Laura Dodsworth doesn’t have an average day job. For the past year, she’s been photographing men’s penises for a photography project.The resulting work, ‘Manhood: The Bare Reality’, isn’t as gratuitous or sordid as it might sound. The book, which features 100 penises in total, explores men’s attitudes to their bodies, masculinity, sex and sexuality.The result is a menagerie of men’s experiences: from the 20-year-old who quit porn after he became addicted and unable to have a healthy sex life to the 58-year-old who has spent his life embarrassed about his penis size.It isn’t the first time Dodsworth has asked her subjects to strip off. Her debut work, ‘Bare Reality’, featured 100 women’s breasts alongside inspiring personal stories that tackles negative body image and female representation in media. Now, she’s turned the lens on the boys.“Breasts and penises are not direct counterparts but they respectively embody ideas of what it is to be female and male,” she told HuffPost UK. “Manhood is a word for penis. It seemed like a good starting point for a conversation about manhood and masculinity.”The men self-selected to be part of the project and are all anonymous. Whether they were asked directly by Dodsworth, recommended by a friend or replied to social media, all the participants were “100% happy to take part”.But when it came to stripping off in front of her, Dodsworth says the men’s reactions were varied: “Some were really comfortable with getting naked. Some were a bit shy. Some were proud.”Dodsworth said she felt “surprised” and “moved” by the men’s honesty in front of the camera.“We never know someone’s story till we ask… Men stepped into the space with a real hunger. I don’t think men are given much opportunity to be honest and raw about their lives and feelings. I had never heard men talk like this. Some of the men said they had never talked like this to anyone, including their partners. It’s a real privilege to be able to offer these stories to the world.”She discovered through the interviews that many men carry body image pressure - particularly about the size of their penis or sexual performance.“That anxiety bleeds into all aspects of their lives. I thought so many had carried around unnecessary shame and fear about their bodies. Because penises are more taboo men don’t see a big variety of real ones around,” she said.Dodsworth hopes that the book will challenge society’s rigid expectations around masculinity, by offering a range of men’s experiences and attitudes“People’s interpretation of the stories and the visual impact of the photographs will be unique to them - we all bring different experiences and ideas to our interpretation of any art, but I hope they come away with warmth, feeling inspired and think more deeply about what it means to be a man,” she said.“I think a lot of the men in this project would have benefitted from reading Manhood when they were younger and it would have dispelled myths and put their minds at rest. Many of the men who have taken part have done so specifically to help other men, and younger men, by relating their experiences.”
I think sex needs to be put back on its fucking pedestal
Age 46
I’m kind of intrigued about
this opportunity to talk about my relationship to... I don’t want to say
penis and I don’t really like saying cock... Rufus, yeah, Rufus. (laughs) My
penis, Rufus, is kind of a barometer of my health, my happiness and my
fitness. My sense of my wellbeing is related to my sexual energy.
I’ve always felt most in communion with my body and with another
person’s body when I feel that my overall fitness, health and energy are
high. Ironically, the only time I’ve ever worried about Rufus is when I
went through a period a couple of years ago where Rufus wasn’t rising and
it was a sign of another health condition. I’d never even thought
about how stress can affect your body and your sexuality. If it wasn’t for
that I would probably never have realised I had high blood pressure or that
stress can have a negative effect on your desire to have sex.
I knew there was something wrong because the desire was there,
but Rufus just wasn’t. I was like, ‘Man, what are you doing? You don’t
seem that bothered. I’m bothered, the whole team is bothered, what’s up
with you? Come on, man.’
I’ve got quite an active mind and I’m often juggling stuff which
is to do with deadlines, work, writing and different projects, and the only
time my mind is completely silent is during sex. A partner once said to
me, ‘Well, what do you think about when we have sex?’ and I said, ‘What do
you mean, what do I think about? I’m just like... I’m here with you.
You’re naked, we’re making love and what else is there? There are no
thoughts!’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, you fantasise about other things?
Other people? Really?’ For me sex is almost about vacancy. It is a moment
of complete embodiment, of being totally calm in the world, do you know
what I mean? It is about being fully present.
The penis is a tool of communication. It’s a kind of a gateway
to losing who you are and your ego, to actually be fully absorbed into the
beingness of another person, as well as into a different you, a more
primal you. I think there is nothing greater than being fully present in
sex. It is a spiritual journey. We can play with power and sex, but bear in mind that
it’s play. I think there’s an opportunity for a creative and renewing exchange.
