It’s one of the most traumatic things a man can experience, the permanent damage or total removal of his penis. Whether by accident or intentional violence, he’s badly injured on a physical physical and psychological level. His ability to identify as a man, experience intimacy with others, or just feel basic pleasure is irreparably damaged.
Just mentioning the possibility of losing his penis will make most men cringe. Joke all you want about how much men glorify their genitals, but it really is an important part of their bodies and their identities. Losing it is like losing a limb, which does plenty to cause serious mental trauma. Add losing a key aspect of their masculinity to the mix and that trauma becomes amplified.
Despite that trauma, men losing their genitals is fodder for comedy. Recently, Netflix released a movie called “The Package,” the plot of which is built entirely around a man who loses his penis in an accident. That movie, if you look it up on IMDB, is listed as a comedy. Imagine, for a moment, a movie that tried to make a comedy out of female genital mutilation. How much outrage would that generate?
There’s nothing funny about women’s bodies getting mutilated or even harmed in any serious way. For men, though, it’s actually a pretty common trope. You don’t have to look too deep into the history of media to find jokes about men losing their genitals.
It’s a famous line in “The Big Leboswki.”
It’s a recurring theme in “Fight Club.”
It’s a sub-plot in an episode of “Rick and Morty.”
It’s a primary plot in an episode of “Family Guy.”
Even in media that isn’t overtly comedic, it still becomes a joke. Just look up the various internet memes about Theon Greyjoy from “Game of Thrones” for proof of that. In each case, the mutilation of men and the loss of their masculinity is portrayed as something that’s inherently funny. The fact that Netflix made a movie about that premise shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Even in the cases of real stories about real men losing their genitals, it’s prone to plenty of humor. The most famous case is probably that of John Wayne Bobbitt, whose wife cut off his penis after he raped her. While Bobbitt was, by all accounts, a horribly abusive man who deserved plenty of condemnation for what he did, his name still inspires jokes.
When people say the name Bobbitt, they don’t think of all the abuse he imparted on his wife. They think of how funny it is that his wife cut his dick off. While he was able to get it re-attached, many other men aren’t so lucky. Whether it’s public perception or daytime talk shows, a man losing his penis is still seen as funny.
Conversely, any media that shows a woman being harmed in any way, even if it’s just a slap in the face, is seen as an irredeemable atrocity. Watch shows like “Married With Children” or “The Simpsons” and you’ll see plenty of scenes where Al Bundy and Homer Simpson badly injure themselves through their antics. However, there are exceedingly few scenes that ever lead to the women being harmed.
Anything that leaves any lasting scar on a woman is inherently abhorrent. There are even major international organizations that work to combat practices like female genital mutilation. When women lose their reproductive organs from disease or injury, it’s seen as a tragedy. Anyone who laughs at their pain is rightly scorned.
Why is this, though? Why is it that an entire comedy can be built around a man losing his penis while any plot that involves a woman getting hurt in any way is dead serious? That’s not an easy question to answer. It can’t be entirely attributed to the gender-driven double standards that I’ve singled out before.
I don’t claim to know the full answer, but I think it’s worth discussing, if only for the sake of maintaining a balanced perspective. I don’t doubt that many have their theories. Some may attribute the humor we find in men getting mutilated to trends in modern feminism. I would strongly disagree with that.
I believe that this idea of laughing at male mutilation while gasping at female victimization preceded modern feminism by a great deal. I would go so far as to say it goes back much further than that. I believe this unique quirk in gender dynamics has roots in ancient pre-modern societies that transcend geography, culture, and ethnicity.
At the core of this phenomenon is one unpleasant, but inescapable truth. I’m probably going to upset some of my fellow men by saying this, but I think it needs to be said.
We NEED to be comfortable with men getting mutilated on some levels.
Take a moment to stop fuming. Then, take a moment to consider why we would need to be okay with this in both current and ancient societies. From a purely logistic standpoint, it makes sense.
For most of human history, men were expected to carry out the dangerous, back-breaking, body-maiming work that built our civilization. Regardless of location, culture, or traditions, putting men in these situations was necessary. Someone needed to fight the wars, plow the fields, hunt dangerous animals, and work in factories.
Until very recently, men had to fill that role because women were at a severe disadvantage due to the dangers and risks of child-rearing. In the pre-modern world, the most vulnerable individuals in a society were pregnant women, newborn infants, and women in labor. In 18th-century England alone, there were 25 deaths per 1,000 births.
With odds like that, there was a legitimate reason to give women extra protection and care that was not afforded to men. Men didn’t have the babies and no society could survive in the long run if it didn’t have a growing population. That’s why, for better or for worse, there are so many cultural and religious traditions that encourage women to remain in domestic roles.
Those same traditions, however, establish a dynamic requiring that we accept a certain level of male victimization. It’s one thing for a man to die in battle or having his genitals maimed in an accident. It’s quite another for a woman, who are tasked with birthing and caring for a new generation, to endure similar harm. Another man can still impregnate a healthy woman. No amount of men can impregnate an injured woman.
