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Comment by rendall | Hacker News Reader

" 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..."

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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.

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.

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.

> 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.

> Partly, I think it's because there are no groups that represent or advocate for men, and probably for good reason.

Change the word "men" to "women" in that sentence to see how patently absurd that claim is. Women have unique needs that men do not, and organizations that help them navigate unique challenges. Why wouldn't this also be true about men? But our society is still so obsessed with "liberating" women that we can't even imagine that men might benefit from having their own spaces and advocates.

Let's talk about homelessness, criminality, or suicide rates, and see if you can convince anyone that it's "for good reason" that men have "no groups that represent or advocate" for them.

> Change the word "men" to "women" in that sentence to see how patently absurd that claim is. Women have unique needs that men do not, and organizations that help them navigate unique challenges

I think you're getting the idea that I don't want groups for men. "For good reason" is probably quite nebulous, so I'll go fix that. Thanks for pointing it out.

>> Partly, I think it's because there are no groups that represent or advocate for men

> Let's talk about homelessness, criminality, or suicide rates, and see if you can convince anyone that it's "for good reason" that men have "no groups that represent or advocate" for them.

This gave me pause, because there are definitely groups that advocate on those issues, they're just rarely framed as being "for men".

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