But, he says: “I knew I needed a penis from six or seven.” Lee, for example, seems to have been born male but, in the absence of a penis, was raised as a girl (it’s unclear for how long, but for at least the first few years of his life).
There are many fascinating questions raised by all three stories, about masculinity, what it takes to be a man, what it means to be without a penis in a patriarchy and a phallocentric culture, but they are only rarely examined. We follow him as he undergoes yet another operation on his poor groin (his doctor doesn’t recognise his face, Anik notes), this time to reposition the internal hydraulic equipment that will enable him to have erections. There are two other subjects in the film: Anik, born with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, which resulted in an underdeveloped penis and Lee, who was born without a penis and only obtained one through surgery at the age of 42.Īnik, too, has had his phalloplasty. We are, however, given enough information to infer that his relationship with alcohol, and the difficulty of attending all the necessary appointments for surgery without support from friends who prove unreliable, are maybe something to do with it. The pandemic added to the delay, but, presumably out of kindness to Malcolm, it is never made fully clear why he has had to wait so long for his operation. Still, it is the deep sadness of Malcolm’s tale – and the six years of waiting for his arm-penis to be relocated is only one part of it – that dominates. It’s not that the narrator of Malcolm’s story, Paul McGann, doesn’t do a fine job of neutrally delivering lines such as: “No one has ever spent as long living with a penis on his arm.” But if you, as a viewer, don’t feel the urge to side-eye someone and murmur: “You don’t say?” then … well, I would admire but also, in some profound way, mistrust you.ĭitto at moments such as the one where, his forearm appendage swinging free, Malcolm points out that it makes it hard to reach the back hob. There is no getting away from the fact that any documentary entitled The Man With a Penis on His Arm is going to invite moments of levity. “Gone,” says Malcolm, beginning to walk out of shot. The interviewer’s journalistic objectivity falls momentarily away. “Then I went to the toilet and it fell off,” he says, matter-of-factly. An attempt to lance an abscess himself resulted in blood poisoning.