[HN Gopher] The Penis Poster That Rubbed People the Wrong Way (2...
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The Penis Poster That Rubbed People the Wrong Way (2018)
Author : wombatmobile
Score : 74 points
Date : 2021-05-27 08:14 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.topic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.topic.com)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| "At most, it's an image worth a few minutes of analysis"
|
| Got to say I chuckled at that, while reading an article the
| author spent hours writing about it.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Wow, I remember a girl in high school showed me this ad in the
| back of a magazine in the library and we had a laugh. What a
| delightful surprise to be reminded of that with a whole article!
| duckfang wrote:
| The company was a shell company owned by Greetings, across from
| Peoples' Park.
|
| They sell lots of novelty goods like this still.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| That's not what the article says, and they seem to have done
| their research. Do you have a citation?
| geocrasher wrote:
| I came across this poster, or perhaps an enhanced version of it,
| while at a customer's location where I was working on their
| computers. It was in the bathroom. So poignant.
| meepmorp wrote:
| > Knowlton had been a graduate student at Columbia University,
| working on a PhD in particle physics, when he first concocted the
| idea for the poster.
|
| Who says grad school is useless?
| hettygreen wrote:
| I thought for sure this was going to be about the Dead Kennedy's
| album Frankenchrist.
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Well, i know what ebay search alert i'm going to add to my
| account today...
| rendall wrote:
| _" Further, Lehman notes, "Heterosexual men may fear that the
| representation of the penis gives women a basis for comparison
| and judgment, and, although men have long engaged in such
| behavior toward women, the thought of the tables being turned is
| nearly unbearable."
|
| As a result, representations of human penises tend to be strictly
| regulated."_
|
| I rolled my eyes so hard I sprained them. I don't know what it is
| with a certain class of people who need to explain everything in
| reference to straight men.
|
| If there were _no_ regulation on representations of human
| penises, these same people would explain _that_ due to straight
| men: "Because heterosexual men have penises, representations of
| penises are celebrated and glorified..."
| medium_burrito wrote:
| So much bullshit. Penises are literally the favorite thing of
| many men across human history to draw, in all shapes and sizes,
| any preferably the most public location. It was even a plot
| point of a major movie a few years ago.
| vmception wrote:
| My issue with this is the assumption that women want longer
| lengths.
|
| Maybe that was the driving force in the 1980s when this piece
| was published and debated, where women were communicating with
| a smaller group of women about sexual pleasure and
| optimizations.
|
| But this seems very inaccurate and tone deaf to read now.
| kodah wrote:
| > I don't know what it is with a certain class of people who
| need to explain everything in reference to straight men.
|
| > these same people would explain that due to straight men:
| "Because heterosexual men have penises, representations of
| penises are celebrated and glorified..."
|
| You are setting up a bit of a weak man fallacy by presenting it
| this way without evidence, but I imagine there probably is
| cognitive dissonance around this (and other topics about men).
|
| Partly, I think it's because there are no groups that represent
| or advocate for men. This hypothetical group, in the current
| cultural climate, could be hijacked by bad actors or other
| identity groups, or it could result in an even more monolithic
| or myopic view of men than exists in pop culture today. Such a
| group would need to be prepared to deal with these issues
| without being exclusionary, divisive, or dehumanizing. I think
| this challenging and would take all the right people to
| organize such a group.
|
| Identity based groups tend to project a monolithic image of
| people that is inaccurate. For instance, if you browse the
| internet long enough you'll probably develop a fairly myopic
| view that lends towards some -isms that certain groups have,
| however, if you talk to people in different cultural regions
| you'll likely discover that what large groups represent is
| largely in-contest.
|
| Edit: the earlier version of this comment confusingly stated
| that there's "good reasons" that these groups don't exist.
| menmen wrote:
| > Partly, I think it's because there are no groups that
| represent or advocate for men, and probably for good reason.
|
| Change the word "men" to "women" in that sentence to see how
| patently absurd that claim is. Women have unique needs that
| men do not, and organizations that help them navigate unique
| challenges. Why wouldn't this also be true about men? But our
| society is still so obsessed with "liberating" women that we
| can't even imagine that men might benefit from having their
| own spaces and advocates.
|
| Let's talk about homelessness, criminality, or suicide rates,
| and see if you can convince anyone that it's "for good
| reason" that men have "no groups that represent or advocate"
| for them.
| kodah wrote:
| > Change the word "men" to "women" in that sentence to see
| how patently absurd that claim is. Women have unique needs
| that men do not, and organizations that help them navigate
| unique challenges
|
| I think you're getting the idea that I don't want groups
| for men. "For good reason" is probably quite nebulous, so
| I'll go fix that. Thanks for pointing it out.
| xdennis wrote:
| Not to mention that the exact opposite is true. Nude men in
| statues and paintings often have penises with pubic hair, while
| women have no pubic hair and no genitalia at all.
| jrsj wrote:
| When I first read the title I thought of a person posting penises
| instead of a poster with penises on it. Internet slang has made
| me dumber.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Of course it rubbed people the wrong way. It's absolutely
| disgusting! It should have been called the "Penes of the Animal
| Kingdom".
