Dear Audrey,
I’m a bi woman, though lately I’ve been dating more men than I used to. I think I tend to connect better sexually with women, but most of my “serious” relationships have been with men. My problem is that I just find penises and balls ugly. I know that’s stupid, but I’m a visual person and aesthetics are very important to me. It’s fine while I’m actually engaged in sex stuff, but then I see my partner naked and just think yuck when I look at his crotch. Am I the only one who feels this way? How do I get over it?
I can’t imagine you are the only person who feels that way. I mean, let’s be honest: balls, especially, are not the best-looking organs. So many body parts are cuter than balls: eyes, mouths, fingers, eyebrows, butts, boobs. I would even argue for knees. I must admit, for me, I don’t find the vulva to be particularly aesthetically pleasing either. It’s fine, and it gets the job done, and I love mine and all of that, but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one and been like, GORGEOUS.
I’m sure a lot of what we feel about the beauty/ugliness of body parts is the result of the way we have been socialized; it’s kind of impossible to look at a penis without the cultural weight of performative masculinity and the patriarchy and Freud bearing down on you. But I find penises pretty sometimes. Perhaps your problem is just that the penis and balls are so out there, hanging around in the open, not at all shielded by the rest of the body, just completely in your face with their genitalia-ness? I don’t know.
In answer to your second question, there are two points that I feel are worth thinking about. The first is that you don’t have to have sex with anyone you don’t want to. If you’re finding yourself sort of holding your nose while you’re screwing someone, maybe that’s not the right person for you to be having sex with. Maybe it’s not the dick—it’s the guy the dick is attached to. Just a thought.
Secondly, there are always going to be things you don’t find appealing about someone. Nobody is perfect. Or even if they are “perfect” at 25, they’re going to get older, get wrinkles and gray hair and surgery scars and stretch marks. However important aesthetics are to you, if you’re committing to someone in a long-term way, you’re going to have to accept that their body is going to change as they age—and maybe not in ways that you like. But I think one of the things that happens when you’re with someone you like for a long time is that you start to find things that you’d normally not like cute on them; you stop seeing the “ugly.” What other people who don’t love them might see as flaws you either don’t see any more or like in spite of yourself.
However much you are not into the idea of dick and balls, or just any old dick and balls on your laptop screen, if there is a dick and balls attached to a human being you love, or are attracted to for reasons other than their dick and balls, I suspect you will learn to love the dick and balls as well. The heart wants what it wants, nutsacks be damned.