I’ve been with a few guys who were much bigger than average (not all at once, alas ) and they were all very concerned at first about hurting me as it had happened to them before. I did feel sorry for them, until I thought to be happy for me. They turned out happy enough as well.
[Hmm…I wonder if the female (or gay male) ‘I can take ten inches’ claim is the equivalent of a man saying he has ten inches?? ]
Re the OP and the work situation - that’s terrible! I’m fairly big up top and my former boss used to joke with me about it occasionally - we got on really well and it was that sort of workplace, so it was fine. But if he’d said he couldn’t concentrate because of the size of my chest (and I always dressed conservatively at work), I would have been on the phone to a lawyer asap. Why yes, in his hearing.
Sorry for excessive smilies - the topic seems to somehow demand it…
This is understandable. However, it sounds like a case of trying awfully hard to make reality adjust to the numbers rather than the other way around. A simple Google image search with the safe filter off is enough to demonstrate the reality of genitalia outside the norm, and a few that are completely off the chart entirely.
Humans are pretty variable in terms of physical attributes, even if most of us fall within the normal range. For example, A rough average of human height for males reveals that most men are going to be between 5’8’’-6’, with a few outliers on either side. That doesn’t stop there from being lots of men over 6’5’’, and plenty of normal men at 7’0’’ and over. That’s excluding people like Robert Wadlow who had a condition that caused him to grow to 8’11’’. Just because 90%+ of men fall into the normal range, doesn’t mean that very tall or very short men do not exist. Genital size is no different.
It ought also be noted that the Lifestyles study only surveyed 300 men, the other two surveys containing half that number, and in one all the patients had erectile dysfunction issues. I very much doubt that such a small sample size would be representative of the population in general; espescially considering that large penis size is genetic, and tends to be more prevalent in certain populations than others.
Once again, no doubt. I’m not sure anyone is arguing 10"+ penises don’t exist. It just seems rather unlikely, if those numbers are to be believed and the distribution is normal, that so many people here have got experience with them. We’re talking about 1 in 3.5 million people having a penis of 10" or larger.
Also, I don’t necessarily believe those Lifestyles numbers. If you use Kinsey’s numbers, we’re looking at an average size of 6.21" and a standard deviation of .77". That still puts us at about 5 standard deviations from the norm.
My intuition would be that 10"+ large penises would be more common than 1 in 3.5 million. But that’s where gaffa’s skepticism lay.
Not to mention, even if the numbers that say 1 in 3.5 million are accurate (which I don’t necessarily believe), that still doesn’t mean that we can’t have a dozen on the boards. That’s how probability works. Even if the odds are way against getting heads on every toss of a coin for 50 tosses in a row, it doesn’t mean that it can’t and doesn’t happen.
Elan “A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a 1 in a million chance is a sure thing!”
V - sigh “And once again Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot.”
Why would it be normal? That doesn’t sound right. First of all, it’s bounded on one side (you can’t be under zero inches), so that removes part of one tail. Probably insignificant, but we’re already out of true normal because of that. Second, just look at the actual graph at the page you linked to. The right tail is clearly dropping off more slowly than the left.
"The Geeks out there will notice that this is nowhere near a normal distribution, which makes the mean and standard deviations a bit difficult to interpret. More here. (which links to)
These statistics do seem to make sense.
It’s more or less a standard distribution, with a very large peak at the average. This implies that most (about 75% of) men will be Mr Average, when it comes to length.
The average is 5.88", however the nature of distribution means the average is not the same as most common. This is because the few very long ones, bias things. So the median is 5.65". That’s the point where 50% will be larger and 50% smaller. It’s the typical size.
And look at the girth graph. That’s off the chart. Why would the length data be so perfectly gaussian and girth either way complex or a noisy mess. Anyway, something tells me this PR data from a condom company doesn’t compute.
Anyway, keep in mind the setting for all this. Lifestyle condoms goes to Spring Break, asking guys to get measured at a nightclub. For all we know it’s just a cover for Lifestyle’s highly profitable money making scheme of selling underground “Guys Gone Wild” videos. Or condoms. could be condoms.
Anyway, for all the stats-skewing things you could draw from that is the fact that the guys were drunk and put on the spot, all the other biasing aside. 25% couldn’t even get an erection. And as we all know, also not all succeessful ones are equal. I really like the idea behind the viagra-powered study. A lot more “scientific.”
On the other hand, maybe, actually, there is some sense in judging your dick’s first impression by the standards of the ones that were drunk and nervous? Hmm?
It should be noted that, although a lot of distributions in real life can be approximated by Gaussians, you’ll almost never see a true Gaussian distribution. And the deviations from a Gaussian distribution are usually most significant way out in the tails. That is to say, most real-world distributions have more outliers than would a true Gaussian.
So when you see a (claimed) data point that’s 5 standard deviations out from the mean, you’re probably justified in saying “Hmm, that’s unusual”, but you’re probably not justified in saying “That’s a one in 3.5 million chance”.
) and they were all very concerned at first about hurting me as it had happened to them before. I did feel sorry for them, until I thought to be happy for me. 
They turned out happy enough as well.