Running Hare XIII

Image: "Hare and Fern" by imogensattic.

Mon Bel Ami

Image: The Leveret.

An Ancient Religion

. . . [M]ost folklore material concerned with the hare, whether informed by sympathetic magic or not, appears to support its connection with an ancient religion: the worship of the Mother Goddess, the deity that Robert Graves has characterized as the White Goddess. The whole of the complex witch-connections of the hare can, in fact, be regarded from one angle as the vestiges of the worship of the White Goddess. Both the hare and the cat were sacred to her, and in the superstitions, which are the squandered legacy of the old religious beliefs, the hare and the cat have become the witches' familiars.

– George Ewart Evans & David Thomson
The Leaping Hare
p. 221

Image: Amanda Clark.

Bel Homme XVIII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Hare Décor III

Image: The Leveret.

Rethinking the "Normal" Penis (Part II)

Following is a second excerpt from "Hung Like a Horse . . . or An Acorn," chapter five of Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt's Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies: Sex, Brains,and Body Guys. For Part I of this series, click here.

________________

Dominant culture believes that only certain kinds of penises can bear the burden of representing masculinity and male sexuality. Such beliefs, however, negatively limit our ideas about desirable masculinity and sexual performance. A single norm such as the "large floppy penis" or the six-inch erection is the genital equivalent of the elevation of the body guy in current media narratives: a representational strategy highly invested in maintaining a belief in the importance and near magical powers of one type of man and penis, neither of which in reality possess the power representation attributes to them.

Urologists acknowledge that men with short, fully above-the-scrotum penises are normal, and we would all agree those are not large floppy organs. There is nothing wrong with those men. The problem is with singular notions of what a flaccid penis is.

The same is true with Michelangelo's David. The art historians [mentioned in Part I] were in a near panic to explain how, because of fear of battle with a giant, he could be considered normal even though he was only two and four-tenths to two and eight-tenths inches. In fact, two and eight-tenths inches is nearly double the size of some of the normal men in a recent urological study who were measured several times, presumably far from the battlefield (Shamloul). In that study, a number of men who were only one and six-tenths inches flaccid were considered "normal." Indeed, this study tells us in medical terms what anyone would see in [a] visit to the locker room. Even if David had a one and one-half inch penis that rested entirely above his scrotum, showing just a head and no shaft, there would be nothing to explain. We only think something is wrong because we expect to see something that conforms to a norm. The real question is why aren't there more, not less, men with one-and-a-half inch penises in the world of art, photography, and movies, because such men are everywhere in life?

. . . [Also] even if we thought penis size would tell us about the quality of a man's lovemaking, why do we put so much emphasis on the size of a flaccid penis since there is little correlation between flaccid and erect sizes?

. . . Kinsey (Bill Condon, 2004) is a film that provides a mature representation of a character with a small penis. The biopic-style film tells the story of the well-known twentieth-century sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson). In the scene with frontal nudity, Kinsey's assistant, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), disrobes to sexually arouse Kinsey in a hotel room the two share on a business trip, revealing a shorter than average flaccid penis.

Indeed, he succeeds in seducing the bisexual Kinsey. Sarsgaard's penis directly challenges cultural assumptions about the desirability of the big penis, in that early in the film we see Kinsey and his newlywed wife visit a doctor to discuss their sexual problems, whereupon they learn that Kinsey's large penis is the source of her pain and their difficulties. . . . [The doctor] initially assumes that the problem is caused either by an abnormally small three-inch erect penis or a five-inch erection, which lies at the very low end of the normal range, as if he cannot imagine that an average or large penis could be the cause of such a sexual problem.

Sarsgaard's flaccid penis, on the other hand, in not only noticeably smaller than the four-inch normative flaccid penis of medical measurement but also of representation. He is at the far extreme of Kinsey, who is unusually well endowed, yet his character is highly sexual and attractive, seducing both Kinsey and later his wife. He in fact turns out to be bisexual, like Kinsey, but his small penis does not mark him as deficient, unattractive, or pejoratively deviant. Indeed, he is marked as confident in that during his seduction of Kinsey he never projects a sense of embarrassment about his body or that he will fail in his seduction – which he doesn't! He is self assured throughout.

See also the previous posts:
• Rethinking the "Normal Penis" (Part I)
• Soft
• Hard
• Not a Weapon or a Mere Tool
• Body and Soul

Images 1-4: Subjects and photographers unknown.
Image 5: Peter Sarsgaard in Kinsey (2004).
Image 6: Ronald J. Griswold.

Blue Hare

Image: "Blue Hare" by Edward Foster.

Bel Homme XVII

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

"Let Us At Least Hope . . ."

Writes Jill Mason at the end of her book The Hare:

Hares can never again be such a source of superstition and myth as they have been in the past. Modern scientific research, technology that provides concrete information about the universe, and a British population that is becoming far removed from countryside matters has led to a detached, rational and, perhaps, clinical approach to all things. As a result, much of the mystery and romance is now missing, and a hare is regarded as a less 'magical' creature: it is now just a hare.

Let us at least hope that hares will always be part of our countryside, even if they are no longer part of our culture.

Morning Light XLVI

Subject: Chris Brown.
Photographer: Arnaldo Anaya-Lucca.

The Hare and the Great Flood

Write George Ewart Evans and David Thomson in The Leaping Hare:

The original creation [of the world] is repeated every morning and every spring but there is always the fear that the little death of sleep and the longer one of winter will last forever. What could look more barren than a dried-up seed in winter, its husk as hard as the frozen earth? This fear is expressed in the story of the Flood. The conception of flood as the end of life on Earth is universal. Stories almost identical with the Old Testament one occur all over the world. But as those who know them are alive to tell the tale, and have animals and plants about them, it is clear that the seeds of life were saved. The Flood is the story of death and resurrection, winter and spring, the darkness of the soul and its creative light. The survivors mark time, so to speak, in some kind of boat, a coconut shell or an eggshell.

Noah's Ark is symbolic of the egg or the husk of a seed, and there are stories of how it sprang a leak and the last hope of new life on Earth seemed about to be lost. It is usually a hare, hedgehog or snake that saves the day:

"All through the days of the Flood, the Devil tried to sink the Ark by making holes in it. Noah put a plug every time. But at last he had no plugs left. He cut off the hare's tail and stopped the last hole with that. When the Devil saw this he fled. But since then hares have no tails. [sic]"* In another version Noah cuts off the foot of the female hare for a plug. She dies, and that would have been the end of hares. But when the animals leave the Ark God allows the male hare to give birth to one child, a female. And so the race goes on. This female can be recognized by the white star on its head. **

When the flood begins to subside, a bird is released to discover land, but in an American Indian legend a hare is sent out. In that story the survivors do not have to use a boat. They took refuge on top of a mountain from which presumably they could see the extent of the waters. They brought a hare with them and knew that the flood had subsided when one day, after its release, it did not return.

* Oskar Dähnhardt, Natursagen, Leipzig and Berlin, 1907-12, Vol. I, p. 277.
** Ibid., p. 278

Boys Will Be Boys V

Image: Subjects and photographer unknown.