ColumnDo men obsess about their penis size because women made it that way? Not so much.

Penis size is a prickly issue (pun most definitely intended and I’ll just go ahead and apologize in advance for the rest of them right now.)

If you Google the phrase “penis size” you’ll get an inordinate amount of hits. We all know the Internet is fueled by porn and cats, but I’m starting to think that penis size queries are a close third. Men are worried about this – very, very worried. And don’t forget that the penis pill and pump industry relies on the rampant insecurity of penised-persons.

A recent study claims that for one-night stands, women prefer bigger penises. The interesting bit about this particular study (based on only 41 women, so certainly not comprehensive) was that the women were more interested in girth, not length. This study was novel in that it used penis models made from a 3-D printer (really). Most other studies about penis size preference have relied on images or surveys with vague language like “small”, “medium”, and “large” – not the handling of mock phalluses. To tell the truth, you’ve got to get your hands on them.

Sexuality studies are important, and we need more of them. However, the media often distorts the material, disseminating the information in a titillating manner that does a disservice to all of us. Making sexuality studies into clickbait may increase advertising dollars, but it doesn’t give us much clarity about the questions that plague us – with the most important one – “Am I desirable?” – at the top of the list.

A man’s member plays a huge (ahem) role in his self-esteem and overall body image, and if he believes that it does not measure up, it can open the floodgates to self-flagellation. And if he does indeed have what he believes women want, this same imaginary man might be a bit more cocky than he deserves to be. (I told you I’d be unapologetic about the puns.)

The thing is, both men and women overestimate and underestimate penis size, depending on the situation. For instance, in the study in question, women were asked to fill out a ten-minute survey after handling the fake penises. After taking the survey, they tended to overestimate the size of the “penis” they’d handled.

Penis size varies with ethnicity, height, and a variety of other factors. It’s a genetic lottery – so obsessing about it doesn’t do anyone any service. If men were more focused on providing pleasure to their partners via other means that just penetration, perhaps this would be less of an issue. Many men seem to have missed the memo — most women orgasm via clitoral stimulation, which is rarely achieved through the old in-out method. If your man’s penis isn’t bringing you to orgasm, it’s not about its length or girth, most likely — it’s that your dude is lazy and/or doesn’t understand how your body works — teach him!

Masculinity, as I recently discussed, is deep in crisis. If we could get our boys and men to stop measuring their members, we might be able to fix some of what’s broken in our culture — or at least start. I know this is a cliche, but I believe that we’d spend less money on the defense budget if we could get dudes to put away the ruler.

Millions of men continue to feel inadequate about something that they shouldn’t even be focused on, if pleasure is the first prerogative. The hands and mouth can provide a lot more bang for their buck than the penis, if one cares to learn to use them the right way. Don’t forget that there’s a new “right way” with every woman – not everyone wants their partner to mouth the alphabet with their tongue – asking questions and listening to your lover’s requests is far more important than the size and shape of any body part.

Tell all the men: Every vagina is shaped differently, and can accommodate a different sized penis. One woman’s “size queen” status is another woman’s “It’s not the size of the ship, it’s the motion of the ocean.”

I like to tell the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Penises.” (Names of penis-owners will remain anonymous.) When I met my first penis, I said to myself (definitely not to the boy attached to the penis) “Well, this penis is way too small.” When I came upon another penis some time later, I said, perhaps out loud, “My oh my, this penis is way too large!” But then, lucky me, I came upon the perfect penis, and that, my friends, is the one that I lost my virginity to (and dated for seven years). It was just right – for me.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon

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The post What Women Want in Penis Size is Just the Tip (of the Iceberg): Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnStereotypes about female sexuality are mostly a load of bunk, and they’re hurting our sex and love lives. ENOUGH ALREADY.

If you still believe that men are the horny ones – the ones that “can’t keep it in their pants” or only “think with their d**ks,” you’ve been brainwashed, and I would like to un-wash your brain. We’ve been socialized to believe that women are less libidinous, more marriage-minded, and wired to crave romance and/or nurturing — not sex.

The truth is that women are likely more libidinous than men, and many desire multiple partners, sometimes at the same time, and sometimes as serial monogamists. (Science is beginning to back this up – they’ve only just begun to study it.) Shocked? Don’t be — explore it and own it if you feel it. Women are also multi-orgasmic, and possess the only body part whose sole purpose is pleasure (the clitoris). And our sexuality doesn’t turn off like a switch at menopause.

There are a lot of myths to bust.

It’s all quite ironic that we continue to believe women want sex less than men, given the hard work that the Greeks, Romans, early (and late) Christians, Jews, and Muslims and others have done to convince us that women’s unrestrained sexual desire can only be tamed by male ownership of female bodies. After a few centuries hunting witches they switched it up yet again – women were to be perceived as perfect little princesses, yet they had to be harnessed in corsets. These women eventually became the “happy” housewives of the ’50s, who were corseted in new ways.

Then we got the pill and a lot changed, but the pervasiveness of the beauty myth continues to keep us in chains. (Note: I’m talking mainly about the arc of women’s sexuality in the West here – female genital mutilation is still the norm in certain areas of the world, owing to the belief that women are too carnal for their own good.)

Before we were owned, we were venerated. Evidence of pre-agricultural fertility cults show that women’s bodies occupied an exalted place in the consciousness of the era. This might have been based on the way we bled with the cycles of the Moon, or because we seemed to be solely responsible for birth and life itself. Whatever the reasons, there was a time when women’s sexuality was sacred.

We were proud to be whores before we were cast as Madonnas. I think it’s about time we took our power back, sexual and otherwise. Before the Greco-Roman patriarchs began their systemic repression of women’s rights and lives, there was prehistory. It’s unwise to romanticize any historical epoch, given that we weren’t there and can only hypothesize about the conditions in which our ancestors lived. But “Sex at Dawn,” one of my favorite books of the last ten years, does a nice job of showing us why evolutionary psychologists have gotten everything so very wrong. And yet they’ve shaped our cultural consciousness. How do we untangle all the crossed wires that claim to define how we’re wired?

It’s as of yet impossible to identify where nature ends and nurture begins, but culture plays a major role in our self-perception and our relationships. The popularity of shows like “The Bachelor” and the annoying ubiquity of Patti Stenger prove that we’re up against a major meme machine and it’s going to take a person-by-person, relationship-by-relationship transformation to shift our consciousness. Sex, and in particular, women’s sexuality, has lived in the shadows of our psyches because it was deemed too overpowering. Instead of trying to control it, we must allow ourselves to experience all of its dimensions. That doesn’t mean we’ll engage in 24/7 orgies and none of us will ever work again (as Republicans seem to fear).

We live in binaries, and  it’s about time for a breakthrough. From compulsory heterosexuality to compulsory motherhood to monogamy, marriage, engagement rings, and more, there’s much we accept as rote. We often participate without question, because it’s in our movies and on our TV’s and our Facebook feeds. But is it what you really want? Only you can answer that.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

Related on EcoSalon:

The Art of Receiving: Do You Deserve Pleasure?

Tantra 101: Sacred Sex for the Rest of Us

9 Natural Ways To Spice Up Your Sex Life

Image: James Clear

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