Sexual Trivia: Penis Sizes

Few questions seem to occupy men as much as the size of their dicks. Is it too short? Will my girl think I'm a bad lover or even laugh at me because it's shorter than others she's had? Is it long enough to reach every nook and cranny of her pussy and stimulate each and every nerve ending? How does my dick compare to others? Is it longer? Shorter? Average?

Questions upon questions. Especially avid readers of porn stories, who regularly come across 10", 12", or even 15" dicks, often can't help comparing these specimens to their own equipment and, not surprisingly, find their own dicks to be much smaller than the ones they read about. The question that has to come up sooner or later is: who's the freak, the guy in the story with the 12" monster or me with my 5" dick? How long is the average human penis, anyway?

Despite widespread interest in this question, however, there are surprisingly few scientific studies which could give us a definitive answer. Instead, as always when solid information is scarce, rumors and speculations run rampant. Even basic facts become the subject of heated arguments among locker room buddies and many men are more confused than ever -- most obvious in the fact that, according to leading sexologists, almost 80 percent of all men believe that their dick is shorter than average.

While the optimum penis size will probably always remain subject to debate, at least the average size doesn't have to be.

The first extensive study of penis sizes was undertaken by the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research in the mid-1940s and found the average penis to be 6.2" long. This study, which is still kind of an authority on the subject, had one flaw, however: participants in the study were never actually measured; they were given stamped postcards on which they marked the length of their erect penises, then mailed the results back to the institute. This procedure was often criticized for its lack of supervision of the participants and the possibility of distortions due to inaccurate measurements or downright cheating.

After the Kinsey report, several other studies on the same subject followed, conducted among others by the University of California in San Francisco and the Lifestyles Condom Company. These studies came to slightly different results, but all found the average penis length to be somewhere between 5.1" and 5.9".

As is the case with most objects in nature, the distribution of penis lengths follows a bell curve. The line peaks just under 6" and falls to both sides; the farther away you get from the statistical average, the less frequent a certain length occurs. In fact, about 90 percent of all penises are between 5" and 7" long.

The longest penis ever described in medical literature, a 14" specimen, was mentioned in a book by Dr. David Reuben, but since he didn't give a source and the measurement could not be independently verified, scientists tend to disregard that report. The longest medically verified penis is not far behind, however; in the early 20th century, Dr. Robert Dickinson came across a 13.5" penis, which still holds the record. Other studies found various penises between 9" and 12", but organs of this length are in fact quite rare.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the smallest fully functional penises documented in medical literature measure around 0.5" in length. While many people might balk at the description of a half-inch dick as "fully functional," in this context it means being able to get erect and have an ejaculation.

In case you've never measured your own dick and are wondering how to do it correctly, it's easy: first you need to get an erection, then you stand upright and hold your penis at a 90- degree angle from your pelvic bone, i.e. parallel to the floor. Now place a ruler on top of it, press it lightly against your pelvic bone, and read the number off the ruler where the tip is. Don't cheat!

Now, before you decide to throw a party because your dick is longer than average after all, or jump off a bridge because it really is shorter, here's the result of another study:

Most women don't care!

About 80 percent of the women who were interviewed expressed no preference for penis size; they said that what a man is able to do with it is the important thing, not its size. And while some women do indeed prefer long dicks, the majority of the remaining 20 percent said they didn't like large penises because they hurt.

There you have it, guys. Don't worry about its size, just use it and have fun!