| teekert wrote:
| Penii if you're a person of culture. (Well it ends in "us" in
| my language)
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| I'm curious. What language is that?
|
| Edit: your name gives off Dutch vibes, so now I'm looking up
| "penis" in all the Dutch-adjacent languages, Low German,
| Frisian, Low German, Limburgish, Luxembourgish, etc., but so
| far no luck.
| teekert wrote:
| Oops you're right, I tried to save my comment after reading
| [0] but I made a second mistake...
|
| [0] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Penii
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| Penopodes
| parenthesis wrote:
| Before I look, I'm going to guess this is the Benetton ad? And
| I'm wrong.
| tromp wrote:
| An image of the poster may be found at
| https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7u7tyUIGt1qzicj3o1_1280....
| clort wrote:
| Incredibly the image at the top of the article is a low-quality
| drawing of the poster itself in a picture frame. I thought it
| was just a cartoonish outline of the concept but its almost as
| detailed as the original..
| xdennis wrote:
| Honestly, we have nothing to be insecure about. Those other
| ones may be longer, but the proportions are just wrong.
| jmuguy wrote:
| I don't know how many times I've come across articles like this
| where the subject is an image or a video or some other media
| and yet the article doesn't actually contain it. This one is
| like an extreme version of that where they have quite a few
| nice illustrations... but not the actual poster.
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article that the artist has sued people
| over unauthorized use in the past, so maybe that worried
| their lawyers. Though you'd think they'd have a reasonable
| fair use case here.
| hedora wrote:
| I assumed they were subtly making fun of the editor and/or
| sponsors.
|
| Article summary:
|
| > _Those other publications were unbelievably prudish for
| historically sexist reasons, and also due to hangups
| revolving around typical male insecurity. Fortunately,
| we've progressed beyond such things. Here it is in its full
| glory:_
|
| _[CENSORED]_
|
| _(Nice try. I don't care how much you've bet in the office
| pool. No dick picks! -- ed.)_
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair use is a defense. But if someone sues you, you still
| have the expense associated with going to court. Even if
| you win, you'll probably still be out thousands of dollars.
| simias wrote:
| In theory, would such such an article even qualify as
| "fair use" if it reproduced the original work in its
| entirety in a decent resolution?
| ghaff wrote:
| That would be for a judge to decide. Certainly one of the
| things that makes reproducing photos/artwork tricky is
| that you're reproducing the complete work. Fair use is
| rarely completely straightforward.
| macksd wrote:
| To be fair, I do find it infuriating when the news is
| basically outraged that someone did something offensive in
| the media, and then keep displaying shots and samples of it
| so you know what they're talking about.
|
| I remember a talk show host on Fox News going on and on about
| Janet Jackson's alleged wardrobe malfunction at the superbowl
| this way. I actually missed the incident during the
| superbowl, but boy did the people who were most outraged
| about it make sure it was shoved in my face.
| [deleted]
| ithkuil wrote:
| I see only:
|
| > TypeError: Cannot read property 'length' of null
|
| Some nerdy innuendo or the site used to work and has some
| content?
| neomantra wrote:
| I met Jim Knowlton when he came to attend the IgNobel ceremony
| (as an alum) in 1994 or 1995. He was great friends with the Post-
| Doc I worked for, both having earned PhDs at Columbia.
|
| Of course that poster was on every door in my dorm, so it was
| great fun to meet him!
|
| The poster comes with an insert that gives extra detail about the
| penises. I asked him to read the clip "The porpoise has a
| remarkable penis..."
|
| I had to dig way deep (disk image backup within disk image backup
| 5 layers deep), but I have found it and now you too can
| experience his narration:
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/c2g5irqb7s1vpee/porpoise_penis.wav...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| It's so funny/sad how many people can get incredibly upset over
| seeing certain human body parts.
|
| Doubly so when there's a double standard about certain body
| parts.
|
| A woman can be thrown in jail for revealing her nipples, while no
| one will blink twice when men do it.
|
| You'd think that in the 21st Century we'd be long past such
| taboos.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Where's the boundary between "such taboos" and taboos which are
| actually supposed to be enforced?
| elliekelly wrote:
| And even in our "progressive" tech bubble it's taboo. Male
| nipples are a-okay on social media while female nipples violate
| community standards on most of the major platforms.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The progressive tech bubble gets all of its money elsewhere
| from ads. Theyre the ones making the calls, doesn't matter
| how progressive Facebook is
| tgv wrote:
| Why?
| dstick wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's filtered / edited due to prudishness, but
| you have to give a good headline credit where credit's due:
|
| "The Penis Poster That Rubbed People the Wrong Way"
| _pgu wrote:
| "Words by Colin Dickey"
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The title made me wonder which Hacker News poster it was about,
| and hope it wasn't me.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| I submitted the article headline verbatim, but the word "Penis"
| was auto filtered in the title by HN.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| ... and now the HN article title has expanded to include that
| word.
|
| I wonder if that was the work of a human editor, or a more
| powerful bot?
| dls2016 wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about HR Giger's "Penis
| Landscape", which almost bankrupted Jello Biafra's record label.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_Landscape
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(page generated 2021-05-27 23:02 UTC)