Original subtitles

This programme contains strong language, scenes of nudity

and discussions and images of a sexual nature

My nub. Er... It doesn't have a name. Could be cock. Cock. Cock.

Cock. Can't remember what I call them on Grindr. Probably penis. Maybe dick. Probably just click.

My dick. My dick. Dick. Dick. Dick. It's mainly click.

The one that weirds me out the most is willy, over the age of childhood.

There's not many hot, sexy words for penis.

You've got this squishy piece of meat between your legs,

and it's the centre 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 centre of you

and, in so many ways, at the centre of who you are as a man.

It's a lot for this little squishy thing.

Well, for this squishy thing. HE LAUGHS

Every penis is different and not all penises are straight.

Some of them bend, some 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'm yet to take off, but it kind of...

Having a nub at times can be annoying.

I'm always crossing my legs cos it's comfortable,

and I always think, "Where do I put my dick?"

Underneath or do I put it on top?

I find that it has got a mind of its own.

It'll be awake when I'm tired,

it'll be awake all the time practically.

I actually think that my dick is boss.

You know, clays 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.

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.

20 years ago, the police stopped this image 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 on this one.

In this film, men will talk openly about their penises

and how it makes them feel about being a man.

And I will be photographing some of them

as they confront their own masculinity.

HE SCREAMS

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.

And challenge the taboo we still feel

around the beauty and power of the erection.

I don't think there's a bloke out there who hasn't sneaked a look,

but you can't ever be caught looking. 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.

I don't know if you can ever be truly happy

with the size of your dick,

I feel like you want it to be a bit bigger.

I used to worry about it when I was a teenager,

cos everyone lies about the size of their click.

I'd be like, "Maybe mine's tiny, oh, my God."

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 smaller or larger,

depending, I suppose, on maybe atmospheric pressure

or just... vibes.

It's weird how weird we are about them,

cos you can't get mad about your nose.

Cos I think so much of our self—worth is based around that.

Like, if somebody's acting out, you'll be like, "Aw, he's got a tiny penis."

It's like, "Has he? Or is he just a dickhead?"

At school, some people would get bullied for,

"Aw, he's got a little dick," or "He's got a small dick,"

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. Done.

I think the first time I masturbated,

I was probably around the age of about eight.

I was... ten. 11, 12?

I reckon I was about 15.

11, or so?

I was three years old.

Obviously not much happened.

I found some pornography. 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 years.

It's, like, imprinted into my mind's eye now.

I remember it very well, cos I drew blood.

I kind of hit it.

Just hit it from side to side and 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 on fire or burning,

and I remember running out of my bedroom, running down the hall,

and running into the bathroom with my dick hanging out

and putting it in the sink and running a cold tap on it.

I just remember this experience

of this adrenaline pumping round my body,

and I couldn't get enough of it.

It sent tingles through my body and down my leg and everything.

I remember talking to a friend and going,

"If everybody masturbates, why don't we just talk about it?"

And he went, "Sh! Don't say that!"

I got really into it for a while. Way too into it.

I must have wanked 15, 16 times...

Nothing else enters your mind.

I didn't stop at one, I think I did it a few times.

Had to double-check, triple—check that it wasn'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 a 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 Koran.

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, a small handbook

I got given by my mum_

It was A Young Muslim's Guide To Puberty, or something.

And in there it was like, um,

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.

Um... 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.

What should just be pleasurable, what 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 want to touch it, or I don't like any of this,

so to masturbate would be to engage with that stuff.

How are 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.

Bring this hand...

Keep that there, bring this hand around your face that way.

Right, yeah.

And then this pose comes out of, like, Greek bodies.

So then what you're doing now

is to queer that thing that you're used to, yeah?

Mm-hm. Now we'll turn your face back that way again.

That's it. So I'm half—vogueing, half...

OK, got it.

AjUMA CLICKS FINGERS Go on.

Yeah, that's it.

So then this is where we're going to start playing around now, yeah?

And look straight towards my camera.

Beautiful.

Beautiful.

Feeling strangely quite powerful. Like, it's...

...weird, it's nice.

Weird and nice is a... is a good mix. Yeah.

HE LAUGHS

Gosh, that's my body. That's me!

That's your body.

My biggest fear is my own body,

and how I feel about it, and here I am...

...very naked, in front of people.

HE LAUGHS

It doesn't get much scarier for me.

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

and 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.

I don't know why, in society, we seem

to have shamed the erection.

It doesn't make much sense to me.

We're prudes, I think, in Britain.

Without an erect penis, we wouldn't have life.

There is a certain power to it, but it's a power that isn't

just, like, uh, physical power,

it's also, it's... It's all connected.

It's strong, it is being masculine.

Same pose, and throw your head back slightly.

It is a physical manifestation, they're quite aggressive, cos, like,

they're big and they're hard and they're angry.

But I think it's also a sort of tie between the sexual act

in that that becomes quite aggressive,

and it's a... It can be, er... kind of physically intimidating.