And Rufus, whatever you want to call it, is part of your gateway to that.
I’m the first black man in the project? Where do I start? That’s
such a head-fuck. When you’re a young black man you experience inordinate
attention and focus on you as a sexual being, especially in the club
sphere. Men are men, and we like an easy time; we’re insecure, we don’t
want to be rejected. And it’s intoxicating to have people give you attention
in a very sexual way. It’s like a simple vocabulary. ‘I don’t have to do any
work, I don’t even have to buy any drinks, I don’t even have to be
handsome’. (laughs) Fuck! It’s intoxicating, but, like any addiction, it
has its downside. It’s not necessarily a very individual attention. This
is not really about me, this is about a persona of black men, you
know: penis size, greater sexuality, up for it. It’s a thrill ride and
I’ve participated in it, but with a degree of self-loathing afterwards, because
I think, ‘What the fuck? I’ve just been someone’s Mandingo fantasy’. And
I’ve done it, not because I’m black, but because I’m a bloke and an
advance was made and I know that there’s not much expected of me. As a man
you can compartmentalise all that stuff, but there’s a part of you that wants
people to want more from you, to be curious about you. It’s not that black
men are more hyper-sexual, it’s just that men, given the opportunity, would
want to be as sexual as possible, to have their cake and eat it.
I grew up in a working-class environment and would sometimes go
to down-home black clubs and I would be approached by white women who
said, ‘I don’t date white men, I just date black men’. The side of me that
is postgraduate-educated goes ‘Woah! Why? A man’s a man. What’s that
about? This is a fetish that makes no sense’. Sometimes these women end up
as victims of it because they’re looking for hyper-masculinity and they
pick out certain kinds of men.
I think it has a damaging effect on some black men I know who
accept and internalise that sense of themselves. When you’re a minority in
a society you internalise how a majority society sees you. You begin to
create your identity partly out of response to the projection. And also
the projection can become the tool of solidarity. The projection can be a means
of bolstering our sense of self or our self-esteem.
Women and men both enjoy sex, are curious about sex, and boast
about sex in different ways, but I think men are more afraid and less
understanding of the emotional nature of sex and compartmentalise it. In
compartmentalising there is a sort of self-brutalisation that goes on,
because sexual exchange is always more than just a conversation and a cup
of tea. There is something of yourself that you pass over. I think in some
ways women are perhaps more in tune with the emotional investment that
comes with sex, the sense that there is a boundary that is being crossed
that is more than mechanistic and more than just pleasure. That doesn’t
mean to say that all women want to stick with every man they sleep with,
but I think that there is a different quality of understanding of that exchange
for some women. Sorry, it’s really hard to talk in these bold terms
because all the time I’m thinking that’s bullshit because of all the
exceptions. So I’m just using these broad brush strokes with these massive
caveats.
I’ve quit porn
Age 20
I’m really into sports, but I don’t particularly care for
appearance. I like to look good but I think of my appearance as more of a
byproduct of sport. It’s common for people to go to the gym, work out
loads, but there’s nothing useful about the muscles they’re building. If
I was in a bad situation I’d be able to get out of it comfortably because
of my fitness level.
Parkour is my main sport at the moment. I used to do a lot of
running as a kid, and when I got bored of that I moved on to rock
climbing. I’m quite a competitive person when it comes to sports and if
there is a competition to be had, I’ll normally try.
I know a couple of gym bunnies, but I can’t really get along
with those people. For some reason gyms all have these walls of mirrors,
and you people that obviously lift loads of weights stand there and take
their picture for Instagram or Facebook or whatever. It’s really
narcissistic.
Loads of people use steroids. When I was in college, a couple of
guys were taking steroids, injecting it into their butt cheeks, or getting
their friends to, which is a bit weird. They had such bad anger issues. I
don’t know if it’s the kind of person that does that sort of thing or if
the steroids lead to the anger issues, but they were so prone to anger that if
you made a joke that was slightly denigrating towards them they would flip. It
was just banter, a joke. One guy literally started shoving me around the
car park and I was like, ‘You do realise if you hit me you’ll get chucked
out of college and you’ll lose your job?’ and he said, ‘I don’t care.’ I
was like, ‘How can you not care?’ It’s just a bit worrying really.
