Manhole

Why is a Man's Penis Such a Fragile Subject to Discuss?

FRONT NOTE: Next week, will be the erection post, I promise. Send me your spicy experiences with penises, or your own penis, as we age? What is a good penis anyway? Erectile dysfunction problems and solutions? What makes good sex/bad sex? Adapations and work arounds? Do you use Viagra? Or Cialis? Do you enjoy sex on these drugs? Anyone want to throw their man’s pills in the trash? LOL. Men, what are the penis issues that stay with you? How important is erecton to your sense of masculinity? What does masculinity mean to you as you age? If there is a day you can no longer have an erection, how will that impact your sense of self? Hit me up with all your sex experiences. Funny, serious, inspiring, sad, stupid. I want them all.

Send to: Kim@FosterEntertainment.net. I will keep everyone anonymous. Put FUNCTION JUNCTION in the heading - that will get my attention! You can also DM in the app.

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I’ve been down a Manhole. I cannot unsee what I’ve seen.

David is opening a show in Denver. And so, unburdened by his healthy desire to be in bed by 9pm, and his excellent adherence to structure, healthy habits and doing things on a schedule that makes our lives sane, I've predictably fallen off the sanity grid this week, and any form of life regimentation. David tethers me to a family program and I’m better for it, we all are. But I’m free-flying now, up at night forming stubborn opinions about Jeremiah and Huda on Love Island USA, rolling through an entire season of Yes Chef! with Jose Andres and Martha Stewart, and digging into sub-Reddits and sub-sub Reddits through the wee hours.

It began simply enough. I started by researching erectile dysfunction and it’s implications for older men. But this essay - about older penises and what to expect from the typical processes of aging while horny - will have to wait.

Of course, I’d heard of the Manosphere, the woman-hating podcasts with Andrew Tate, and Weekes + Gaines, the cultishness, the shadowy chat threads, the startling open-hatred of women. I didn’t realize that erectile functioning and malfunctioning are big business in this space.

I went full rabbit hole into The Red Pill movement. Was introduced to Sneako talking about female privilege. Drank deeply from the coffers of Jordan Peterson, who is sure that women and men are not equal, and should never be treated as such. Fell into the abyss of Incel culture. Learned about PUI techniques (that’s pick-up artist for the uninitiated) and that FAP signifies male masturbation (because jerking off a penis makes a fwapping sound, get it?)

The penis and its functionality were front and center in nearly every anonymous discussion, even when it wasn’t mentioned by name at all.

The penis is always with us.

The whole Andrew Tate-style of media, designed specifcally for men, seems to be a more violent version of the Beauty Industrial Complex Grift. It’s designed to make men feel insecure about their masculinity, and then sell them solutions to their problems.

Take Hamza Ahmed, UK hot boy, Pickup Artist (PUI) who believes men are too feminine and shouldn’t be caught exhibiting emotions, because it makes them look weak. Ahmed, according to The Guradian, charges hundreds of pounds for online courses offering dating tips, social skills lessons and fitness advice, through his hilariously-named Adonis School, and for a reasonable $999, you can subscribe to all his videos to learn how to do what he does at the top of the evolutionary food chain - create grift that you can sell online to people further down the social ladder than you.

There are only two kinds of men in the Manopshere. Alpha men are strong, in this world. They are fit, healthy, strapping and wealthy. They are confident, charismatic, sexually successful and they say they appeal to women. Chads (otherwise known as a Beta) are weak, submissive, forced to make-do with discarded women from their Alpha buddies. They are sexually compromised, obsess about their dicks working, and how they will please women. They are, in this space, less physically desireable to women.

The Alphas are there to help, through costly exercise programs to beef up, nutritional supplements to enhance erections, zoom calls that will help you get your game back, weight training regimes. The grift is easy, because men are never at fault. It’s always the fault of women. A lot of the male bonding and connection happening there is at the expense of women.

If you are not getting laid, it’s not about you. It’s about her is the message. Women are inherently evil. They are the enemy. Men need tactics to dominate them. It’s easier to hate women than to hate yourself. The men have to stick together. This is a war.

And yet, there is so much self-loathing in this community that I was moved as a mother who has a teenage son. It made me wonder: Why is a man’s penis such a fragile thing for men and women to talk about?

