penis

penis In 1672, the anatomist Regnier de Graaf declared, ‘the names of this organ … are almost too many to count, and more are invented every day by after-dinner speakers and by men with time on their hands and a penchant for venery as well as by lascivious poets.’ Things have not changed much since the seventeenth century; a recent survey of American college students pinpointed 144 alternative names for the penis among men and 50 among women. The word ‘penis’ is probably derived from the verb pendere, meaning ‘to hang’, but hundreds of euphemisms have arisen for reasons of propriety and comedy. The most traditional English-language synonyms include yard, phallus, and manhood.

The penis is undoubtedly the centre of much linguistic, artistic, scientific, and erotic atten-tion because of its association with procreation, sexual pleasure, and prowess. An anatomically complicated and versatile organ, the penis, as De Graaf noted, ‘consists of diverse parts which nevertheless all skilfully cooperate in making it able to stretch and relax.’ This changeable nature is key: ‘It would be unseemly and disgusting and it would totally impede one's conduct of worldly affairs to be like the Satyrs and have a penis always erect. On the other hand to have one always loose and floppy would incommode successful conduct of the affairs of Venus.’ Much medical attention has been paid to the latter problem, namely impotence. Partly via research into impotency, we now know that erection derives from a complex system involving multiple psychological and physiological factors. The proximate cause of erection is an increase of blood supply to the spongy tissues of the penis.

Decorative codpieces and mythological tales have long encased the ‘male organ’. Perhaps the best known penis-centred tale is that of Osiris, the unlucky Egyptian god who had his body chopped into parts and scattered about. Isis, Osiris's wife and sister, managed to locate all except the penis. Ever since, stories have abounded of penises which seem to enjoy virtually independent existences and wills.

Phallic worship has often centred around disembodied penises. Some native Peruvian peoples, for example, worship and seek strength from the ‘phallus tree’, the branches of which look like penises. Phallic worship generally speaks to issues of fertility (agricultural and human) and power. Thus, while testicles have been represented as the loci of maleness, the penis has also traditionally and cross-culturally signified virility and power. (What else but an attribution of power to the penis could explain the continuing fascination with the posthumously disembodied and preserved penis of Napolean Bonaparte? Having passed through at least nine sets of hands since Bonaparte's death, the emperor's penis now allegedly belongs to an American urologist.)

While the power of a penis — real or representative — has frequently been judged by the penis' size, Aristotle assumed that too large a member would actually render a man relatively infertile: ‘Those who have a very big penis are less fertile than those with an average-sized one, because cold semen is sterile and what has to travel any great distance gets cold.’ By contrast, today we find in Western popular culture a virtual obsession with penis size because of the equation of penile mass with prowess. In the US, a fast-rising number of men are seeking ‘penile augmentation’ surgeries designed to make their penises look longer or be wider. These procedures, which include tissue grafts and injections of fat, are not widely tested or approved and come with serious risks. Some men instead follow the ‘low-tech’ techniques of the sadhus, Indian ascetics who stretch their penises through the use of hanging weights.

Ornamentation of the penis is common in many cultures and involves lengthening, piercing, dressing, and tattooing. These cosmetic alterations often carry spiritual significance. At one time, the practice of circumcision (removal of the foreskin) was confined mostly to Jewish males, but early in this century, Western physicians became convinced that a circumcized penis is a healthier penis. (Infections may occur less often in circumcized penises, and penile cancer, although in any case very rare, is virtually unknown in circumcized penises.) The rate of circumcisions consequently soared. Lately, the number of male circumcisions done for ‘medical’ reasons has tapered off, as the foreskin's perceived value has again risen.

In spite of folk tales that a man's penis size can be guessed by the size of his nose or feet, penis size does not correlate with these other measurements, nor is post-puberty penis size easily predictable from pre-puberty size. Size may be considered critical, and boys born with a condition known as micropenis are sometimes raised as girls — but definitions of micropenis vary. With respect to general appearance, boys may be born with hypospadias, in which the urethral opening is on the underside of the penis rather than on the very tip of the ‘head’ or ‘glans’, but this is not often severe enough to require correction. So, while relatively strict criteria of penile normality may be held in Western popular culture, in fact penile anatomy varies considerably. Minor variations are common and do not require surgical attention.

The present-day criteria for penile ‘normality’ arose in part from the conviction among male psychoanalysts that the penis is critical in the development of male and female identities. Thus, while Sigmund Freud attributed a necessary ‘penis envy’ to women, his successor Jacques Lacan posited a multidimensional ‘phallus’. Lacan's ‘phallus’ refers to representations of the penis; the phallus becomes a ‘privileged signifier’ taking precedence over all others. Pre-modern anatomists often likened the male penis to the female vagina, but it is in fact homologous to the clitoris.

Alice Dreger

See urogenital system.See also circumcision; coitus; ejaculation; phallic symbol.