They weren’t unintelligent, they were fine at their college
work, but they never intellectualised anything. They didn’t think about
their feelings, or what stuff meant to them. They were always about, ‘Oh,
when we went to Ibiza and were banging some women’. The idea of going on a
holiday just to drink and try and have sex with loads of drunk women
doesn’t appeal to me at all. I think if you’re a relatively nice person you
just find someone that actually wants to have sex with you for a good
reason, not just because they’re drunk.
I’ve quit porn. Actually I quit masturbation entirely for quite
a long time.
I used to have issues ejaculating with my ex when having sex.
Hand jobs and blow jobs were fine, but that was normally because they were
on the rougher side. I think ejaculating became associated with my hand
and watching porn. I had issues with being on top too. I think that’s
because when watching porn I would lie still, whereas when having sex
I actually have to be up and mobile.
My new girlfriend did some research on it. There are a few
issues. Watching porn is nothing like actually having sex. Also the
feeling of the hand is nothing like actual sex or another person – there’s
this thing called the ‘death grip’. What happens to a lot of people is
they grip too tight when masturbating and they get used to it and then sex
doesn’t feel tight enough. I mean, some people are very tight, but they’re
not that tight. For me, a mixture of all of these led to my problem. My
girlfriend and I are having sex perfectly fine now. Well, we’re getting
there. There are still some issues, but obviously people have things in
sex where you have to work things out and it’s good to have discussions about
it.
Shall I tell you how we met? We met doing parkour and we were
friends for a while. A few years ago she wrote up a sex contract as part
of an art project but she never got the chance to use it. One night she
asked me if I wanted to sign her sex contract with her. I said no at
first. Then I mulled it over and thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen, really?
Like, I’m friends with her, but what’s wrong with sex? Why not?’ I messaged her
to ask if I could change my mind. And then she sent over the contract.
It’s a great idea, but it took me a while to get over how weird it felt at
first.
The one we signed was called ‘Three Mergers’, as in having sex
three times, and then you decide where you want to go from there. You can
sign another contract, or you can just leave it and not do anything again.
You can cut it off at any time, but the idea is you sign it like you would
anything else. So you sign this contract and then you do the deed. Obviously
it’s not properly legal in the UK.
Our first kiss? OK, that was awkward. It was on this sofa.
(laughs) It wasn’t in the contract, but we decided beforehand it would be
a bit weird if we didn’t kiss while having sex, or building up to sex. We
went to kiss each other and the first thing that happened was our teeth
clashed and we both went ‘Ow’. Then we went to try again and it flowed a lot
better.
We got to the bedroom and I told her I had issues with staying
hard and ejaculating. I didn’t want to say beforehand, it felt really
awkward. I wasn’t undressed at that point and it’s never too late to say
no. She said it was fine and we’d work through it. I didn’t lose
my erection, but I didn’t ejaculate having sex.
Porn is an addiction in the end. In the same way that gambling
isn’t a physical addiction, it’s not actually in your blood, but it gets
into your mind. I used to use porn every day.
Quitting porn and quitting masturbation was like a reset. After
several weeks I could orgasm during sex again. It had to be quite rough,
fast sex to start with, but at that point I could. Then it changed from
being kind of awkward and a bit annoying that it wasn’t happening to, ‘Oh,
I can orgasm with sex now, this is good’. And then it kind of slowed down
and got really good. I would like to be able to orgasm from more gentle sex. It
still has to be a bit faster than I’d like. I still have issues with
coming when I’m the one moving, and not lying down. That’s getting better
too, I’m very close.
A lot of older men who started watching porn later in their life
actually don’t have many issues because they’ve been with women, they know
what sex is actually like. The problem is when people start young on the
iPhone that their parents got them, they don’t have to sneak to the
computer or anything, they can just watch it, every single night, hardcore,
softcore, they can watch people getting fisted, elbow deep up the bum if
they really want to, that kind of thing. They can watch anything they want
and that’s when it gets to be an issue. If you get brought up with things
from a young age then they stick with you. If you hit puberty and get
straight on to porn, which happened to me and to a lot of people my age,
that’s when it becomes a big issue and affects you later on.
