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(gentle music)
- My knob.
- Uh.
- Doesn't have a name. - Could be cock.
- Cock. - Cock.
- Can't remember what I call him on Grindr.
- Probably penis, maybe dick.
- Probably just dick.
- My dick. - My dick.
- Dick. - Dick.
- It's mainly dick.
- The one that weirds me out the most is willy
over the age of childhood.
- There's not many hot sexy words for penis.
(rock music)
(gentle music) (water bubbling)
- See, you've got this squishy piece of meat
between your legs, and it's the center of pleasure,
and it's this symbol of masculinity
and of who you are as a man.
There's all these attachments of power, of insecurity,
and it's physically right at the center of you,
and in so many ways at the center of who you are as a man.
It's a lot for this little squishy thing.
Or for this squishy thing. (laughing)
- Every penis is different.
And not all penises are straight.
Some of them bend, some of them tilt upwards.
Some of them are kind of thick at one end.
Like, they're all very different.
- It's quite fun to kind of make it do the helicopter thing.
I've yet to take off, but, it kind of... (tongue clicking)
(water dripping)
- [Participant] Having a knob, at times, can be annoying.
- [Participant] I'm always crossing my legs,
'cause it's comfortable.
I always think where do I put my dick?
Should I put it underneath or do I put it on top?
- [Participant] I find that it's got a mind of its own.
It'll be awake when I'm tired.
It'll be awake all the time, actually.
- I actually think that my dick is boss.
You know, days where I need to get stuff done,
and I'm just like so horny I can't concentrate,
I actually think my dick is in control.
(gentle music)
- [Ajamu] My name's Ajamu, and I'm an artist.
I grew up in Huddersfield, surrounded by a macho culture.
I was all set for a career in the army,
but by 21 I had other plans.
I became passionate about photography,
and that was my way out.
I wanted to fuck with the rules
and create images of men I hadn't seen before.
(gentle music)
20 years ago, the police stopped this image
from being shown in a public gallery.
It was considered too explicit.
And I don't think we've moved on enough since then.
Penises are still taboo,
and I want to change that.
Hold it right there.
Do not move.
Just close your eyes for me in this one.
in this film man will talk openly about their penises
and how it makes me feel about being a man.
And I will be photographing some of them
as they confront their own masculinity.
(participant yelling)
Through the portraits I will make,
I want them to rethink the way
they see their penises and themselves.
- It feels powerful to be stood here, nude, naked,
and I'm owning it.
- [Ajamu] And challenge the taboo
we still feel around the beauty and power of the erection.
(water splashing)
- I don't think there's a bloke out there
who hasn't sneaked a look.
But you can't ever be caught lookin'.
That's not good, that.
- Everyone can see what's going on down there,
even if you don't directly look.
I think boys are obsessed about size
and who's got the biggest penis.
(gentle music)
- [Participant] I don't know if you can ever
be actually truly happy with the size of your dick.
I always felt like you want it to be a little bit bigger.
- I used to worry about it when I was a teenager,
'cause you just, everyone lies about the size of their dick.
I'd be like maybe mine's tiny.
Oh my god.
- [Participant] I think it's difficult
if you're a straight man
when you only ever see other people's flaccid penises,
because that's not when everyone's at their best.
And actually even when it's sort of flaccid,
it can sometimes be a bit smaller or larger,
depending, I suppose, on maybe atmospheric pressure
or just vibes.
- It's weird how weird we are about them.
'Cause, you know, you can't get mad about your nose.
'Cause I think there's so much
of our self-worth is based around that.
Like if somebody's acting out you'd be like,
"Oh, he's got a tiny penis."
It's like has he?
Or is he just a a dickhead?
- At school some people would get bullied for,
"Oh, he's got a little dick, or he's got small..."
Even if no one had seen it,
it was just a really powerful way of emasculating someone.
I think you then carry that into your adulthood,
and you're still weighing yourself up against people
for ridiculous reasons.
- I can't understand people
who aren't fine about the size of their penis,
for god's sake.
I was born with a penis, and that's it.
I'm done.
(gentle music)
- [Participant] I think the first time I masturbated,
I was probably around the age of about eight.
- I was 10, 10. - 11, 12.
- I reckon I were about 15. - 11 or so.
- [Participant] I was three years old,
three years old, three years old.
Obviously not much happened.
- I found some pornography that,
I don't know whose it was, it was stashed in a bush,
and in my head I remember it being French.
I don't know how French pornography's ended up in a town,
a park bush in Telford, but,
and it was a brunette woman and she was sitting on a dildo.
