Arts
Tight Harmonies and Good Stories: Wishing Chair
The Thinking Man's Tool
The Thinking Man's Tool
by Bob Wolff
| A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis |
David Freidman has not only written the lark I expected when I picked up A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis. He has packed the pages with history and insights on the influence of a man’s most prized organ and many other forces that drive civilization.
Friedman starts with the devil of early Christianity and moves through da Vinci to Freud to feminism and beyond. His is an often humorous biography of the very idea and symbolism of this body part. Thanks to his research we learn how the people of different eras considered the organ; the role it played in politics, literature and art.
Early Christians made the penis into the “demon rod,” writes Friedman, and he shows us how ancient Egyptians and Greeks idealized the organ, making it the symbol of power, energy, companionship, and plenty. Negative to Christians, erections intrigued Romans. Freud may have focused on the penis too much for the good of his own young science and art.
Friedman and Freud fall into the same trap – looking at the penis mostly from a heterosexual male viewpoint. What if Freud had considered the loss men feel not having a vagina? What if Friedman considered women’s viewpoints on the penis other than as something ‘missing’ that they can obtain only by allowing a man to do something very much akin to possessing them?
It should have been no surprise Friedman doesn’t consider the meaning of the penis to gay men, but the gay point of view seems so essentially prick-centered that its omission is shocking. He also misses an opportunity to cover the essential connection between the joy of sex for men, some of their partners, and what may be the most damaging infection to humankind since the middle ages.
While there are gaps in Friedman’s exhaustive study, it is a solid, instructive read. As Friedman introduces us to sexual dynamics during the eras of slavery and post-slavery in the United States, we are told the importance of the penis as the Jim Crow laws were upheld in the South. When lynched, African-American men were castrated by Caucasian KKK men in front of a crowd to keep Black men in their place. Another interesting political thread of Friedman’s story concerns the Clarence Thomas saga as a latter-day reflection of that earlier era.
Friedman explains why the penis is shaped as it is, why so many sperm are ejaculated, what scientists believe about Human Sperm Competition, and the medicalized penis – medicine offering opportunities to those involved with penises to have them behave more as they wish.
For politically minded gay men the book will interest and at the same time frustrate and may anger. Gay men are missing from this cultural history except for peeks into the life of Leonardo da Vinci. One could ask – will the next 21st century penis historian not only include the thoughts and feelings of gay men, but consider the effects on society, in the 1980s as AIDS made their prized possession a potentially deadly weapon?
We certainly can wonder why a book copyrighted almost 30 years after AIDS emerged discusses Viagra and penile implants but avoids the psychological and other health issues of AIDS. We could also ask why the lesbian viewpoint on penises is missing from this book – after all, it is called a cultural history of the penis. But then, for those whose vision is limited to the straight and narrow, we are missing from the culture, aren’t we?
Bob Wolff is a theatrical acoustic design consultant who lives in Randolph.