An Open Letter (#weinergate)

Dear Men Who Send Pictures of Their Bits to Women:

I write on behalf of myself and all of the women out there in the world today who, upon hearing that some football player, politician or other random famous person has emailed, Tweeted, Facebooked or otherwise electronically sent a photo of his junk to a prospective hook-up, reflexively (when we finish laughing) say to ourselves (and anyone else who will listen), "why would you ever do that?"

Contrary to what you might think, as a general rule, women aren't really all that fascinated with your penis - at least not as fascinated as you might think we are.  This is not to say we don't like that you have a penis, or that we do not ever want to see it or otherwise engage with said penis.  No; what I mean is that, barring extraordinary circumstances, we usually don't feel like we need a photo of it, and it is exceedingly rare that we need a photo of it to pop up, unannounced, on our Twitter feed, in our SMS Text inbox, or in a Facebook chat box.  No matter how awesome the photo (or the subject) is, we are probably never going to hang your "masterpiece" on our living room wall, above our bed, or even in our garage.  Rather, we will store it on our mobile device, and whip it out at the bar after a night of drinking to show our girlfriends what this jackass we met on Facebook sent us, as if we wanted or needed such a photograph.  Or, as many of you have discovered firsthand, we will save the photo until it is least convenient and helpful to you, and then send it to Andrew Breitbart or any other media outlet that is willing to pay for it or give us enough publicity to assist us in getting a book deal.  Or to your wife.  You remember her, right?  Riiiiigght....

Of course, as I mentioned, there are exceptions to the rule - i.e. "extraordinary circumstances" - in which sending a photo of your bits might be warranted.  For example, if you had unprotected sexual intercourse with a woman, then a week later, discovered something that looked like cauliflower growing from the shaft of your penis, by all means, snap a picture and send it to her she she can show her doctor what to test for.  Similarly, if you have an unusually small or large penis, you might want to send a photo (upon her request only, after making the appropriate verbal disclosure) so she can either get her giggles out of the way before you come over, or do some sort of kegel exercise to prepare for the impending sexual armageddon.

Absent such extraordinary circumstances, there is really no need to send us a picture of your penis (or, for that matter, any body parts that are directly penis-adjacent).  Really.  However, let me also be clear that I, like many women, can totally get behind sending a woman a nice picture of your non-penile/non-penile-adjacent physique, especially if you are in the habit of "meeting" women on Twitter or Facebook; after all, it's completely reasonable in that circumstance to provide some sort of evidence that, while you may be too lazy to go out to a bar to pick her up the old-fashioned way, you are not, in fact, too lazy to run a few laps or lift some weights.

We've all seen what can happen when you send pictures of your nether-regions to women, and now that you understand our perspective on the whole "digi-bits" issue, consider yourself on notice.  To paraphrase the line from Field of Dreams, "If you send it, we will laugh... and then we will send it to everyone we know."

Cheers,

K