And that was like a go-to thing for for years.
It's like imprinted into my mind's eye now.
- I remember it very well, 'cause I drew blood.
- I kinda hit it. (laughing)
And I just kinda hit it side to side,
and then something, it felt really nice after a while,
and I thought that's how you did it for so long.
- I came for the first time, although nothing came out,
and I actually thought my dick was like on fire or burning.
And I remember running out of my bedroom
and running down the hall and running into the bathroom
with my dick hanging out,
and like putting it in the sink
and running a cold tap on it. (laughing)
- [Participant] I just remember this experience
of this adrenaline just pumping around my body,
and I couldn't get enough of it.
- [Participant] It sent tingles from my body,
and right down my legs and everything.
And I thought- - I remember
talking to a friend and just going,
"If everybody masturbates,
"why don't we just talk about it?"
And he went, "Shh, don't say that."
- [Participant] I got really into it for a while,
like way too into it.
Like I must have wanked-
- [Participant] Like nothing else enters your mind.
- I didn't stop at one.
I think I did it a few times, so.
- That's like double check, triple check
that it weren't a fucking one off.
- Grew up in quite a religious household.
I first masturbated probably when I
was about maybe 11 or so.
And for years masturbation for me felt
like something that was wrong.
- I grew up in quite conservative Muslim family in Bradford.
We went on pilgrimage,
and we were taken to mosque to learn to read Arabic
and learn to read the Quran.
That's shaped so much of who I am now
and how I live my day-to-day life.
Within my family, sex just did not exist.
The closest I ever had was like the small like handbook
I got given by my mum.
It was like "A Young Muslim's Guide to Puberty"
or something.
And in there it was like
something about masturbation and going to hell.
So obviously when I was 13, 14, 15,
and super randy, that became an issue.
So to stop myself from ejaculating, which would,
in my mind, kind of complete the wank
and make it then like a full blown sin,
I'd grip my penis really hard
or just physically try and stop myself from ejaculating,
which led to kind of physical scarring, physical damage.
I have a lot of negative associations with it now.
So it's a tricky thing.
Which should just be pleasurable,
which should just be so simple.
And then sometimes there's still that guilt,
or sometimes I hate how my dick looks
or I don't wanna like touch it,
or I don't like any of this.
So, to masturbate would be to engage with that stuff.
(gentle rhythmic music)
- How you feeling? - It's all laid bare,
isn't it?
There's nothing I can hide behind,
no clothes, no airs and graces.
It's just me and my body.
(gentle rhythmic music)
- Bring this hand.
Keep that there.
Bring this hand around your face that way, right yeah.
And then this pose comes out of like kind of Greek bodies.
So then what you're doing now is to quell that thing-
- Yeah. - That you're used to.
Yeah? - Mm-hm.
- Now will you turn your face back that way again.
That's it. - I'm half voguing,
half, okay, got it.
(Ajamu snapping)
- Go honey. (laughing)
Yeah, that's it.
So then this is where we're gonna start
playing around now, right, yeah?
And look straight towards my camera.
Beautiful.
(gentle rhythmic music)
(camera beeping)
Beautiful. - Feeling strangely
quite powerful, like it's weird,
it's nice.
- Weird and nice is a good mix.
- (laughing) Gosh, it's my body.
That's me, naked, ah. - That's your body.
(Ajamu laughing)
- My biggest fear is my body and how I feel about it,
and here I am very naked in front of-
(camera beeping) People.
(participant laughing)
It doesn't get much scarier for me.
(gentle music)
- [Ajamu] I take portraits of dicks,
because dicks have their own stories to tell,
but are still censored.
Lots of countries actually celebrate the penis
in terms of its fertility, aliveness.
And in this country the dick is still seen as pornographic,
and my work is there to reclaim the dick from that space.
By keeping the erection so taboo,
we don't allow men to be vulnerable.
- I personally think it's really important for us to like
just see more erect penises in our lives.
Not for a sex thing.
Just to normalize 'em,
to make them less panicky.
Because, I think if you're a straight man, specifically,
you don't see enough of them.
- Hold it right there.
- [Participant] I don't know why in society
we've seemed to have shamed the erection.
It doesn't make much sense to me.
We're prudes, I think, in Britain,
- Right there. - Without an erect penis
we wouldn't have life,
so there is a certain power to it,
but it's a power that isn't just like a physical power.
It's also, it's all connected.
It's strong.
It is being masculine.
(camera beeping) - Sit pose
and throw your head back slightly.
- It's their physical manifestation,
they're quite aggressive, 'cause like they're big
and they're hard and they're angry.
