Manhood: The Bare Reality

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Especially in Gender Studies in Thai mainstream education rarely found the study about masculinity and body politics which could lead to misunderstanding about 'penis'. I found it very illuminating in hearing each man's story about his relationship with his penis, his views on life in regards to it and how porn, abuse, size and cancer's have shaped each persons outlook on their views towards their penises and life in general.

This book is a sequel of sorts to The Bare Reality, the original book in the series where 100 women had their breasts photographed and shared what it meant to them to be a woman.But reading about Female Genital Mutilation, the number of women speaking surgery on their vulvas and the language around how we refer to female body parts made Laura reconsider. Womanhood departs from the ‘ideal vagina’ and presents the gentle un-airbrushed truth, allowing us to understand and celebrate our diversity. Before Manhood came Bare Reality - where Laura interviewed 100 anonymous women and took pictures of their chests. There is sadness as well that many men have experienced in their lives and sexuality and how they are working through that.

Or the man who found himself hiding a personality he wasn’t sure others would like behind a body he was confident they would.It’s not the first time that she has used intimate photographs to explore ideas about identity, gender, sex and society – nor was that project immune to double entendres. He was given the news he would live, at exactly the same time his mum found out her own cancer was incurable. It wasn't always comfortable to read - the views expressed in here were occasionally distressing to me - but I was glad to have it laid out anyway, and feel perhaps better able to have discussions with penis-owning people about these things now. Here are a variety of ways to talk about men’s health in a natural manner, ranging from using current events to witty remarks to simply grabbing the conversation by the ball and being blunt about this crucial topic.

The conventional wisdom is that men don’t like to talk about things, and that they are suffering and even dying because they don’t talk about this part of their body. Once upon a time, penises occupied their place on the pedestal with pride, from the holy worship of the phallus in ancient Rome to the Shiva Linga, but they have also long been associated with base level male banter, ridicule and fear. While I do get very passionate about men’s health, the truth is that men have done much of this damage to themselves by perpetuating harmful stereotypes and narratives. Certainly I learned that the penis is endlessly variable, as are the bodies which penises are attached to--unlike porn or TV or popular cinema, in which men's bodies skew toward "perfect" or at least "extremely attractive in a culturally conventional way.I found it really hard to find somebody who’d been to prison who wanted to take part, I found it really hard to find a vicar who’d agree to take part, and sometimes it took a while to find certain types of people. As this is a driving force and predominant theme behind the mission of ABSOT, these lines aren’t new information. We need to talk more – not about sports and women and stereotypical “guy things,” but about what really drives us as people.