Hard copy

New women’s erotica magazine Filament is promising to print a UK-first erect penis in their next issue, if they sell 328 copies of issue one (reviewed here), which apparently will give them the funding they need to find a new printer.

No-hardness is a silly taboo that I suspect few people knew even existed, left over as it is from a previous age. The taboo (along with one about oral sex on screen) was broken in UK mainstream cinema eight years ago, by the film Intimacy. So why is the newsstand so different?

The answer is not legal, but rather political. The problem, it seems, is that Filament’s current printers won’t allow it because of the potential reaction of “religious and women’s groups”. It’s unlikely that they’re worried about legal action; more probable is the fear that current clients will cancel their contracts – in this climate, why take the risk on a magazine that struggles to sell 328 copies?

Filament says it is facing other problems, too. Traditional UK distributors have apparently already balked at taking the magazine, even pre-erection – though that might be as much due to having a very small reader base as the magazine’s content. The cynic in me wonders if this is all just an elaborate PR stunt – but there’s no denying that the principle of printing an erect penis fits within their core offering, so if it is a stunt, it isn’t one that jars.

The strangest part of all this is that photos of erect penises can still generate a flurry of media attention (yes, I know, including this blogpost). After all, S Magazine (from Denmark) has built up a decent international following, is sold in Borders in London – and they’ve printed erect penises before, as have most of the magazines in Ralph’s excellent round up of arty homo zines, many of which are available in trendy London’s swinging design shops. Perhaps this is just silly season Britain getting a flush of repressed pleasure out of an imagined, practically non-existent taboo – or it may be a true sign of how seriously sexist are the unspoken rules of magazine pornography, and how worried printers are about creating controversy between clients. If you know better, let me know.

Back in another life, as a writer about film, I interviewed the director of Intimacy, Patrice Chereau, shortly before his film came out.

“Sex is a problem that you cannot face so easily, because people are so scared,” he said. “We are more repressed than we think. And it’s not just in England. I have promoted the film all over Europe, and everywhere it is the same.”

PR stunt or not, the fact that an erect penis can cause any debate at all shows that we still have a long way to go.