But I think it's also sort of tied between the sexual act
in that that becomes quite aggressive,
and it can be
kind of physically intimidating.
- How are you feeling? - Serene. (laughing)
I think hiding the male erection
and making it this taboo thing gives it more power
than maybe it deserves,
because it's pretty ordinary (laughing) actually.
(jazzy music)
- I'm really excited about doing this next shot.
The idea is around naturalness of fertility, flower, fauna.
A dick is kind of a central part of nature.
- Yeah, I think it removes all the kind of
cosmetic attachments we have to the penis
and brings it back to the organ.
So yeah, I think it's a, a beautiful way
to frame it. (both laughing)
The reason I wanted to do this shoot, actually,
was because I don't want there to be a taboo
around the erection.
It's something that we all experience.
And so for me to openly explore that,
in an artistic way as well, is amazing.
- A flaccid willy is a bit of a ball-ache, to be honest.
But as for when it's hard, fucking hell, sometimes it hurts.
- I know from a biological point of view it's blood flow
and it's two chambers filling with a lot of blood,
so then whenever...
I remember learning that thinking,
am I gonna get lightheaded?
What's gonna happen?
- I can definitely have an erection when it's not sexual.
I can wake up in the morning,
and it's like bang, it's up, and,
I don't particularly feel sexual.
- [Participant] It's a sign of good health.
It means your blood's flowing around your body,
waking you up.
That's what...
That's the reality of being a man.
You just wake up every day with a hard on.
- I think the most awkward ones for me are kind of
would happen when I'm driving.
I don't know if it's like the rumble of the road
on the kind of, (clapping) you know, your balls
as you're hitting the, as you're on the seat.
- And you sort of go, how did that speed bump
give me an erection?
- [Participant] I used to always get one in geography class.
There's nothing to do with geography.
- A lot of it is mental.
I could see a text come through from a client
who I'm really attracted to,
my dick would instantly get hard.
- For me personally, if I'm walking down the street
and suddenly I get a boner, I just go, I feel good.
I'm charged.
I've got some sexual energy there.
I'm not trying to force this on anyone.
I'm not trying to show it to anyone.
So yeah, there's a level of sort of pride, really,
to have that organ wake up.
(water splashing)
- It's like another bit of your body all of a sudden.
See it's a hard thing, you know,
just like- - Physically I
become very hot.
My body- - It's thrilling.
You know, it feels good.
You start to release these endorphins in your brain.
- [Participant] It's going into your loins,
and you can't concentrate.
- [Participant] (indistinct) Like a tingle.
- [Participant] There's this rush of blood,
that's what it seems- - It's not itchy.
(indistinct)
- [Participant] It's pretty much all you can think about.
- [Participant] And you go into more of
an animalistic state of mind.
(indistinct)
- [Participant] Release a little bit of-
(indistinct)
- [Participant] Driving.
(indistinct)
- [Participant] Yeah, it's like another limb.
(man moaning)
- And then you need to do something about it.
(gentle music)
- Some of my most embarrassing moments in my life
would be times when it's failed me. (laughing)
This is a thing that I want to be proud of,
that I wanna use properly,
that I want to pleasure a woman with,
and sometimes that pressure has meant
I haven't been able to get a boner,
and instantly then you're in this psychological battle
where you think, she's gonna feel bad about herself,
at the same time I'm feeling bad about myself.
And if that happens once, it can happen twice,
it can turn into like this cycle.
So, if you put too much pressure on yourself,
if you think this thing is always gonna bring you
glory and joy and ecstasy,
then you will mess yourself up for future sexual encounters.
- Being a man, sex is talked about
as if you're some kind of porn star.
(gentle music)
You're never kinda like,
oh gave her the best 10 seconds of her life type thing.
That's never, you know, talked about, you know?
She was so gorgeous,
and it was such a hot situation that I lasted seconds.
I've never ever met a bloke who's said that,
but I know it's happened to me. (laughing)
- When you're penetrating,
it's like entering the most warm, cuddly space.
It's just all encompassing
and it takes over your whole mind and body.
So it's not just your penis sliding inside a very nice,
moist, wet, tight sort of...
It's a great feeling,
but also that flows through your whole body
and through your brain, and it's,
your endorphins are going ding,
and everything's going ding.
It's a real button presser, frankly.
- When I first started having sex men, I was a bottom.
'Cause that's sort of where you end up,
because there is a weird masculinity element towards that.
And so because I was having sex with men
who were teaching me,
I'd go on bottom and that's how it worked.
