The Race To Get Their Penises In A Museum; What Is Exhibitionistic Disorder? [VIDEO]
There is a penis museum in Iceland. That’s right, and it’s full of penises, or, in the words of its founder and curator, Sigurður "Siggi" Hjartarson: honorary members. The Icelandic Phallological Museum, which opened in 1997, has a total of 280 penises from 93 difference species, including mice, whales, and bulls. But even with so many penises, the museum is still missing, and looking, for one from a human.
The documentary The Final Member, which is expected to be released this spring (trailer below), follows the story of two men who are vying for that spot. One of them, Pall Aranson, lives in Iceland and has promised to donate his five-inch penis after he dies. The other one, Tom Mitchell, is from the U.S. and he’s so bent on having his seven-inch penis — named Elmo and tattooed with the U.S. flag’s stars and stripes — in the museum, that he’s willing to have it surgically removed. “I’d like to know the largest and best one came from the states… I’ve always had a dream of fame and fortune for Elmo,” Mitchell says in the video, according to The Huffington Post. The penis of whomever gets the spot will be the second to go up in the museum. Hjartarson once displayed the penis of a 95-year-old man, but it was improperly preserved. "I should have put him in vinegar, perhaps a wee bit of salt. So I could have formed him better," he told Lonely Planet.
So, what would posess someone to want to donate their penis to a museum, let alone before they've even died? Mitchell is an exhibitionist, Zach Math, one of the filmmakers behing The Final Member, told Vice. Exhibitionism is the act of exposing one's genitals to a stranger. According to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5), exhibitionistic disorder is diagnosed if a person acts on the sexual urge to expose themselves more than three times, and if it causes “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty” between the two people. In studies, the DSM 5 says, exhibitionism was positively associated with psychological problems, a lower satisfaction with life, and greater alcohol and drug use.
If Mitchell actually has the disorder, then it might make sense. He reports problems with women in the documentary, according to Math. “He’s a very sweet guy on a certain level,” Math told Vice. “He’s hurt. The thing that made him an extraordinary character in my mind is, toward the end, he says something like, ‘I’m so taken by women. It leaves me vulnerable, and I’ve been hurt so many times, but I need them so much that I need to remove this organ.’ For someone to say that is… there’s so much depth going on there that’s so counter to how we think of that organ.”