ABSTRACT
On 6 December 2015, the New York Times published an article called “Penis Transplants Being Planned to Help Wounded Troops.” In it, reporter Denise Grady gives us uplifting news. Medical science has developed a way to replace penises lost in battle. Despite risks of cancer, organ rejection, infection, and bleeding, surgeons can sew onto live men the penises of dead men, repairing the damage and eventually restoring full utility. This is good news, indeed, as the article estimates that from 2001 to 2003 alone, “1,367 men in military service suffered wounds to their genitals.” Everybody agrees, writes Grady, including the caring, longsuffering wives of veterans with infected, mutilated, or impaired penises, that injuries to that organ “eroded their husbands’ sense of manhood and identity.” Three serious men with eyeglasses and surgical blues, surrounded by shelves full of test tubes, pill packages, and x-rays, reassure us in a photograph at the article’s head that science has at last triumphed over man’s deepest fears: that men in battle could be turned into women. We can assume the wives will be happy now, rewarded for their solicitude. The new penises would come replete with urinary function, sensation, erectile function, and maybe, too, fertility. In a flash, then, military science has ended the castration complex and psychoanalytic trauma, adding another layer of dirt over Freud’s grave.
