Penis Appreciation Society – Are you a member?

I'm not gonna lie, when I was younger I wasn't really a fan of penises. I mean, don't get me wrong, I loved touching them and fucking them and feeling them grow and harden and respond to my touches... But I didn't particularly like looking at them. They were this sort of weird, tacked on extra that looked like it didn't really belong, all loose and swinging in the breeze, or standing up to attention... They just looked... funny. 

Naked men just weren't something I looked at to appreciate, not the same way I looked at women. Women, soft and flowing and naked in artworks everywhere. Boobs and full frontal nudity in museums, and curved, vulvalicious forms in sculpture and carvings. 

Porn and erotic art celebrated the feminine form, and everything around us from advertising to spirituality guided us to see the beauty in female nudity and gave us permission to appreciate it. 

Cocks, on the other hand, just don't have that pull (pardon the pun). When confronted with the giant, yet not-so-giant, nakedness of Michelangelo's David we giggled and smirked. Dicks were scrawled on desks and bathroom walls as jokes and crassness. There was nothing sexy about them. Nothing sweet and mysterious about them. They weren't shrouded with temptation and eliciting desire. They were just... dicks. 

He's Got the Look

It took many years of working in adult shops and seeing dicks and dildos and penis shaped items before I really started to appreciate their form and aesthetic. To see the curves and lines and even the ropey veins that snaked along a nice, hard shaft as something beautiful in its strength and hardness. As something pleasing to look at. As something I desired to have inside me. But, for some reason, they still looked odd to me when attached to the man. I can't really explain it except to reiterate what I'd learnt when I was younger; naked women – sexy, naked men - funny. And it wasn't just me. My girlfriends and I would talk about this phenomenon a lot. About how a man in nothing but a pair of nice butt-hugging boxers was as sexy as fuck... But the minute you took the pants off... We giggled like school kids. What was wrong with us?? We were grown adults. We were open minded, liberated, sex positive feminists who loved men and women and sex and all the trappings that came with it, but penises turned us into teenagers snickering and whispering behind our biology textbooks.

Love It Like a Man

It was a gay man who really showed me the way of loving cocks attached to men. In fact, if I'm honest, it was a lot of gay men, and if I'm even more honest, it was totally gay porn.

People are often surprised to learn this but, according to statistics gained from places like Pornhub and other adult websites, gay porn is one of the most popular porn categories among (straight) women, and the reasons for this are actually more obvious than you'd think. You see most hetero porn, especially in the mainstream, is aimed at men. And more specifically it's aimed at men fucking women and his enjoyment of what is happening rather than hers. While yes the stuff is happening to her, and you get to see the stuff he's doing, for the most part it's kind of detached to us as women. It's not necessarily about our pleasure at all, and we can totally tell. Even with a lot of mainstream lesbian stuff it's obvious to most of us that this has been made for men's eyes and so while it can be a slightly more titillating to us than some straight porn, it can still be a little bit meh. 

But why then gay porn, I hear you ask? Surely that's the most "made for men" porn you can get? And to this I say yes, but also no. It's... Different.

You see, men who like cock really like cock.

They adore it. They worship it. They appreciate it, and seeing that, for a women who quite likes penis, is hot as fuck. Without being too generalist about gender (because fuck generalising gender) women are very often aesthetic creatures who like to form emotional bonds to the things we love. Whether it's people, clothes, sparkly stationery items, or, yes, penises, knowing it and loving it is part and parcel of the enjoyment of it and for some reason, seeing gay porn and the adoration they had for the beautiful penises they were enjoying, clicked something in my head. It gave me the permission I think my subconscious needed to swap it from giggly little willies into gorgeous, sexy cocks.

Let's Talk About Dick Pics

These days, thanks to website like Tumblr and Reddit there is far more positivity and adulation towards men, their bodies, and specifically their penises. There is less mirth or disgust surrounding them, and slowly but surely, men are beginning to realise that for many, many women, it's not about hating penises or not liking men that makes us as vocal about not wanting to see your dicks as we are, but about consent and permission, and the difference between wanting to see a cock, and having it sent to us out of the blue by some random dude we don't know. Often these messages can be as confronting as a douchbag yelling something gross from his car, and the cocks themselves as ugly as the intent behind the sending. But a pic that's been asked for? A cock that's been sent especially to you because you've requested it and want to see it... Oh yeah. We love a good, consensually sent, and beautifully photographed dick pic, and don't ever let anyone tell you differently. 

Penis Appreciation Society

While penises have been celebrated throughout history as manly, war-like weapons of mass destruction, again that's usually been for the benefit of other men, but there are a few places around the world that truly love and appreciate the gorgeousness of cocks for all of their form and functions and probably one of the most well known is Japan and it's fun and funky  Shinto Kanamara Matsuri festival, which translates to "Festival of the Steel Phallus". This amazing festival full of colour and life is a celebration of all things cock and where the god Kanayama-hiko and the goddess Kanayama-hime are celebrated and worshipped for a bunch of things but notably who sex workers would pray to prevent sexually transmitted infections. Started in the sixties as a traditional yearly festival these days it's an excuse to sell penis lollipops and balloons and also raise money for AIDS research, and is a big draw card for tourists in Japan. 

Show Your Appreciation 

If you, like me, are a lover of men, and have men in your life whose penises you like, tell them! Just like we love to hear that we're beautiful or sexy from those who love us, so too do men. And men super love their dicks and absolutely want and need to hear that we love them too. If you're someone who enjoys looking at penises then there are numerous websites around now dedicated to anonymous or not-so-anonymous dick pics. Some are there just for your enjoyment, and some are even created specifically for you to leave comments and ratings and sometimes even more. 

Whether you like them cut or uncut, or you don't really care you just love cock, it's time to throw off those last vestiges of giggling glee, and really sink yourself into the gorgeousness and seductiveness of the wonderful, versatile penis.