Small dick problems: Masculine entitlement as rhetorical strategy

ABSTRACT

This essay aims to sharpen the term entitlement for critical scholars by positing entitlement as a rhetorical strategy of hierarchy maintenance. The Reddit community r/SmallDickProblems, intended to provide support for men with small penises, furnishes an appropriate case study for threatened masculinity employing entitlement claims to maintain status. Abetted by the affordances of scale and anonymity associated with networked platforms, the men at r/SmallDickProblems assert affective and epistemic entitlements to recoup what they perceive to be a natural gendered hierarchy. Content advisory: This essay examines discourses concerning misogyny, transphobia, and suicide.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective entitlement
• epistemic entitlement
• male entitlement
• manosphere
• networked misogyny

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 TV Tropes deploys a vernacular use of the term tropes, conforming to what Christian Lundberg describes as “a range of associations that cohere around a signifier” in “Enjoying God's Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of an Evangelical Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 4 (2009): 387–411, 389. See TVTropes.org.

2 Emma Mayo and Jonathan Craigie, Hitler's Last Day: Minute by Minute (London: Short Books, 2015). A common response to Hitler's small penis is “that explains a lot,” which is an example of the Compensating for Something trope occurring in real life. See Rachel Dicker, “Hitler Had a Weird Looking Penis, Historians Say,” US News, February 22, 2016, https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-22/adolf-hitler-had-a-small-penis-report-finds. “That explains a lot” was also a common response to Stormy Daniels’ description of President Trump's penis as smaller than average and resembling the toadstool character from Mario Kart. To clarify, my interest here is not the “truth” about Hitler's or Trump's penis, but rather to identify the pervasive cultural logic that asserts that penises (de)form character. See Stormy Daniels and Kevin Carr O’Leary, Full Disclosure (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2018) and Joanna Rothkopf, “Stormy Daniels's Detailed Description of Donald Trump's Penis Explains a Lot,” Esquire, September 18, 2018, https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23301515/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-penis-mushroom/.

3 Christopher Frizzelle, “Kamala Harris Landed One Solid Blow After Another Against Trump,” The Stranger, September 13, 2019, https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/09/13/41380904/kamala-harris-landed-one-solid-blow-after-another-against-trump.

4 Christa Olson, American Magnitude: Hemispheric Vision and Public Feeling in the United States (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2021), 194.

5 Alex Abad-Santos and Constance Grady, “How Big Dick Energy Explain Modern Masculinity,” Vox, June 27, 2018, https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/6/27/17506898/big-dick-energy-explained.

6 Tamari Kitossa, “Can the Black Man Be Nude in a Culture That Imagines Him as Naked?” in Tamari Kitossa (ed.), Appealing Because He Is Appalling: Black Masculinity, Colonialism, and Erotic Racism (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2020), 3–58, 5.

7 To have a small penis, according to the going logic, is so unequivocally terrible that there is an informal legal strategy to avoid libel charges named after it: the small penis clause. Explains one journalist, “It is a trick used by authors who have defamed someone to discourage lawsuits. ‘No male is going to come forward and say, “That character with a very small penis — that's me!”’ Mr. Friedman explained.” See Felicia Lee, “Columnist Accuses Crichton of ‘Literary Hit-and-Run,’” New York Times, December 14, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/books/14cric.html.

8 Not all people with penises are men and not all men have penises. Transmen and nonbinary people occasionally participate on SDP to mixed reactions, but SDP is far from a gender-inclusive community. Although I recognize its limits to describe people with penises, I continue to use the term men as it is emic to the set of artifacts under consideration. See Liz Duck-Chong, “Let's Talk about Girldick,” in Scarleteen: Sex Ed for the Real World, https://www.scarleteen.com/article/bodies_politics_sexual_identity_sexuality_gender/lets_talk_about_girldick.

9 Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities 22, no. 4 (2019): 638–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17706401.

10 Casey Ryan Kelly and Chase Aunspach, “Incels, Compulsory Sexuality, and Fascist Masculinity,” Feminist Formations 32, no. 3 (2020): 145–72, 148.

