From Suriname comes these incredible images via the lens of Aad Nicolaas.
“Indeed the camera captures visual facts, but these facts can be a huge fiction.”
Aad Nicolaas
To see more of his work, visit www.wix.com/aadnicolaas/photosite
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On the Dunes by Henry Scott Tuke of 1906
Troy Caperton is a 59 year old artist working in Austin, Texas. He is a master painter and offers his own work and his reproductions on eBay and at his website,
Ignudo Number Eight of 1511 by Michelangelo
Also see this previous post on Troy Caperton’s work.
Boys Bathing of 1912 by Henry Scott Tuke
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Four Naked Men by Pietro Perugino.
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Three Men in the Landscape,1874, by Hans von Marées
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The Torture of Prometheus, Jean Louis Cesar Lair, 1819
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Diogenes, by Jules Bastien-Lepage, 1873
Is circumcision cleaner and healthier?
Published on September 13, 2011 by Darcia Narvaez, Ph.D. in Moral Landscapes. Photos added by me.
Myth: You have to get the baby circumcised because it is really hard to keep a baby’s penis clean.
Reality check: In babies, the foreskin is completely fused to the head of the penis. You cannot and should not retract it to clean it, as this would cause the child pain, and is akin to trying to clean the inside of a baby girl’s vagina. The infant foreskin is perfectly designed to protect the head of the penis and keep feces out. All you have to do is wipe the outside of the penis like a finger. It is harder to keep circumcised baby’s penis clean because you have to carefully clean around the wound, make sure no feces got into the wound, and apply ointment.
Myth: Little boys won’t clean under their foreskins and will get infections.
Reality check: The foreskin separates and retracts on its own sometime between age 3 and puberty. Before it retracts on its own, you wipe the outside off like a finger. After it retracts on its own, it will get clean during the boy’s shower or bath. Once a boy discovers this cool, new feature of his penis, he will often retract the foreskin himself during his bath or shower, and you can encourage him to rinse it off. But he should not use soap as this upsets the natural balance and is very irritating. There is nothing special that the parents need to do. Most little boys have absolutely no problem playing with their penises in the shower or anywhere else! It was harder to teach my boys to wash their hair than it was to care for their penises.
Myth: Uncircumcised penises get smelly smegma.
Reality check: Actually, smegma is produced by the genitals of both women and men during the reproductive years. Smegma is made of sebum and skin cells and lubricates the foreskin and glans in men, and the clitoral hood and inner labia in women. It is rinsed off during normal bathing and does not cause cancer or any other health problems.
Myth: “My uncle wasn’t circumcised and he kept getting infections and had to be circumcised as an adult.”
Reality check: Medical advice may have promoted infection in uncircumcised males. A shocking number of doctors are uneducated about the normal development of the foreskin, and they (incorrectly) tell parents that they have to retract the baby’s foreskin and wash inside it at every diaper change. Doing this tears the foreskin and the tissue (called synechia) that connects it to the head of the penis, leading to scarring and infection.
Misinformation was especially prevalent during the 1950s and 60s, when most babies were circumcised and we didn’t know as much about the care of the intact penis, which is why the story is always about someone’s uncle. Doing this to a baby boy would be like trying to clean the inside of a baby girl’s vagina with Q-tips at every diaper change. Rather than preventing problems, such practices would cause problems by introducing harmful bacteria. Remember that humans evolved from animals, so no body part that required special care would survive evolutionary pressures. The human genitals are wonderfully self-cleaning and require no special care.
Myth: My son was diagnosed with phimosis and so had to be circumcised. Continue reading
Call him TM. No, he’s not hiding his face because he is ashamed of who he is. It’s a matter of keeping his personal life separate from an amazing career. So why is he different? For now let me just say that TM has walked a lifelong path that most of us could not begin to fathom.
Imagine getting a Barbie Doll for your birthday when you would rather have a baseball bat and a catcher’s mitt. Imagine being told to wear a dress to school when you’d rather wear a pair of blue jeans. Imagine growing up not fitting in with the girls because you think differently from them, but also not fitting in with the boys because you don’t look like them. Growing up is a long row to hoe for everybody. Multiply that by ten fold if you were born in the wrong body.
TM is a straight male in his thirties, from in the western U.S and has a steady girlfriend. He normally does not share intimate photographs of himself, but has chosen to use Enlightened Male as a forum to broaden knowledge and understanding about transgender people.
During the course of our correspondence, I asked TM what he thought about his body: “I used to hate my female body. As I am slowly developing a more male-appearing body, I am becoming more comfortable in my own skin. I am OK for now with having female genitalia.”
TM likes being nude in the right setting, and in private he enjoys exploring his changing body. He has never experienced a nude beach. His fantasy is having a beautiful, complete male body and sharing the experience of being naked with someone else. He has had chest surgery to have a male chest and has been on testosterone for several years, so other than the genital area, he is a male. The genital reassignment surgery will come at a later date.
So now you have been introduced to TM. For this essay he has provided pictures of his body; and what follows in his own words is a glimpse of his heart.
I am a transman. You pass me every day on the street. I look like an average guy and you have no idea that I was born a female. It’s not that I don’t want you to know, it’s just that you really don’t need to know. Because I am just me.
Even though you don’t need to know that I am trans, there are some things I do want you to know. And that is what this segment is about. I hope that you can understand a little more about people like me and have a new appreciation for people that may be different than you. Continue reading
By Wilhelm Von Gloeden
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By Manuel Diumenjó
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By Herb Ritts
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By Herb Ritts
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By Gregory Prescott
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By Herb Ritts
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By George Rodger (1908-1995)
Terry just reached what he calls an old age of 47 last month. He has Paul McCartney’s eyes. Must be an English trait.
Terry has fun being a man. He has fun with his penis, wanking it certainly, but also taking pictures of it.
Pictures of his privates run from whimsical, to artistic, to sensuous. He is a novice photographer who loves taking pictures as a hobby.
Terry’s motivation in photography is not just taking photo’s of himself, but of anything that catches his eye: wild life, landscapes, stills, etc.
He enjoys taking pictures because it relaxes him from the stresses of work and and every day life. He says you can make a story unfold from a photo, almost like when your reading a book … you can almost read between the lines. 
Terry is gay and single … still trying to find a sole mate, he says. He has a good relationship with his brother who is straight and married. The two men participate in impromptu photo shoots now and then.
Terry sincerely believes the human body is beautiful. He says: “We can see, by looking at a nude male or female, what we can’t see in ourselves; that in ourselves we see more of what we might not like, while others may see it differently. And when we get a nice comment we feel validated, which encourages a guy like me to take more photos.”
About his attraction to men, Terry says: “At work, if I see a good looking guy, I have this Continue reading
