Penis Insecurity
Correlation between number of Google searches for key phrased and the number of Evangelical Christians in a US state
Correlation between number of Google searches for key phrased and the number of Evangelical Christians in a US state
A paper published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion last March, offers an explanation for the sometimes bizarre behaviour and aggressive attitudes of male American Bible-belt Evangelical Christians, including their frequent fascination with guns and propensity to follow the male leaders of weird cults - behaviour that seems so at odds with what most of the rest of the developed world sees, rightly or wrongly as a peace-loving, pacifist religion.
The paper reveals an almost obsessive evangelical preoccupation with the size of their penis and suggests that this is due to:
...the largely patriarchal―and increasingly embattled and radicalized―evangelical subculture [which] explicitly or implicitly promotes equating masculinity with physical strength and size, leaving men influenced by that subculture (whether evangelical or not) to seek solutions for their privately felt failure to measure up.Sadly the paper in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is behind an expensive paywall, even for the abstract (which can be read here)
Drawign on data from Google Trends, the 2010 Religious Congregations and Membership Study, Pew Research Center’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, and the
Though there have been dissenting voices and countermovements within mainstream evangelicalism, writings of prominent evangelical thought leaders have for decades relied on phallic symbolism and even explicit phallic references to either valorize physical strength or, more often in the negative, castigate Christian men for their lack of ‘manliness'.
U.S. Census, the researchers from the Sociology Departments of Oklahoma and Indiana Universities showed a correlation between the number of searches on Google for phrases such as “male enhancement”, “make penis bigger”, etc. per state and the number of Evangelical Christians in a state. This correlation held true after allowing for other demographic factors such as gender, political ideology, age, percentage married of each state population, percentage black, and education. In an earlier paper, published in The Journal of Sex Research, the same authors showed a correlation between the number of Google
To the extent that a subculture promoting unattainable, phallocentric masculinity (which we argue is likely stronger among evangelicals) pervades the entire community, more men will internalize that ideal and look for remedies to address this privately felt need. Indeed, even if some of these searches were performed by women in these states, that would provide additional support for the idea that such a subculture of phallocentric masculinity has so pervaded the region that even women feel the need to remedy their male partner’s or spouse’s perceived physical shortcomings.
searches for "Porn" and the number of Evangelical/Bible literalist Christians in a state.The authors conclude with the following warning of the harm evangelical Christianity is doing to society and these cultures in particular, with:
Our findings provide important insight beyond the potential psychic damage that could be associated with subcultural views that equate masculine worth with physical size and strength either centering on or symbolized by the penis. At minimum, a higher prevalence of searches for male enhancement terms like “penis enlargement” and “male enhancement” (though these searches could also be performed by women) mean men in that region not only feel that having a larger penis is important, but that their penis does not measure up. This is perhaps the very archetype of masculine insecurity. The fact that evangelical thought leaders have so frequently challenged the masculinity of their followers by appealing to their (symbolic lack of) a large‐enough penis, suggests that they helped contribute to this phallic insecurity so clearly prevalent in states where evangelicals predominate. Indeed, even if some of these searches were performed by women in these states, that would provide additional support for the idea that such a subculture of phallocentric masculinity has so pervaded the region that even women feel the need to remedy their male partner's or spouse's perceived physical shortcomings.
I wonder too if they even realise this feeling of penile inadequacy is the reason they need to boast about how many guns they own and how great their lives are with an invisible friend to love and protect them.
No wonder America is becoming a much more dangerous place with mass shootings becoming a daily occurrence while more and more people are leaving the churches for the less judgmental, more tolerant cultures to be found in the company of secular humanists, agnostics and Atheists. There, the measure of your worth as a human being is how well you behave towards your fellow human beings, not how big your penis is.
What a malevolent, dehumanising, antisocial religion Christianity is showing itself up for in the hands of American Talibangelists.
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