Cowboy loves to tell me that I break everything down to penises and vaginas. After a recent exchange with a reader in Orange County, California, a light bulb went on over my head: Guilty as charged.
Here’s his first letter:
I read your article (“I HEART Bronson Arroyo,” October 29, 2005) regarding penis size. Explain to me exactly why you think it’s appropriate to laugh at and ridicule someone over something that’s deeply painful, exacerbated by popular humor and media? Don’t you think this is insensitive and cruel, considering we’re all people, we all feel, we all hurt.
I was surprised by his candor. I read it to Cowboy. He got macho, kind of like he got competitive in his second-ever yoga class the other day, doing lots of hopping back to plank position and deep extended-arm John Cleese breathing. He said “well, obviously he’s got a small penis,” flung himself down on the couch, and took a swig of his Red Stripe.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” I said (me, suddenly a defender of men with small penises).
I wrote back: Tell me more about how it made you feel.
Him: I was looking up the female perspective on size on the net and came across your article. I really thought boasting about ridiculing men for being sub-par or cackling about it on girls night’s out was rather ... mean spirited. I’m hoping that the behavior described isn’t as common as my instincts tell me it is.
Cowboy sniggered over my shoulder. OK, I’m thinking, Has the crazy system of group showers in the boys locker room damaged more than just men’s egos? Did we women learn to be bigots from men?
I wrote back: I did not mean to imply that we have to be talking gargantuan. I mean, really, how many guys actually HAVE to wear Magnums. I never mean to hurt anyone, but, rather to record the truth about people, the world ... I work with teenage boys and some of the stuff they say about women turns my hair green!
Him: I tend to avoid the types of guys who make disparaging remarks about women. It’s disgusting. Growing up around mostly women I’m all too familiar with the pressures placed on them by males and other women to look certain ways, weigh in at this, look this young at age x etc. My problem is that it’s somehow comedically more acceptable to ridicule a man for his physical shortcomings than a woman; in the sense that the status quo/enlightened/liberal community generally perceives a male who makes nasty comments about a girl’s weight or breasts to be somewhat pig-like, whereas ridiculing a man presents little consequence whatsoever. Size is used over and over again as an insult, y’know? And the insult is usually not just an attack on the person’s body, but tends to make assumptions about their psyche and personality simultaneously.
Me: I think you are right. And I will use more caution in the future. I think women feel somehow that making fun of men, belittling them and emasculating them, is some form of retribution for the power we feel men still have (like we still make 77 cents for every male dollar) ...
