July 30 2010,
This little teddy bear shows us how how the Male body and the penis are not intrinsically threatening or dangerous. Masculinity requires masculine clothing and other semiotics of power. Naked a man is feminine and tender.
The American social taboos around Penis Publicity have an ironic effect. The Masculine Myth is so fragile, and so ready to evaporate with just a few rays of sunshine, but the left and right of society is united its fear of male sexuality and naked males. Many Radical Feminists seem to equate seeing a penis with violation, and would surely advocate using the powers of the state to suppress Male Nakedness if our post-protestant culture did not already ban the male body from "The Mediated Public" except in its gym-mediated Hyper-Masculine form.
We are in a strange dialectic where a Counterpublic solidifies what it is reacting against.
