What Would Happen If You Had Sex With a Wicker Dick?

Every once in a while, a small movie comes along that captures national curiosity before it premieres. That’s what happened with Wicker, a romantasy-comedy-fable that hits theaters this week but has been a source of horny internet fascination for months, due largely to the fact that it stars Alexander Skarsgård as a man made entirely of wicker, complete with a rock-hard wicker dick that catapults Olivia Colman into paroxysms of bed-breaking ecstasy.

When we meet Colman’s character, referred to only as “Fisherwoman,” she’s long single and endlessly mocked by her neighbors for her malodorous vocation. She spontaneously visits the local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) and asks him to weave her a husband out of wicker; the resulting creation is a gentle, kind, Nordic wood-hunk with a penis so prominent it stuns a tailor upon first sight. (“This should cock — uh, fit,” he stutters.) Within hours of their marriage ceremony, the wicker husband’s dick audibly crackles to life and rails Fisherwoman so hard that he destroys her bed. Much of the rest of the film, adapted from a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones and directed by real-life couple Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, focuses on the couple’s staggering carnal connection.

Though much of the early fervor around the film focused on the novel erotic thrill of wicker Skarsgård cock, some of it hit a note of concern: What about the splinters? Bacteria? Degradation? Would it be advisable, from a sexual-health perspective, to mount a basket dick? To find out more, including the advantages of wicker sex, I called up my favorite source, Dr. Lauren Streicher, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, sexual health and menopause expert, and the author of multiple books on women’s health, including Come Again: A Science-Based Guide to Sexual Function in Midlife and Beyond. (Previously, Dr. Streicher and I seriously discussed Dakota Johnson putting ice cream in her vagina and “WAP.”)

What were your initial thoughts when I emailed you about the film and the wicker dick? You replied saying that you brought it up at a conference and it scared people.
I brought it up and we all had a good laugh. And someone said, “Well, there is the splinter issue.” But, very seriously, I actually looked to see who wrote the original story and the director and all of that. And in a male-centered world, there’s this idea that what women want is something that’s long and perpetually hard. And in truth, what gives women sexual pleasure is not usually so much the big, long, forever-hard penis, but more clitoral stimulation and arousal and all that goes with it. But this is a fable, it’s a fantasy. Women certainly do fantasize about the rock-hard, never-failing, always reliable, good-to-go penis, and certainly Wicker Man has that.

But also, from what I read about it, it’s really about what that penis was attached to that was incredibly arousing. Here’s this woman who’s basically written off as a weird spinster, who finds a man who is kind and sweet and generous and sees her for who she is and also is sexually attracted to her. So it’s the combination of not just the wicker penis, but what it’s attached to. Bonus, it’s hard all the time.

He does slide into her and she pretty quickly has an orgasm, so it’s true that she’s super aroused by him generally. But you and I have talked about how that depiction of sex in movies isn’t the most representative.
I think as far as the instant orgasm, the important part of that is — it wasn’t the penis that gave her the instant orgasm, it’s that she was so aroused by the entire overall situation. Women can orgasm just from being aroused, and while most require clitoral stimulation, maybe he had a really prominent wicker pubic bone or something. The most arousing thing to a woman is a man who’s aroused by her.

So I learned in my research for this piece that wicker is a weave, not a material. In this movie, he’s made specifically of willow. What would you say are the specific risks associated with having sex with a man made of willow?
There’s no data on that. [Laughs.] So the way to think about that is, let’s think about women who have sex with inanimate objects. It’s not just toys. Sometimes they have sex with fruit, or with candles. And the biggest risk factor, quite frankly, is if it breaks inside you. We caution women, if you’re going to have sex with a candle or a fruit, it’s always a good idea to use a condom around it, not because of the risk of STIs from the cucumber, but because if something breaks, you’re not gonna wind up a with a piece inside your vagina that you might not know about and have to retrieve. Do I think she should use a condom with wicker guy? I’d like to see the construction of the wicker penis. But if there’s a chance that a piece of wicker could break off and stay inside her, then I would say it’s something to think about. The other issue is scratching. A flesh-and-blood penis doesn’t have rough spots or splinters; a wicker penis, I assume, does. Vaginal tissue very easily can get scratched and can bleed, depending on how smooth the wicker is. But I do want to be clear. There is no data on sex with a wicker penis.