I lost my virginity to the wife of my school teacher
Age 92
I lost my virginity to the wife of my grammar school teacher. He
was sent to France as a spy and resistance fighter. They had made an
arrangement that while he was in France and there was no way they could keep in
touch, that if they were sexually interested in someone else, they could have a
relationship. They were both in love and would remain that way throughout
the war, but it was an arrangement. I was 18 and went to stay with
her when I had my embarkation leave. I was about to go to Africa. I knew
them both and was fond of them both.
I was in a single bedroom. In the morning, the door opens, and
in comes this woman, in her robe. She took it off and kneeled beside the
bed. And there was this 18-year-old naïve boy. Man? Boy. Not sexually
experienced at all. I’d never had sexual intercourse. It was an act of
kindness. I immediately fell in love with her, of course.
I loved her. I’d loved her before. I’d had great feeling for
her, but this was incredible.The next day we went
out with her daughter, and bought some shopping. I went back to my unit
and went off. I left with an enormous pleasure. On the other hand, I was in
the army. War wasn’t something I’d chosen, I was called up.
I had an easy war. I was a driver and a wireless operator. I
didn’t come in contact with the enemy. I didn’t have difficult tasks, I
just operated a radio. I didn’t like being conscripted, but I didn’t
object. It was a justifiable war and I expected to be conscripted.
After my school teacher’s wife, my next time with a woman was
with a prostitute in an Arab brothel in Algiers. I don’t actually remember
having relations there, but I think I did. Then, in Italy, I went to a
Naples brothel. I stayed all night. That’s unusual in brothels. When
I woke up and looked at her, I thought she was lovely.
I no longer have an attitude towards masculinity. I am affected
by dementia now. A psychiatrist said I have dementia and prescribed drugs.
It affects the way you think as well as your memory. Up until the age of
87 I still had normal feelings about sex and attraction, but these
completely cut off and disappeared with my dementia. If I look at a
pornographic image I have no sexual feeling. I am physically incapable, I
couldn’t get an erection now. I occasionally masturbated until a few years
ago, but it’s not there for me now, it has disappeared completely.
The absence of sexual feeling doesn’t matter to me at all. When
I was younger it would have been disastrous. You know, if a man can’t get
an erection, he’d go and see a doctor and get it sorted. Like all men, it
was a major interest, but I have no interest in it now. I have been
married twice and had a number of affairs that mattered to me a great deal.
Life has changed for women and men during my life. There is a
more liberal relationship between men and women and an improvement. There
is more partnership between men and women. Although when I was young there
were plenty of men who weren’t sexist individuals.
My last relationship was in my 70s and that was with a woman in
her 50s. We had a sexual relationship, we went on holiday, I looked after
her children. We’re still friends now.
Longevity is increasing. My grandparents died in their 70s, but
they were more like people in their 90s now. Ageing happens later now. Up
until I was 87 I felt normal in most ways. OK, I couldn’t ride a bike as
well as a young man.
I would claim I am a male feminist. What’s the word that covers
all the different problems? This dementia... There are other forms of
oppression, like class oppression. That’s it, I remember, I’m an inter-sectional feminist. I believe very much in that.
I’ve spent my life feeling my penis is too small
Age 58
I’ve spent my life feeling my penis is too small. For as long as I
can remember I have been ashamed about it. I believe how I feel about my penis
shaped my life, particularly up to a point. I’m doing this to help other men.
My teenage years were difficult for me - I’d look at other boys
in the showers at school and see they were bigger than me. I felt ashamed and
‘less than’. I was worried about my penis being too small to function. I went
to an all-male institution. I was worried about being ‘revealed’ somehow.
As I felt my penis was very small, I didn’t have sex with a
woman for a long time. I wanted to but every time I got close I went, ‘Ah,
she’s going to discover my penis is so small’. In the end when I finally
had sex it was with someone I felt very close to and trusted, and I was
relaxed about it. It had stopped me having more sex earlier with women
I didn’t feel so close to; I don't know whether that was a good or bad
thing.
At times I am too tense to pee when I go to public toilets.
If I am lined up with lots of guys I worry when people are checking me
out. At times it excites me though, when they look at my small penis as they
show me their much larger ones, pulling their pull their foreskins all the way
back, playing with them and masturbating. Some have also reached over to play
with my penis and I have let them.
