(Picture: Ella BYworth for Metro.co.uk)

This morning I noticed that some truly terrible person had tweeted something truly terrible.

‘Bitch if you’re dressed half naked in public, don’t get mad wen i touch your body without your consent cuz i believe that’s wat you wants’ wrote this bloke on Twitter.

Now, as you can imagine, I was frothing at the mouth. What a vile sentiment. How desperately outdated and slut shaming and generally ignorant. Unsurprisingly, the replies to the tweet shared a general consensus. The man who wrote it was a nasty person.

But you know what else the majority of the replies had in common?




Speculation about his penis.

People said he didn’t have a penis, that his penis was tiny, that he didn’t know how to use his penis. Balls were a feature too. Small balls, shriveled balls, tiny balls.

How did we arrived at a place where the default response to a person saying something ignorant and untrue is to insult a part of their anatomy?

Because in a world where we find ourselves arguing with complete strangers on the internet, we have to grapple for insults that sting. Which, when it comes to men, means penis comments.

Both physically and emotionally, if you want to hurt a man, you aim between the legs. Almost every man I’ve ever dated has been insecure about the size of his penis, wishing that it was longer.

Men are taught their entire life that their worth, their power and their prowess stems from the size of their sexual organs.

It doesn’t seem to matter that most women only have a four inch deep vagina, or that women are for the most part spectacularly disinterested in balls (big balls are fine, small balls are fine, we honestly do not care about balls).

Despite extensive research and writing that demonstrates the opposite, men are forced to regard the size of their genitalia as the most important aspect of their sexual abilities and a defining characteristic as a man. So it’s no surprise that it’s the first weapon we reach for in our internet argument arsenal.

I know how tempting it is. I’ve done it myself. We all remember the moment in Notting Hill where Julia Roberts tells a group of astonished wankers ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean any harm, I’m sure it was just friendly banter, I’m sure you guys have dicks the size of peanuts. Enjoy your dinner, the tuna’s really good.’

(Photo by Ulrich Baumgarten via Getty Images)

But in a world where we stand against body shaming, I’m afraid I think we have to stop. For two reasons, really.

Firstly, because it’s lazy. When someone is talking trash on the internet, or in real life, we should do better than throwing a lazy penis comment their way. We should dismantle their argument, or we should ignore them.

Secondly, body shaming isn’t nice and it isn’t okay. It’s the same as when people call Katie Hopkins ugly. You might think that she’s a terrible person, that she insights racial hatred or that she’s a terrible example to her children. But the lack of symmetry in her face isn’t symmetrical is not relevant.



Men worry about their penis size. Men are self conscious about it. For some men it ruins their sex lives, leaves them feeling depressed and can be part of wider mental health issues. Talking about small penises as if they’re the end of the world or something you should be ashamed of only makes that problem worse.

People’s terrible opinions and horrible comments are bad because they’re bad. Not because of the body that they came from. When we focus on the latter we are distracted from the former, and we lose the moral high ground.

So please, next time you hear or read someone saying something truly terrible, rather than making comments about his teeny tiny mouse balls, or her ugly fatness, stop. Engage with the discussion instead. You never know, they might even learn something.*

*I mean, it’s arguing on the internet, it’s very unlikely. But hey, a girl can dream.

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