DICKSON DISPLAY

After all, humans are basically a form of ape. We don't have thick, matted body hair, and we speak many languages and fly ourselves to Mars, but when it comes to sexuality we're in the same category as chimps and orangutans. We're not exactly the same as they are—because for one thing our males have much bigger penises in relation to body size. Darwinians, always on the lookout for nature's intention, believe human penises got big because they were being used for purposes of display. In other words, when a man pulls it out and shows it off, he's just doing what comes naturally.

Jared Diamond, in a charming article in Discover in 1996, compared the human penis to the sixteen- inch tail of the male long-tailed widowbird and the black stripe on the breast of another bird, the great tit. Female widowbirds are attracted to the males with the longest tails. Male great tits with wide black stripes on their breasts automatically dominate male great tits whose black stripes are not so wide. In the same way, he says, the human penis must have been seen as a sign of virility: The bigger a man's penis was, the more attractive he was to women and the more he was respected and feared by other men. If men had their way they would have penises as big as scimitars, or baseball bats, or cannons, with which they could really intimidate each other. Luckily, natural "counterselection" has kept their size within bounds. In evolutionary terms, a penis loses its rationale if it can't fit inside a vagina.

(Darwinians use comparative ball size among the great apes to prove that human reproductive strategy is meant to be mixed. Humans have medium-size balls, bigger than gorilla balls, smaller than chimps'. Small-balled gorillas hardly ever have sex, and they live in small bands with one male ruling several females, unchallenged by other males. Under these conditions they don't need much sperm in order to propagate. Chimps need big balls because they're promiscuous. The males who produce the most sperm have the best chance of impregnating females. Men's medium-size balls are ideally suited to a mixture of monogamy and promiscuity. Men need enough sperm to compete with other men, but the competition is limited.)

All their lives men see each other's flaccid dicks in locker rooms and at urinals. If it's true these dicks are fashioned for display, then how can the men help making comparisons? They look across at other men and down at themselves. Looking down has a foreshortening effect, so if they're the same size as everyone else, to themselves they look smaller.

Boys' penises start growing when they're about eleven, and stop when they're about seventeen. In high school the size competition is fiercest. Boys may get nicknames based on what their penises look like: the snake, the toad, the purple creeper. "You look at people's cocks when you take a shower in high school," I was told. "A guy with a good one shows it off. He'll flash it and wiggle it if he's with his friends in the same shower room—'How do you like this, huh?'"

Then before you know it boys become men, and they start considering penis enlargement surgery.



Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley