Dick jokes

The dick joke retains its dominant conceptual status, but it’s no longer the straightforward staple it once was. #MeToo, concerns about ‘toxic masculinity’ and social justice campaigns which prioritise minority groups while challenging the centrality of the white, male perspective are all working to complicate the conventional forms of sexually explicit material. However, these new cultural conditions also provide the grounds for a whole new flowering of the form, with the dick joke both ally and enemy in the pursuit of social justice.

Comedian Phil Wang offers up one instance of the former: a celebratory account of his ‘fantastic penis’ in his memoir, Sidesplitter (2021):
‘When erect, it is sturdy, effective and rather handsome. When flaccid, it packs away neatly into a very manageable nub – about the size of a fat garden slug – exactly flush with my testicles, so the entire package resembles a single small gourd. My penis is an ingenious piece of practical design, perfect for the busy travelling man’ (2021, p.161). There’s a subtle satire on the heterosexual, masculine mode in that comically brusque attention to detail, with the techie Top Gear/men’s mag tone tilting into a rather more anachronistic, bluff version (suggesting the clipped intonation of 1950s British manhood, perhaps). Wang is half British, half Malaysian and this account is presented after his description of the demeaning consensus about East Asian men’s small penises, ‘part of the general characterisation of the East Asian body as diminutive and feminine’ (2021, p.161), and as such is clearly intended as a counter to the stereotypes that position East Asian men as ‘sexually abnormal, physically peculiar, and in every conceivable scenario, NOT TO BE FUCKED’ (2021, p.162).

Another affirmative and indeed, actively joyful, representation comes from Jordan Gray, a trans comedian whose hugely successful show Is It A Bird? (2022) refers both to ‘the kind of catcall she gets in her hometown of Essex’ (Lewis, 2022) and the show’s superhero theme. She asks the audience if they want to see her costume and the show ends with her going into a phone box – the place where Superman famously changes outfits. She steps out completely naked – her ‘costume’, and her superpower, her particular combination of breasts and penis. It’s a rather stunning act of both vulnerability and celebration in the face of the transphobia registered by the show’s title. Gray went on to perform live on British television in December 2022, and after a characteristically high energy musical performance, yanked off her clothes and yomped joyously around the stage. There was some subsequent controversy, and Gray commented that she ‘hoped her appearance would help normalise trans bodies’, a way of representing a transgender body ‘animated with pure electric joy, instead of lying flat on a mortician’s slab.’ It also constituted a ground-breaking dick joke (the show’s host, Ben Elton, joked after the sketch: ‘now that is what I call a kn*b gag’ (Salvoni, 2022).

Robin Tran, another trans comedian, also provides a fresh take: in her special, Don’t Look At Me (2017), she declares: ‘I’ve got a small dick – if I make it to surgery I’m hoping it will cost less: I’ll get the half-off discount’. Trans’ work leans into the gender dysphoria of ‘born boy, girl brain’ – with a series of bits that explore masturbation preferences demonstrating a very ambivalent relationship with her penis. Not celebratory perhaps, but Tran is also helping to normalise the experience of being trans.

Wang, Gray and Tran approach the issue of representation from the perspective of minorities who are trying to right wrongs, an approach that isn’t available to white, cis or straight comedians. In Brian Logan’s recent review of veteran comedian Frank Skinner’s show 30 Years of Dirt (2023), he implies as much when he wonders if knob gags might ‘be defended on the basis of cultural inclusion.’ There’s an ironic recognition here that dick jokes are at odds with the priorities of social justice; the old order versus the new. ‘Comedy has changed, and [Skinner] can’t be so fast and loose with the filth as he once was’ but his claims that ‘they were the primary means of communication where he grew up, as indelibly a part of him as his Black Country brogue’ (2023) might be adequate justification for their sufferance in the new order.

It may be the new order but the liberal agenda is obviously not without its detractors, and a substantial cohort of comics, ‘many of them white and male, find big audiences by pushing back against the perceived hypocrisies and excesses of liberal culture’ (Sanneh, 2022); a cohort that includes those US comedians loosely affiliated with Joe Rogan, including Tony Hinchcliffe, Tim Dillon, Joey Diaz, Ari Shaffir, Bert Kreisher, Tom Segura and Shane Gillis. As Kelefa Sanneh suggests, these comics ‘tend to be contemptuous of the decorous sensibility of the mainstream entertainment industry, and often purport to be speaking for a counterculture, although the numbers suggest that the “counter” may in fact be bigger than the “culture”’ (Joe Rogan’s podcast ‘reportedly reaches something like eleven million listeners’ (2022). In this world, dick jokes continue unabated and unapologetic, without the need for either craft or the freedom of marginal status to earn comic license or to render the jokes palatable. Instead, the increasing pressure for men to be circumspect or sensitive about phallocentric material, means that the simple fact of the violation of that taboo is sufficient.

Two consequences of our new cultural conditions, then, for the dick joke: the grounds for a new, progressive take, and also for the entrenchment of conventional, reactionary forms.

Works cited:

Lewis, Isobel (2022), ‘Jordan Gray, Is it a Bird?, Edinburgh Fringe review: This hilarious, bold show will change lives’, The Independent, 19 August, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/reviews/jordan-gray-review-edinburgh-fringe-b2148360.html

Logan, Brian (2023), ‘Frank Skinner: 30 Years of Dirt review – a celebration of smut’, The Guardian, 7 August, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/aug/07/frank-skinner-30-years-of-dirt-edinburgh

Sanneh, Kelefa (2022), ‘Shane Gillis’s Fall and Rise’, 19 September, The New Yorker,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/26/shane-gillis-fall-and-rise

Wang, Phil (2016), ‘Phil Wang’s Penis Chat, Comedy Central At The Comedy Store’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2SXqVjmJ9E

Wang, Phil (2021), Sidesplitter, London: Hodder Studio

Tran, Robin (2017), ‘Don’t Look at Me’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emb4jS7Yy2M

© Emma Sullivan 2023.