Stepmonster

Reaching to the core of the stepmother experience.

by Wednesday Martin, Ph.D.

Listening to John Mayer's Penis

What Can We Learn from John Mayer's Penis?

Published on February 11, 2010 by Wednesday Martin, Ph.D. in Stepmonster

This post is a response to John Mayer's "Very" Wide-Open Window Into U.S. Race Relations by Mikhail Lyubansky, Ph.D.

As Valentine's Day--that celebration of love, romance, and the pair bond--bears down upon us, let's take a moment to consider John Mayer. Well, one part of him. His penis.

John Mayer's penis, it is clear from a recent interview in Playboy, has things to say. One of those things is, "I'm not into black women."

Here's the quote from the interview that's got people reeling, wondering, sneering, laughing (probably at him rather than with him), and feeling bewildered, outraged, and, well, turned off:

My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a fuckin' David Duke cock. I'm going to start dating separately from my dick.

Should we buy into the formula that men think with their dicks, Rahm Emmanuel might well be tempted characterize Mayer's penis as the "R" word (though only in his mind, after the drubbing he received). After all, Mayer is the only person to give Emmanuel a run for his money in the "saying something dick-headed" department of late. For that, Rahm might want to take John and the person who thinks and talks for him--John's penis--out for a drink. I wonder what John and his penis will have?

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You can bet it won't be the same thing. Because John and his penis are, he tells us, at odds. They just can't agree. He really, really wants to be attracted to black women (he has a Benetton heart), but his penis, more of a David Duke guy, won't cooperate.

This conundrum of John's is certainly going to get people talking about race. I hope it also gets us talking about sex, romance, and attraction as well.

One celebrity's idiotic gaffe (and mindset) is a country's opportunity to ask some fairly serious questions. These include, Who do we fall in love and in lust with, and why? Who do we want to have sex with, and why? Why do we sometimes not want to marry or partner with the person we want to have sex with? Or have sex with the person we want to marry? What kinds of lessons, conditioning, and false ideology from our childhoods go into creating our sexual and romantic desires, desires we might naively consider to be wholly "natural" and "intrinsic"? And how often do we blame our penises for choices, preferences, and biases that actually live in our minds?

Maybe John and his penis will let us all know.