Read Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis Online
Authors: Mels van Driel
Tags: #Medical, #Science, #History, #Nonfiction, #Psychology
Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis
M A NHOOD
The Rise and Fall of the Penis
MELS VAN DRIEL
Manhood
Manhood
The Rise and Fall of the Penis
Mels van Driel
reaktion books
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
33 Great Sutton Street
London ec1v 0dx, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
The original edition of this book was first published in 2008
bv Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam, under the title
Geheime delen: Alles wat je er altijd al over wilde weten
© Mels van Driel and Arbeiderspers 2008
English-language translation © Reaktion Books Ltd 2009
English translation by Paul Vincent
This publication has been made possible
with financial support from the
Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Cromwell Press Group, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Driel, Mels van, 1954–
Manhood : the rise and fall of the penis.
1. Penis. 2. Men–Sexual behavior.
i. Title
612.6'1–dc22
isbn: 978 1 86189 542 4
Contents
1 The Testicles and the Scrotum 10
3 The Prostate and Seminal Glands 62
8 Voluntary and Involuntary Sterility 214
Conclusion: That Wraps it Up 272
Introduction
Everyone knows what it’s like to become hooked on a particular subject. These things never happen purely by chance; in all probability they relate to something in us. We are drawn to the topic as if by a magnet.
It can reach the point where the person concerned is obsessed day and night. There is a constant stream of new facts, ideas and insights. Of course you’re now probably thinking that the writer himself has, or had, fertility problems or some erectile dysfunction. Well, that isn’t the case, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be at some point in the future. The same is true of all my male readers.
My broad interest derives mainly from daily contact with men’s
‘private parts’. Since mid-1983 I have worked as a urologist, so that I deal more or less permanently with sick people, or with people who think they’re sick. In the last few decades tens of thousands of penises and testicles have been through my hands. Eventually one feels the urge to dig deeper. Why do men come to doctors complaining about these organs?
Over the years my thinking about men’s ‘family jewels’ has achieved a precarious balance between urological, sexological and psycho logical perspectives, the academic approach, the problems of my surgery, daily life and especially literature. This is what moved me to write this book.
Wearing several different hats as a writer isn’t necessarily always easy, but it does provide a broad, human perspective, through a kind of internal cross-fertilization. Of course novels and poetry have the last word; art always takes precedence over science. But for a urologist the fact that the testicles and the penis are also organs, which if necessary must go under the knife, is in itself a source of satisfaction!
Drop the word castration in mixed company and watch all the men grab for their crotch, rather like footballers in a wall protecting them-7
m a n h o o d
selves from a direct free kick. This reflex can in fact be traced back to the ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Having been circumcised, like most Jews and Muslims, he used the term ‘castration’ to denote the removal of the penis, though over the centuries castration has never meant anything anywhere in the world but the removal of the testicles.
Freud’s successful coup is particularly interesting because in his thinking the testicles had lost all significance: he shifted almost all the focus onto the penis and the symbolic phallus, although the root of fertility and virility lies elsewhere, namely in the testicles. That shift was prompted by another: from sex as a means of procreation to sex for pleasure. In the wake of this development, increasing attention was paid to the penis at the expense of the testicles. This book attempts to redress the balance. The testicles receive at least as much attention as the penis, while the prostate and the seminal vesicles, also important in reproduction, are also briefly discussed.
In this book the genitalia are linked to such phenomena as religion, death and our craving for sexual pleasure. It describes how people down the ages have thought about the male private parts, and have had themselves castrated and sterilized. In addition it lists genital ailments, some serious, some not, and the relevant treatments. In addition a great number of secrets are uncovered. This information is inter-spersed with the thoughts and experiences of celebrities, poets and novelists. I lay absolutely no claim to completeness or scholarly rigour.
