I sometimes come across videos like this
or pictures like this
This is very interesting to me because it shows how people
have no idea what is going on in their own brains.
Let us start with the question: why an unwanted image of a
dick causes us to have an emotional reaction (and it seems that both man and
women have a similar reaction after looking at a stranger’s dick – some mixture
of shame and the feeling of being intimidated)? I remember when I was talking
to a male friend on Skype not so long ago. Another male friend of mine stood
behind him and suddenly pulled his pants off and showed his dick to the camera.
My immediate reaction was to curse and look away in disgust. The thing is that
unlike many people who send dick pics, my friend perfectly knew what he was
doing – he has read The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris. I did too, but the trick
nevertheless worked.
So why do dicks evoke these emotions in us? Do we learn to
be scared by dicks? When and how exactly do we learn about this? Somebody tells
us? Or do we need an unpleasant experience with a dick that belongs to somebody
else?
There is no reason to be afraid of a dick if you had none of such experiences. But people still do have these emotions. So what causes them?
There is no reason to be afraid of a dick if you had none of such experiences. But people still do have these emotions. So what causes them?
Another example I know is when I was just a few years old
and I was playing at a riverbank with a group of female friends, all of them a
few years old. A dude with a mustache was riding a bike nearby. He stopped
close to us, silently pulled down his pants and showed us his junk with a smile
on his face. The girls started screaming and run away. I probably did the same
thing, although I do not remember well, as it was so much time ago (by the way
none of us thinks about this as a traumatic experience now; it was quite
benign; after the incident the guy rode off and we never saw him again). Of
course, nobody explained to us before that this was an appropriate reaction in
such a situation. But it seemed appropriate. Why?
The answer is that this is our innate instinct. We
have inherited from our ancestors some types of social interaction that are guided
(among others) by genital display. People who observe primates know that the
genital display is a way to communicate social status in a group. Dominant male
individuals show their dicks much more often than other individuals. Human brains
are wired in a similar way. Seeing somebody’s dick makes you feel intimidated
and human intuition sometimes makes guys show their dicks in order to
intimidate others.
A woman often feels disgust after seeing stranger’s dick,
yet she may think that his intention was to arouse her and the man had no idea
that his dick looked gross to her. A men asked why he sent a dick pic would
probably say something like that: “it was a joke; I wanted to embarrass her; I
like to show off my masculinity.” What is really going on, is that when a man
wants to intimidate a woman (or less often another man), his primate intuition tells him to show off his
dick. The woman verbally misidentifies his intentions but emotionally responds
in an intended way. The act achieves its goal. Note that the man also somewhat
misidentifies what really caused him to do this. It is because he acts on his
animal instinct.
So, as it turns out, unwanted dick pics are a product of our
ancestral way to ensure group cohesion through authority structure. These
mechanisms have not much use nowadays but they still hang around aimlessly in
our brains causing trouble. Moreover, the example of dick pics shows nicely how
our verbal processing is disconnected from the part of the brain where we actually make decisions. Neither a man nor a woman verbally understand their
own role in this situation – unless they are educated in anthropology or
primatology.
If you want to read more, I recommend:
- The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris
- The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
- Primate Ethology by Desmond Morris
- Body language: The crotch displays of men