Pity the Poor Penis

Bubblehead: Your comment has mystified me. Do you think Scott Ritter needs to be edited? If so, why? You think he’s wrong? Too verbose? Unqualified? Too outspoken? Unreasonable? What? Please advise.

Pity the poor penis. I realize this may seem a strange topic for a blog but somehow, as there is nothing else on the news except 24 hour coverage of the terrible Haiti disaster, and there is little or nothing I can add to that, I decided to indulge the survivals of my previous incarnation as an anthropologist. In any case, as we now live in a culture that seems to be obsessed with erections, artificial or otherwise, and female orgasms, faked or otherwise, a few words about the penis should not be amiss. This was actually inspired by my Googling a previous acquaintance out of curiosity. This was a man who, having completed his medical training, decided to pursue anthropology instead. We were in New Guinea doing anthropological research at the same time. He, like me, is now an emeritus professor, and has recently written a book about circumcision, basically acknowledging that this procedure is entirely unnecessary and does not occur in most Anglo-Saxon countries, except the United States, where it exists for very questionable reasons. As you may know, this is a controversial procedure, with some arguing it is unnecessary and perhaps harmful, with others arguing it prevents diseases and so on. At the moment there is no clear consensus. It seems to be performed purely for religious reasons but the argument continues.

What I find of most interest about this topic is that circumcision is merely the proverbial “tip of the iceberg,” when it comes to the treatment and abuse of the male organ. For example, in New Guinea, with which I am most experienced, there are all kinds of things done to the penis that have nothing to do with circumcision per se. The Bena Bena, where I worked, during male initiation rites, shoot a sharp stone-tipped arrow into the urethra of the initiates. The Garia did the same thing only with a thorn-headed arrow. The Wogeo cut the glans with with a sharp crab claw. The Awa cut wedges out of each side of the glans with a sharp bamboo knife, as did the Kwoma. The Arapesh rub the penes and scrota with stinging nettles and lacerate the penis with bamboo knives, and also insert barbed grass stems into the urethra. The Abelam tell their sons to strike their penes with nettles to rid them of “bad blood” and later incise their penes. In other places, lengths of “spear” grass, treated with ashes, are shoved into the penis, withdrawn and reinserted and twirled around until the youths cry out in pain and urinate. In several other Pacific societies, Tikopia, Tonga, Tahiti, and parts of Indonesia, a cut is slit in the foreskin, which is said to be either for reasons of cleanliness or to facilitate sexual pleasure. I have never pursued this practice beyond the Pacific area, but I would be most surprised if similar practices do not exist in Africa, South and Central America. Of course in Australia we know that Australian Aborigines practiced an extreme form of penile mutilation in the form of subincision. I suspect forms of penile abuse are widespread, and although I know that the mutilation of the female genitals also occurs, I do not believe it is anywhere near as widespread.

So how would one explain this rather widespread practice of penile abuse? There have been a variety of explanations. LeTourneau, for example, regarded circumcision as a substitute for human sacrifice. Zaborowski thought that circumcision at puberty marked the entrance to adult life. Sir James George Frazer thought that circumcision separated an individual from a vital portion of himself that would later be treated supernaturally. Briffault suggested that that circumcision was an attempt to imitate female genital defloration. Westermarck claimed it was a means for converting a boy into a man capable of procreation and marriage. Crawley regarded it as a means of preventing the retention of magically dangerous secretions and also of sacrificing of a part in order to guarantee the well-being of the whole. Bryk thought circumcision as a substitute for castration and human sacrifice. Freud thought of it as castration, Bettelheim thought it was an attempt to emulate the female genitals, and so on. You might note that all of these attempted explanations deal only with circumcision and therefore ignore all these other forms of penile mutilations and abuse. In the New Guinea case, perhaps the most widespread explanation has to do with the Bettelheim position. Namely, men, envious of the female ability to give birth, bleed themselves in emulation of this remarkable female ability. The bleedings are said to be “male menstruation.” This idea was first put forth, as far as I know by Kenneth Read, writing about the Gahuku-Gama, but it was also promoted by Ian Hogbin in his book “The Island of Menstruating Men,” (Chandler and Sharp, 1970). As far as I know this interpretation is fairly widely shared by many who have written about New Guinea. I personally believe this is an erroneous interpretation. Kenneth Read, who worked very early in the New Guinea Highlands, claimed that the Gahuku-Gama, with whom he worked, said the penile bleeding was “male menstruation.” He was my mentor, and I do not like to question his work, but first, I was never able to find a single informant in the Bena Bena area, adjacent to the Gahuku-Gama, and even intermarried with them, who would agree with this interpretation. Indeed, they thought it was ridiculous. Second, it is not clear to me how this could be adequately explained in Pidgin-English other than by equating it roughly with female menstruation. Third, I have yet to meet any normal male, in New Guinea or anywhere else, who would indicate envy of the female ability to give birth (unless, perhaps, they were “gay”). I regard this explanation as the “Stupid Savage” explanation. That is, “savages” are so stupid they do not understand childbirth, they therefore envy women this unusual ability, and then pretend they are women. This completely ignores the overwhelming male dominance and ethos in these societies, the overwhelming belief in the magical importance of semen, the widespread belief that the womb is merely an “oven” for forming an infant, and the importance of the male gender in the continuity, meaning, and culture of life in general.

When I started this account I did not intend it to be an advertisement. But I have written on this subject previously, “Men and ‘Woman’ in New Guinea” (Chandler and Sharp, 1999). This book was not a commercial or academic success, I’m not even certain it was ever reviewed. I think this might have been because I had the temerity to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be a human universal, apparently such a heretical view in the anthropological circles I moved in at the time, that it was unacceptable and better ignored. I still think I made a cogent argument. In any case, this remarkably widespread practice of abusing the male genitalia still begs for an explanation. I wonder if anyone has ever considered the long-term consequences of Viagra and Cialis?