The core belief of the Manopshere is that there is a cultural story out there, that we have all tacitly, and incorrectly, accepted as true - that women are oppressed by the patriarchy. These dudes believe this story messes with the natural order of things. That men are dominant and in control, and should be.

The Red Pill (TRP) metaphor is important here. It’s from the movie, The Matrix, famously starring Keanu Reeves. Take the blue pill and it allows you to live in the world without knowing its difficult truths. The Red Pill is wide-eyed freedom, seeing the world for what it really is. These men are awake to the truth (Ironically, they are a form of woke).

I know the truth, and I can sell you mine.

The Red Pill ideology gives men and women different goals for success. It pits them against each other. They are not heterosexuals engaged in meeting and finding commonalities and becoming a couple or a family. They are not Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, which is what we Boomers and Gen x were weaned on. We knew there were conflicts and differences between the sexes. But those differences could be bridged in the liminal spaces of complexity, by talking it out, listening, and mutual understanding and compassion. In other words, we could talk about stuff and work through it. Somehow, knowing we were built different was the whole point.

The Red Pill offers no bridges to connection. Young men believe they are in a kind of war against women to get what they need. How do I get this girl to have sex with me? How do I keep her at arms length so she doesn’t try to latch onto the resources I have to offer? How can I keep from being emotionally vulnerable, which is so beta, in this relationship?

There is also, in this scenario, a Black pill. The most sad of all the pills, because it is a terminal pill. This is specifically part of Incel culture. Incels are men who have been so rejected by women, and so unsuccessful at getting them into bed, that they have put themselves into permanent time-out. They are involuntarily sexually and emotionally celibate. The Black Pill is an understanding that this is terminal hopelessness. They stay invisible. They are sure they will not have a successful sexual or emotional relationship with a woman.

From a chat thread on Reddit in an incel group:

I thought women only wanted handsome men or men with charm and confidence. I liked playing Everquest and World of Warcraft, other games, and I spent a lot of time hanging out on Portal of Evil laughing at shitty websites and shittier people. I think that made me feel better about myself and superior to others, despite putting absolutely zero effort into exercise or improving my body. It was easier to belittle people on the internet and feel good that at least I wasn't Lord Rexington Fear. Underneath it all though I despised myself and my ineptness. That kept me single through most of my 20s.

Another story from Reddit that stuck with me:

I am disappointed with myself and my manliness and self esteem is very very low, I know that this girl will also view me as a loser, even in twenty years will look back and laugh at my weakness. I’m not sure how I can deal with this and what happens next but I for the first time in life I feel weak and unmanly and truly truly depressed.

He isn’t just upset because he had a physical problem that he needs to work out. He experiences shame, disappointment, impotence (both physically and psychic-ly). She isn’t just laughing at him. She is laughing so hard, she will be laughing at him for the next two decades. She will never stop laughing at him. The whole scenario is huge and permanent and monsterous in his head, and it probably colors every sexual or romatic encounter that follows. There is a self-centeredness here that feels off. And yet, the depression, the hopelessness is sticky.

And it’s not even based in reality. A recent psychological study determined that Incels believe society hates them and they overestimate how much. They believe support and sympathy are missing, even when its not. This tells me that there is some mental juju happening. Incels might be impaired-enough that they miss cues and communications from women. This is illustrated in a Reddit story of a woman who tried to show interest in a young man, who identified as an Incel, but she couldn’t get him to read the cues she was sending. He was oblivious. She stopped trying. They never hooked up.

The incel guy feels weak, unmanly, chronically depressed. Why wouldn’t he not turn to the online Manopshere to give himself solutions to correct the things he feels are wrong with him? To go from incel to ladies man? Beta to Alpha? But if he can’t come to terms with his own flaws and issues, there are always others to blame. He can sit in the confines of his desk chair, scrolling and hating. It’s better than feeling nothing.

The Red Pill and Incel communties see themselves as rational, logical, and unemotional, that this is representative of traditonal masculinity. Emotional responses are inferior and for women only. The discourse in these spaces flattens the dynamism and individual demarcations of humanity; they push women into essentialist categories of all women that hinges on broad, misguided and inaccurate stereotypes. Women in these worlds are always manipulators, working the angles, in love with a Beta but pining to be fucked by an huge, engorged Alpha, the fantasy goes.

