potency, political power, and invincible manhood. Examples of unabashed and unapologetic penis power abound; after all, what does it tell us, when during the 1968 Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, American President Lyndon Johnson boasted that he didnt just screw Ho Chi MinhI cut his pecker off.

The penis is also the phallus, the specific symbol of mens power; according to Sigmund Freud, it is the body part that little boys fear they will lose if they act on their Oedipal urges, and the organ that little girls wish they had so that they could fulfill theirs. Even in contemporary psychoanalytic theory, the penis represents the male self. Whether in fantasy dreamscapes or in everyday life, our human existence seems populated, even animated, by phallic symbols; they are expressions of mens efforts to find a stable place in an insecure world. In fact, the leitmotif of the phallus in psychoanalysis has been so enduring that radical feminists have extended its metaphoric use and labeled patriarchal societies and political regimes phallocracies.

The penis is a player on the sexual world stagean organ of performance, a barometer of self-worth, an indicator of sexual profit and loss, and a contributor to the sexual performance index particular to each and every male, regardless of sexual orientation.

To American men in particular, the penis doesnt stand for a personit is a person. The penis is often imagined as having a personality of its own. Men engage in complicated relationships with their penises; they give them names like Peter or John Thomas, and often have conversations with them about when to get hard, how hard to get, and when to ejaculate. The cultural paradox of these practices can be glimpsed by imagining women coaxing their clitorises, perhaps named Kimberly or Vanessa, to have orgasms or scolding their labia, named Jennifer, for insufficient lubrication. Men conduct dialogues between the little head and the big head. The little one often leads the big oneand can get guys in heaps of trouble.

And just as the erect penis signifies all that is powerful, dominant, and assertive, so, too, does the flaccid penis signify all that is soft and submissive and subservient. If the erect penis is manhood personified, the flaccid penis is femininity in a male organ, all abject vulnerability and failure. In addition to the psychological phallus, the potent penis, or the patriarchal penis, consider the many other personages and characters of this masculine appendage (weve been alliterative for the sake of simplicity; youll also note that the penis in quotation marks is the cultural peniswere not referring to different anatomical organs):

• the pathetic penisthe penis that needs erectile dysfunction medication, the one that is so vulnerable to failure that it must constantly be propped up with cultural and pharmaceutical prostheses.