A lot of women ask me, “why are men so concerned about the size of their penis?” The short answer is that they are very insecure about the whole issue, and they don’t always have an outlet for making peace with that insecurity. Here are some of the things that make such an insecurity continue to exist:

Penetrative intercourse is popularly held as being “real sex.” Everything else is just “foreplay.” This emphasis on penetration as the act that makes the sex obviously puts a great deal of attention on the penis and its penetrative function. And you don’t want to be inadequate in that regard, now do you? Personally I hate this kind of thinking –it’s a load of destructive hogwash that often ruins the free exploration and expression that makes sex great. Penetration is only one way to have sex, and often it’s more cumbersome and dangerous than other ways–STDs, pregnancy, condom issues, erection issues, vaginal/anal pain etc. Open your mind up , and if the person you are with does not want to open up with you, move on. Positive thinking is open thinking, especially in sex. 🙂

There is a lot of hype about big dick. We call it hype, of course, because it’s not actually real. But it’s everywhere… the jokes, the stories about “that guy who’s hung like a bull,” and nowadays, all the porn movies, where pretty much all the dick is well above the norm in size and physically attractive women squeal and gush about how “it’s so BIG!” and that kind of thing. It wouldn’t be an issue if smaller penises were as talked about–but they aren’t, so naturally there is a biased consciousness out there that leans toward big penises. And it is true…

For intercourse, there is a general preference for penises that are at least a certain thickness and length. BUT… even when it is said that “size does matter,” often “the bigger the better” is presumed to be the real meaning of this. Not so! It is merely a preference for the penis not to be very small for penetration–and very small is a description that the vast majority of men’s penises do not actually fit in any way. Though there is a not-so-large percentage of women [and guys] who do prefer bigger than average penises, that percentage is evened out by those who might even like it a little smaller than average; there’s just a lot more hype about big dicks, that’s all, so that’s all we hear. The overwhelming majority of the time, “average” is definitely quite good enough for a rockin’ good time, and too big can sometimes be quite troublesome and spoil the fun. Same thing for anal intercourse– the big cock hype distorts what a desirable size really is. And another thing to remember…

Heterosexual men often don’t see a lot of penises, let alone get to be near them and hold them and have any real sense of comparison between different ones. And the less you are acquainted with something, the more likely it is that you’ll have some very untrue ideas about it, especially if there is all this hype going around. So men who have quite nice-sized penises spend all this time worrying, because they have no sense of real proportion and often they’re only seeing and hearing about cock in porn and in conversations about “how BIG he was,” and all that jazz. In fact, being big generally does not mean a great deal except at one particular point…

The visual. There is one area in which a big penis is big news: when you first see it. A big display of sex does grab one’s attention–and men who don’t get this “mmm, that’s big!” reaction when they first whip it out might feel like their woman won’t be as aroused as she would be if the cock were heftier. Thing is, how a cock looks at first sight is not a good indicator of how it’s going to feel. And plus, she may likely want to feel it in more than one place, which is easier to do with a cock that isn’t too big… so don’t get discouraged if you don’t have a ginormous one; confidence and being in tune with your partner are the things that will really produce the pleasure.

We talk about penis as if that’s what a man is. Seriously. Saying something like “he’s kind of small” or “I’m thicker than average” makes it sound like a man is his penis, doesn’t it? We can substitute “he is ___” with “his penis is ___” and get the same point across without the hidden implication that the penis is the man. No wonder there’s so much male insecurity, because…

Popular culture puts a lot pressure on men to be “man enough.” If you aren’t “man enough,” people won’t respect you. If you aren’t “man enough,” you won’t be able to match a woman well. because you won’t lead with authority like a man is “supposed to.” And if you aren’t “man enough,” you won’t be able to please her, either, and she’ll look for someone who has a bigger manhood. The conflation of “manhood” with “penis” is too easy to make in our penis-centric view of masculinity, so naturally men feel a pressure to be very “manly” in that department. But…

You can’t change your penis size. You can get bigger muscles, become more athletic, learn new skills, enlighten yourself in other ways… but this basic piece of manhood is pretty much unchangeable. If you are less than fully satisfied with what you’ve got, well, this is obviously something you don’t want to be judged by, right?

Manhood and masculinity are harmfully narrow concepts these days. The predominant perception of how a man is supposed to be is really messed up: it’s a one-dimensional, either-or view that teaches little appreciation for the finer things in life. So without any sense of the diversity of things to be appreciated in life men fetishize the few things that they perceive matter, which can often be limited to cars, sex (one kind of sex, especially), and sports (this is not always true, of course, but especially in the absence of education it becomes more and more so).

We’re human beings, not monochromatic robots. But a lot of this stuff hides behind fears and taboos that make it hard to talk about, in addition to the fact that it’s already hard to talk about sex.