Brian, a 37-year-old in New York, had had enough. “I just woke up one morning and couldn’t take it anymore,” he tells me. “Men need functional underwear — not some shoddy attempt to cut corners and save a few bucks on manufacturing.” His main beef: the fact that men’s underwear manufacturers had removed the “dick flap” from their boxer briefs. “Having a dick flap is a right, not a privilege,” he says emphatically.
He took to Reddit with his gripe, and to his surprise, the inquiry ignited a long-dormant war not between man and manufacturer, but between men who hate dick flaps and those who pledge their undying allegiance to the hole in the front of their underwear.
Why have men’s underwear manufactures removed the dick flap? from AskMen
Brian’s brothers in arms argue that the dick flap is both convenient and functional. “The flap is at the perfect height, right in line with your zipper, so it makes perfect sense that you would use it when you have to go pee or for any other reason (yes, discreet BJ, I’m looking at you),” explains Jay, a 33-year-old in Indiana who’s used the dick flap his entire life, even going so far as to return entire packs of underwear that don’t feature it.
Others, like 27-year-old Slade in Texas, say the dick flap is ideal for the working man who tucks in his shirt. “I first started noticing the ol’ dick flap’s uses when I became a professional,” he explains, adding that as a middle school teacher, it allows for seamless bathroom breaks.
“You can just zip down the trousers, shoot willy through the flap and zipper and release. Then you give it a good shake and a quick jump, sheathe your sword, zip up and you’re good to go. Take that flap away, and you’re back in hell: Undo belt, unbutton pants, unzip pants, pull down chonies, flop out dong, release. Then shake, pile back in, pull up chonies, tuck in shirt(s), zip up pants, button pants, cinch belt… MY GOD what a fricken hassle.”
“Imagine stepping up to the plate and unzipping, only to find that all entrances are blocked,” Brian adds. “You go left. You go right. Your junk has been, dare I say, quarantined. Fear sets in: ‘Will I make it, or will the dam burst and spill its golden showers upon my legs?’ Enough of this nonsense. We want dick flaps, and we want them now!”
But according to the anti-dick-flap crowd (or anti-flappers), Brian’s fearmongering is nothing more than propaganda. In fact, they argue that dick flaps are their own nightmare scenarios. Twenty-year-old Marc, for instance, says he made the mistake of wearing boxer briefs with a dick flap to his middle school gym class.
“The problem with running is that it creates a lot of movement in the crotch area, and loose running shorts don’t tend to hide anything that might slip out,” Marc tells me. “Well, midway through running, I noticed a part of me had slipped through the forbidden flap, and when I looked down, I could see my member happily bouncing around in my loose gym shorts.”
Marc turned beet red, convinced anyone who looked in his direction would become aware of the bulge, a paranoia that became a reality when it came time to play volleyball. “I started to notice people, my crush included, with worried looks on their faces trying to ignore the banana flopping around in my pants,” Marc says. After a second round of begging his gym teacher for a bathroom break, young Marc finally escaped to adjust himself and swear off dick-flapped boxer briefs forever.
“Being pro-flap is like being pro-pineapple on pizza, and we know the only people who are for that are uncivilized,” says 28-year-old Scott. “I live in a civilized world and like my underwear to show that I, too, am civilized.”
To that end, Scott says he’s not even sure “how the damn dick flap is supposed to work.” “Like are you supposed to shove both your dick and balls through it or just the shaft?” he asks. “Does anyone actually know? Personal experience here, but my dick was never long enough and often times too wide to fit through the flap.”
In Scott’s defense, many say the divide between pro and anti-flappers comes down to size (Scott hashtags the response above with #ShortGirthyDickProblems). Along those lines, Rob, a 55-year-old in Canada, says, “Too many times I’ve had the exasperating and deadly experience of reaching through flaps that were halfway around my shorts, only to find that they didn’t pull back to create a big enough hole.”
Thus, adds Marc, “the pro-flapper’s most prominent and functional argument that flaps provide a quick and easy route to pee is objectively wrong.”
“Pulling the front of your underwear down with one hand is easy, discrete and clean,” he continues. “After urinating, a classy man massages his urine spout from the bottom up to get any urine out that may be remaining in the shaft. Not only can you not do this with the flap method, but the hole tends to cut off piss and make urine leak out after you’ve zipped up your pants.”
Of course, pro-flappers won’t hear any of it. “I don’t buy into pulling down your pants being faster than using the flap to pee,” Jay says. “If the flap is too tight, you might need bigger boxers, or you have a huge dick. Plus, that’s almost always a two-hand job.” On the flip side, he argues, “You can put your hands on your hips after you pull your dick through the flap and go no hands if you want to.”
“Look, I’m not here to judge,” says Brian, reflecting on a week of pro- and anti-dick-flap crusaders waging war in the thread he started. “But for me, time is precious these days, and I don’t want to have to unbuckle the belt, unbutton the fly, unzip and yank down my underwear when there’s a perfectly clear-cut solution: the dick flap.”
Quinn Myers
Quinn Myers is a staff writer at MEL. He reports on internet culture, technology, health, masculinity and the communities that flourish within.