From Reddit:

Yeah man, all women are going to lie about that. It's in their nature to deceive sexually, whether it's lying about their past exploits and N counts [number of sexual partners], or tricking people into pregnancy or cheating and using sex in a relationship to manipulate behaviors. Through evolution their brains have adpated to meet their needs…

Another from a Reddit incel thead:

There is no bigger liar than the female human. All the rising false rape charges essentially prove this. All the false hope they give toward sub8 [below 8 points on a 10 point attractiveness rating scale] men also proves this fact. (Incel)

Why is this so dangerous for women? If women are inherently deceptive, then there is no such thing as a true rape allegation. Rape allegations are women lying, because it is their nature. Because they like being sexually taken. They enjoy abuse. They deserve abuse. The are evolved to accept it. Rape and sexual assault doesn’t exist here, and this gives men permission to take women by force and to discount their experiences after. And this is particualry salient, because some men believe this is the only way they can have sex, by force.

Female deception is seen as so powerful and overwhelming that it can override logic or intuition. Women are dangerous. Promiscuous. Always on the look out for well-resourced Alpha men who are physically fit and wealthy. Women require the structure men give them, because left to their own devices, they are Pandora-like, unleashing an open box of chaos on the world.

The ideology goes: Women have evolved to only want men, so they can suck from the teet of their power. This is science as religion.

From a Reddit incel group:

…they (women) are the submissive inferior and thus you can do what you want with them & they take it. They're the doormats, you're the superior … Keep your guard up & don't ever make a bitch feel cute or like anything ever again unless she EARNS it. No meaningful attention until she earns it by being a dope ass girl whose always there when u want her etc. She gets a treat when she does right by you. Not for being a breathing vagina owner…

Obviously porn has played a role here. Breathing vagina owner. But it didn’t cause this mysogyny. Porn proliferation is the result of a society that refuses to investigate, punish, eradicate, and prevent violence against women. The law enables male violence and aggression to keep women subordinated. It is often micro and unseen. If porn went away tomorrow, the problems men have with women would still persist.

The Manosphere has taken their cues from sexism and hyper-atrophied it to include unbridled gun ownership, flagrant racism, xenophobia, and hyper-control over women’s reproductive health. ICE is their macho army. Multi-culturalism is a sickness. Aligator Alcatraz is a hilarious and meme-able brand. They have annointed this president as their God, probably because he is cool with assaulting women in dressing rooms, possibly sex trafficked under-age women with his pal Epstein, grabbed women by the pussy and peeped naked beauty contestants at his own pageant. He is the living personification of how lots of men feel. Like they are entitled to women’s bodies, to do what they want with them, to take wealth by whatever force is necessary, to make up their own morality code.

But lines like this, from a man on Reddit, have stayed with me:

I’m basically dead inside anyway.

There is no other way to look at it. Men ARE suffering.

I’m a mother to a teenage son (14). My adult daughters (18 + 20) are actively dating. The Manopshere, the health of our men, is our business. Even though I find the ideology ugly and unconscionable, I do know that hateful ideology can almost always connect back to childhood ACES, trauma, attachment issues, mental illness, addiction.

There is a reason people are filled with hate - they are not well.

When people are at this level of despair, we need to focus on treating the despair and the isolation, the root of the problem, not the hate and fear. The hate is the symptom. Anyone who has raised a child from trauma or fostercare knows that the behaviors of kids with severe trauma are meant to be anti-social, entitled, narcissitstic, angry. It’s how hurt people push you away. But we must tend to the core problem so that new behaviors and coping will emerge. I wrote about my son, Raffi and his 14-year-old friend, who is struggling right now, huffing, watching porn, addicted to gaming, often aggressive, lashing out. I don’t see him as a bad kid. I worry for him.

I don’t expect young women who are dating and trying to assemble their lives to take this on. They are not supposed to fix men. They are not supposed to look past the mysogyny and find the trauma. Why? Because men in this state can be, and are often dangerous. Or complicated and unpleasant.