So to be penetrated, that was,
it felt great and it was amazing.
And having sex with a man in the first place was incredible.
The first time I topped,
I was terrified,
absolutely terrified because I had no idea what I was doing
and I didn't know if I would do it right.
And I was taking on a lot of the control,
and I was becoming what would be seen as
the more kind of masculine role,
and I didn't feel like I could live up to it.
It turns out I'm pretty good, but,
at that point it was terrifying.
(water dripping)
- There's lots of theories about where we come from,
I mean how we're created.
But essentially there's one thing
that's vital in that, and that's sperm.
- It does start with the sperm, obviously.
- I never think about being able to use my sperm
for anything other than cleaning up later.
- I don't think anything towards sperm.
Just get it off me.
That's it.
- It's easier for men to disconnect from the idea
that sperm has a value,
because we produce millions of them,
and we can quite literally toss them away.
- When you look at cum when you're younger,
you don't necessarily acknowledge
that it's a reproductive tool.
But as you get older, you know,
if you're firing on all cylinders,
and you cum and then you know that there's sperm in there,
and it could potentially, you know,
lead to you having a child,
it does give you that sense of being a man.
- After we'd got married and we decided
that we wanted to try having kids, which was brilliant,
'cause we had a lot of sex, but we weren't getting pregnant.
And I was like, "Well let's go and talk to the doctor."
And I got the phone call on the drive back to where we live,
and he said, "Yeah, there's no sperm at all in the sample,
"and so that means that you won't be able to
"conceive your own child."
Which broke me, to be honest, completely.
And still does.
It's indescribable, the pain,
because, I can't imagine what it's like to lose a child.
But I know what it's like to lose a child you've never had.
I lost probably 18 months of my life to depression.
So we had to find a way forward,
and for us that was sperm donation.
I remember sitting on the train, going to work,
looking around and thinking,
one of these guys on this train could be the sperm donor.
And I really struggled with that.
I really struggled with this idea of that,
of like how will I ever bond with that child?
We got pregnant the first time we went in,
which was kind of a miracle,
after everything we'd been through.
It was just like,
we believed it, but we didn't entirely believe it.
But it was just wonderful.
It was such a turning point in our lives
that I never ever thought I'd get to,
if I'm completely honest.
And then our son was born,
and when he was brought out to me and I hugged him...
(participant sharply exhaling)
It was everything, absolutely everything.
I love him so much.
Nothing will compare to having a child.
(gentle music)
- I grew up in Sheffield,
and it's an area that's well known for straightness,
is if there's a problem,
people will go outside the pub and they'll sort it out.
Violence brings a rush inside of me, but,
it's like doing a bungee jump.
It's like jumping outta a plane.
It's an ultimate adrenaline rush.
And on this one particular night,
I went out on a night out,
and I ended up hitting a doorman,
and I got 21 months for that.
(gentle music)
During sex, I often feel wrong,
because my first experience having sex was rape.
I were 10.
So it's hard for me to like, to separate the two.
The 10-year-old me dealt with it silently.
I wore a mask.
I were lost.
I felt as though I couldn't talk to anyone about this.
And then as I got a bit older, like,
I started questioning myself like, am I gay?
Does this mean I'm gay because I've been with a boy?
And it confused life outta me.
Then the shame had set in, the guilt had set in.
It affected my confidence in a way
that it were like reverse psychology.
I had to then prove,
I felt so shallow and so small inside,
that I'd do anything to prove to anyone I am a big man.
I am a man.
I used jail for what it was.
It were a long, big, long look in the mirror.
It were just me facing myself.
I could no longer run away from what's happened to me.
I speak out openly now about the sexual abuse
and the rape I sustained as a child,
and I can use my energy in a different way.
I can channel my energy in a much more
positive and influential way.
And I'd say now,
I've done something what not many men can face.
I've digged deep within myself,
I've faced all my fears,
and I'm as masculine as I've ever been.
(gentle rhythmic music)
- I've always photographed men's bodies in black and white.
As men, we are often defined in black and white terms.
And what really interests me are the shades in between.
My work plays around with the idea of what men are
and who we are allowed to be.
(gentle music)
So then, I'm gonna ask you to take off this for me.
- Okay. - And then
I will then put this on for you.
How you feeling? - Yeah, I'm good man.
- Yeah, - I'm naked, but it's fine.
- So basically the idea I'm working with
is I'm to use the shirt as a analogy for a straight jacket.
- Okay. - How we could be trapped
in terms of notions of kind of
identity and masculinity - Identity.
- How does that feel?
