If you’ve been a part of adult culture for any amount of time you would have inevitably heard some kind of jokes about size. Poking fun at Hitler’s micropenis, jokes about big cars being overcompensation, for better or worse the jokes are a staple in our culture. It’s an age-old debate, and the cultural consensus seems to agree that, yes, size does matter.
I’d disagree. At least, I think it doesn’t matter to women.
Between 70 percent to 90 percent of women can’t orgasm from penetration alone. So, for the majority of women, penetration isn’t really the main source of pleasure. Not to mention if a dick is too big, it can be seriously painful.
According to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, of women who can orgasm from penetration, there is a penis size that statistically gives women the most vaginal orgasms. The size is 5.2 inches in length.
The average man’s penis is between 5.1 and 5.5 inches, with most men falling on the lower side of that margin. That means, most men are par for the course on having the ideal equipment. However, 45% of men say they’d prefer a longer penis.
So if penis size doesn’t really matter to most women, and most men have the ideal length for the few women who would benefit from it, why are men insecure about their size?
I’d argue it boils down to the transient nature of masculinity as it stands in our culture. I’m sure we’ve all joked about someone we know having a ‘fragile masculinity’, but as a culture we have framed masculinity as something easy to lose. Any time a man acts too stereotypically femine, expresses emotion, or goes against the very thin margin of what’s considered ‘manly’, he is confronted with accusations of ‘not being a man’.
This isn’t something we’ve faced at large as women. Womanhood isn’t something we’ve been told we could lose, some actions may not necessarily be viewed as ‘ladylike’, but we’d never be accused of not being a woman.
This is where the obsession with dick size comes in. It’s a symbol of masculinity that every cisgendered male is born with, that can never be taken away from him. It’s a quality that’s foundation isn’t fragile the way other manly qualities such as strength, power, and lack of emotion often are. Though it’s a very cave man way of thinking, the thought process boils down to: the bigger the dick, the bigger the man.
So, to no one’s surprise, the cultural obsession with dick size was never really about women’s preference after all. Mostly it boils down to men performing for other men. Most staples of masculinity tend to do this, reminiscent of the way that men obsess over being muscly, even though women tend to value other traits like emotional intelligence much more. If men’s insecurities really were centered on pleasing women in bed, they’d probably be focused on their head game. If we can address these root issues, we can get rid of the insecurity, and everyone would probably have a better time in bed too.