Partway through Captain Fantastic (2016, dir. Matt Ross), off-the-grid anarchist/socialist father Ben (played by Viggo Mortensen) and his six kids have emerged from their isolated, utopian life in the deep wilderness of Washington state, to drive to his wife's distant funeral in a repurposed school bus. After an overnight at a campground, he stands nude in the door of the bus with his morning coffee, to the shock of an elderly couple passing by.
"It's just a penis," he says in response. "Every human male has one."
But to be fair, it's not just a penis. It's Viggo Mortensen's penis.
Leaving that significant objection aside, "It's just a penis" is worth contemplating.
Feminist theory in the '80's and '90's was deeply influenced by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. His work is hugely and willfully cryptic, but here's somethig he said that's worth thinking about, especially if you're a queer man trying to live authentically in your erotic body--and at the same time putting as much space as you can between yourself and the toxic bullshit of the manosphere. (Jake Hawley, J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, yes. I'm talking about you, and all your too-numerous friends.)
So here goes: the Phallus is not the penis.
For Lacan, the Phallus is a construct, not anatomy. It's conceptual. It signifies power, mastery, self-containment, sufficiency. It's the guardian of the patriarchal order. In other words, it's everything the manosphere dudes wanna believe about themselves.
Lacan sometimes calls it "The Name of the Father." With capital letters to make it scarier. (Thank you, Judith Butler, for that line.)
But it can only do its job if you don't see it for what it really is--a hollow idea that bears very little relation to the vulnerable life you live in your body.
It's a little like Toto pulling aside the curtain, and Oz, the Great and Powerful, turns out to be a bumbling old guy who's trying to hold it together. Or as Lacan liked to say, the Phallus has to remain veiled in order to maintain its authority.
Otherwise, what lurks behind the idea of the Phallus turns out to be just a penis. An organ that refuses to live up to the insane expectations that toxic masculinity places on it--sometimes by veiled implication, sometimes by smarmy, explicit frat-house boasting. (Which brings to mind a certain Access Hollywood tape.)
It doesn't get hard on demand. Or at all. Or gets hard when you least want it to. It leaks, sometimes at seriously inappropriate moments. It's always changing. (Just look closely at your own for five minutes if you need to be convinced.) In short--it's not the reliable source of masculine authority that patriarchy needs it to be in order to go on convincing everybody to fall in line.
As I see it, that's why queer men's sexuality is such a threat to the "dominant fiction" (thank you, Kaja Silverman, for that phrase) that guys should rule the world. Maybe it's why, in the first flush of gay liberation, in 1971, Charles Shively called cocksucking an act of revolution. Maybe it's also part of why the the right has pivoted to transphobia as its go-to strategy for whipping up moral panic. If a trans woman can declare that the penis she was born with doesn't define her; if a trans man can lay claim to the penis nestled at the top of his mangina--then patriarchy is, indeed, not long for this world.
And to those of us who identify as cis-gendered gay or bi or otherwise queer men, I say: love your penis. As it is, not as you think it ought to be. It's a source of joy. It's also a reminder that our lives are precious, unpredictable, and transitory. Celebrate your penis. Look after your penis. It's not a tool. It's not a weapon. It's the exposed tip of your heart. It's the wand of your soul. It's your ladder to heaven. It's your antenna transmitting its messages to your brothers, and receiving theirs. It's the key to your inner temple. It's your taproot into the earth. It's the wish-fulfilling jewel between your legs.
This, too, is an act of revolution.
