We need to talk about her penis. Not about any specific individual’s private parts. That would be weird. No, we need to talk about the union of those two words. The smashing together of the female pronoun and the noun for the male genital organ. Her penis. Nothing better captures the irrationalism of our age, and also the slippery authoritarianism of it, than the fact that this nonsensical phrase is frequently uttered, and as much in the respectable press as in the gender Bedlam of internet discussion forums. If anyone tries to tell you the culture war is a myth, show them her penis.
Her penis is everywhere. It regularly pops up in news reports. You’ll see it in The Times and on the BBC. It’s inescapable. “Ex-soldier exposed her penis and used wheelie bin as a sex toy in public,” said a headline in Metro in April 2022. “A Glasgow-born sex offender has admitted exposing her penis,” said the Daily Record in that same story. Teesside Live, which covers Middlesbrough, the part of the UK in which this minimalistic anomaly reportedly whipped out her phallus, went all out. “Teesside woman accused of exposing penis,” its headline declared. “She is charged with committing a public nuisance by indecently exposing her penis to other members of the public while masturbating from a property window,” readers were informed. Readers, I’m sure, will have been more startled by the news that there exists a woman with a penis than by the claims that she flashed it at unsuspecting passers-by.
Speaking of flashing, the Daily Mail informed us in September 2021 that an individual “exposed her penis” at Wi Spa, a spa in Los Angeles. What’s more, “her penis” was “partially erect” at the time. A woman with a boner? More proof that there’s nothing men can do that women can’t. In September 2022, the Mail reported on allegations that American college swimmer Lia Thomas “took out her penis” in the women’s locker room.
[This is where we are and I refuse to be. He’s a guy, they are men – this is abusive to women, plain and simple. ~ Beege]
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