How are you feeling?

Serene.

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.

Actually.

I'm really excited about doing this next shot.

The idea is around naturalness, fertility, flora, 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 beautiful way to frame it.

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, I remember learning that, thinking

"Am I going to get light—headed?"

"What's going to 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.

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...

...on the kind of, you know, your balls

as you're hitting the... on the seat.

And you sort of go,

"How did that speed bump give me an erection?"

I used to always get one in geography class.

And it was 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,

"Oh, 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 anyone," so there's a level of

sort of pride, really, to have that organ wake up.

It's like another bit of your body all of a sudden,

it's a hard thing,

you know, just... Physically, I become very hot.

It's brilliant, you know,

it feels good, you start to release these endorphins in your brain...

...and it's going into your loins and you can't concentrate...

...close to that, it's like a tingle...

...it's this rush of blood that sort of seems to...

...it's not itchy, that's not the right word...

...that's pretty much all you can think about...

...like, you go into more of an animalistic state of mind...

...at least a little bit of...

"euphofia".

...driving...

SEXUAL MOANING

...and then you need to...

...do something about it.

Some of the most embarrassing moments in my life

would be times when it's failed me.

This is a thing that, erm, I want to be proud of,

that I want to 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 are some kind of porn star.

You're never kind of like,

"Oh, I gave her the best ten 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.

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 your endorphins are going, "Ding!"

And everything's going ding, it's a real button presser, frankly.

When I first started having sex with men, I was a bottom

cos 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, that's how it works.

So to be penetrated, that was... That felt great

and that 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.

Turns out I'm pretty good, but at that point, it was terrifying.

There's lots of theories about where we come from

and 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 come when you're younger,

you don't necessarily acknowledge it's a reproductive tool.

But as you get older, you know if you're firing on all cylinders,

and you come and 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've got married and we decided

that we wanted to try having kids,

which was brilliant cos 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."

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."

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...

...ah...

...it was everything.

Absolutely everything.

I love him.

So much.

Nothing will compare to having a child.

I grew up in Sheffield,

and it's an area that's well known for straighteners.

If there's a problem,

people will go outside a pub and we'll sort it out.

Violence brings a rush inside of me.

It's like doing a bungee jump.

It's like jumping out of 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.

During sex, I often feel wrong,

because my first experience having sex was rape.

I was ten.

So it's hard for me to, like, to separate the two.

The ten-year-old me dealt with it... silently.

I wore a mask.

I was lost.

I felt as though I couldn't talk to anyone about this.

And then as I got a bit older, like, I start questioning myself.

Like, am I gay? Does this... does this mean I'm gay?

Because I've... cos I've been with a boy.

And it confused the life out of me.

Then the shame would set in, the guilt would set it.

It affected my confidence in a way,

but it was 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...| am a man.

I used jail for what it was.

It was long, big, long look in the mirror.

It was 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 that not many men can face.

I've dug deep within myself, I've faced all my fears,

and I'm as masculine as I've ever been.

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.

So then I'm going to ask you to take off this for me. OK.

And then I will then put this on for you.

How you feeling? Yeah, I'm good, man. Fine. Yeah?

I'm naked, but it's fine.

So, basically the idea I'm working with

is that I'm going to use the shirt as an analogy for a straight jacket.

OK. How we can be trapped,

in terms of notions of kind of identity and masculinity.

Identity. How does that feel?

Yeah, it's fine.

You know, it's not normally the way I'd do it. It's cool.

You might want to try and just bring your hands up a bit more.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

Has to push out, slightly.

It'll be awkward. Yeah, it is awkward.

|'m... That's want I want, is the awkwardness.

And your veins look beautiful.

My what? Your veins on here...

Christ, really? Jesus, I'm popping out.

OK, so besides all that, just a really normal pose?

Yeah. I get it.

So, it's all about tension.

Right, can you just now turn around and face me now?

And then just do that pushing out again. just push.

Yeah. Nice.

Nice.

Beautiful.

I really like this shot, actually.

So, I'm basically, what we're capturing is the tension.

And then there's tension within your hands as well.

OK, got it. Right, yeah? Right.

Right, can I have you just turn your face

directly towards the backdrop and stay like that. Yeah.

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, break out of that.

And, um, to mould it to yourself.

Beautiful.

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 retook at my education

and chuck out the bits that don't apply.

And there's a lot of it. A lot of crap.

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 the top school,

and then everybody ended up at Oxford or Cambridge

and a lot of them are in politics.

Everybody thinks, you know, we're privileged.

I tell you what, you're lucky if you didn't go.

You got away with it, cos it was shit.

And then just push one hand up. Yeah.

The longer I was there, the more I discovered and realised

what really was going on.

One of the things that happened was, there was a teacher

who'd come into the dormitory

and he would make us 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, you know...

Um, he had really scary, thick glasses

and a wrinkly face, like paper. That's what I remember of him.

