Soft

Following is an excerpt from The Male Body by Susan Bordo:

No other part of the male body is so visibly and overtly mercurial as the penis, capable of such dramatic transformation from passivity to alertness. No wonder many cultures have worshipped the phallus as a magical being. The word “fascinate” has its origin in the Latin word fascinum, which meant “witchcraft” and derived from the phallic god Fascinus, worshipped by Romans, who sometimes wore an image of an erect penis around the neck as an amulet or hung one of the walls of their houses. . . .

We don’t quite regard the penis as a magical being, but we still find fascination in its mercurial nature. . . . “Hard” and “soft” are two dramatically different physiological states that have been endowed with even more dramatic – and varied – significance.

Non-erect, the penis has a unique ability to suggest vulnerability, fragility, a sleepy sweetness. It’s not just soft, it’s really soft. It lolls, can be gently played with, cuddled. . . .


In literature, tender descriptions of the penis are usually evoked when it is soft. The most famous is offered by D. H. Lawrence through the persona of Connie Chatterley, who murmurs to Mellor’s soft penis as through it were her infant baby, even a fetus.

“And now he’s tiny, and soft like a little bud of life!” she said, taking the soft small penis in her hand. “Isn’t he somehow lovely! So on his own, so strange! And so innocent! And he comes so far into me! You must never insult him, you know. He’s mine too. He’s not only yours. He’s mine! And so lovely and innocent!” And she held the penis soft in her hand.

Say what you will about Lawrence in his phallic postures; he’s truly captured a woman’s moment here.

All animals of course, are made of mostly soft stuff, requiring various kinds of protection, from horns to helmets, to help us get by. Human flesh is particularly vulnerable, but the soft penis seems especially so, not, I think, because (like the testicles) it is more easily hurt than other parts of the body, but by virtue of contrast with its erect state. No other body part offers that contrast.

Unfortunately, the relation between the hard and soft penis often determines whether the soft penis will be cherished like a sleeping baby or derided as a flaccid piece of failure. The vulnerability of Mellor’s soft penis touches Connie Chatterley, but only after she has known him in a more commanding mode; transfigured by satisfying sex, she looks with wonder at “the tender frailty of that which had been the power.” But fifty pages earlier, after unsatisfying sex, Mellor’s body appears a “foolish, impudent, imperfect thing,” the “wilting of the poor, insignificant, moist little penis” of her lover to be “ridiculous” and “farcical.” Whether he’s a tender bud, full of promise, or a sad, wilted bloom, the full flower of manhood sets the standard.

– Susan Bordo
Excerpted from The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 1999
pp. 43-45

NEXT: Hard
See also the related posts:
• Penis
• Phallus
• Rethinking the "Normal" Penis
• Rethinking the "Normal" Penis (Part II)

Recommended Off-site Link:
Give a Man Six Inches and He’ll Want a . . . - John Elder, The Age (Melbourne), August 13, 2006.

Image 1: Doug Koziak (photographer unknown).
Image 2: Subject and photographer unknown.
Image 3: Geoffrey Kane (photographer unknown).
Image 4: Subject and photographer unknown.
Image 5: The Leveret.