- Yeah, that's fine.
You know, it's not normally the way I do it,
but it's cool.
- [Ajamu] You might wanna try
and just bring your hands up a bit more.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Okay. - As to push out slightly.
It's gonna be awkward. - Yeah, it is awkward.
- [Ajamu] That's what I want, is the awkwardness.
And your veins look beautiful.
- My what? - Your veins on here.
- Oh Christ, rages, I'm popping out.
Okay, so beside all that, just a really normal buzz.
- Yeah. - I get it, I get it.
- Yeah, so, yes, this is about tension.
(camera beeping)
Right, can you just now turn around and face me now?
And then just do that pushing out again.
Just push.
Yeah, nice.
Nice.
(camera beeping) Beautiful.
I really like the shot, actually.
So basically what we're capturing is the tension,
and then there's tension within your hands as well.
- Okay, got it. - Right, yeah?
Right, right.
Can I have you just turn your face
directly towards the backdrop and stay like that?
Yep.
- I suppose to a certain extent masculinity
could be seen as being like a metaphorical straight jacket.
When you're tied into a way of behaving
and thinking on a very one-dimensional level,
I see it as a challenge to break out of that,
and to mold it to yourself.
- [Ajamu] Beautiful.
(camera beeping)
- We've been very much in a man's world,
things are changing.
I think it's a great thing.
And, you know, men have to
maybe redefine themselves a bit away from this
sort of very passe, cliche.
I was born in the 60s, you know?
I went to school in the 70s,
and attitudes have changed a lot.
So, I effectively had to re-look at my education
and chuck out the bits that don't apply.
And there's a lot of it, a lot of crap.
(gentle music)
I was sent to a really beautiful little school
in the middle of the country.
I was seven years old.
Boris was there.
The whole Johnson family were there, actually.
And it was seen as being like the top school,
and then everybody ended up at Oxford or Cambridge,
and a lot of them are in politics.
Everybody thinks that it's, you know, we're privileged.
I tell you what, you're lucky if you didn't go,
you got away with it because it was shit.
- [Ajamu] And then just pushed one hand up, yeah.
- The longer I was there, the more I discovered
and realized what really was going on.
(gentle music)
One of the things that happened was
there was a teacher who'd come into the dormitory,
and he would make a stand around completely naked,
and we'd have to get an erection
and balance our slippers on the end of it,
and basically who'd get the hardest erection.
It was basically he would wander around sort of watching.
He was a, you know...
He had really scary, thick glasses
and wrinkly face, like paper.
That's what I remember of him.
And if he punished me, for example,
he'd take me to his room... (yelling)
And he'd bend me over his bed,
and then I would just hear him breathing over me,
but he wouldn't touch me.
And yeah, it was creepy, you know?
For somebody at that age,
seven years old, it's super creepy.
I didn't realize at the time how extensive it was.
I mean, some of my friends were essentially raped.
There's obviously zero consent at that age, you know,
by teachers, you know,
and we were all seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12.
I mean we were young.
We were young.
It's a hard word to describe
how you feel later having realized something was going on
that you couldn't help with.
We were kids, so there's no way
I could have done anything at the time.
But like if we'd all known more about the way of the world
and we'd been a bit older,
we might have been able to do something.
It's weird the way the memory works.
For many years, everyone brushes under the carpet.
You know, we wouldn't even talk about it with each other.
But then in recent years, around the time of Jimmy Savile,
the compensation did come up,
and it only became apparent to me then
how damaging this had been to some people's lives.
We brought a criminal case against some of the teachers.
We've already been successful.
We had one locked up.
And it meant justice for his victims.
(techno music) (internet dial-up tone)
- Pornography came into my life
when I got a computer in my room.
Because the dial-up was really slow,
you just load images.
And you know, it would be like,
you'd see the head and then you'd see the eyes
and then you'd see the boobs.
And sometimes before you'd even
got to the bottom of the image,
which could just be one photo, you could have ejaculated.
But it was always a race with pornography.
I found that it was never sort of prolonging it
and having a 10-, 15-minute, 20-minute, 30-minute
sort of level of masturbation.
It was always this sort of get it done quickly
before someone catches you.
(people moaning)
- Porn just puts it into a visual,
so you have to do less work.
I think actually, honestly,
using your imagination to is a lot of work. (laughing)
And nobody's got that kinda time.
- [Participant] Sometimes I would use it
if I know I need to wank
and it has to be quick, I will use porn.
- I think most people approach porn like that.
They watch it, they get what they need from it,
and then they close their laptop
and pretend it didn't exist.