11 Simon Cottee, “Incel (E)motives: Resentment, Shame and Revenge,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism (2020): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1822589.

12 James Cairns, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).

13 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. entitle.

14 Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild: Essays (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press, 1990).

15 Brett Christophers, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (London: Verso, 2018), 30.

16 Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015).

17 Robin Jensen, Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2016).

18 Lora Arduser and Amy Koerber, “Splitting Women, Producing Biocitizens, and Vilifying Obamacare in the 2012 Presidential Campaign,” Women's Studies in Communication 37, no. 2 (2014): 117–37, 128. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2014.914115.

19 Karen Tumulty “Opinion: Manchin Warns that Biden's Agenda would Create an ‘Entitlement Society.’ But His State Leads the Way,” Washington Post, October 26, 2021. Accessed December 22, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/26/manchin-warns-that-bidens-agenda-would-create-an-entitlement-society-his-state-leads-way/.

20 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. entitlement.

21 Readers of this journal may be familiar with another fold of entitlement: Kenneth Burke's concept of referring to words as abbreviated titles of things. Notably, Burke also connects entitlement to hierarchy. See Burke, “What Are the Signs of What?: A Theory of ‘Entitlement,’” Anthropological Linguistics (1962): 1–23.

22 Allison Rowland, Zoetropes and the Politics of Humanhood (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020).

23 Recent rhetoric or communication scholars using the term male entitlement include: Amanda M. Friz and Marissa L. Fernholz, “The Male Gaze in the Medical Classroom: Proximity, Objectivity, and Objectification in ‘The Pornographic Anatomy Book,’” Women's Studies in Communication 43, no. 3 (2020): 292–316; Kristen Hoerl, “The Impossible Woman and Sexist Realism on NBC's Parks and Recreation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 4 (2021): 373–97; Meg Tully, “‘Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Don't Rape’: Subverting Postfeminist Logics on Inside Amy Schumer,” Women's Studies in Communication 40, no. 4 (2017): 339–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2017.1368763.

24 Critical rhetoric or communication scholars using the term white entitlement include: Wendy S. Hesford, “Reading the Signs: Performative White Allyship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 239–44; Loius M. Maraj, “What's in a Game? Wake Working (Fantasy) Football's Anti-Black Temporalities,” Women's Studies in Communication 43, no. 4 (2020): 400–13; and Ersula J. Ore, “Conspiring Against White Pleasures,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 107, no. 2 (2021): 250–3.

25 Jacqueline Rose, On Violence and on Violence Against Women (London: Faber & Faber, 2021), 3–5.

26 Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel, “Suicide by Mass Murder: Masculinity, Aggrieved Entitlement and Rampage School Shootings,” Health Sociology Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 451–64, 454. doi.org/10.5172/hesr.2010.19.4.451.

27 Kate Manne, Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women (New York: Crown, 2020), 186.

28 Manne, Entitled, 186.

29 Kate Manne, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 63.

30 Manne, Entitled, 7.

31 Manne, Down Girl, 130.

32 Manne, Down Girl, 130.

33 Paul Elliott Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood: Donald Trump's Demagoguery,” Women's Studies in Communication 40, no. 3, 2017: 229–50; Casey Ryan Kelly, Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2020).

34 Stephanie L. Hartzell, “Whiteness Feels Good Here: Interrogating White Nationalist Rhetoric on Stormfront,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (2020): 1–20.

35 Tan Hoang Nguyen, A View from the Bottom: Asian American Masculinity and Sexual Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 4.

36 Calvin R. Coker, “From Exemptions to Censorship: Religious Liberty and Victimhood in Obergefell v. Hodges,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 15, no. 1 (2018): 35–52, doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2018.1424918; Kelly, Apocalypse Man; Jennifer Marie Rome, “Blogging Wounded Masculinity: Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity and the Crisis of the Male (In)fertile Body,” Women's Studies in Communication 44, no. 1 (2020), doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2020.1752342.

37 “Reddit: A Beginner's Guide,” https://mashable.com/archive/reddit-for-beginners.

