Women
think of penis size as a sensitive issue. We're trained that way. I did
not, for example, ask any of the men I interviewed what size they were
because I felt it would be violating a trust. In fact I had never
thought of penises in terms of inches before. Whatever man I was with,
if he really wanted me to I would tell him he had the biggest cock I'd
ever seen. I didn't think facts were the point, and for this reason I
expected statistics about size to be hard to find.
To the contrary, the penis size of the American man has been well documented. Anyone who wants can look up the ongoing Definitive Penis Size Survey, a popular web site on the Internet. The results of this survey, which are periodically updated, are almost identical with the results obtained by Alfred Kinsey, who did his research on college men in the 1930s and '40s.
Very few American men are more than 9 inches long when erect, and very few are officially undersized. (At a web site advertising penis enlargement surgery the potential customer is informed that such surgery is considered to be cosmetic unless a man has a certifiable micropenis. If his erect penis is less than 32/3 inches long and less than 3V inches in circumference when erect, he may have surgery to lengthen his penis, and most likely his health insurance will cover it.) Most men—about 80 percent— measure between 5 and 7 inches erect. The greatest number are 6 to 6V inches long. Most men have a circumference, when erect, of between 4 V and 5 V inches.
But who wants to be average? Kurt Vonnegut told me that when his novel Breakfast of Champions was published the people at West Point gave him a hard time. In the middle of the book he had divulged the penis sizes of some of the male characters. Among them was a career army officer: "He had a penis six and one-half inches long and one and seven-eighths inches in diameter." The army felt
he should have been bigger.
One of my informants said he used to play baseball in college, and he and his teammates would make comparisons, saying, "Whose is longer?" Meaning, he said, who has more character, heart and guts.
Since in cultures such as ours penis size is every man's secret, people like to guess how big a man is by looking at him. Folk wisdom has it you can tell a man's penis size from the size of his feet, or his hands, or his fingers, or his nose. Once I saw, passed around on a late-night talk show on TV, the basketball shoe of a seven-foot pro. The shoe was bigger than a baby, and everyone who saw it must have been visualizing the penis that went with it. But so far there haven't been any conclusive statistical studies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that hand and foot size may have some relationship to penis size. Noses, no.
Penises are unpredictable. You can't tell from the size of a flaccid penis what it will look like when it's erect. Some of those that look biggest when flaccid enlarge the least upon erection. One popular myth is that black men have the kind that enlarge the least, and the only reason white men think black men have bigger penises is that they see them in the locker room when they're limp. There are various other unconfirmed rumors about ethnic groups: that Arabs are particularly well hung, or that Latinos are. Jamaicans, I was told, are famously huge. They advertise in the gay porn magazine personal ads— you see them one after another: Jamaican, 10 inches; Jamaican, 11 inches. A male hustler I interviewed said eastern Europeans were biggest of all. These rumors are titillating. Anyone who's never thought of having sex with a Jamaican man can think about it now. Dreadlocks, that wonderful, lilting accent and a ten-inch wong.
According to two surprising news items that were posted on the Internet, in 1992 a World Health Organization survey found that more than a third of British penises were too big for their own government-approved condoms. A dispute was raging because the same British dicks were said to be bigger than the condom norm—17cm (about 6.7 inches) length and 5.6cm (about 2.2 inches) width— proposed for adoption by the European Economic Community.
That black men are bigger than white men, and that Asian men are smaller, are the two most popular racial stereotypes. Ned Rorem, who has written openly about his gay love life, challenges these stereotypes. "Whenever a race is called inferior, the men are said to have big dicks. All homosexuals have big dicks. All black men have big dicks. All Asians have small dicks. But the few Asians I've had any dealings with had perfectly normal-size dicks," he said to me. It's a point well taken. But many others I spoke with who were in a position to know—some gay men, a few adventurous women, a urologist—said black men are bigger and Asian men are smaller. (Since there is no hard scientific evidence, it's safe to conclude that your chance of getting the size you want, with any particular man, is about the same as your chance of having a coin you flip come up heads.)