(gentle music)
- The first time I ever saw porn, I was 12,
and I was on the internet kind of going to these websites,
and having fun, I was like,
oh my god, my little sister loves Boyzone.
I'm going to look for Boyzone's website
and then print off some pictures of Boyzone
and take them home for my sister, because I'm adorable.
Also had a massive crush on most of Boyzone
at the same time, but didn't fully understand.
So I typed in boyzone.com, thinking it was their website,
and it was not their website.
Not at all.
It was some very aggressive porn.
And I could draw you from memory that page instantly,
because it was both the most electrically exciting
and the most terrified I've ever been in my life.
(people moaning)
- When I was younger, it was a lot of just frosting
and fucking and everything was sort of really aggressive.
And I think I learned all them behaviors
through pornography,
and I don't know how many sexual partners I had,
but it was too many before someone actually said,
"I don't like it like that.
"Why do guys always do it like that?"
There was this serious lack of communication before that,
that actually meant slow down, make love,
like caress me, use it properly,
allow me to feel the different contours of your penis,
and that was like a game changer for me.
- So I think porn became a bit of a problem.
There was definitely levels of addiction there.
There were ways in which it was affecting my self image
in terms of here are all these super smooth,
super ripped white guys with massive dicks.
And,
I didn't see, obviously didn't see myself in any of that.
(gentle music)
I first realized kind of towards the end of primary school
that I was gay, but Asian men are straight.
That's it.
So I think trying to marry those parts
of my identity together, that completely ripped me apart.
It was
trying to pray that the sexuality would go away
or that I'd become straight, or failing that,
if I could get hit by a bus or if something would happen
so that I wasn't alive anymore,
because I was suicidal during this time,
but suicide is prohibited in Islam,
so it kind of felt as I was trapped.
And obviously the gay didn't go away,
and then it just got more and more intense,
until I couldn't keep up with it anymore.
It was just too much.
It was...
It was crushing,
and I took it out on my body.
So it was, you know, hacking at my body.
It was punishing my body,
because I hated this vessel that I was attached to,
and I just wanted to rip my body apart.
And I did.
Physically, I started to rip it apart.
- How are you feeling, okay?
I want you to feel yourself
transforming into something else, right, yeah?
(camera beeping)
Yeah?
Beautiful.
Now then, touch your scars with this hand.
Yeah, just very...
Yeah, very, very gentle like that.
- This is probably the strangest thing
I've ever done in my life.
(gentle music)
- [Ajamu] Look away some more, look away.
That's it.
Being nude. - Mm-hm?
- [Ajamu] How do you feel in terms of power?
- It feels powerful to be stood here, nude, naked,
talking about things I've talked about,
and I'm owning it.
This whole experience has been
kind of airing out the dirty laundry
and seeing that actually when I talk about it,
it's not as powerful anymore,
or it's kind of, it doesn't have as much of a hold on me,
and it's kind of drawn a line under it.
(gentle intense music)
- I'm done.
That's the image.
(gentle intense music)
Nice. - That's me.
- [Ajamu] That's you, honey.
(participant laughing)
Thank you.
- Thank you.
(gentle intense music)
- Thank you.enisf
my ability to create life with the opposite sex.
It's integral to who I am
from a survival standpoint, in terms of my fertility,
my strength, meaning being able to pass on my seed.
It's how I connect with the opposite sex
on an intimate level.
It's how we exchange that magical energy.
It's fucking awesome.
- How you doin'? - Fantastic.
- Thanks for comin' in. - You're very welcome.
- [Ajamu] Do you shake or hug.
I like hugs personally.
There you go.
- I think it's a travesty that men and women
are being mushed together,
because I think the differences
between the two are so beautiful
and that's where all the chemistry comes from.
And to pretend that we're all the same
in the name of equality, I think is nonsense.
I think that our differences should be celebrated
and what we should be doing
is learning how to respect each other for those differences.
- Sabin, tell me more about your work.
- [Sabin] I'm a sexual development companion
and high class escort.
- Yeah. - So essentially women hire me
to help them explore their sexuality.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- And it varies a lot from women who
have been in long-term relationships but have had no sex
to women who want to explore
maybe a darker side of their sexuality.
- Okay.
- I don't feel any pressure because of my race,
but I probably have been with women who, for them it was,
a large part of the attraction to me
was the fact that I was the forbidden fruit.
I'm not ignorant to the fact that that plays into it,
but I don't let that define me.
- [Ajamu] How long have been in the business?
- Coming up to about five years now.
- Are your family aware?
- I've got a 19-year-old daughter.
