Reflections on a Plastic Penis

Plastic Penis Silhouette 

(SA 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

It's an amusing irony of the world we live in today that just as silicone sex dolls become ever-more life-like with their synthetic skins and other technosexual advances, actual flesh-and-blood human beings are becoming-plastic [1].

 

So, it was no great surprise to read this morning [2] that microplastics have been discovered in the male member for the first time - having already been found in the testes and semen - effectively turning the penis into an organic dildo. 

 

Now, you might have thought that would have certain advantages; perhaps enabling harder and longer-lasting erections, for example. But, as a matter of fact, the opposite is true and questions are now being raised (no pun intended) about the role of these tiny pollutants in erectile dysfunction and falling fertility rates.

The penis, as a vascular, spongy organ with high blood flow, is particularly vulnerable to contamination with microplastics, which we are continually breathing in and swallowing in our food and drink. First they get into the blood; then they lodge themselves in the smooth muscle tissue of the penis. 

 

Maybe they do or maybe they don't cause damage and lead to problems in the bedroom. But the fact is they shouldn't be there; although how we might remove them from the environment - and from our bodies - is a question no one knows the answer to.

 

II. 

 

Of course, D. H. Lawrence foresaw all this a hundred years ago: we should've listened, but we didn't.

 

One is reminded, for example, of a passage in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) in which Oliver Mellors protests against the becoming-machine of the human being - 'with India rubber tubing for guts' - and the manner in which technocapitalism is emasculating men and destroying both their virility and fertility; 'making mincemeat of the old Adam' and sucking the spunk out of each and every individual [3].

 

Notes

[1] I have written on this in earlier posts: see, for example, the post on RealDolls (17 July 2017); or this one on Living Dolls (10 Jan 2013).

[2] See Damian Carrington's report in The Guardian entitled 'Microplastic discovery in penises raises erectile dysfunction questions' (19 June 2024): click here. 

      The multi-authored scientific report that Carrington based his article on was published in the International Journal of Impotence Research (June 2024): click here for online access provided by Springer Nature.   

[3] See D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 217.