Well, we might be the first people really looking into it. Have you ever seen a splinter in a vagina? That’s a very haunting possibility to me. How would you get it out?
I haven’t seen a splinter, per se. I’ve seen other pieces of things, or things lost in the vagina, and it’s very easy for a gynecologist to get these things out. But not so easy for a woman. We take the speculum, we look at it, we grab an instrument, and we get it out. But a splinter is unique in that it not only scratches you but could theoretically pierce the vaginal wall. A piece of sharp, hard wicker versus something that’s soft and pliable. But in the theoretical, non-fable world, a piece of wicker in the vagina would not be recommended.

Are there types of wood you’d feel safer recommending? Apparently, very early dildos were made of wood, and there are still some well-polished wooden sex toys.
Yes, I have pictures. I give lectures on this. There is a long history of inanimate objects being put in the vagina for sexual pleasure. The original ones — well, dildos go back to the beginning of time, but dildo came from the Italian “diletto,” which came from a similar Greek word. Greek fishermen would carve these for their wives. They’d go off fishing for a year, and the idea was, “Here, honey, pretend this is me so that you don’t fool around,” and they’d leave. And these were in museums, and they were very finely polished and smooth. There’s no risk to putting a wooden dildo in the vagina as long as it’s smooth.

How do you feel about a wax coating on the wicker? Sometimes some wicker will be coated in wax, so maybe it’d be smoother? Would that worry you less?
I don’t know if that would change it one way or another. Though wax is slippery, so it could be a lubricant, if you will. I was looking up how old the characters were, and we don’t know, though Olivia Colman is in her 50s. And so we do worry about dryness, and I’m hoping that in the non-fable world, people use a good lubricant. A lubricant is anything that decreases friction, period. A barrier between tissue and object. So wax decreases friction; that’s why people wax things. So theoretically, it might make things a little smoother and function as a lubricant.

Are you worried about the wicker possibly trapping dirt?
Nah. Sometimes it comes up: Does the object have to be sterile? When was the last time you saw a sterile penis? Penises are very dirty. That’s not really the issue. It’s the damage to thin, vulnerable tissue.

We’ve covered the disadvantages. Let’s talk about advantages. What is an advantage to a wicker penis?
You don’t need to worry about an STI. You don’t have to worry about erectile dysfunction; a wicker penis is going to stay hard. There’s no ejaculate. Some people don’t like the messiness of ejaculation or find it irritating. [Long pause.] Those are the only ones I can think of.

Let’s talk about the wicker man’s experience. He’s vulnerable to the elements. What kind of effect might vaginal secretions have on wicker? What’s in there that could affect wood?
Well, it’s mostly water. Assuming she has healthy lubrication, vaginal discharge is made of primarily water and some mucopolysaccharides that make it slippery. Beyond water, I don’t think … I’m not a wicker specialist, so I don’t know what degrades wicker. But I can’t think of anything in female lubrication that would be problematic. But what do I know about wicker? Nothing.

Well, famously, water is damaging to wood. You do need a coaster. So maybe there are aesthetic concerns there.
I’m sitting in my wicker chair thinking about this.

Okay, I have a few other fantastical penises that I wanted you to comment on, in terms of risk. There is a proliferation of fantasy-romance novels where women are having sex with all sorts of creatures. I’m not sure how familiar you are with that world.
I’m not.

Tin? Like a tin-man dick?
Again, as long as there wasn’t something scratchy.

Scarecrow. Hay dick.
Hay would break, I would think. Those little pieces floating around in there that can’t get out.

Fur.
Same problem. You’re gonna leave some fur behind. The vagina is self-cleaning, so we don’t tell women to clean inside the vagina or douche. But if you have some stuff that’s sitting in there over time, it can cause an odor or inflammation and all of that. I don’t have anything to back it up other than, if there’s a hunk of fur sitting in there, it wouldn’t be particularly healthy for the vaginal microbiome. But! If you look at furry creatures, usually the penis itself is not furry. Right?

That’s a really good point. Apparently, ancient Greeks used breadsticks smeared with olive oil as a lubricant. Did you know about this?
No, but first of all, olive oil as a lubricant — I tell people it’s fine in a pinch, but don’t use it routinely, because it’s not condom-compatible and there’s a small chance it might increase infection. As far as olive oil on breadsticks? I mean, a breadstick can break.

Okay, fish scales. Like a sea creature.
Ooh. Ooh. I don’t know. Do they come off? I don’t know. That sounds bad, doesn’t it?

I’m trying to be open-minded.
Right. And thorough.