If I’d had a larger penis I think I would have moved in the
world of men with more confidence. You see men stroll through the showers
and gym all confident and ‘Look at me,’ and I don’t; I’m the guy in the
corner with a towel. I’m not in changing-rooms that much, but I think it
would have given me more confidence. It’s kind of interesting.
I’m successful in my life, so I don’t think a small penis has
held me back in my life. I’m a business leader, a leader of groups, I
perform on stage. It feels like it’s more of an inner wound, and it has
served me by giving me humility. Instead of walking through life with
a swagger I’ve always been a bit tentative. I’ve also thought more about
whom I can trust and who I can’t.
I looked at penile enlargement in magazines and thought it was a
complete waste of time. I knew that the journey for me was accepting how
my body is. The way forward is to make friends with the body I have. I
never thought about body surgery seriously.
Size has never been a factor with partners. I feel my partners
like my size because it doesn’t hurt and they can take me orally more
easily. Close female friends have told me that large penises have been
intimidating or painful. I remember overhearing one female friend say to
my partner that she could never go out with a man who didn’t have a large
penis because she wouldn’t feel like he was a real man. I thought, ‘Wow,
that would rule me out then’. I wondered how many other women think that.
It’s never been as issue with my partners though.
Some of my close friends’ attitudes to women were Neanderthal,
terrible. Behaving with women like that now would be unimaginable. They
were seen as sexual objects to be preyed on, seduced, grabbed, grappled
with, fucked, and that’s it. There were about five men to one
woman overall at university and it was hard to get a girlfriend. Most of
the guys were seriously frustrated especially I guess the ones like me,
those with a small penis. I know of boys who got raped by or performed oral sex
on other men as some sort of initiation and thought it was a laugh.
People might get stripped naked. I remember one time at
school a man took me aside away from other and showed me some porn. He made me
take out my penis and played with it showing me how to. Then he sucked it after
which he made me play with his penis. I think he must have sensed
my terror. That fear was with me all the time.
There was this other time a boy of 13, a year older than me came
into my shower stall at school saying he wanted to bathe. He looked at my
comparatively smaller penis while he fondled his own much thicker and longer
one. He showed me how to pull my foreskin all the way back and played with my tiny balls. He
also fingered my butt hole after
which we masturbated together. I still meet him occasionally on a social level.
I was abused as a teenager on a train by an elderly guy who kept
fondling my penis through my pant till I was really hard. It was a 35-minute
journey. We were standing in the passage of a crowded compartment. He managed
to put his hand inside my pant grab my penis and fondle it.
I’ve done a lot of work around all of this and still
occasionally feel really upset about it.
Manhood: The Bare Reality, published by Pinter & Martin, is out June 15, 2017
For my 2015 book Bare Reality,
I photographed and interviewed 100 women about their breasts. From a 101
year-old woman who had fled the Nazis to a Buddhist nun and
streaker, all spoke honestly and openly about their bodies. It was a
revelation and the experience made me feel connected to my own sense of
womanhood. Yet, to my surprise, at the end of the project I felt out of
balance. Simply, I wanted to know men better, too. What stories would they
tell? I think that talking about ourselves can be very healing. Of
course, the stereotype around men is that they don't open up about their
feelings. Men's magazines might now feature cosmetics, but heartfelt
emotional confessions are rare. For so long they have been taught to keep
a ‘stiff upper lip’, to be ‘strong and silent’. Enough. I felt it
was time to hear from men themselves. In Manhood: The Bare
Reality, I interviewed and photographed 100 men, aged from 20 to 92.
They opened up about their bodies, sexuality, relationships, fatherhood,
work and health.Why did I photograph their penises specifically? Just as
breasts embody ideas about femininity, a penis does the same for masculinity.
We even refer to it as his 'manhood'. Sure, they are just a body part, but
they are also a source of pleasure, the subject of exaggeration, a means to
reproduce and cause of emotional anxiety - in other words, the perfect starting
point in a new brutally honest male conversation.
Here are 9 things I learnt about men from
photographing 100 men naked:
1. Men want to be heard
I wasn’t sure that I would find and persuade enough
men to bare their bodies and their most intimate stories. Would they talk to me
as a woman? In fact, to my delight, men had a hunger to be heard. I was
blown away by their honesty, vulnerability and courage. There is an empty space
in the narrative about men. Feminism has helped women to redefine being a woman
and given them a voice. I don’t think this has happened enough yet for men, and
taking part in this project was one opportunity to talk.
