{"id":68610,"date":"2016-03-07T09:56:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T14:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68610"},"modified":"2016-03-05T23:25:45","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T04:25:45","slug":"trumps-is-not-the-first-penis-in-presidential-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/03\/07\/trumps-is-not-the-first-penis-in-presidential-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s is not the first penis in presidential politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the history of sexuality blog\u00a0Notches<\/a>,\u00a0Rachel Hope Cleves\u00a0reminds us that this isn’t the first time the size of an American president’s penis has been politicized.<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson\u00a0defended the size of American men’s penises, including presumably his own, in\u00a0Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em>, published in 1785. He was countering a claim made by naturalist Comte de Buffon, who argued that the American climate\u00a0shrunk men’s genitals and made them asexual and impotent.<\/p>\n

“Poppycock!” wrote Jefferson (I’m paraphrasing), but literally, he said, the Native American, as well as\u00a0transplants to the continent, was “neither more defective in ardor, nor impotent with his female.”<\/p>\n

Jefferson’s penis would later become the subject of political scandal after America learned\u00a0that a woman he enslaved,\u00a0Sally Hemings, had given birth to several of his children. A cartoon portrayed him as a cock\u00a0— and Hemings as a hen —\u00a0this time suggesting that Jefferson\u00a0was too<\/em> virile to be president.<\/p>\n

Cartoon from American Antiquarian<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether Trump is too virile, or not virile enough, is still up for debate.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the history of sexuality blog\u00a0Notches,\u00a0Rachel Hope Cleves\u00a0reminds us that this isn’t the first time the size of an American president’s penis has been politicized. Thomas Jefferson\u00a0defended the size of American men’s penises, including presumably his own, in\u00a0Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785. He was countering a claim made by naturalist Comte […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[218,55,2094,85,20068,120],"class_list":["post-68610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bodies","tag-gender","tag-gender-politics","tag-politics","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/03\/5-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68610"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68615,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68610\/revisions\/68615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}