Abstract
Hypospadias is where the urethral meatus (or “pee-hole”) is not at the tip of the penis, but somewhere on the underside. It is thought that this affects between one in 200–300 infants assigned male. Surgery to “repair” this genital variation is standard, even though hypospadias often poses no medical threat at all, and in the face of testimony from adults about the negative physical and psychological consequences of these surgeries. This chapter examines historical and contemporary reasoning by British medical professionals for cosmetic surgical interventions on boys’ penises. A recurring reason (found in historical case studies and in interviews of contemporary clinicians) is the necessity of boys peeing standing up, next to their male school friends. Situating this within intersex scholarship and activism, this chapter explores the different ideas of what a penis “means” and is considered to be for, in medical accounts of hypospadias. Specifically, three ways of conceptualising the penis are discussed: “the performative penis”, where acts such as peeing standing up inscribe the individual as male into society; “the psychological penis”, where these acts are considered important to the formation of some essential male gender identity; and the “perfect penis”, where the surgical search for perfection and the production and maintenance of penis norms are conflated in medical discourse.