Straight Porn and the Penis

If I say that men are fascinated by--obsessed with--penises, it is not to insult anyone. It's all too easy, in our world, to make fun of men, men's bodies, and men's feelings about their bodies. We men love our cocks, and that's ok. In fact, that's good. We have long relationships with our penises, so let's hope the relationships are positive ones.

Men become attached to the sight, the feel, the idea of a hard squirting cock; from years of that hard squirting cock being at the center of a pleasurable masturbatory life. Pavlovian association? Skinnerian reinforcement? Whatever we call it, it is completely understandable and natural: To the male mind, Hard Penis = Pleasure.

The problems in our culture with accepting this male phallophilia are these: homophobia, insecurity, and prudery. In academic, progressive, feminist, and other supposedly sex-positive sub-cultures; there is often a deep suspicion of male sexuality. But I want to emphasize: Male interest in penises has nothing to do with orientation or confusion about orientation, nor about competition, domination or degradation of anyone, nor really about anything. Men's interest in cocks is fairly free of baggage. All of that other crap--from orientation anxieties, homophobia, to the treatment of semen and the penis as weapons of humiliation in pornography--comes later, as society muddies the clear water of sexuality with its confused, hypocritical bullshit.

In so much of porn for men who identify as straight, penises are either central, or conspicuously absent. As for the whys and hows, I'll save specifics for another blog entry. For now, a recommendation: Quit worrying. Being curious about penises, erections, and ejaculations will not change your orientation. Seeing them, enjoying them in your porn collection or in your fantasy life... none of these have to mean anything you don't want them to mean. I'm not a fan of labels and categories for sexuality, but whatever "straight" means to those who apply the term to themselves, it is not contradicted by a collection of cumshot videos on the hard-drive.

I want to reclaim the penis from the pornographers who enable the man-hating wing of progressive subculture--i.e. from the pornographers who fulfill the prophesies of McKinnon, Dvorkin, et. al., by turning the penis into a weapon of violence and humiliation.

Semen is not about domination, but about the human reality of juicy sex. It's a healthy bodily fluid. We--men who love women, sex, penises--we need to reclaim the narrative of the hard cock and the cum-shot. We need to reclaim it from both the woman-haters who make porn... and from the man-haters who present papers about them at the MLA.

Hard spurting cocks are--or can and should be--symbols of passion, beauty and love. I hereby declare my erection to be beautiful, and my semen to be among the many yummy juices of sexual passion. I invite you to do the same.