ABSTRACT
When the American comedian Sarah Silverman tweeted she liked ‘a masculine penis’ most responses-ranging from confused to comedic—questioned whether there was any other kind. Such is the association between masculinity and the penis. Using Silverman as a point of departure, this chapter explores the ways comedy figures the penis through a logic of (in)visibility and knowing and not knowing. Drawing on the argument that the penis has become subject to much greater visibility, a question that guides the chapter is whether the comedy tropes on which so much penis humour depends and through which it is ‘known’ continue to function in the same ways with the same effects. The Netflix series American Vandal and artist Ellen Jong’s Getting to Know My Husband’s Cock are used to explore how it is not a question of simply being visible which makes the penis known or comedic, but rather how this logic of (in)visibility and knowing shift and generate different ways of knowing what a penis is and might be.
