Ewww! Enough! There’s gay men in here!
More, more, there’s straight men in here!
–Tim
For what it’s worth I agree with the people who think it’s a matter of preference. More specifically, it’s a question of economics. People who make TV shows are trying to get people to watch. I suspect that a lot more men are interested in seeing naked women than there are women interested in seeing naked men.
Why should that difference exist? Well, sorry to sound like a sociobiologist, but, if you consider the popular theories on mixed reproductive strategy, it makes a lot of sense.
I wonder if there is a similar assymetry in non-HBO watching cultures . . .
<<So quit watching stuff about leabians & watch some gay male flicks, youll see plenty of penis.>>
Heh, I’m gay, but I’m not gay.
I’ve watched gay flicks and it was promptly thrown in the trash. I want something as dramatic as the movie Ghost but with lil penis showing – you know? Seems gay flicks contain nothing but mindless sex, no storyline, no substance, just sex sex sex.
I like HBO becuase they attempt to mix the two. For example, they have this wonderful show called “Sex and the City” where you have a group of women who go out and have sex. I know it sounds like a trashy show, but I kid you not, it is quality programming! They have yet to show one single penis, despite the fact that the show pratically says the word a gillion times during the storyline.
<< What shows on HBO are showing a woman’s vagina? Wouldn’t that require spreading of the legs and lips? Or do you mean to say they show the outer parts of a woman’s genitals?>>
Actually, they have a series called “Real Sex.” Which in actuality, shows the spreading of legs quite alot. I wish there were other HBO watchers would step forward, I’m not making this up. 
But for the most part, they show the outer genitals, which I still consider the vagina. You show that woman prancing around on the HBO series to any man and they’ll be more than likely to tell you it is a vagina or a pussy. I doubt they’ll refer to it as a labia or the outer pubic region.
<<“Swinging” is overstating it a bit. I’d say “jiggling.”>>
I laughed so hard when I read this.
<<And BTW, they did not show no dick in Boogie Nights, except in the sense that they showed aliens in Close Encounters.>>
You got me back this statement. Elaborate?
Thanks for the replies gang, this is really interesting and entertaining thread.
What the poster meant was that the penis at the end was not actually Mark Wahlberg’s penis–it was a prosthesis. Allegedly, the special effects guys said it was the scariest thing they had ever worked on including all their years of making props for horror movies.
HBO just shows bush so far as I know. And no I don’t mean George W. You don’t actually end up seeing the genitals. Once in a while on their television show Oz you’ll see a penis flopping around.
Marc
There was a computer flick in the 70s, The Forbin Project ?? and the computer had this really big penis & they showed it too. Also, the Boob Tube, another 70s flick, had a talking penis.
handy:
No penises, talking or otherwise, in The Forbin Project. You might be thinking of Demon Seed, in which a self-aware computer with the voice of Robert Vaughn impregnates a woman. But, to tell the truth, I don’t recall a penis in that one, either. (It’s based on a Dean Koontz novel – I think it’s the first adaptation of his work). There have been other picturs since that show science-fiction penises. I’ve seen a clay animated film set in a toy shop with cklay penises on Ken dolls an the like, and a purple forked penis on an alien. There’s alsoo an animated “Mother Goose” film with an x-rated “Jack in the Beanstalk” segment featuring a giant penis.
But these instances are few and relatively recent (even the Mother Goose cartoon I cite usually covers up the penises), and I agree with the folks above who call this a double standard. Guys don’t seem to like the idea of showing penises flacci or erect.
They show more than enough penises on tv here in the UK (if you watch at night, of course) – but never erect, and often in a relatively non-sexual context, e.g. nudist camp docudramas, naked game shows, strange European competitions, and the like. (Needless to say, these are penises most of us don’t really want to see!)
The word you’re all looking for is vulva. Vulva is a great word, an excellent word. It’s fun to say. I want to get everyone to say “vulva.” I love vulva!
vulva! vulva!! VULVA!!!
The movie Saturn 3 or Saturn 5 (i forget) has a robot penis that has sex with Farra Faucet (sp).
Talking about robot penises or cartoon penises just proves the OP’s point.
Yow!
How could I forget the cult classic Flesh Gordo, with the infamous rotating robot penises?
Your analysis undoubtedly applies also to the way men and women dress, generally. When’s the last time you saw a man
wearing a sleeveless bare-midriff top, and what did you think of him when you did? Women’s casual fashion, with all its skin-baring approaches to near-nakedness, bespeaks
vulnerability and perhaps childlikeness. This is usually thought of as a negative, but in a way it’s positive too, as women have the freedom to dress that way if they wish, or more conservatively if that is their preference. Don’t get me wrong.
As a man, I think women look teriffic in that type of clothing. It’s more the sexual dichotomy which I criticize. Men’s casual shorts/shirts just keep getting
baggier and longer to the point where they’re hardly shorts at all; our other clothes are equally body-concealing: we might as well be Moorish women.
Max Torque wrote:
And bring a whole new dimension to the Kevin Bacon game.
Andrew “bignum” Warinner
You mean the new “Kevin’s Bacon” game?
Actually, I think the reference is to the exciting new game “6 inches of separation.”
How big is the one you do?
There seem to be many theories here, some about power, and some say women are more exposed and some say men! And there are these power reasons. Another explanation for the customs of bodily presentation (exposed, unexposed, which parts are shown, and all adornments including tattoos) is the one apparently ordained by at least some structuralist philosophers: namely there is no rational reason and no power reason, ON THE WHOLE. There is no REASON at all.
There is no meaning to this phenomenon anymore than there is any meaning to anything else we do: we are just all practising variations of baboon hind end display and monkey head-with-banana-draped-on-it behavior. Such things occurWHEN THE PRIMATES INCLUDING US HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO (IE., HAVE TOO EASY A LIFE), much like even a bored dog eating its excrement or the draperies. It all starts the way this one ape tribe was observed starting a behavior: primatologists peering at a tribe noticed that one day a female took her banana down to the local seashore and swished it around in the waves and then ate it. A few other monkeys followed suit and eventually most of them were doing this, and PASSING IT DOWN THROUGH THE GENERATIONS. As you can see, there is no point to it at all. See also my entry on the horsemeat thread. Somebody wore his cap backward one day and now look what we have on our hands! Recently I observed a person sitting in a group and he had A WASHRAG ADORNING THE TOP OF HIS HEAD. This may or may not become the next big fashion, but remember you read it here first.
Well first off let me say, don willard, that I want some of whatever you’re on.
Second, thanks for clearing it up for us: if you put a million monkeys in a room, they’ll end up naked, with the males shielding their penises from view, and the females “taking their bananas down to the local seashore and swishing it around in the waves,” if that’s what the kids are calling it these days.
And what a relief to know there’s no reason for anything we do. I can stop wasting so much of my time on SDMB.