I'd say almost half of all my emails relate to penis size, specifically requests from guys who want to increase their size. My usual response is that all of the available products and pills are both dishonest and dangerous. From Tuesday's FDA news release:
"At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Marshals today seized $346,954.43 worth of FastSize Extender devices and FastSize EQM Erectile Quality Monitor devices, as well as component parts used in the manufacture of the FastSize Extender. The FastSize Extender and the FastSize EQM Erectile Quality Monitor are manufactured and distributed by FastSize, LLC of Aliso Viejo, Calif."
"The FastSize Extender device was promoted to gain length, girth, and overall penile health improvement and to correct penile deformity caused by Peyronie's disease. Because the devices are intended to diagnosis, cure, mitigate, treat or prevent diseases, they are subject to the regulatory authority of the FDA. The devices do not have approved applications for premarket approval for these uses."
"During a recent inspection of the FastSize LLC manufacturing facility, inspectors noted significant deviations from cGMP regulations. Additionally, the devices are not properly listed with the FDA as required by law, and the firm failed or refused to furnish materials or information regarding the devices to federal inspectors as required under the Medical Device Reporting regulation."
Anxiety about penis size is at once a giant cultural joke and also a serious obstacle for men to enjoying sexual pleasure. There's a term for guys who believe their penises are too small when in fact they don't qualify in the eyes of medicine, penile dysmorphophobia (colloquially referred to as small penis syndrome.
Thinking your penis is too small to provide you or your sexual partners any pleasure (which of course involves the misunderstanding that to feel or provide sexual pleasure you need to use a penis) is just as bad as any other kind of internalized body hatred. Which isn't to say that guys don't figure out ways to stop worrying about penis size. But those who do usually start by talking about it.
Reader's Share Their Stories: How I Stopped Worrying About Penis Size
More on Penis Size:
**NB: this blog post contains plot from the first episode, don't read it if you haven't seen it!**
The season premiere of Mad Men ended less than an hour ago and after talking about it with the friend I watched it with (who also works in sex, and agreed that something was up with the sex worker answering that phone) I was curious about what others thought of the slap happy sex work, public sex, and the new agency which is built on at least two affairs (that we know of). So I did what one does at 11:30 at night when you want to hear what a random group of people who watch TV and are online think, I went to Twitter and searched for Mad Men and sex.
People seemed generally pleased with the amount and different kinds of sex, although many were "disappointed" that Don was paying for sex. Several people wondered why he "had to" pay for it, said he was too good looking for that, or that it made him seem less cool and powerful (and more than one offered to slap him for free). This isn't a surprise. Most people don't value sex work, and presume that those who pay for sex (always "others" despite the fact that we all know someone who has paid for sex, whether we know it or not) do it because they're pathetic, powerless, and unable to have sex with a non-professional. The truth is that lots of people who pay for sex have access to sex elsewhere. I'd hazard a guess that while some people pay for sex because they've tried but can't find a sexual partner who isn't a professional, most people who pay for sex don't do it because they have no other options.
I'm hoping that the writers will make the most of this plot line, and let Don's sexuality reveal parts of himself to both us and him, without relying on tired anti-sex work stereotypes. The relationship between paying for sex and power, that is to say who holds the power in the client-provider interaction, is complicated, as is the question of who has the power when someone is being paid and carefully constructing a scenario where they get slapped. So far I don't see a lot that's revealing about the sex Don's having. He has a highly contrived and controlled fantasy he plays out (bra must be on, woman on top, slapping in the face). It's just like the rest of his life. In this way at least the sex seems to fit with his character.
As a sex educator I'm always on the look out for how we treat sex differently, without giving much thought to whether we should or not. In some ways sex is just another thing we do; by ourselves and with others. But we often interrogate sexual acts and intentions in ways we don't wonder or worry about when it comes to other social interactions. When we do this in a way that opens up space for conflict and possibility, it's a great opportunity. When we ask questions that never get past our own experience, we're only scratching the surface. So, for example, let's think about the other things that Don pays professionals to do. We know he pays a woman to clean and cook, he probably pays someone to do his laundry. He doesn't pay someone to shine his shoes though, he does that himself. Why is that? Shoe shining and sex work have a few things in common. Both are jobs that get little respect and tend to be done by folks disproportionately marginalized (by race, class, gender....). Both offer opportunities where someone in a position of power is off their guard and visible to the person they are paying.
