ABSTRACT
In our time, phallocentrism is perpetuated by a flourishing medical construction that focuses exclusively on penile erections as the essence of men's sexual function and satisfaction. In this chapter I shall describe how this medicalization is promoted by urologists, medical industries, mass media, and various entrepreneurs. Many men and women provide a ready audience for this construction because of masculine ideology and gender socialization. Women's sexual interests in anything other than phallocentric sexual scripting are denied. As one author has put it, "Taken by itself, the penis is a floppy appendage which rises and falls and is the source of a number of pleasures. The phallus is more than this. It is the physical organ represented as continuously erect; it is the inexhaustibility of male desire; it is a dominant element within our culture" (Bradbury, 1985, p. 134).
