A Short Post on the Penis

Not everyone loves penis, but without what comes out of a penis, none of us would be here today. And to celebrate this cold (okay, warm) hard fact, Japan held its annual riDICKulous festival known as Kanamara Matsuri, it literally means the Festival of the Iron Phallus.

Legend has it that 17th century Japanese sex workers would head to the Kanamara shrine in Kawasaki to pray for a clean bill of health. Today, a penis altar is paraded to the shrine and the festival isn’t about sex work or porn, or even gay pride in Japan; it’s just some good, clean family fun where people celebrate fertility and safer sex practices. In fact, one of the main goals of the festival is to raise awareness around HIV and AIDS.

This is the aforementioned eight foot penis:

I can’t imagine something like this going down in “progressive” Western countries. We can’t even agree on how to educate our children on sexuality — so if large penises were parading down the street it would cause outrage in certain areas of our United States. Never mind letting them lick a penis lollipop.

I mean, we freaked out about Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction (the one that revealed her nipple for 9/16th of a second during the Superbowl halftime show 10 years ago). If we can’t even handle the boob that feeds us, how on Earth would we be able to deal with the prick that brought forth the juices that birthed us?

However, if I could fantasize about it, it would be cool to have a festival that celebrates the body in all its naked glory. We could call it the Festival of the Birthday Suit. And like the penis festival, it would be celebrated by the young and the old.

Sure, this festival isn’t for everyone. But remember, while grandmothers licking penis shaped lollipops may make you uncomfortable, we all got here somehow.

 

How would you celebrate the penis?