She's lived with me since she was five years old.
- Yeah. - So she's well aware
of what I do.
I'm quite open with her, within reason.
I'm still her dad, so- - Of course, yeah.
- [Sabin] You know, some information
I don't need to share with her,
but she knows what I do.
- Yeah. - I don't hide that from her.
My mother is surprisingly more open to the idea,
than, I would say, my brothers and sisters,
who, they tend not to really know how to deal with it.
Because within our family, the idea of discussing sexuality,
especially if you've grown up in a household
which is quite religious, it's still quite a taboo subject.
- [Ajamu] I want men to celebrate their bodies
and their sexuality.
And this project has made me continue to question
why we don't see penises outside of sex.
So a tremendous symbol of old school masculinity,
but that needs to be challenged.
- For me, masculinity is all about
how much of a man I can feel,
how much of a man I can make myself feel.
Or how much of a man I come across to other people.
- I don't think society really has many real men.
I think society has a lot of grown boys,
and so I think men find themselves under the pressures
to try and achieve a warped version of masculinity.
And it's the wrong version of masculinity
that they're pursuing.
(intense music)
- I think the word masculinity,
to me, means violence, probably,
first and foremost.
It's much bigger than me.
It's structural.
It's the way we reward masculinity and let boys be boys.
I was always extremely visibly feminine
from a really young age,
and I think people just didn't really
know how to deal with that.
So when my big body that was incredibly feminine
would question people's perception of what I should be,
I think that creates a friction
and a tension and a violence,
and that's what would happen.
At high school that used to like find me in corners
in like a PE changing room or something.
And then they'd like cum down my throat,
and they'd be like, "You fuckin' tell anyone about this,
"and I'll kill you."
And they'd like, later that day,
I'd look up at the top deck of the bus,
and they'd be like, "You fuckin' faggot."
And then spit on my face,
and then there'd be all their lads around them
doing the same, and it's like, how funny.
You literally came in my mouth about four hours ago.
(gentle intense music)
- My surname's Bellringer,
and when I was at school I was teased remorselessly.
And I acted really badly with that.
Instead of laughin' it off,
which woulda been a better option,
I used to get into scrapes or fights and things like that.
And the problem is, is that
I couldn't fight my way out of a paper bag.
And when I joined the army, I had to hide that.
I was worried that I was a coward,
and I felt that I had to appear as this big man.
I had to project this idea
of being big, gruff, brave,
courageous.
And no one must know that I feel that I'm a coward.
- As an 18-year-old,
joining the police meant a decent wage at 20,000 pounds,
driving fast cars, and locking bad people up.
However, the stark reality is,
I've become ill from it.
- Ken, there's just somebody (indistinct) around over there.
(intense music)
- 10 years ago I was serving in Afghanistan.
My role over there was bomb disposal.
We were tasked on this particular day
to deal with a series of devices.
Something we'd done many, many times before.
But on this particular day it went awfully wrong.
- I would be in murder scenes,
blood everywhere, carpets, walls.
There would potentially still be a body there
if it hadn't been removed by the coroners.
Going to a road traffic accident,
you're diggin' body parts out of the roads
with tweezers and spoons.
But the one thing that will never ever leave me,
and the medications haven't touched,
and haven't managed to solve is,
the smell and the sight of death.
I can close my eyes and I can picture any one of
a hundred maybe dead bodies that I've seen.
And to this day, I wake up
in the middle of the night screaming,
I have sweats and terrors.
That's the reality of being in the police.
They have something called the canteen culture.
And you literally sit around on your lunch break
and you laugh and joke about their bodies.
In essence, that's their way of dealing with it,
because they make it very difficult for you to speak out.
Well, you joined the police,
you know what you were getting into.
- I survived an absolutely massive explosion
that I had no right to survive.
Strangely, when I was told that I'd
lost my testicles, I just,
metaphorically just shrugged my shoulders,
and went, you know, that's right.
That's that then.
I didn't grieve straight away,
but later on I did.
Sometimes I'd be in a horny mood,
but have nothing that I could do about that.
I suppose the ultimate frustration of being a man,
- Mental health is a big problem for men.
The stigma attached to men is
you can't cry, you can't show you're emotional,
you can't let off steam in a way that shows you're weak.
And we need that.
We need that
sort of ability to say,
I'm struggling with this, I'm tired,
you know, I'm feeling emotional,
I'm feeling down, I need to cry.
- The genital injuries that I've suffered
really has changed my perspective on being a man.
Many things aren't as important.
I don't need to be big and aggressive.