And if he punish me, for example, he'd take me to his room.

And he'd bend me over his bed and I'd 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 realise at the time how extensive it was.

I mean, some of my friends were essentially raped.

Obviously zero consent at that age,

you know, by teachers, you know?

And we were all seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12.

I mean, we were young, we were young. We were young.

It's a hard word to describe, how you feel later,

having realised something was going on that you couldn't help with.

We were kids, so there's no way

I could've done anything at the time.

But 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 would brush this under the carpet.

We wouldn't even talk about it with each other.

But then in recent years,

around the time of jimmy Savile, the conversation 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.

DIAL-UP TONE

Pornography came into my life when I got a computer in my room.

Because the dial-up was really slow, you'd just load images.

And there 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 ten, 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.

WOMAN MOANS

Porn just puts it into a visual, so you have to do less work.

I think actually, honestly, using your imagination

to jerk off is a lot of work.

HE LAUGHS And nobody's got that kind of time.

Sometimes I will use it if I know I need to wank and it has to be quick.

Er, 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.

The first time I ever saw porn, I was 12.

And I was on the internet going to these websites

having fun and I was like, "Oh, my God, my little sister loves Boyzone.

"I'm going to look for B0yz0ne's website

"and 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,

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.

WOMAN MOANS LOUDLY

When I was younger, there was a lot of just thrusting and fucking

and everything was sort of really aggressive.

And I think I learned all them behaviours through pornography

and I don't know how many sexual partners I had, but it was too many,

before someone actually said, "| don't like it like that.

"Why do guys always do it like that?"

There was a serious lack of communication before that.

That actually meant, "Slow down, make love,

"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 were 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...| didn't see, obviously didn't see myself in any of that.

I first realised towards the end of primary school that was I 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, um... HE SIGHS

...trying to pray that the sexuality would go away

or that I 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 I kind of felt as though I was trapped. Um...

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 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 you feeling, OK?

I want you to feel yourself transforming

into something else, right, yeah?

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.

Look away some more, look away. That's it. That's it.

Being nude... Mm-hm?

...how do you feel, in terms of power?

It feels powerful to be stood here nude, naked,

talking about the 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.

I'm done.

That's the image.

Nice. That's me! That's you, honey.

Thank you.

Thank YOU.

My penis, for me, is...

...symbolic of 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,

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.

|t's... it's...

...it's fucking awesome.

How are you doing? Fantastic.

Thanks for coming. You're very welcome.

Do you shake or hug? I like hugs. THEY LAUGH

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.

But what we should be doing is learning

how to respect each other for those differences.

So, then, tell me more about your work.

I'm a sexual development companion,

I'm a 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

where they've had no sex,

to women who want to explore

maybe a darker side of their sexuality.

OK.

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 their 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.

How long have you 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.

Of course, yeah. So, you know, some information

I don't need to share with her, but she knows what I do.

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,

quite religious, it's still quite a taboo subject.

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 it remains a symbol of old-school masculinity.

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,

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.

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 that friction and a tension and a violence,

and that's what would happen.

At high school they used to, like, find me in corners

in, like, a PE changing room or something.

And then they'd, like, come down my throat

and then be like, "You fucking tell anyone about this, I'll kill you."

Like, later that day, I'd look up at the top deck of the bus

and they'd be like, "You fucking faggot!" and then spit on my face.

And all their lads around them would be doing the same

and it's like, "How funny, you literally came in my mouth

"about four hours ago."

My surname's Bellringer,

and when I was at school, I was teased remorselessly

and I acted really badly with that.

Instead of laughing it off, which would have been the better option,

I used to get into scrapes or fights and things like that.

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 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,

driving fast cars and locking bad people up.

However, the stark reality is, er...

...I've become ill from it.

There's just some A and A here, Geezer's moving around over there.

Ten 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. Um...

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 digging body parts out of 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 dead 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 knew 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... 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.

"| 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.

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 men, our emotions get tangled.

We cannot always work them through, unravel them.

For me, the octopus is a great metaphor

for how we can talk about masculinity.

And then the octopus tentacle's going around here,

going to be like shackles as well,

because then I think we're also chained

to concepts of masculinity.

For me, it's the shackles of PTSD and the police.

I think everything you've just said

is completely captured within that photo.

Secondary school harboured 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 have been bullied for that.

And as you grow up, you continue to reuse them patterns

that are built into you,

not realising 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, 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, caveman type thing,

where men would look after the women.

So they've got to 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.

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 going to happen on my sixth birthday.

And I said to the people around me,

"I'm going to be a boy when I'm six." And they're obviously like,

"No, you're not."

Puberty, for me was horrible, really horrible.

I knew from an early age that I was going to 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 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 micropenis,

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 ten 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're still the same people and the relationship's the same,

but the world sees me as a different...

“sexuality.

Our dicks helped 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

and 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 one 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 realise

that we're all probably not as masculine as we all think we are.

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.

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.

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