50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality

Pepper Schwartz, Martha Kempner

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780470674345, 9780470674338
• eBook ISBN: 9781118611203
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality seeks to dispel commonly accepted myths and misunderstandings surrounding human sexuality, providing an enlightening, fascinating and challenging book that covers the fifty areas the author's believe individuals must understand to have a safe, pleasurable and healthy sex life.

• Dispels/Explores commonly accepted myths and misunderstandings surrounding human sexuality
• Includes comparisons to other countries and cultures exploring different beliefs and how societies can influence perceptions
• Areas discussed include: pre-marital sex, masturbation, sexual diseases, fantasy, pornography, relationships, contraception, and emotions such as jealousy, body image insecurity, passionate love and sexual aggression
• Covers both heterosexual and same-sex relationships

1
Body Parts
Who Has What and How It Works

Myth #1 Bigger Penises Are Better

How many jokes have we all heard about how much “size matters?” And how many retorts “It’s not the meat, it’s the motion?” There are so many penis jokes and so much bragging, it isn’t funny. No, it really isn’t. Because the fact is that men with smaller penises worry that they will not be virile enough, it may make them avoid sexual interaction or even peeing in a public urinal, and, even more importantly, some of those men will buy various fake products that will supposedly make them longer, stronger, or wider. Distraught men may even opt for surgery, and these implants can cause nerve damage and even impotence. Even if successful, these are serious operations which include cutting the suspensory ligament, followed by weeks of traction that include hanging weights on the penis (Vardi et al., 2008). This results in added length, but only in the flaccid state! (So who is this operation really for? Could it be really to see other guys enviously ogle the longer penis in the men’s room?) Attempts to add girth have even more problems, often resulting in uneven distribution of the added fat tissue which can have an overall lumpy effect. Most men who have the procedure are not happy with the result (Li et al., 2006).

So How Big Are They Usually?

There are differences in penis size. There are wide ones that are short, long, and in between. There are long ones and short ones of different girth. The best study on penis size (Wessells et al., 1996) found that the mean size of flaccid penises was about 3.5 inches and about 5.1 inches erect. When they measured against the pubic pad, it was about 6.2 inches. Mean circumference of the erect penile shaft was about 4.8 inches. Two-thirds of the men were within 1 inch of these measurements. Other studies also arrive at similar measurements (Templer, 2002). Interestingly, these studies found no correlation between the flaccid and erect state, so next time you sneak a glance at the guy at the next urinal just remember—you don’t really know much.

There have been quite a few studies searching for whether a man’s height has any positive correlation with penis size. Taller men certainly think their penises are bigger. An internet survey of 52,031 heterosexual men and women found taller men estimated they were larger while shorter men estimated they were smaller (Lever et al., 2006). They may be right. Researchers in Iran actually studied the external genital dimensions of 1500 men and concluded that length had a significant positive correlation with height (Mehraban et al., 2007). A study from the Department of Urology through the Athens Naval and Veterans Hospital measured 52 men under 40 and found that the penile shaft length, and total length, was correlated positively to height (Spyropoulos et al., 2002).

Body mass also has had some correlation with penis size but most researchers feel that the correlation is because the penis of obese men retreats under the belly and so seems smaller than it is. Ultimately, researchers conclude that “fat level is a good predictor of when a man rates his penis as small versus large” (Lever et al., 2006, p. 135).

People often joke that the larger the hand and feet the larger the schlong, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Urologists at St Mary’s Hospital and the University College Hospital in London studied the stretched penile length of 104 men and found that there was not a “statistically significant relationship between stretched penile length and shoe size” (Shah and Christopher, 2002, p. 586). No one else has found such a link either.

While hands might not tell us anything, it turns out that the index finger can. The study of Iranian men found a positive correlation between the parameters of an index finger and the size of a man’s penis (Mehraban et al., 2007). Another study on a small sample of men found the same thing (Spyropoulos et al., 2002). Voracek and Manning (2003) offered an explanation for this: “Homeobox (Hox) genes regulate limb development, including fingers and toes, as well as urogenital system development, including the penis. Therefore morphological patterns of the fingers may be related to morphological patterns of the external genitalia” (p. 201).

So there may in fact be some physiological continuities that can predict larger penis length. We think the better question, however, is why is everyone so interested? Are there really any differences between big penises and small when it comes to sexual satisfaction?

Does Size Really Affect Pleasure?

Well, there are two ways to look at this: what’s in your head, and what’s in your body. Physiological research refers to how effective different sized penises might be in terms of women’s likelihood of orgasm and enjoyment of sex. Psychological factors refer to how mentally or emotionally or even aesthetically important size is for a woman’s pleasure and/or likelihood of orgasm. A number of studies have taken a look at both. Let’s look at heterosexual data first.

