A rant you should steer clear of if you are at all uncomfortable with male anatomy (just like everyone at my university apparently)

First of all, I should say that me and my Children's Lit class don't always get along. Not just because I find myself making huge generalizations about a large percentage of the population (children) in order to answer any question in the class straightforwardly, but because I clearly come from a very different place than most of my classmates. I come from the ghetto. I come from a field of study where gender-bending literature is kind of the norm. I come from a Mennonite church. I come from a family of missionaries and ex-missionaries. Hell, I don't know where it comes from, but I come from a place where we don't constantly deny that penises exist.

Second of all, I would like to say something about penises. About half of the world's population has them. A large percentage of the other half of the population has had one inside of them at least once. They are referred to in a variety of ways every day: on the radio, in books, in movies, in t.v. shows. They are spray-painted on buildings. Any rod-like object has been likened to one at some point in time. Anyone who has seen the cinematic gem Superbad will have seen a variety of fascinating artistic interpretations of the penis and all that it stands for. Penises are real and they're everywhere, damn it!*

And yet today I found myself seated in a classroom full of 20-somethings who could not handle the mere suggestion of the word 'penis'. It was the discussion on puberty in literature. We divided into groups** and examined the classic 'growing body'-type texts that crop up in households when someone realizes that the only alternative is the dreaded Puberty Talk. Then we had to discuss whether or not these books were appropriate for children.

A girl held up a text aimed at adolescent boys and showed us a page with drawings that were 'really inappropriate'. She waved it around. Someone gasped. From my vantage point I could not make out what exactly had shocked them, so I asked what it was. There arose a surprising amount of giggling for a university classroom. The girl would not, could not, say what was on the page. She had to pass the book to me. People stared. People giggled. Someone handed me the book. I tried to open it so that the person across from me could see it, thinking she might actually want to join the class discussion, but she shook her head violently. I began to feel like quite the perverted creep, wanting to see this horrible thing that children should not read about. Nevertheless, I persevered in my misguided quest for the truth. I opened the book to the offending page.

The page was titled 'every boy is different'. It was a set of cartoon drawings of penises. Professionally flaccid penises. Penises of all shapes and sizes. Big penises, small penises, fat penises, thin penises, one that I would have thought was a bulbous nose if it weren't accompanied by two testicles. Ah. There it was, the shocking thing. Drawings of penises. In a book about male anatomy. The horror. And I was being either pitifully naive or very creepy for requesting to see this book about anatomy. In a class about anatomy.

These are the things I probably should have said:
"Where's the inappropriate drawing? All I see are drawings of penises in a book about penises."
Or
"Oh is it because all these penises clearly belong to white boys? This book is racist!" (hey, maybe that WAS why everyone was embarrassed)
Or
"If it's inappropriate for adolescent boys to see eachother's penises how come you're not protesting the open-air locker rooms a the YMCA?

In fact, I've decided to change the ending of this story. I looked at the page of penises. Then I said, "Yeah it's pretty offensive to see pictures of penises that aren't the size and length of my forearm. Thank God there's enough ads for internet porn that all these boys have probably seen what a proper penis looks like by now."
Everyone was shocked by my ability to use the word 'penis' in a sentence. They were aghast at my charmingly dirty sarcasm. Then they saw my point. They all nodded at my words of wisdom. Thus liberated from their body-shaming mindset, we decided that we should make our own book in response. We spent the rest of the class designing it. It is pop-up. It will be on bookstore shelves by May. Enjoy!

*What is more, they're pretty important. Where would we be without them? Half of the DNA that created each one of us came out of one. And think about urinals! If half of North America's population couldn't pee standing up, think how many more bathroom stalls we would need! Penises are space-savers. They can also be time-savers. Think how many more bathroom breaks would have to happen on car trips if certain members couldn't pee out the window (I kid. I can't think of any good that has come from a jet of urine shooting out of a car traveling at 100 km/hr).

**and I can give you a second (and much longer) rant on how much I hate group-work, so I was biased from the start. If I apologize enough for being judgmental no one can judge me, right?