I know that dynamic is offensive to both feminists and men’s rights activists because it reduces their value to their reproductive capacity. I get why that’s offensive. Even I find it offensive, as a man. However, therein lies the most critical detail with respect to male mutilation versus male victimization.
These disparate standards, which predate the modern era by centuries, are still very much ingrained in our society. We still see women, especially those of breeding age, as more valuable than men. We romanticize young men who heroically sacrifice themselves in war, but recoil at the idea of young women suffering a similar fate.
Add emerging demographic issues with respect to declining fertility rates and the same incentives for accepting male mutilation are there. We still need people to have children for society to grow and function, but more women are having fewer children and more men are eschewing the pursuit of families entirely.
In terms of logistics, that increases the value of every woman who wishes to have a children and decreases the value of men who refuse to go along with that plan. In that system, a man losing his genitals or suffering a severe injury has to be funny in order for the situation to be tenable. By the same token, any harm coming to a woman has to remain extremely taboo.
Logistics aside, it’s still an unfair predicament that undermines the suffering and trauma that men endure. The fact that we have to be okay with their suffering while overvaluing the suffering of women is bound to fuel more egregious double standards. Movies like “The Package” certainty don’t help, but so long as this age-old gender disparity persists, men losing their penises will remain fodder for comedy rather than tragedy.
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There is however, one huge issue here, that is, as men decide they want out, the ones prepared to play should be seen as more valuable. There is a simple reality that increasingly, the fact that women feel entitled to laugh, where they would be angry in the reverse, is being added to the reality of domestic and sexual violence versus the lie we are told (that is CDC and the best studies, show clearly that they are essentially 2 way things) leaves us with a growing and easily sold narrative – that men should not want to pair up, because women are not concerned with their well being.
This is added to with the reality of shows Like the Wendy Williams one, where she freely suggests that she lie to become pregnant and The Talk, where Osbourne makes fun of a man, who was likely previously abused, is so tortured because he wants out of the relationship. That these shows are known to be watched and accepted by millions of moms adds to the view, that their concern for their mates is thin at best, because they do not see their mates, or sons in the place of those men and get outraged..
It does not matter that this is or is not a fair view, it is that it creates fuel for that view. It does not matter why, it is that women, in this situation are not perceived as caring, and the arguments around it, seem thin at best. It is that you cannot effectively argue against them, because the trick of gender reversal, shows the hollowness.
Valid point! Thanks.
Additional information:
http://www.insideindonesia.org/boys-under-the-blade
Leaving aside the issue of losing your entire penis for a moment, consider the issue of circumcision of men and women (FGM in the latter case).
As someone working with international development, one of the few areas where we have clocked up remarkable success is combating female genital mutilation. A widespread practice half a century ago, it has been reduced to a fraction both in terms of scope (it is only prevalent in a few places plagued by a host of problems, such as Somalia) and severity (from removing the clitoris to pinpricks in most cases). It is still a horrific practice that remains a problem, but a much smaller one than just a few decades ago.
You would think that we could now build on this success to combat male circumcision. At least the cases where it is done without the proper safeguards – unsanitary, invasive circumcision without pain relief still sees more than a tenth of men in relatively prosperous South Africa suffer from disfiguration, with a dismaying number of fatal cases following blood poisoning.
But no. Quite the contrary: Clinton lobbied for expanding the practice. Apart from the tinge of racism (she had African men in mind), the evidence was flimsy and has largely been debunked; and perhaps more seriously – telling men they are less likely to contract and spread HIV if they are circumcised will, arguably, prompt some of them to be even less careful about protection.
The evidence against the practice of infant circumcision is, as far as I understand, strong – apart of course from the moral imperative to ensure that we all have control over our bodies. But for some reason we seem to fail to extend the compassion we have for women and girls to men and boys.
There are several issues with talking about MGM in the same breath as FGM. Feminists tend to get into a childish defensive posture trying to make it out as if you are trying to compare the two.
The reality is that in a lot of ways circumcision is much worse than the more common types of FGM like the one you mentioned. The reality is no one cares which one is worse but they always take it that way and try and shut the conversation down. If you look at the left leaning press like the Guardian Newspaper in the UK, when circumcision is even brought up they usually delete the posts claiming people are trying to derail the conversation.
Then we have places like Iceland that try and ban circumcision and it gets dropped because of all the religious nut jobs come out of the woodwork and start claiming its being done to target them. Or when Germany tried it and had uproar from the religious crazies over there.
If feminism had anything to do with real equality when they tackled FGM they would of tackled MGM as well, instead all the money and time that was given to them to sort the problem was just used to sort it out for girls.
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I’ve been on disability for eight. Freaking. Years for daring to speak about this with psychiatrists.
The phrase, “time heals all wounds” is incredibly threatening to me.
Also the fact that “opposite day” is a nationally recognized holiday. So let’s look at some common phrases…
Shut up becomes… Open down.
Grand canyon becomes… Awful pillar.
Etc.
Call me craY, but something’s off…..
There’s another one…
Or not.
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