Masters and Johnson, the famous sex researchers whose work on sexual functioning in the late 1960s and 1970s jump-started the whole field of sexology and sex therapy, looked at hundreds (maybe thousands) of heterosexual sexual acts and concluded that size was irrelevant or a minor factor in women’s sexual pleasure. Their research has been replicated numerous times (Masters and Johnson, 1966; Zilbergeld, 1999; Fisher et al., 1983). The main reason they felt sexual arousal and orgasm were unrelated to penis size was because the vagina is such an accommodating space that, in general, the walls of the vagina grab the penis and conform to its size. The authors do note that women and men might not feel this grabbing at all times during sex because during the excitement and plateau phase of the sexual arousal cycle the bottom part of the vagina “balloons” (perhaps to capture semen more efficiently). At times of extreme arousal, the vagina could feel looser or the penis not quite as fulsome.

Though the popular media may suggest that women want bigger and wider penises, the research tells a different story and points to men being a lot more worried about penis size than women are. A large academic internet study found that while 55% of heterosexual men were happy with their penis size and/or girth, 84% of heterosexual women were happy with their partner’s penis attributes. Only 14% wanted something bigger (Lever et al., 2006). An older study by Zilbergeld was particularly conclusive about women’s subjective opinion: out of 426 non-virginal women, not one mentioned that penis size was important (Fisher et al., 1983).

More recent studies have also gathered some interesting results. Eisenman (2001) asked 50 women about the importance of penis size; 45% felt more width felt better, while only 5% responded positively to greater length. A European study asked a number of new mothers about their partner’s penis size and sexual satisfaction and only 1% of them mentioned length as a positive addition to their enjoyment. The majority found penis length either unimportant (55%) or totally unimportant (22%). A number of women said that they thought length was less important than girth, but only 1% mentioned girth. On the other hand, an additional study by the same researchers did find that one out of three women mentioned size and/or length as being important (Francken et al., 2002). In a 2006 article based on a 1998 study of 556 women in Croatia, girth was found to be more important than length but still only 12.8% of the sample rated either girth or length to be very important to them. However, when the authors limited their analysis only to the most sexually experienced women, a different story emerged as more of these women thought that penis size was important (Štulhofer, 2006).

Interestingly, how a penis appears was important to women in this study as 26.9% of sexually experienced women said that the appearance of their partner’s penis was very important to them and 44.9% said that it was somewhat important. In fact, only 18.2% said aesthetics of the penis were totally unimportant. It is interesting that in these studies women have strong aesthetic preferences but lesser physiological ones.

Where does that leave us? Well, heterosexual men are clearly getting feedback that makes them worry about their penises. But, despite the pervasiveness of this myth, it seems rare that this feedback is truly based on size. Most importantly, there is certainly no credible information that penis size determines satisfaction in heterosexual relationships.

Is This Different for Gay Men?

Male sex workers advertise their wares according to size and gay male models in sexually explicit material seem to be chosen for the size and girth of their penises. In sexy gay cartoons, the guys are always hung. No wonder gay men worry about penis size—it seems to be a particularly widely held obsession in gay America. But does it matter in gay relationships?

Well, to some extent, what people believe to be real, is real in its consequences. (A saying first noted by W.I. Thomas, an early sociologist.) The aesthetics of penis size in the gay world has been so extolled that it would be odd if it didn’t affect how a gay man felt about his equipment! But does it really make a difference in sexual satisfaction?

Certainly some men think it does. But are gay men who have partners with small penises more likely to stray or more likely to be sexually unfulfilled? We did not find any data on this topic in same-sex relationships so we are not sure if there is any consequence in a relationship one way or the other.

Why Do We Confuse Bigger Penises With Better Penises?

We think there are two reasons. First, the whole world seems to think bigger is better in just about everything from a hamburger to a house. Certainly, there are status points for having a big house—we know that it cost more and the person who builds or buys an elaborate estate is definitely trying to tell the world they are a big deal. Whether or not that house is pleasant to live in may be an entirely different matter. Bigger penises come from the same thought pattern. Of course we know that bigger isn’t always better in everything. Look at the extraordinary weight gain that has accompanied larger bagels, enormous steaks, and super-sized French fries. In fact, a big penis may be painful to some women, dangerous in vigorous anal sex to either a homosexual or heterosexual partner, and may actually be softer because very big penises can have some problems distributing enough blood to be “rock hard.”

The second reason we think bigger has been confused with better is because for the most part only huge p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Preface
• 1 Body Parts
• 2 Orientation and Identity
• 3 Sexual Stats
• 4 Performance
• 5 Conception and Contraception
• 6 STIs and Protection
• 7 Relationships
• 8 When Sex Is Unhealthy
• 9 The Not-So-Private Side of Sex
• Index
• End User License Agreement