Shaming men for their penis size isn’t just humiliating for them – it’s bad for women too
We don’t celebrate the average penis nearly enough
By Kate Lister
“What is the most complimentary thing you can say to a man in bed?”
“Ouch.”
I love that joke. Any comedian will tell you that if you have to explain why a joke is funny, it hasn’t worked, but I’m an academic and we spend our careers laboriously explaining why things work, so here we go. The joke is about having a big penis, so big your lover says “ouch”. It works because it is a dig at ludicrousness of preferring a penis so big it causes pain over one that is smaller, but more pleasurable to the recipient. It not only plays on a very particular sexual insecurity, but it also leans into the trope of heterosexual women faking things to keep men happy in the sack.
It was never on any sex ed syllabus I’ve ever saw, but I think we all know a bit of exaggerated wincing upon the point of entry will be well received. Sorry if I have burst a few bubbles there, lads, but unless you are dealing with a medical condition where vaginal penetration is painful, or you’re packing some serious tackle, it most likely didn’t hurt. Speculums can sometimes hurt, babies’ heads hurt, but I’d be willing to bet that your penis did not. And that is a very good thing! It is a wonderful, marvellous, glorious thing! We don’t celebrate the average penis nearly enough and I am on a mission to change that.
Feminism has done phenomenal work around body shaming and sexual positivity, but there is one issue that seems to have flown under the radar. One narrative that is still laden with shame and is culturally acceptable to deploy as a devastating insult. Penis size. As a society, we are obsessed with a girthy gearstick. We associate a big dick with masculinity, virility, even social success. It’s not something we consciously recognise but our lexicon is laden with the message that bigger is better.
For example, you might have heard the phrase “big dick energy” to describe someone who is confident. Urban Dictionary defines it as “social confidence without cockiness […] The loud and boisterous energy emitted by someone who has a colossal phallus and doesn’t have to tell anyone about it. The energy speaks for itself.” And in the same way we praise a whopper, we stigmatise a tiddler. “Small dick energy” is defined as people who “carry themselves like they have a really embarrassing secret that they’re terrified of other people knowing. They often spend lots of time and energy trying to project a sense of confidence that rings hollow.”
If you want to insult a man, what is your verbal weapon of choice? You say he has a little penis; a chipolata, a button mushroom, a Tom Thumb. It’s a needle dick, a pencil prick, a big belt buckle. He’s hung like mouse, hung like a cashew, or hung like hummingbird. I’ve deployed such insults myself in the past, and at the time, I felt pretty good about it. It was a beautifully succinct way of belittling a man, but it’s also pretty shitty. Actually, scratch that. It’s really shitty. It’s body shaming, pure and simple.
Making fun of penis size has to be one of the last bastions of sexual humiliation that is still socially acceptable. I would be up in arms if I heard anyone shaming a woman for a shape of her vulva. We would never refer to “big vagina energy”, or suggest a woman was confident because of her awesome vulva. Yet it is still perfectly acceptable to shame penises and link size with “being a man.” It’s got to stop.
And here is the thing: bigger really is not better. Ask any man wielding tackle that could stun cattle and he will tell you that it is often more of a hinderance than a help. I know there may be size queens reading this whose taste in penises is maximalist, but this is simply not true for the rest of us. According to a 2021 study at Clemson University the average penis size without an erection measures between three and four inches, and the average penis size with an erection is between five and six inches. And as someone who has put in the fieldwork, this is just fabulous.
I have encountered a few biggins in my time and, despite what you may have seen in porn, it wasn’t the best of experiences. It was uncomfortable, it limited the choice of positions, and seriously threw out my rhythm. And do you know what else I have noticed? Men with more compact packets tend to be better lovers. Do I have any peer reviewed data to back this up? No, I don’t. But in my experience, the guys packing the standard equipment tend to up the foreplay, whereas the overly endowed rely on their penis to do all the heavy lifting.
Having said that, I did once talk to a guy who was packing over 12 inches and he said all he can do is foreplay because most people can’t accommodate his tackle. It’s sounded like a weird curse. A man wishes for a huge penis, and now his penis is so big he can’t have any penetrative sex at all.
I adore foreplay (what woman doesn’t), and the worship of the whopper only plays into the cultural obsession we have with penetrative sex being “proper sex.” The idea that a huge penis automatically makes you a great and desirable lover just perpetuates the narrative that having something substantial to stick in is enough. It’s not. Up to 80 per cent of women don’t orgasm with penetrative sex alone, whereas 90 per cent can do so through masturbation. So, it really doesn’t matter what you are packing, fellas, the penis isn’t enough to get your partner off.
But my love of foreplay aside, the veneration of size has some really serious consequences when it comes to mental health and body image. The full title of the research study to come out of Clemson University is “Average-Size Erect Penis: Fiction, Fact, and the Need for Counselling.” The obsession with having a few more inches can be so damaging that the researchers recommended counselling as a therapeutic intervention.
The paper concluded “a majority of men wish they were larger, with some choosing penile lengthening surgery. These surgeries are considered by the American Urological Association to be risky.” And that “most men seeking surgery have normal sized penises”. Penile enlargement surgeries involve silicone implants, transferring fat cells, or the use of skin grafts to increase the size of the penis. There is no guarantee the surgery will work, and the risks include scarring, infection, loss of sensation, changes in shape, and difficulty in getting an erection.
Penile dysmorphic disorder (PDD) is a mental health condition where people experience persistent anxiety about the size of their penis. They might not even have a small one, but they are riddled with fear that they do. It’s so prevalent it is listed as a variant of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Sufferers report being so hung up with what’s hanging that many can’t bring themselves to have sex at all. Ouch.
Which brings me nicely back to where I started. Surely the best thing you can say to a man in bed is almost anything other than “ouch”. Our celebration of size has seriously messed up our priorities. The social shame and stigma around penis size is so pervasive that women are regularly missing out on foreplay, some men are avoiding sex all together, and in rare cases men are even considering dangerous surgeries.
Penis shaming is cruel and damaging. And if you have been endowed with a bigger than average doodle, good for you, but that does not mean you will be a better lover. It certainly doesn’t mean you are better man than anyone else. I think I speak for a great deal of women when I say give me a man who is good with his hands over Billy Big Bollocks any day. Now, that is some big clit energy, right there.
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