The dick pic and the quest for intimacy
A much-needed video appeared yesterday, apparently via Alain de Botton and definitely via The School of Life – The Dick Pic. You may think sending dick pics nobody asked for is not a very thoughtful hobby, but have you thought about it deeply enough? The School of Life is here to help.
It’s pretty painful to watch, what with the pretentious narrator and all, but it’s an essay as well as a video, so we’re in luck.
The Dick Picture is one of the least well-regarded of contemporary genres. To many, the idea of a man sending an acquaintance a picture of his penis sounds the height of idiotic self-regard and arrogance. Who, after all, would be interested – let alone turned on? It seems a fitting occasion to mock and laugh heartily.
Sigh. Have you spotted what the writer (de Botton?) left out? Have you wondered what happened to the all-important variable? It’s whether or not the recipient wants the dick pic. If the dick pic is invited, I don’t think it is idiotic self-regard and arrogance, it’s just lovers being lovers. But if it’s not invited? It’s all that and worse. But whatever imbecile wrote this thing seems to have entirely forgotten about that aspect. Which is sort of the whole problem, isn’t it…
Clearly, there are ways of sending images of one’s genitals to other people that may go seriously wrong. But there can also be quite important and benign aspects to this apparently crude and alarming phenomenon, dynamics that tells us about what lies at the heart of our sexuality and our search for intimacy.
Not if it’s uninvited there aren’t. If it is invited, there’s no need for this ridiculous essay, and if it’s not, this ridiculous essay is a pile of shit.
We get Dürer painting his in a self-portrait. Great; no problem. Then we get ludicrous commentary.
To make a dick pick isn’t typically about arrogance: it’s an exercise in vulnerability. Other people may laugh. That is what makes the act such a gamble and, when it goes right, a symbol of closeness. Like all men, Dürer knew perfectly well that many people would find his radical self-portrait acutely embarrassing. But, just like many of his modern day successors, Dürer was searching for a kind of friendship through an undefended act of revelation. He wasn’t making an assertion of potency; he was creating a noteworthy new avenue for rejection – in the name of honesty.
But he wasn’t presenting it to people uninvited. He didn’t go knocking on people’s doors and hold the portrait up when they opened. A single self-portrait isn’t the same as a dick pic tweeted to women who didn’t request it.
It is certainly possible to be too proud of one’s penis, and attempt to show it to others out of a desire to shock and humiliate. But for the overwhelming majority of men, this is not remotely what is at stake. The sending of a dick pic stems from a wish to reveal one’s deeper, more sincere self without any of the normal requirements for secrecy and shame. It is precisely because the penis is an area of such potential disgust and ridicule that its calculated revelation belongs to a trajectory of closeness, in which social inhibitions are finally and courageously lowered.
It’s as if women just didn’t exist at all, isn’t it. No need to think about whether or not they asked for these dick pics, no need to ask them how they feel about uninvited dick pics, no need to take them into account in any way.
Is there an Alain de Botton essay generator? There should be one.
I wouldn’t mind being a philosopher. My thesis shall be on how “Hey, Luv, show us your tits!” is a plaintive expression of vulnerability and the willingness to embrace rejection.
“The Reign of the Phallus” continues, I see. Is it because we may have a woman president that men feel ‘un-manned’? Do men feel the USA will become a No-Man’s Land? (No, since millions of men are willing and eager to vote for the only sand candidate in the race). Or is the photo a humble offering by a bashful male who thinks he has nothing else to offer the world but his aging member (like a certain NY politician named Weiner? No, he’s anything but bashful!)
Is is due to the general disgust with Trump and the ‘short-fingered vulgarian’ label, a throwaway comment made by an Atlantic magazine writer? In the scheme of things it would long ago been forgotten except for the ‘thin-skinned’ one repeatedly, over the years, trying to force the magazine to retract it?
Is it any of these or none of these? At the end of summer, we are reduced to the body. Children’s bodies are being barrel bombed in Syria, drowned off the coast of Greece? Women are being told not to seek an abortion, a legal procedure, when the contract the Zika virus and the fetus is showing signs of a small brain size? Male political leaders in the GOP are already saying a huge NO. None of that matters, the dick picture must be viewed.
Our bodies are all that we have when we are born. Feminists say women have autonomy over theirs/ours. Don’t show me photos of penises, of parts of bodies standing in for the whole, like a penis or a breast. Show me photos of whole human beings with their humanity intact. Caregivers taking care of dying elders, children being taught in school without fear of gunmen rushing in.
The dick pic is pathetic in the scheme of things, especially considering the world and all it contains, the beauty and horror. Then there’s a world of human suffering that few pay attention to. Can we just get off of the obsession with the male member for five minutes? Or is that like asking Trump to shut up and listen for once–for 5 minutes? There is too much hubris and too little humility in the world. I think I’ll pass.
You haven’t thought deeply or courageously enough about it, Gretchen Robinson. The male member lies–or, better, rises–at the mossy juncture of our sexuality and our search for intimacy. It is vulnerable and potent, a symbol of the Real Self undefended by the BVDs of social custom.
Would you say this essay fills a much needed gap in the literature?
Jim Baerg, I wouldn’t go that far. I think, rather, that de Botton firmly grasped the subject and artfully manipulated it until he reached a satisfying denouement.
From the essay:
Oh, dude. *facepalm*
(It’s like sexual harassment isn’t a thing.)
This essay, and particularly that last quoted paragraph, must surely be to encourage (straight) men to send dick pics to each other, in the spirit of #DudesGreetingDudes.
I’m so naive: I expected to find some research cited at the end of the article to back up that amazing parade of ‘facts’.
The essay reads just as well as an essay that men should expose their dicks to women in meatspace. But to be clear, I think it is wrong.
And yet, just imagine for a second the indignant bantam squawks from the MRA crowd if dick pics really were critiqued. “Body shaming! Hypocrite feminists hate it when women’s bodies are given [completely unsolicited] criticism, but where are they when a man’s [completely unsolicited] dick pic is criticised??”
The brackets of course are the salient bits that they will assuredly omit.
If Durer had drawn a picture of his erect penis and then sent a messenger to deliver it to a woman he knew, who had not shown any interest in him, it would have been very different to exhibiting a nude self-portrait.
Also why encourage shy men to send pictures of their penises to others? We all know that there is so much that can go wrong if the recipient is indiscreet and or the relationship breaks down. If a couple are already lovers, the man can learn to be less self-conscious about his body. Physical intimacy is far more important than than multimedia message intimacy.
‘There are people who should — perhaps — ‘ put on a raincoat and ‘exercise their vulnerability’ at the nearest schoolyard?
True about Dürer. Also, re-reading the post an hour or two ago I wished I had pointed out that Dürer DID NOT paint a dick pic, he painted a naked self-portrait, dick included.
De Botton seems to be assuming that virtually all dick pics are sent to women in a relationship with the sender, or at least with their prior consent (because, if he were correct about that, then the piece would be a bit pretentious, sure, but not particularly offensive). Privilege so clearly defined and identifiable is rare.
I’m not sure it’s even possible for him to assume that, because he’s aware that sending dick pics isn’t universally seen as okie dokie. He must have picked that up from somewhere…yet he still goes on to ignore the recipients altogether. The whole thing is so clueless I just can’t figure it out.
De Botton? say no more!
Surely most people think “unsolicited dick pic” when they hear “dick pic”? Because most comments I hear about them are about ones sent without consent.