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As advertised, this article is an exploration of the overdetermination of phallic identification in masculine identity and contemporary culture. When I first conceived the idea, I felt like I was onto something. All that has happened in the world since had me feeling uncomfortable writing about something so relatively superficial as male identity at a moment when there are numerous ongoing genocides across the globe, including those in Gaza, Congo, and Sudan, war in Ukraine, political assassinations and violent upheaval throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, police violence and militarism running unchecked, and right-wing fundamentalism advancing the erosion of global freedom and safety on a daily basis. But in my hesitation, I was reminded that the phallus—as both a function and an organ—is so often a tool of war. The humanitarian crises and conflicts presently unfolding around the globe are driven primarily by male-identified leaders acting under the aegis of law, might, and the destructive impulse. Sexual violence is used in the media and on the battlefield to coerce, demean, and destroy the bodies and minds of all who stand in opposition. We are all, whether directly or by proxy, by deed or by result, getting quite thoroughly fucked. Not in the pleasurable if overwhelming sense of being disorganized by intensity and excess toward a possibility of reconstitution (Saketopoulou, 2023; Saketopoulou & Pellegrini, 2023), but rather traumatologically warped against our will without regard for consent or desire (Davis & Dean, 2022). And so perhaps, in the face of such relentless encroachment, it is the ideal time to consider the curves and contours of the phallus as it protrudes so unavoidably into view.
Despite this preamble, my aim in this work is not to impugn the phallus, the phallic function, or masculinity as such as innately corrupt, but rather to illustrate the recursive function of a masculinity primarily encoded as a relationship to genitality, and to chal