38 Caitlin Ring Carlson and Luc S. Cousineau, “Are You Sure You Want to View This Community? Exploring the Ethics of Reddit's Quarantine Practice,” Journal of Media Ethics (2020): 1–12. doi.org/10.1080/23736992.2020.1819285; Adrienne Massanari, “#Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit's Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures,” New Media & Society 19, no. 3 (2017): 329–46. doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807.

39 Michael Barthel, Galen Stocking, Jesse Holcomb, and Amy Mitchell, “Reddit News Users More Likely to be Male, Young and Digital in their News Preferences,” Pew Research Center, https://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-news-users-more-likely-to-be-male-young-and-digital-in-their-news-preferences/.

40 Kelly and Aunspach, “Incels”; Agnese Vellar, “#anawarrior Identities and the Stigmatization Process: An Ethnography in Italian Networked Publics,” First Monday (2018): https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i6.8412.

41 Massimo Airoldi, “Ethnography and the Digital Fields of Social Media,” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21, no. 6 (2018): 661–73, 668. doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2018.1465622.

42 Alice E. Marwick and Robyn Caplan, “Drinking Male Tears: Language, the Manosphere, and Networked Harassment,” Feminist Media Studies 18, no. 4 (2018): 543–59. doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1450568; Candi S. Carter Olson and Victoria LaPoe, “‘Feminazis,’ ‘Libtards,’ ‘Snowflakes,’ and ‘Racists’: Trolling and the Spiral of Silence Effect in Women, LGBTQIA Communities, and Disability Populations Before and After the 2016 Election,” The Journal of Public Interest Communications 1, no. 2 (2017): 116–32. https://journals.flvc.org/jpic/article/view/104562; Richard Rego, “Changing Forms and Platforms of Misogyny: Sexual Harassment of Women Journalists on Twitter,” Media Watch 9, no. 3 (2018): 472–80; Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman (London: Hachette, 2016).

43 Stephane J. Baele, Lewys Brace, and Travis G. Coan, “From ‘Incel’ to ‘Saint’: Analyzing the Violent Worldview Behind the 2018 Toronto Attack,” Terrorism and Political Violence 33, no. 8 (2021): 1667–91. doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1638256.

44 Rachelle Chadwick, “On the Politics of Discomfort,” Feminist Theory 22, no. 4 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700120987379; Britta Timm Knudsen and Carsten Stage, Affective Methodologies: Developing Cultural Research Strategies for the Study of Affect (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

45 Gavin P. Johnson et al. “Responding to the Investigative Pivots of Rhetoric Research,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 51, no. 5 (2021): 407–21, 408.

46 Debbie Ging, Theodore Lynn, and Pierangelo Rosati, “Neologising Misogyny: Urban Dictionary's Folksonomies of Sexual Abuse,” New Media & Society 22, no. 5 (2020): 838–56, doi.org/10.1177/1461444819870306; Massanari, “#Gamergate.”

47 Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kate M. Miltner, “# MasculinitySoFragile: Culture, Structure, and Networked Misogyny,” Feminist Media Studies 16, no. 1 (2016): 171–4.

48 Marwick and Caplan, “Drinking Male Tears.”

49 Kara Brown, “The Problem with Calling Women ‘Females,’” Jezebel, February 5, 2015, https://jezebel.com/the-problem-with-calling-women-females-1683808274; Ralph DiFranco, “I Wrote this Paper for the Lulz: the Ethics of Internet Trolling,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23, no. 5 (2020): 931–45. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-020-10115-x; Ging, “Alphas;” Marwick and Caplan, “Dinking Male Tears;” Annie Jones, “Incels and the Manosphere: Tracking Men's Movements Online,” Master's Thesis, University of South Florida, 2020, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=etd2020; Andrew Marantz, Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York: Penguin Books, 2020); Shawn P. Van Valkenburgh, “Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities 24, no. 1 (2018), doi.org/10.1177/1097184X18816118.

50 Acknowledging that the relations between affect, feelings, and emotions are unsettled, I follow Chris Ingraham's distinctions: If feelings have an internal, biographical character and emotions have an external, social character, then affect is the “processual pooling up of intensity that potentiates the innumerable ways, flailing and wincing, we might feel and emote our way into the world.” Because affect is prior to and foundational for emotions, I refer to affective entitlement claims as an encompassing umbrella term for rhetorics expressing an expectation of deservingness to other people's emotionally (and therefore affectively) charged responses. See Ingraham, Gestures of Concern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 40.

