"Boys will be boys." They compete. Evolutionarily speaking it's natural, as males are designed to compete with one another in order to attract mates. That's just how it is. Isn't it?
In his "Faggot = Loser," Ken Corbett explores the psyche of a young boy named Josh, who acts the way he does due to his frustration with his older brother and father who are "bigger" than him. Corbett brilliantly structures the chapter by first introducing the general topic, then narrating exchanges he has had with Josh, and then finally explaining his analysis of the events. By cleanly organizing his ideas with subheading and subsections, the chapter is very easy to follow and comprehend. Nevertheless, why his organization is very clean and structured, his transition between arguments are seamless. His flow from one idea to another is very organic and almost conversational.
He explains his psychoanalysis of Josh in a very convincing manner, using examples from his exchanges with Josh to set up the framework for his thesis regarding the psyche of young heterosexual boys. Josh, like other boys, wants to be the biggest, the best. Corbett's analysis is thorough, but still allows room for the reader to make his or her own conclusions.
"Does size matter?" The penis is one of the largest sources of insecurity in young men. The popular assumption is that the bigger the penis, the better a man is sexually. Thus, men are left with the insecurity regarding whether their penis is big enough. Allusions to this insecurity can be seen in popular culture. Here is a link to a South Park scene where a man, who is insecure about the length of his penis, projects his insecurity to a class of elementary school children (in which the boys made a chart of their penis sizes). In this, Randy expresses that penis length (which he is insecure about) is superfluous and that other things must be taken into account (not surprisingly, the formula he creates for adjusted penis size puts his 4.5" penis at 6.3", which is above the "national average")
South Park
Thus, using these arguments regarding penis anxiety, I feel that what Corbett observed in Josh, can be compared to the general anxiety about being "bigger." For some reason, the general notion is that bigger = better. But does it?
Note how the anxiety over bigness for males is often mapped onto the penis, which pretends to be the gateway for certainty of phallic possession, BUT it also metastasizes itself to all other areas of the body, and beyond. The entire body of the (ideally heterosexualized) male must enact the phallus, or bigness, from the way he walks, to facial expressions and voice tone, as well as the general performativity of personhood (what he likes to watch, what he likes to touch, what he likes to eat, what his goals are). So the penis is only one of a long list of worries for this man to guarantee bigness. Money, of course, as a major symbolic phallus being another supposed guarantor of bigness.
ReplyDelete