One woman articulated this candidly on Reddit:

The whole business of entitlement, sex, aggression, erections, and pills makes me angry. On the one hand, I felt that I was complicit in allowing him to continue (with the Viagra), but the reason I didn’t stop him is because of that stupid toe in the door of patriarchy…I didn’t want to humiliate him by talking about it. It felt incumbent on me to make the problem go away. Which is just stupid. But I was, in a way, taking care of his bad behavior.

A young man on Reddit said this:

Inceldom is a state of mind which requires strength and sometimes outside guidance to overcome.

Outside guidance.

Here is where I think older parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents can help. We need older men to pour themselves into the lives of younger men. Online, in our families and communities. Scott Galloway (NYU professor, speaker and author, Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher) often talks about the importance of younger men having older men in their lives. In fact, in one interview, the host, Scott Illing, makes this point for him.

This is personal for me, like it is for millions of people. I have a 5-year-old son and I don’t want to see him screwed up. I don’t want to see him undone by his own resentments. And I don’t judge these men, even though I can see how much destruction they’re causing, because I can see myself in them. I can see myself tumbling down the same rabbit hole when I was younger. I was pretty lost. I was caught up with drugs. I was close to falling right over the cliff.

But I had a family member who pulled me back and probably saved my life. It was one of those “get your shit together” moments, and soon after that I was in the military and the whole trajectory of my life changed.

Galloway goes on to talk about the critcal importance of older male figures in young men’s lives.

You had a man in your life who had an irrational passion for your well-being and was willing to have a very uncomfortable, no-upside conversation other than hoping it was going to impact your life. And that’s what’s really missing with a lot of these young men. It’s hard for your mom to push you up against a car and physically intimidate you and scare you straight. Moms can provide other things, but young men need men.

Why can’t we talk about erections? And penises? And sex that goes wrong? And dating? Why do men think they need to bang in and out of us for an hour and this is a good thing because it stayed hard and then got them off (Reddit story)? Why aren’t we teaching girls to ask for and feel they deserve pleasure? Why aren’t we modeling talking about sex, even when we are dating?

And as for masculinity? Why can’t we be cool with men being emotional? Or having moments of weakness? Or not caving to their own standards of beauty? Or not performing perfectly in bed? If nothing else, can we at least have a conversation about it?

David Brooks, opionion writer for the New York Times, wrote a piece in the Atlantic this week about how we have lost a common understanding of our moral values. Essentially, throughout history, we have always had a standard that we could look to for how we should act. We can compare our actions to the tenets of a greater belief system. But this has largely disappeared in modern culture.

Brooks maintains that without a basic standard of morality, we can’t settle arguments or differences in perspectives. We either blugeon people with our ideas (like rolling back Roe v Wade) or manipulating people into responding to our ideas (like DEI.) We retreat to tribalism to find a community standard.

But, he says, what we retreat to is free-forming of our own individual ideas. I’m a progressive and I know what progressivism stands for. Or I’m MAGA and I know what we are supposed to believe. So we have these fragmented groups that cling to their own realities to make sense of their problems. The Manosphere began as self-help and was corrupted by grifters looking to make bank. It’s unregulated moral code gone bad.

There is no systemic remedy right now. Young men are struggling under the lack of opportunities that other generations had, like paths to affordable education, stable and increasing incomes, home ownership, an American Dream of their own. Galloway off-handedly suggests a mandatory two-year-period of service in the US for every highschool graduate, which is fascinating. The service could be serving in the military, feeding the unhoused, caring for the elderly, working with a schizophrenic community, picking up litter, teaching children - as a way to make sure young people are embedded in their communties with long-lasting roots and connections. This would also be fanastic for our communties.

But until then, what we can do, individually, is not give up on our young men.

Keith Haring, 1970’s. Manhattan Penis Drawings for Ken Hicks.

Mentors - particularly older, more accomplished men - can refuse to be pushed away by anti-social behaviors. We can refuse to judge where a person is and focus on where they can go. We can step up and pour ourselves into their lives. Take the most unmotivated young man and push him up against a car if need be, and bark at him to get his shit together. Because you care. Someone cares. Then, walk with him through the first steps. Unstick him. Bring to him a sense of infectious hope for the future that you know he can have. Steady his confidence.

I’m basically dead inside anyway. This is what life is like in the Manhole. No one deserves to be stuck there. Our girls will not be safe until our boys are safe, too.

Thank you, as always, for reading. xo Kim