2. Men worry about their size
I know this seems obvious, but do you know
just how many men worry about this? I didn’t. There’s the man who
describes his feelings about his penis as a child as his ‘deepest, deepest
shame’ and who went on to have penile enlargement. Another who said he has
spent his whole life feeling like his penis is too small and thinks if he’d had
a larger one he ‘would have moved in the world of men with more
confidence’.Feeling ashamed or worried about your body is bad enough in itself,
but it was clear to me that this anxiety affected other areas of men’s
lives.Penises are still pretty taboo in our culture, and that’s why men
don’t see the spectrum of 'normal'. As the photos in the book prove, there's a
huge range of sizes and shapes out there. And bigger isn’t always
better (in fact, some men were worried about being too big.) It’s time to
dispel those myths, face reality and celebrate the glorious diversity out
there. In the age of internet porn, and the ubiquitous airbrush, I hope some young
men can save themselves decades of worry and misery.
3. Men feel less able to talk about their
feelings
In the past, I've had some
honest, emotional conversations with partners and friends - but
nothing on this scale. So many men told me that they hadn’t talked
like this before, or revealed a secret from their past which was key to their
sense of manhood.As one told me: ‘My men friends and I don’t have the sort
of friendships where we talk about emotions and personal things. I’ve had deep
and strong friendships, but a lot was left unsaid. I never really knew how to
make it different.'There was a generational divide: younger men seemed
more likely to open up to their friends. I don’t want to tell men they should
talk more, or how to talk, but I know these conversations were cathartic. I
loved having them, and I know people will be moved when they read the stories.
4. Men really want to please in bed
Lots of straight men wanted to talk to me about
pleasing their partner. There was the man who wants to give every woman an
orgasm; the man who is ‘all about the woman’s satisfaction’; the man
who spoke about sex ‘magnifying the love’ between him and his partner. Men who
were worried they were small talked about putting more effort into other
aspects of lovemaking to compensate. As a woman, I was fascinated, and
delighted, to hear it:‘I am almost entirely motivated by my partner’s
satisfaction. I can come at any point, whenever, but in a sexual situation I
want to take full advantage of seeing her enjoy it. I really get off on it. The
more I see her enjoy it, the more turned on I am. Maybe I want to be thought of
as a better lover? Sometimes I make her come three or four times before I do.’
5. Men find peace when they make love
The orgasm is also known as ‘la petite mort’ (the
'little death'). Well, a number of men told me how they find peace, and
escape from the stresses of life when they make love, even going as far as to
describe it as a ‘divine realm’.
6. Fathers are important
Dads received special mention from many of the men I
interviewed. Naturally, good fathers were seen as instrumental in normal and
healthy upbringings. But the most notable fathers were the absent
ones, or the ones with problems; from violence to intolerance to
alcoholism. So many men talked about the gift of fatherhood and wanting to be
good fathers to their children. Nothing focuses you more as a parent than
hearing about where others went wrong.
7. ‘Manscaping’
Call me out of the loop, but I just didn’t realise
how many men remove or ‘manscape’ their pubic hair. High maintenance grooming
regimes are not just for women.One man told me: ‘I manscape to be more
presentable for women, I assume it’s what they prefer. I don’t think anyone
wants it bald but if you can show you care, it’s good. At least it makes me
feel better about myself.’
8. Men are suffering with mental health
problems
'Man up’ has to be one of the most unhelpful
expressions ever - it shuts men down. I was surprised how many talked
about their mental health problems, from a man with severe OCD to the man
who survived cancer only to try and kill himself. All were heartbreaking.
Rates of male suicide male suicide in this country are rising. It’s a
major social issue that kills 12 men a day in the UK. I hope
that Manhood will open up more conversations about what it means to
be a man and help people realise they are not alone.
9. Men are lovely
Manhood is
not a manifesto for men, nor is it my world view. In it, 100 men simply give
you their stories, how they think and feel. They reveal their manhood in both
senses - with grace, humour, courage, and sensitivity. I was touched by
their warmth and vulnerability. In fact, I fell in love with men. I hope that
you will fall a little bit in love, too.
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