A Mind of Its Own: a cultural history of the penis
David M Friedman Robert Hale, 368pp, £20
ISBN 0709071108
I need to lie on the sofa for a bit and think about men. Perhaps someone could pour me a drink. I've just finished David M Friedman's riveting book A Mind of Its Own: a cultural history of the penis. In my head, I see rows of willies swaying to verses of "Nobody Knows the Troubles I've Seen". Heaven knows the penis has had its up moments, but it's lived through tortured times. The cultural history of the penis is the history of mankind.
Friedman details man's relationship to his mutinous body part from the beginning of western civilisation. (Women will not be surprised to learn of the awe and affection in which the penis is held.) Though man's greatest obsession is with his penis, he remains ambivalent about it. Is it a hero to be celebrated, a treacherous fiend that must be controlled, or a demanding other whose wishes must be granted? Ideas of the penis vary from culture to culture, from one era to the next.
St Augustine, Freud (and the makers of Viagra and Cialis) have a lot to answer for. Friedman's book reads like a Hollywood epic - sex, death, torture, self-destruction, heroes, villains, love, drugs, money and high-tech machinery.
The penis was always more than a body part. The link between impotence and defeat had grim realities for Egypt's enemies, whose penises were severed before or after death. Three thousand years later, Lyndon B Johnson, when asked by the press why the United States was still fighting in Vietnam, unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis and said: "This is why."
Sacred oaths between the Israelites were sealed by placing a hand "on the testicles", an idea that survives today in the word "testify". We learn that the Greeks liked boys with small, tidy penises, while the Romans preferred overendowed Priapus. They were convinced that a huge penis equalled exceptional strength and soldiers were often promoted on penis size. They may have talked of little else, as there are more than a hundred slang words for penis in Latin, a language known for its brevity. Although the Emperor Nero married a eunuch, the Romans were encouraged to have sex. Fatherhood was rewarded. The Roman penis worked for the state.
Friedman records that serious sexual trouble started with the Christian penis. Mary's sanctity (bad news for girls) was defined by her lack of contact with the penis. No organ, Augustine would establish, was more corrupt. During orgasm, not only semen spills, but part of man's soul. Hatred of the penis merged with misogyny; the Church declared the penis should be used solely for procreation.
By the 13th century, the penis virtually disappeared from western art for 800 years. Even as late as the 16th century, negative attitudes prevailed. Michelangelo's nude David was stoned by a Florentine mob when it appeared. Leonardo da Vinci, the first man to point out that "the penis has a mind of its own", attempted the earliest anatomical drawings of this body part. (The vagina was assumed to be an inverted male organ.) By the 17th century, it was thought that large noses were predictors of penile size. More scientifically, the role of blood (not air) in creating an erection was established. In 1769, Father Lazzaro Spallanzani proved, through an experiment with frogs, that fertilisation is impossible without semen. He dressed some of the male frogs in tight taffeta breeches; although still enthusiastic, they fertilised fewer female frogs.
But semen was still considered satanic and masturbation a vicious disease to be cured. Friedman does not spare us the descriptions of physicians who used straitjackets, gloves and leeches, or who plugged the urethra with electrodes. The body was considered a machine that could overheat. John Kellogg, in the United States in the 19th century, thought the problem could be solved by keeping the engine fuel bland. Kellogg's cornflakes were designed to inhibit lust and masturbation - something not widely remembered as we munch our breakfast cereals.
More shocks followed. For the western male, one of the worst was the discovery of the black penis, "invariably longer and stiffer than the white man's even when relaxed". The black man and his "immense copulatory organ" were considered a menace to American society. There was (and still is, if you ask me) huge anxiety about the phallic appeal of the black male.
Then along came Freud with his concepts of penis envy, castration anxiety and the unconscious as a realm made chaotic by penile lust. Freud "put the penis on the minds and lips of nearly every educated person in the western world".
By the 1960s, feminists began to make a political cause out of it, sometimes deciding to leave men - and the penis - out of the equation altogether. Not unreasonable, it seems at this stage in a book with a chapter entitled "The Battering Ram". Though Friedman clearly enjoys chronicling the life and hard times of the penis, he is sympathetic to women. He is impressed by the works of Kate Millett and Andrea Dworkin. Feminism has been blamed for many things, not least male impotence. In a thrilling finale, "The Punctureproof Balloon", we are treated, among other fascinating data, to man's ultimate conquest - mastery over his penis. With the help of new drugs he can have a chemical erection at will. Good news for men and women? Friedman isn't sure. But he quotes a noted urologist, who claims: "Anyone who thinks a man doesn't need a firm erection doesn't understand men."
I think I understand men. I've long realised that a man is two people, and you have to be very nice to his Best Friend. This book is full of marvellous insights, but at the same time raises serious questions. Every woman should read it and so should everyone with a penis. But now I do need a stiff, um, drink.
Marcelle d'Argy Smith is the author of The Lovers' Guide: what women really want (Carlton Books)
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