Not all readers will be aware that the Bible contains everything that life has to offer in terms of sex and love. It includes, for example (in alpha betical order): abortion, adultery, aphrodisiacs, anal sex, bestiality, castration, circumcision, exhibitionism, gang rape, group sex, homo -
sexuality, oppression of women, phallus worship, partner -swapping, prostitution, Satanic sex, sex during menstruation, sexually trans mitted diseases and, of course, self-abuse. This makes it impossible not to include a number of stories from various books in the Bible.
The best novels and poems commonly mirror everyday reality. One needs only the slightest familiarity with literary history to know that many writers have celebrated the healthy human body as a rich source of happiness and pleasure. There are, though, also writers, poets and philosophers who have written extremely graphically and evocatively about balls, penises and prostates or about ailments of those organs –
often in a way that no expert could improve on. Writers and poets, major and minor, male and female, undoubtedly have a broader, more human view of reality. Some female poets eagerly explore the scrotum, while the willy and the balls are mocked with great relish. Sometimes the private parts are dangerous and sometimes a set of toys. It is not 8
i n t ro du c t i o n
only writers and poets who provide knowledge and ideas; the same is true of singers, both castrati and others. A long series of interviews, conducted over 25 years with men suffering from major and minor ailments of the genitalia, guarantees a high level of authenticity. Several of these have been included with names deleted as short ‘case histories’.
Who is this book aimed at? Principally, certainly, at the ‘worried well’, with their fretting about pain, reduced fertility, erectile dysfunction, unusual swellings, undescended testicles, prostate cancer, castration anxiety and so on and so on. It offers women the opportunity of gaining a better understanding of their men. Men and women contem plating sterilization will find this book particularly useful. It offers arguments on who should and should not ‘go through with it’.
Its diversity of content makes the book resemble a big bag of liquorice allsorts. And as with liquorice allsorts, it’s best not to eat everything in one go. I have kept the tone light – the most effective way to approach ditherers and fretters.
9
chapter one
The Testicles and the Scrotum
Terminology
Ancient Greek and Latin had a great variety of terms for the testicles.
Only a few of these have remained in use. Some years ago two Classical scholars, Horstmanhoff and Beukers, devoted a study to the subject.
The Greek word for ball is
orchis
, which is found, for instance, in medical parlance. An ‘orchidectomy’ is an operation for the removal of the testicles, while an inflammation of a testicle as a result of mumps is known in the jargon as
mumps orchitis
. Orchids are so called because the tubers of the flower show some similarity to testicles. In the Middle Ages it was thought that the man who ate the biggest of these tubers would sire especially large children.
Testis
means witness in Latin, as evidenced by such words as
‘testify’ and ‘testament’, a document drawn up by a lawyer and signed in the presence of witnesses. The Dutch expression ‘the lawyer and the witnesses’ for the penis and the testicles recalls this link, as does the phrase ‘the lawyer inside and the witnesses outside’ describing sexual intercourse with the penis in the vagina and the balls dangling outside.
(Don’t assume that this can be taken for granted: a form of coitus exists in which both penis and balls are inserted in the vagina.) All kinds of factors may give words that were originally neutral in meaning enhanced or diminished status, moving from obscene to scientific or alternatively from respectably descriptive to coarse. The Anglo-Saxon ‘bollocks’, for example, was for centuries a purely des crip -
tive term (see its use in the medieval translation of
Reynard the Fox
below), but today is considered vulgar. It refers to the testicles, literally and figuratively, in widespread uses like ‘Bollocks!’ (nonsense), or ‘He thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks’ (He has an unduly high opinion of himself). Neither of these expressions is current in the usa.
‘Ball-bag’ and ‘nut-sack’ are current slang for ‘scrotum’, though they have not yet ousted the technical term in everyday usage. ‘Having 10
t h e t e s t i c l e s a n d t h e s c ro t u m balls’ is synonymous with having backbone and can be extended to resolute women like ex-premier Margaret Thatcher. Other informal words for testicles include crown jewels, goolies, nads and nadgers. In this book ‘testicles’, ‘testes’ and ‘balls’ are used indiscriminately.