Reading the title, one might think that this new release of The Bubble Box is a treatise on philosophy or theology, but The Penetrated Man reveals a much deeper and more intimate taboo. We do it but we don't say it. So read our column in silence to find out what it's all about…
A book that at the bottom of its subject
In its introduction, The Penetrated Man reveals a practice that is the majority among men but still taboo: male penetration. To help you understand, we follow Eddy, the only fictional character in the comic. As often, the character speaks to the reader and begins by explaining his method. We understand that the authors, the scriptwriter Zoé Redondo, the cartoonist Martin Py, have done a lot of bibliographic research that can be found at the end of the volume. They collected testimonies and met with sexologists. However, pleasure is little studied and even less that of the prostate. It comes as much from the body as from the mind. Orgasms are the projections of fantasies on a part of the body. They are also a social construct with valued practices and others reprobated.This arid start starts from the data because the authors seem to want to be taken seriously.
Each of the eleven chapters of The Penetrated Man focuses on a character forged by testimonies from a survey. Johakim is a macho guy who refuses the very idea of male penetration. Gaëtan is a curious Christian. Alyssa is a committed feminist. Merwan is an atypical homo. The book then begins to address taboos by beginning with the description of social stigma in general by the character of Johakim. Then, The Penetrated Man shows the weight of religion by the evangelical Christian Gaëtan.
These characters are not just pretexts to talk about sexuality but the reader follows a group of friends with confessions and unspoken. Throughout L'homme penetré, the reader finds the duality between saying and hiding. Hiding is synonymous with suffering while liberation passes through confession leading to pleasure.However, these characters are sometimes caricature. Johakim is the least credible character. His machismo comes from a childish trauma and therefore a lack of self-confidence. This may be true, but the presentation is simplistic.
Penetration is for analormales
The penetrated man then shows how patriarchy influences these intimate relationships. The female anatomy is still unknown. Some readers discover that women have a prostate. This is only the first step in a deconstruction of patriarchal society through the character of Alissa. The penetrated man makes the reader discover a completely different anatomy. The prostate is the conductor of pleasure.
He can see in The Penetrated Man, the link between sodomy and misogyny because if penetration is commonly evoked among women, it remains taboo for men. It is associated with a submission. The book addresses gender representations to deconstruct this taboo. There is also a homophobic smell because this practice is necessarily reserved for gays.
Cartoonist and colorist Martin Py has the daunting task of being clear without shocking. He constantly manages to evoke without showing by moving away from erotic drawing. His rounded style sometimes evoking humorous manga is totally adapted. However, Py does not hesitate to lift a taboo by the image as the sketches of the male sex to show the shape, the location and the role of the prostate.It is also he who is responsible for defusing the seriousness of the text by visual jokes or in dialogues. The penetrated man does not integrate a box edge or scenery to focus on the characters. In addition, one color per chapter allows you to separate the characters. Reading is made dynamic by very different page shapes.
The penetrated man is not an apology for penetration, but the book raises an intimate taboo that then becomes a political subject. We talk about pleasure but also the weight of morality, the cult of the penis, asexuality, consent and rape culture… The reader feels a lot of good by deconstructing preconceived ideas. However, we can find that some passages are a little naive in the face of reality.
Find on the site other journalistic comics with Underground and Le passage intérieur.