And for me, now, being a man is just about
being happy with life.
That's the important thing,
being happy with life and who you are.
(gentle bright music)
- [Ajamu] As men, we are conditioned
to bury our vulnerability,
so often with disastrous results.
I find it inspiring
the way that Darren has faced his demons.
Jesus Christ.
- This is a first for me.
I can't say I've ever had octopus on my feet.
- As are men, our emotions get tangled.
We cannot always work 'em through, unravel them.
For me, the octopus is a great metaphor
and for how we can talk about masculinity,
and then the octopus tentacles going around here,
going to be like shackles as well
because then I think we're also trained to
a concept of masculinity.
- For me it's the shackles of PTSD and the police.
- [Ajamu] Yeah.
- I think everything you've just said
is completely captured within that.
That photo.
(gentle intense music)
- Secondary school harbored
a very warped version of masculinity,
because it was very much about dominance and popularity.
You had to prove yourself,
whether it was through courage, through fighting.
If you were seen to care too much,
you know, you could have been bullied for that.
If you weren't able to snog a girl,
you would've been bullied for that.
And as you grow up, you continue to reuse them patterns
that have built into you,
not realizing that you should have grown out of them,
as you truly turn into a real man.
- I think men ooze this confidence,
and this testosterone just comes through,
and they put on this poker face.
But on the inside, you know,
they are quite emotionally constipated,
and a lot of the thoughts and the feelings
are kept to themselves.
- I honestly don't know what masculinity is,
and that's one of the reasons I have trouble being it,
because it's not a story I can tell myself
that I understand.
- Masculinity means, obviously,
men and women look different.
If you go back thousands of years,
you've got sort of that primate, the caveman type thing,
where men would look after the women,
so they've gotta be tough and, you know, protect their women
and go out and feed their family.
So for me that's really, really important
to be seen as a man.
(gentle music)
When I was five, for some reason,
to me the age six just seemed like a boy's age.
And so I thought I would wake up on my sixth birthday,
having wished for many, many years,
every morning I'd wake up and pray that I'd be a boy,
that it was gonna happen on my sixth birthday.
And I said to the people around me,
"I'm gonna be a boy when I'm six."
And they're obviously like, "No, you're not."
(gentle music)
Puberty for me was horrible, really horrible.
I knew from an early that I was gonna grow breasts
and have various things happen,
and the thought of that scared the life out of me.
And then, you know, it's coming
and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.
And your body just grows in ways that you don't want it to.
I thought I was a freak.
Having started hormones, obviously my clitoris has grown,
so effectively it's a micro penis.
And the clitoris has got, I don't know,
50 times more nerves, I think, than a penis.
So it's very sensitive.
And if it's grown, it's gonna be even more sensitive.
It can become erect, which means you've got something
that effectively feels exactly the, you know,
it sexually feels nice.
You can still orgasm.
And for me, being a man is not necessarily about that area.
No one sees that.
So when I'm walking down the road,
and I go into a shop and buy a can of Coke,
that's the one area that doesn't matter.
I was in a relationship for about 10 years
before I transitioned.
And you know, in terms of the relationship itself,
nothing changed.
But what I find really weird is
before I was seen as a straight woman,
so I was straight, and now I'm seen as a gay man.
We are still the same people,
and the relationship's the same,
but the world sees me as a different sexuality.
- [Ajamu] Our dicks help shape us as men
and how we navigate the world.
And like the men I've met,
that can be complicated and beautiful.
- Now, as I stand,
masculinity means to me somebody who's
not got anything to prove.
Somebody who can live truthful, somebody who can say no,
somebody who can express their emotions,
and somebody who can be honest with themselves
and others in this world.
- A good man to me kind of means someone who
is strong and courageous.
Not just like physically strong,
but with a sense of reliability
and able to support people around him.
- Someone who is comfortable and controlled
and doesn't feel the need to project themselves onto others.
- I wanted to fuck with the rules,
especially the ones that tries to define
how we as men should think and act.
- I think being a man has changed a lot
in the last few years.
We're all starting to realize that we're all
probably not as masculine as we all think we are. (laughing)
- There's definitely been a massive change for me
in how men are with their emotional selves.
There is a dialogue that's been opened up
where men are allowed to talk about pain.
They're allowed to talk about
what they feel and why they feel it.
And it's raised the bar from survival to happiness.
And I think now men want to be happy.
- [Ajamu] We need to let men be whatever they want to be.
And I think we can do all that
without losing the joys and the pleasures of the dick.
(bright rhythmic music)
(person moaning and panting)
(gentle bright music)