Penises Are Magic! #4
Hard-Ons! How Do They Work?
Penises Are Magic! A Guide to Patriarchy for Everyone Who Didn’t Consent to It is a book-length project that Hanne Blank Boyd is publishing as a subscribers-only serial on Substack. Looking for previous installments? Try the “Penises Are Magic!” heading or the #pam tag.
Hard-Ons! How Do They Work?
Penises get hard in exactly the same way that a rubber balloon goes from being smaller and soft and flabby to being bigger and round and firm.
No, I don’t mean via blowing. Get your mind out of the gutter. Sheesh.
I’m talking about filling a flexible-walled chamber until it expands to its limits and its walls become taut and rigid.
Like those dancing air noodle dudes they put outside at used car lots? Exactly!
As you will recall from our last installment, the penis is a tube with a tube inside it that whose job is to be the pee pipe from the bladder to the outside of the body. It moonlights as a semen squirter.
In addition to this tube-in-a-tube situation, penises also sport three additional tubes made out of smooth muscle that run the length of the penis but don’t have openings to the outside. They are completely internal and they exist in order to get filled up with blood to the point that they become stiff and hard to the touch.
That’s right. Just like bike tires, penises have innertubes.
