debate is whether this is physiologically significant – or whether the bulky penis is only a psychological predilection. What is not up for reassessment, however, is that penis length is of secondary importance. ‘If things aren’t too bad in other ways I doubt if any woman cares very much,’ the American playwright Lillian Hellman (
Pentimento
) observed.
As Alex Comfort makes clear in
The Joy of Sex
, ‘female orgasm doesn’t depend on getting deeply into the pelvis’. There’s a good purely physiological reason: only the first two inches of the vagina are rich in nerve endings. The long and short of it, therefore, is that unless there’s a startling abnormality, no erect penis is too small to surmount what the Chinese poetically call ‘the jade terrace’ and make adequate contact where it matters. And only in very, very exceptional cases is a penis too long, and virtually never too thick. A young man, weeks away from marriage, wrote to Kinsey explaining that his penis was 7.25 inches erect and 6 inches in circumference, which led him to be ‘afraid that my organ is too big for intercourse with an average woman’. Kinsey wrote back, ‘We have never seen a solitary instance in which the dimensions of the penis caused any difficulty in intercourse. Certainly we have records of successful adjustment where the penis measures two or three inches more than your own.’ In being reassuring Kinsey was not being entirely accurate: elastic as the vagina is, a penis ‘rare’ in the Kinseyan sense can touch the neck of the cervix and the posterior fornix, causing pain; a man with such a penis may have to wear the equivalent of an outsize tap washer to reduce his intromittence. That said, the experienced Phoebe was entirely accurate in telling the inexperienced Fanny Hill that she ‘had never heard of a mortal wound being given in those parts by that terrible weapon’. The vagina is highly accommodating – it can give passage to a baby at birth, after all – and closes upon whatever size penis is presented to it.
Women, of course, do have preferences about body parts, just like men. Some, for instance, have a taste for the circumcised penis, finding it neater, some for the uncircumcised penis, because the foreskin is another element and that it rolls back on erection adds intrigue. But in the final analysis whether a man is ‘Roundhead’ or ‘Cavalier’ is likely to be of scant significance – as is size. Whether women have a partiality for ‘bigs’, whether in one dimension or the other or both, this isn’t likely to top their wish list. What does, if a woman has feelings for the penis-possessor, is that she has no preferences – she accept his penis as it is, part and parcel of him: ‘how innocently part of him it seemed, and not a harsh jutting second life parasitic upon him’ in Updike’s telling phrase (
Couples)
. Anyway, a sensible man should give due cognisance to the fact that a woman is more likely to be turned on by broad shoulders and pert buttocks (should he have these) and by his ability to make her laugh than she is by his genitals. And, remembering Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that a man’s legs need only be long enough to reach the ground, he should be at ease with what he has. After all, what really matters is that he employs his penis to his partner’s satisfaction as well as his own.
Yet research shows that almost without exception, irrespective of intellect, education and cultural or ethnic background, men ask women if the penises of previous incumbents of their bed were bigger. To appropriate a remark of the painter Ferdinand Delacroix (who was talking about canvasses), ‘Men are always more given to admiring what is gigantic than what is reasonable.’
Whatever the evolutionary path of the human penis, Jared Diamond observes that it is four times bigger than biologically necessary, and ‘as a structure [is] costly and detrimental to its owner’. And if the functionally
Pentimento
) observed.
As Alex Comfort makes clear in
The Joy of Sex
, ‘female orgasm doesn’t depend on getting deeply into the pelvis’. There’s a good purely physiological reason: only the first two inches of the vagina are rich in nerve endings. The long and short of it, therefore, is that unless there’s a startling abnormality, no erect penis is too small to surmount what the Chinese poetically call ‘the jade terrace’ and make adequate contact where it matters. And only in very, very exceptional cases is a penis too long, and virtually never too thick. A young man, weeks away from marriage, wrote to Kinsey explaining that his penis was 7.25 inches erect and 6 inches in circumference, which led him to be ‘afraid that my organ is too big for intercourse with an average woman’. Kinsey wrote back, ‘We have never seen a solitary instance in which the dimensions of the penis caused any difficulty in intercourse. Certainly we have records of successful adjustment where the penis measures two or three inches more than your own.’ In being reassuring Kinsey was not being entirely accurate: elastic as the vagina is, a penis ‘rare’ in the Kinseyan sense can touch the neck of the cervix and the posterior fornix, causing pain; a man with such a penis may have to wear the equivalent of an outsize tap washer to reduce his intromittence. That said, the experienced Phoebe was entirely accurate in telling the inexperienced Fanny Hill that she ‘had never heard of a mortal wound being given in those parts by that terrible weapon’. The vagina is highly accommodating – it can give passage to a baby at birth, after all – and closes upon whatever size penis is presented to it.
Women, of course, do have preferences about body parts, just like men. Some, for instance, have a taste for the circumcised penis, finding it neater, some for the uncircumcised penis, because the foreskin is another element and that it rolls back on erection adds intrigue. But in the final analysis whether a man is ‘Roundhead’ or ‘Cavalier’ is likely to be of scant significance – as is size. Whether women have a partiality for ‘bigs’, whether in one dimension or the other or both, this isn’t likely to top their wish list. What does, if a woman has feelings for the penis-possessor, is that she has no preferences – she accept his penis as it is, part and parcel of him: ‘how innocently part of him it seemed, and not a harsh jutting second life parasitic upon him’ in Updike’s telling phrase (
Couples)
. Anyway, a sensible man should give due cognisance to the fact that a woman is more likely to be turned on by broad shoulders and pert buttocks (should he have these) and by his ability to make her laugh than she is by his genitals. And, remembering Abraham Lincoln’s dictum that a man’s legs need only be long enough to reach the ground, he should be at ease with what he has. After all, what really matters is that he employs his penis to his partner’s satisfaction as well as his own.
Yet research shows that almost without exception, irrespective of intellect, education and cultural or ethnic background, men ask women if the penises of previous incumbents of their bed were bigger. To appropriate a remark of the painter Ferdinand Delacroix (who was talking about canvasses), ‘Men are always more given to admiring what is gigantic than what is reasonable.’
Whatever the evolutionary path of the human penis, Jared Diamond observes that it is four times bigger than biologically necessary, and ‘as a structure [is] costly and detrimental to its owner’. And if the functionally
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