51 As a measure of self-protection, I choose not to reproduce the pseudonyms of specific users or link directly to a specific user's post. Throughout the essay, quotations have been lightly edited for readability and remaining errors are not signaled with sic. See Callum Jones, Verity Trott, and Scott Wright, “Sluts and Soyboys: MGTOW and the Production of Misogynistic Online Harassment,” New Media & Society 22, no. 10 (2019). doi.org/10.1177/1461444819887141.

52 To be fair, there are a small minority of men on SDP who claim that their penis is so small that they cannot engage in the biomechanics of penis-in-vagina intercourse as typically imagined.

53 Jonathan A. Allan, “Phallic Affect, or Why Men's Rights Activists Have Feelings,” Men and Masculinities 19, no. 1 (2016): 22–41, 26. Allan remarks that “Affect thus is a way to recuperate the castrated patriarchy in a way that cannot be denied. The turn to affect thus is practical, political, and phallic” (28).

54 Massanari, “#Gamergate.”

55 Philomena Essed and Sara Louise Muhr, “Entitlement Racism and its Intersections: An Interview with Philomena Essed, Social Justice Scholar,” Ephemera 18, no. 1 (2018): 183–201, 188.

56 Stephanie M. Ortiz, “Racists Without Racism? From Colourblind to Entitlement Racism Online,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44, no. 14 (2021): 2637–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1825758.

57 This observation aligns with Susan Faludi's assessment of the men that she interviewed for Stiffed: The Roots of Modern Male Rage (New York: Harper Collins, 1999/2019).

58 Johnson, “The Art of Masculine Victimhood,” 239.

59 Giancarlo Marra, Andrew Drury, Lisa Tran, David Veale, and Gordon Muir, “Systematic Review of Surgical and Nonsurgical Interventions in Normal Men Complaining of Small Penis Size,” Sexual Medicine Review 8, no. 1 (2020): 158–80.

60 Rowland, Zoetropes.

61 Jack Bratich and Sarah Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-up Artists to Incels: Con(fidence) Games, Networked Misogyny, and the Failure of Neoliberalism,” International Journal of Communication 13, no. 25 (2019). https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/13216/2822.

62 Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, On Intersectionality: Essential Writings (New York: The New Press, 2017); bell hooks, “Sisterhood: Political Solidarity Between Women,” Feminist Review 23, no. 1 (1986): 125–38.

63 Heather McGee, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (New York: Penguin Random House, 2022).

64 Manne, Entitled, 140.

65 “R/SmallDickProblems Rules,” https://www.reddit.com/r/smalldickproblems/.

66 See “How to Measure Penis Size, Length, and Circumference,” https://www.penissizes.org/how-to-measure-penis-size.

67 See https://calcsd.netlify.app/chart.

68 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

69 Kundai Chirindo, “Invisible In/humanity: Feminist Epistemic Ethics and Rhetorical Studies,” in Joan Faber McAlister and Bryant Keith Alexander (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Communication (New York: Routledge, 2021), 349–60.

70 Emily Winderman, “Anger's Volumes: Rhetorics of Amplification and Aggregation in #MeToo,” Women's Studies in Communication 42, no. 3 (2019): 327–46, 330. doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2019.1632234.

71 For space consideration, I have not pursued discussing the entitlement to sex, though it appears regularly in SDP as well as the manosphere and incel cultures more broadly. See Amia Srinivasan, “Does anyone have the right to sex?” London Review of Books 40, no. 6 (2018).

72 Ashley Noel Mack and Tiara Na’puti, “Publicity as Containment,” Rhetoric, Politics, & Culture 1, no. 1 (2021): 97–105. muse.jhu.edu/article/801955.

73 Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive; Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2019).

74 bell hooks, “Penis Passion,” in The Lion's Roar, 1999, https://www.lionsroar.com/penis-passion.