Gloria Moreno

As ethnographic and anthropological studies of men and masculinities expanded since the 1990s, men from diverse cultural backgrounds and regions of the world have come to be recognized as having and producing gender. However, the significance of contemporary male genital modifications and their implications for masculinity, extending beyond circumcision and biomedical perspectives, did not receive adequate attention, particularly in the Global South. My project proposes an ethnographic study of penile beading and its implications for modern masculine subjectivity and sexuality amongst men in Havana, Cuba. Locally known as ‘la perla’ and to enhance manhood, sexual potency and pleasure for women, this practice involves inserting beads beneath the foreskin of the penis. Although initially confined to prisons, it spread to military schools and urban barrios. Through participant observation, and by conducting in-depth and life-history interviews with pearled men and their partners, this project asks why la perla holds such significance in Havana’s barrios. Understood in relation to a longer history of hierarchies of desirability and the gendered, racial and economic transformations prompted by the post-Soviet crisis, this project documents the significance and negotiation of male sexual desirability through practices like penile beading, its implications in masculine subjectivity and gender relations.