There are plenty of ways of making meaning out of Don's sex scene. More is expected of him and riding on him at work than ever before, and the carefully constructed fantasy world he created with Betty is gone. The sex scene let's us know that he's paid this woman before, and he already has a fully developed and carefully constructed scene with her (bra must be on, she's on top, progressively harder face slapping). Maybe it's his way of relinquishing control for a moment. Maybe it's only within a highly contrived and constructed situation that he allows himself/is able to feel something. Maybe he's a masochist, or playing with shame (if you're interested in creator Matthew Weiner's explanation check out his interview in the Daily Beast).
Whatever the season brings I plan to follow Don's lesson about sex to Peggy; "Sex doesn't sell. You are the product. You feeling something is what sells." Watching characters we know have sex, particularly the ones we think are hot, may be fun, but it's what the sex makes them feel, makes us feel, that's far more interesting.
Read more Twitter comments on Mad Men & Sex
The Daily Beast - Mad Men's Slap-Happy Return
So here's a pop quiz. Which bodily fluid will people pay hundreds of dollars a year to increase, that's not tied to fertility? it's not sweat (celebrities and power brokers shoot up Botox just so they won't sweat), it's not vaginal fluids (there's still a multi-million dollar industry shaming women into deodorizing their vaginas), it's not spit or snot (is a parenthetical note necessary for those?). I know I blew the mystery with the headline, but I couldn't contain myself, it's semen.
That's right. There is actually a whole market of products that promise to increase your semen volume completely out of the context of fertility. In theory I get this. So many guys see sex in porn before they have sex, and straight guys (who these products are almost exclusively marketed to) almost never see other guys ejaculate. And if all you know about semen you learned from porn, you might think there was something wrong with the amount you ejaculate. Enter the marketers!
Here's some very un-market oriented information about what's average, what's possible, and what's impossible when it comes to increasing semen volume. Enjoy!
Increase Semen Volume: Do Products to Increase Semen Volume Work?
While I've been familiar with the concept of being asexual since my early days in sex education, I first heard about asexuality as an identity from David Jay, the founder of the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network. David, and the thousands of people who came to join him in the online space he created, talked about their experience with such honesty and clarity and at the same time never glossing over the incredible conflict, confusion, and frustration that comes with living in a society that is so saturated in sexual messages, and not experiencing sexual attraction to others. Hearing from them about their experience sparked a hundred ideas in my mind and many conversations with friends, lovers, and colleagues.
Angela Tucker, the director of the upcoming documentary Asexuality: The Making of a Movement (check out the trailer here) had a similar experience, and it led her to the film she's now working on. I heard about Angela and her film from Kickstarter, a fun and easy way that anyone can get involved and support creative work. They're on Kickstarter looking for funds to edit the film, and last week I talked with Angela via Skype to learn more about the project and their Kickstarter campaign.
Asexuality as an identity is still something lots of people don't know about. Do you remember how you first encountered the term asexuality?
I learned about asexuality through an article on Salon.com years ago which was a profile of David Jay and talked about asexuality as a growing identity. I started talking about the article and about asexuality to friends and I was really struck by what a conversation starter it was and also how divided people were about it. I thought it was interesting that the idea of a community of people who experience no sexual attraction blew so many people's minds and how some people who are typically extremely progressive and open were really dismissive of it. David Jay and I actually went to the same college, not at the same time, and we got together over a slice of pizza to talk about it. That was three and a half years ago, so we've been talking and filming ever since.
I know you haven't started editing the film (which is what the Kickstarter campaign is about) but can you describe a bit of what the film is about or what people can expect.
