The Penis Poster That Rubbed People the Wrong Way (2018)

[rendall]

" Further, Lehman notes, “Heterosexual men may fear that the representation of the penis gives women a basis for comparison and judgment, and, although men have long engaged in such behavior toward women, the thought of the tables being turned is nearly unbearable.”

As a result, representations of human penises tend to be strictly regulated."

I rolled my eyes so hard I sprained them. I don't know what it is with a certain class of people who need to explain everything in reference to straight men.

If there were no regulation on representations of human penises, these same people would explain that due to straight men: "Because heterosexual men have penises, representations of penises are celebrated and glorified..."

[xdennis]

Not to mention that the exact opposite is true. Nude men in statues and paintings often have penises with pubic hair, while women have no pubic hair and no genitalia at all.

[medium_burrito]

So much bullshit. Penises are literally the favorite thing of many men across human history to draw, in all shapes and sizes, any preferably the most public location. It was even a plot point of a major movie a few years ago.

[vmception]

My issue with this is the assumption that women want longer lengths.

Maybe that was the driving force in the 1980s when this piece was published and debated, where women were communicating with a smaller group of women about sexual pleasure and optimizations.

But this seems very inaccurate and tone deaf to read now.

[kodah]

> I don't know what it is with a certain class of people who need to explain everything in reference to straight men.

> these same people would explain that due to straight men: "Because heterosexual men have penises, representations of penises are celebrated and glorified..."

You are setting up a bit of a weak man fallacy by presenting it this way without evidence, but I imagine there probably is cognitive dissonance around this (and other topics about men).

Partly, I think it's because there are no groups that represent or advocate for men. This hypothetical group, in the current cultural climate, could be hijacked by bad actors or other identity groups, or it could result in an even more monolithic or myopic view of men than exists in pop culture today. Such a group would need to be prepared to deal with these issues without being exclusionary, divisive, or dehumanizing. I think this challenging and would take all the right people to organize such a group.

Identity based groups tend to project a monolithic image of people that is inaccurate. For instance, if you browse the internet long enough you'll probably develop a fairly myopic view that lends towards some -isms that certain groups have, however, if you talk to people in different cultural regions you'll likely discover that what large groups represent is largely in-contest.

Edit: the earlier version of this comment confusingly stated that there's "good reasons" that these groups don't exist.

[tromp]

An image of the poster may be found at https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7u7tyUIGt1qzicj3o1_1280....

[jmuguy]

I don't know how many times I've come across articles like this where the subject is an image or a video or some other media and yet the article doesn't actually contain it. This one is like an extreme version of that where they have quite a few nice illustrations... but not the actual poster.

[clort]

Incredibly the image at the top of the article is a low-quality drawing of the poster itself in a picture frame. I thought it was just a cartoonish outline of the concept but its almost as detailed as the original..

[xdennis]

Honestly, we have nothing to be insecure about. Those other ones may be longer, but the proportions are just wrong.

[JoeAltmaier]

   "At most, it’s an image worth a few minutes of analysis"

Got to say I chuckled at that, while reading an article the author spent hours writing about it.

[meepmorp]

> Knowlton had been a graduate student at Columbia University, working on a PhD in particle physics, when he first concocted the idea for the poster.

Who says grad school is useless?

[dls2016]

I thought this was going to be about HR Giger's "Penis Landscape", which almost bankrupted Jello Biafra's record label.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Landscape

[Tabular-Iceberg]

Of course it rubbed people the wrong way. It's absolutely disgusting! It should have been called the "Penes of the Animal Kingdom".

[teekert]

Penii if you’re a person of culture. (Well it ends in “us” in my language)

[neomantra]

I met Jim Knowlton when he came to attend the IgNobel ceremony (as an alum) in 1994 or 1995. He was great friends with the Post-Doc I worked for, both having earned PhDs at Columbia.

Of course that poster was on every door in my dorm, so it was great fun to meet him!

The poster comes with an insert that gives extra detail about the penises. I asked him to read the clip "The porpoise has a remarkable penis..."

I had to dig way deep (disk image backup within disk image backup 5 layers deep), but I have found it and now you too can experience his narration:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c2g5irqb7s1vpee/porpoise_penis.wav...

[nsxwolf]

Wow, I remember a girl in high school showed me this ad in the back of a magazine in the library and we had a laugh. What a delightful surprise to be reminded of that with a whole article!

[pmoriarty]

It's so funny/sad how many people can get incredibly upset over seeing certain human body parts.

Doubly so when there's a double standard about certain body parts.

A woman can be thrown in jail for revealing her nipples, while no one will blink twice when men do it.

You'd think that in the 21st Century we'd be long past such taboos.

[elliekelly]

And even in our “progressive” tech bubble it’s taboo. Male nipples are a-okay on social media while female nipples violate community standards on most of the major platforms.

[exporectomy]

Where's the boundary between "such taboos" and taboos which are actually supposed to be enforced?

[refurb]

What’s so special about the 21st century that “wed be long past such taboos”?

I mean taboos have been around for thousands of years, new ones are created, old ones die. Why do you think the end game is “no taboos”?

[tgv]

Why?

[hprotagonist]

Well, i know what ebay search alert i’m going to add to my account today…

[geocrasher]

I came across this poster, or perhaps an enhanced version of it, while at a customer's location where I was working on their computers. It was in the bathroom. So poignant.

[jrsj]

When I first read the title I thought of a person posting penises instead of a poster with penises on it. Internet slang has made me dumber.

[hettygreen]

I thought for sure this was going to be about the Dead Kennedy's album Frankenchrist.

[parenthesis]

Before I look, I'm going to guess this is the Benetton ad? And I'm wrong.

[ithkuil]

I see only:

> TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of null

Some nerdy innuendo or the site used to work and has some content?

[dstick]

I'm not sure if it's filtered / edited due to prudishness, but you have to give a good headline credit where credit's due:

"The Penis Poster That Rubbed People the Wrong Way"

[wombatmobile]

I submitted the article headline verbatim, but the word "Penis" was auto filtered in the title by HN.

[DonHopkins]

The title made me wonder which Hacker News poster it was about, and hope it wasn't me.

[_pgu]

"Words by Colin Dickey"

[duckfang]

The company was a shell company owned by Greetings, across from Peoples' Park.

They sell lots of novelty goods like this still.

[ComputerGuru]

That’s not what the article says, and they seem to have done their research. Do you have a citation?