Gay men also say that the most feminine among them often have big penises under their pants or skirts. The irony of course is that a big penis is supposed to be ultra-masculine. But no man you told about fabulously well endowed drag queens would come to the obvious conclusion that penis size might not be a measure of masculinity. The belief goes far too deep and may even be wired into male brains.
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
To the contrary, the penis size of the American man has been well documented. Anyone who wants can look up the ongoing Definitive Penis Size Survey, a popular web site on the Internet. The results of this survey, which are periodically updated, are almost identical with the results obtained by Alfred Kinsey, who did his research on college men in the 1930s and '40s.
Very few American men are more than 9 inches long when erect, and very few are officially undersized. (At a web site advertising penis enlargement surgery the potential customer is informed that such surgery is considered to be cosmetic unless a man has a certifiable micropenis. If his erect penis is less than 32/3 inches long and less than 3V inches in circumference when erect, he may have surgery to lengthen his penis, and most likely his health insurance will cover it.) Most men—about 80 percent— measure between 5 and 7 inches erect. The greatest number are 6 to 6V inches long. Most men have a circumference, when erect, of between 4 V and 5 V inches.
But who wants to be average? Kurt Vonnegut told me that when his novel Breakfast of Champions was published the people at West Point gave him a hard time. In the middle of the book he had divulged the penis sizes of some of the male characters. Among them was a career army officer: "He had a penis six and one-half inches long and one and seven-eighths inches in diameter." The army felt
he should have been bigger.
One of my informants said he used to play baseball in college, and he and his teammates would make comparisons, saying, "Whose is longer?" Meaning, he said, who has more character, heart and guts.
Since in cultures such as ours penis size is every man's secret, people like to guess how big a man is by looking at him. Folk wisdom has it you can tell a man's penis size from the size of his feet, or his hands, or his fingers, or his nose. Once I saw, passed around on a late-night talk show on TV, the basketball shoe of a seven-foot pro. The shoe was bigger than a baby, and everyone who saw it must have been visualizing the penis that went with it. But so far there haven't been any conclusive statistical studies. Anecdotal evidence suggests that hand and foot size may have some relationship to penis size. Noses, no.
Penises are unpredictable. You can't tell from the size of a flaccid penis what it will look like when it's erect. Some of those that look biggest when flaccid enlarge the least upon erection. One popular myth is that black men have the kind that enlarge the least, and the only reason white men think black men have bigger penises is that they see them in the locker room when they're limp. There are various other unconfirmed rumors about ethnic groups: that Arabs are particularly well hung, or that Latinos are. Jamaicans, I was told, are famously huge. They advertise in the gay porn magazine personal ads— you see them one after another: Jamaican, 10 inches; Jamaican, 11 inches. A male hustler I interviewed said eastern Europeans were biggest of all. These rumors are titillating. Anyone who's never thought of having sex with a Jamaican man can think about it now. Dreadlocks, that wonderful, lilting accent and a ten-inch wong.
According to two surprising news items that were posted on the Internet, in 1992 a World Health Organization survey found that more than a third of British penises were too big for their own government-approved condoms. A dispute was raging because the same British dicks were said to be bigger than the condom norm—17cm (about 6.7 inches) length and 5.6cm (about 2.2 inches) width— proposed for adoption by the European Economic Community.
That black men are bigger than white men, and that Asian men are smaller, are the two most popular racial stereotypes. Ned Rorem, who has written openly about his gay love life, challenges these stereotypes. "Whenever a race is called inferior, the men are said to have big dicks. All homosexuals have big dicks. All black men have big dicks. All Asians have small dicks. But the few Asians I've had any dealings with had perfectly normal-size dicks," he said to me. It's a point well taken. But many others I spoke with who were in a position to know—some gay men, a few adventurous women, a urologist—said black men are bigger and Asian men are smaller. (Since there is no hard scientific evidence, it's safe to conclude that your chance of getting the size you want, with any particular man, is about the same as your chance of having a coin you flip come up heads.)
Gay men also say that the most feminine among them often have big penises under their pants or skirts. The irony of course is that a big penis is supposed to be ultra-masculine. But no man you told about fabulously well endowed drag queens would come to the obvious conclusion that penis size might not be a measure of masculinity. The belief goes far too deep and may even be wired into male brains.
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
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