You Are Not Your Penis. Sorry If That’s a Shock.

I had wanted to post something bluntly titled "You Are NOT a Lesser Man." But it turns out that would require a widespread redefinition of what it means to be a man — one that doesn't involve obsessing over the girth, stiffness, or factory condition of your reproductive hardware.

Let’s face it: If the average man spent half as much time tending to his emotional intelligence as he does mourning the decline of his erection, we might already have cured half the world’s problems.

Yes, cancer changes things — body, libido, mood, functionality. Join the club. Women have been silently adjusting to hormonal avalanches, surgical mutilations, and social invisibility for centuries. We don’t measure our worth in millimetres or pump pressure. We just get on with it.

Why is a scar on your face "rugged" but a scar from life-saving surgery "emasculating"? Why is the success of prostate cancer treatment discussed in terms of who can still pitch a tent, rather than who got to attend their daughter’s graduation?

Let’s say it clearly: If your manhood is that fragile — dangling by the thread of a functional erection — then cancer didn’t take your masculinity. It just revealed how hollow it was to begin with.

Intimacy, by the way, has nothing to do with penetration and everything to do with presence. But if that sentence made you uncomfortable, congratulations — you’ve just met your real growth opportunity.

This disease, like any serious one, forces adaptation. It separates the self-absorbed from the self-aware. And here’s the kicker: the people who love you don’t love your penis. They love you. If that’s not enough — maybe the problem isn’t the disease.