So what does
your penis mean to you?
Back in the late 1980's, a psychiatrist
named John Bancroft became alarmed that impotence was often being treated without
reference to a man's psychological issues. He observed that treatments such as the
implantation of inflatable implants in the corpora cavernosae, penile injections, and surgery to increase blood
flow, all obscure the real issues that can be the cause of impotence - in other
words, the psychological factors in the relationship that a man has with his
penis.
Bancroft wrote a paper entitled "Man
and His Penis - A Relationship Under Threat?" in which he said: "The size of a penis is as much
a function of psychological processes as it is anatomy. Often erection endows a situation
with a sexuality the owner may not have recognized or be prepared to
acknowledge. And how often does the penis resolutely refuse to support its owner
in a sexual endeavor, as if to say, 'you have no business doing this - count me
out of it'?"
The point being that the penis does not lie. And this relationship, this indicator, of a man's
intent is important, for doctors may ignore the man and treat the penis as if it
existed in isolation.
Losing potency has been described as like
losing a part of one's mind, and, as I know myself, having been through an
unpleasant episode of diminished sexual potency in my late thirties at a time
of life crisis, it certainly can seem that way. The experience really did
feel like a part of my mind had gone: like someone had reached inside and
removed something essential to my male identity.
Imagine how you would feel if you knew that your manhood was not going to swell
and stand before you as it always had: if you knew that there would be no
admiring glances from your sexual partners for your erect penis, no worship for
the hard member that signifies your male potency. Nowadays a man is
not measured by his ability to fight a war, to defend his family, to build a
home - at least, not in our culture: instead, his penis's ability to get
hard and do its duty has become a substitute symbol of his masculinity.
Impotence robs a man of his
self-respect, his goodwill, his humor, his amiability, and makes him a grumpy ,
irritable creature
who feels powerless and unmanly. This "phallocentrism", some say, is a
learned behavior, not something innate to the male psyche. Yet feeling the
pleasure of an erection again after they had been rare is an experience that
seemed so fundamental to my sense of my own masculinity that I would question how that idea
fits with male experience. In any event, those who proclaim the idea say that
the relationship between the male ego and the penis is a male-centered sexual
script written by society and reinforced by the first sexual act most males
encounter - masturbation. Masturbation, they say, proclaims the male's sexual
independence, focuses male sexual desire in the penis, and makes a man's capacity
for erection the most important part of his masculinity and control.
But are they confusing cause and effect?
Many mothers and fathers would observe that their male children seem to have
been born with their penises in their hands, and that masturbation might
therefore be the result of the male condition, not the cause of it.
The author David M Friedman, in his
book A Mind Of Its Own: A Cultural History Of The Penis, makes the
observation that the availability of chemical agents of erection such as Viagra
have changed the relationship between a man and his penis. With the ability to get
erect on demand, man is now very much in control of his penis, rather than the other
way round, as it has been for centuries. He suggests we do not yet know the consequences
of this shift in the balance of power, this separation
of organ and mind, this medicalization of the penis as an item to be treated in
its own right, separate from the man attached to it.
But one thing is sure: it is going to
reinforce men's image of themselves. A friend, newly divorced, not having had
sex for two years, appealed to me after meeting a new woman who was crazy about
him. "Help," he said, "I can't keep it up. I can't keep up with her.
I can't do it three times a night." I recommended some Viagra and within
days received a grateful phone call. "You certainly saved me," he
said, though what from he didn't offer and I didn't ask: shame, a sense of not
being manly enough to service a woman's demands, the inability to have a hard-on ready whenever this attractive woman wanted it? Who, I wondered, was
separating the penis from the man in that situation?
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