Size Matters

I will not bury the lead. I will ask a most indelicate question. Why are men obsessed with penis length? Let us not pretend this is not true. After all, we are almost friends.

In survey after survey two things have exhaustively been proven to be true:

· 80-85% of drivers judge their skills to be above average or better.

· 80-85% of men believe that their penis is below average size.

Just in case math isn’t your thing—which is also true of a similarly large percentage of people—50% of people have above average driving skill and below average penis size.

That’s just how it works. The tricky bit is determining what it means to be an average driver or have an average size penis. That’s where we run into problems, especially on the penis front. Which was a particularly fun phrase to write.

The earliest researchers into sex, sexuality and of course penis length were Masters and Johnson. (William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson). They conducted the earliest research into average penis length. And in doing so head fucked at least two generations of men.

It’s not like men needed any help in having absurdly fragile egos and fear of sexual inadequacy. It’s practically our birth right. It’s right there on our business cards.

MAN

TERRIFIED OF NOT SATISFYING A WOMAN AND

MORE THAN WILLING TO FIGHT ABOUT IT.

Seriously. M + J were doing the best they could, and their work was truly groundbreaking and world changing and all of that. But at least one of them should have figured this out. That just asking men their schlong length was probably not the best way of going about it. You would think that at least Virginia would have known better.

Yes, the earliest reported studies of men’s penis length were based on simply asking men how long their cocks were. Where should I start in describing the staggering extent to which this would not work. Well, first of all, probably half the men being asked didn’t know and probably couldn’t figure out how to measure it even if they tried. Then let’s consider that no man in the history of the world would ever answer that question honestly, even if they did know.

The effects were devastating on at least two generations of hapless men. The first studies told them that the average penis length was more than seven inches.

Word spread like wildfire. Virtually every man in the literate world came to believe that they possessed an unusually small penis. The sound of tape measures being pulled out rang out across the globe as men strained to find a way to measure their penis in a way that might get them close to “average”.

Creative measuring passed fishing as the world’s most popular pastime among men. Of course not. I completely made that up, but you get the point. Because of these studies, the vast majority of men were made to feel as if they had been cheated. Electricity use plummeted worldwide as most men would fuck only in the dark. Assuring that they would not have their self-perceived tiny pecker seen and laughed at by their partner. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.

Decades passed and dozens more studies were performed. Many of them used a revolutionary new scientific technique known as JUST MEASURING THE FUCKEN THING. With every new study the average American prick was shrinking. The thing is, nobody noticed.

Numerous other studies were done where they asked people what they thought the average penis length was. For decades the results of those polls remained stubbornly close to the 7 inches first reported in the 1950’s. For some reason it had stuck in people’s heads (and other body parts) despite all of the more recent and more accurate studies that were being conducted. Studies that proved conclusively that the average tallywhacker was indeed much smaller than seven inches.

It took forever but the scientific consensus is now that the average erect penis is somewhere between 4.5 and five inches long. You would think that this would bring a very long and loud sigh of relief. From both men who now understood they were normal. And from women who had to live with the overcompensating male dickheads who had to act like tough guys to prove their manhood to themselves and the rest of the world. Not to mention the endless hours women spent reassuring the men in their lives that they had perfectly lovely dicks. It must have been even more exhausting than the 37 seconds of thrusting they had just endured from most men. But that’s a whole other thing.

So, you might think that after more than half a century our story has a happy ending, and everybody understood that most of them were normal and perfectly well hung. But no. Just when we all finally somehow got it through both of our heads, the mother of all self-image crushers was unleashed on the earth:

PORN

Once the purview of shady storefronts and grainy videos, porn became as easy to get as a weather report. Porn is now literally everywhere. Videos featuring an army of men with French bread sized dicks swinging hypnotically across the screens of mobile phones around the world. Some of those giant tools were used to penetrate outrageously large breasted women who in most cases were clearly crying out in pain rather than well-rehearsed passionate moaning.

Once again feelings of inadequacy became epidemic. Men across the globe stared down forlornly in shame. Ron Jeremy ran for president and was elected four times despite having only run three times. Pete Davidson had sex with every able-bodied female on the eastern seaboard powered all the way by what is now known as, you know it, “Big Dick Energy”.

Yet there is hope once again on the horizon. It arrives by way of a new way of expressing the relative size of men’s genitalia. The answer is, of course, by weight. For instance, on the many occasions that I am asked about the size of my manhood, I will reply boldly, with confidence. “9” I might say. “13!” I will declare for all to hear.

“Inches?” comes the immediate and inevitable follow up one-word question. But I am ready. “Ounces” I will reply proudly. Or perhaps “liters”, or “grams”.

I know. It is absurd to declare a measurement of your genitals based on weight. Not just absurd, but impossible. How in the world would you go about weighing your stuff? And why would you want to? What’s more, why should we care about any of this?

In my case, it was simply to find a way to include that single tepid joke of expressing your penis size by weight. I am much less able to explain why the rest of the world is obsessed with the size of their genitalia.

The only thing I know for sure is that it is based on male fear of inadequacy. I can easily argue that most of the shitty things in this world find their roots in this same fear. All the worst things, war, dictators, the bible and all its competing books that seek to subjugate women. They are all based in men’s fear that they are unworthy of the women who birthed them, and every woman that they seek to impress. And in failing to be worthy of women, they seek instead to subjugate women and pull them down from the pedestals that men themselves placed them on.

Did I get this point across? I’m not sure. But it’s as close as I’m ever going to get. I hope it's enough.