Does Size Matter Part 1

I don't have a penis and I've never wanted one. As a woman, I'm subject to impossible pressures with regard to my physical makeup, but I can't even begin to fathom the anxieties associated with penis size. While it may not factor heavily along the path to enlightenment and it doesn't seem to matter to most women, men are socialized to obsess about the size of their penises. Joking, bragging, worrying, strategic shaving, lying and measuring are common symptoms of this cultural fixation that reduces men to the size of their members.

Studies of men who worry that their penises are too small overwhelmingly indicate that their anxieties are unfounded. They often underestimate their own size or overestimate perceptions of normal penis size. More importantly, they miscalculate the degree to which their sexual partners desire a larger penis. Research indicates that 85 percent of women are happy with their partner's penis size in comparison to only 55 percent of men who report satisfaction with their own size.

Studies that have attempted to determine and reproduce estimations for average penis size have resulted in a mixed bag of results due to challenges of methodology. Who should do the measuring? What measurement instrument is most reliable? Where should the measurement begin? What position should the penis take during measurement? Despite these limitations, a review of over fifty studies suggests that the average length of an erect penis is approximately 5.5 inches. Self-measurements tend to be higher than those conducted by researchers.

While some men are "show-ers" and have larger flaccid penises that expand proportionally less when erect, others are considered "growers" who have smaller flaccid penises that grow much larger during erection. There is a much wider range in flaccid penis size making it an unreliable predictor of its full length during erection.

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