The subtitle is "the making of a movement", but a movement is really about people. So the film has characters in it. It is a profile of David Jay and a few other people who identify as asexual. But it's also about larger ideas, like how one can be part of this burgeoning community in this really over-sexualized world. When I talk to people at parties about the film so many of them want to talk about how they don't always desire to have sex and how they can feel overwhelmed by the images around sex. But a the same time that's not an okay thing to talk about. You're supposed to talk about how great and amazing the sex your having is. But people talk about feeling overwhelmed, or having been in a relationship for eight years without having had any sex, and whether that was okay for them or wasn't. And speaking of the people in the film, I think people admire people who have the strength to identify as something that most of the population wouldn't identify as. So it's also about how you deal with life as an outsider and how you build a movement.
You don't identify as asexual. Can you talk about how you position yourself in relationship to asexuality. And what the response has been from people who find out your making this film?
Most of the time with documentaries about identity, people make the film because they are that identity and they want more exposure to that identity. I've always been interested in films about identity. I'm an African American woman and there's always the assumption that I'm supposed to be making a film about being an African American woman.
So people assume that I'm asexual and want to have a conversation about that. A few people have asked me, but it comes out more with people asking my producers whether I'm asexual or not. I was at a party and talking about the film, and talking to someone I don't know that well, and they were making that I'm-trying-to-figure-you-out face and they'll ask questions which aren't direct questions like, "so how do you connect to the material". But I'm not going to answer unless you ask me directly. Because I don't want it to seem like I'm saying "Oh God, I'm not asexual!" But if they ask I'll tell them I'm not, and then it gets interesting because when you tell them you're not, they speak more freely to you about asexuality, particularly if they fall in the camp of thinking it's not real.
It's helpful for me to have such a close relationship with David Jay, I consider him a friend beyond the subject of the film. And if I didn't have that relationship with him I think it would be more difficult. In the beginning I really just innocently thought this would be an interesting thing to do because I'm someone who is interested in identity. But I also know that I'm not making an advocacy film about asexuality, and I know that there are some things in the film that some asexuals aren't going to be happy about. Not everyone in the film keeps the identity as asexual, and I think that will be tricky for some people.
Can you describe some of the things you've shot over the years, or the different elements of the film?
Over the years of making the film we've followed David through his efforts to try and make the movement grow. AVEN marched in Pride in San Francisco for the first time last year, and we filmed that. And that was a big moment because some people in the asexual community really want asexuals to be a part of the LGBT community. We're also following an effort that David Jay and others are making to be involved in the new DSM definitions, to try and keep some language in there that acknowledges asexuality (which won't be explicitly referenced) and makes it okay for someone to identify that way. We interview some scientists who are starting to study asexuality, which may give it more legitimacy. But there's a bigger question of whether you need a study to legitimize who you are? That's something that comes up in the interviews.
So for folks who are interested in knowing more or seeing the film, what's the story with the Kickstarter campaign?
Kickstarter is basically a great way for filmmakers to get people involved in their work in a kind of high stakes way. We're doing a Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 so we can edit the film into a rough cut that we can then take to broadcasters for funds to complete the film. It's really hard to get any money from broadcasters without a rough cut, and so far we've been able to do shooting through being crafty, people working for free, etc... But for the edit we need the money to bring the film to the next stage.
We have 60 days to raise the $10,000. People can donate amounts starting at $25 and if we don't raise the entire amount, everyone who has pledged gets their money back, so the stakes are very high. At every level you get something for your donation, it might be a digital download of the film, or a mix that I made or David Jay made. You can get tickets to the film premiere, we're having two events that will just be for our contributors (one in Manhattan and the other in Brooklyn) and also we just added some amazing prizes from the authors of The Nanny Diaries. And everyone who contributes gets access to a members only area where we will be posting longer trailers and other extras that are only for our Kickstarter supporters.
Find out more about Asexuality: The Making of a Movement (at Kickstarter).
More about Angela Tucker at Arts Engine.
