# Small penises **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [February 28, 2018, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741 "2018-02-28T10:50:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2018, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/41 "2018-03-03T15:17:00Z")
> [@toefungus](#): > > Um, the human species is a hundred thousand years old. > > Any selection would have happened long before trousers were invented. One of the earliest piece of clothing was the loincloth. In some tribes, men were a hollow tube (some plant) on a string around their waist which is long enough to encase any penis length. ---
**Author:** ![constanze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@constanze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/constanze)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2018, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/42 "2018-03-03T15:27:52Z")
> [@toefungus](#): > > It’s almost as if you don’t understand evolution. Or maybe you misunderstand it. It’s not simply “who has most one-night stands”. It’s about “who produces more survivable offspring longterm”, given a hundred other factors that influence survival. That’s why I gave the example of bird’s beaks. > [@](#): > > If women wanted bigger penises they’d pick the biggest one among the multiple guys who were bringing home food. If women get to pick at all, depending on society. > [@](#): > > Or … they’d pick a guy who brings home food as a partner but sneak off to bang a guy with a big penis. It’s not about banging the guy, it’s getting his babies that counts for evolution. And if sneaking off results in a pregnancy, but that means she gets kicked out by the food provider, women will stop sneaking out. If pregnancy by sneaking out is passed off without consequences, women will still select the food provider as partner, (cuckoo principle), but sneaking out leaves big penis guys with less procreation possibilities than the regular mate. > [@](#): > > Either way: The big penis gene gets propagated. All it takes is a preference by females and pretty soon the “bring home the food” guys all have them swinging down to their knees. If evolution would work that way, then why hasn’t it already? We see some extreme lengths in animals: peacock feathers, antlers in deer, horns in mountain sheep, even when for the species it’s counterproductive to waste so much food energy to produce big horns/ feathers only to attract a mate. But not all species go that far - because different pressures make other features more important, or because the too elaborate individuals die off prematurely. > [@](#): > > I get the impression that most posters are male Where do you get this impression from? Do you know every poster personally? Not all nicks are gender-indicative; and those that are may not correspond to the real gender of the poster. > [@](#): > > If men **really** sought out huge breasts then all women would be massive. Once you get past puberty though I don’t think it really makes much difference when selecting a partner. Smaller ones are generally much perkier/prettier IMHO. Again, narrow focus. Until recently, breast size was not an important feature for beauty in most of the world. It’s only with Hollywood saturation that most of the world pays attention to it. In many cultures, fat people were attractive, because they had higher chances of surviving hard periods. At some times, light skin was prized because it meant the person was wealthy enough to not work outdoors. Farmers wanted strong women to help with the fieldwork (again the part where marriages are arranged and personal preference doesn’t count at all). ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/43 "2018-03-06T18:20:38Z")
> [@toefungus](#): > > Um, the human species is a hundred thousand years old. > > Any selection would have happened long before trousers were invented. I read that evidence says humans were upright, relatively hairless, and walking around naked for at least 60,000 years before clothes were invented. Something about DNA evidence from body lice. Before anybody says 60,000 years isn’t enough time, allow me to point out that a shorter time than that was enough for people in Europe to develop larger noses and lighter skin. If there was a strong enough reason for penis size to affect the survival of the children, it could have happened. The bigger picture is that evolution is not just about which individuals can most easily attract mates. It’s about which individuals can produce the most viable offspring that survive long enough to reproduce themselves. A mutation may have multiple effects and it will be successful if the net result of all those effects is more viable offspring. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/44 "2018-03-06T18:47:14Z")
Natural Selection selected for white skin in the last 7,000 years or so. It is an ongoing process. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/45 "2018-03-06T19:09:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **toefungus** : > > I get the impression that most posters are male so I’ll point out that it works the other way, too: If men really sought out huge breasts then all women would be massive. They are. Even an A cup is significantly bigger than most female primates have, even among our closest relatives. Though of course some are more massive than others. As for human penises being larger than most primates, I suspect that that’s actually due indirectly to our big heads. Big heads at birth mean that vaginas have to be bigger, and vaginas being bigger mean that penises will be bigger, too. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2018, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/46 "2018-03-07T05:17:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > They are. Even an A cup is significantly bigger than most female primates have, even among our closest relatives. Even more telling, men have the very same size lactation mechanism. Most of the bulk of the human female breast appears to be purely decorative. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/47 "2018-03-12T21:16:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > They are. Even an A cup is significantly bigger than most female primates have, even among our closest relatives. Though of course some are more massive than others. > > As for human penises being larger than most primates, I suspect that that’s actually due indirectly to our big heads. Big heads at birth mean that vaginas have to be bigger, and vaginas being bigger mean that penises will be bigger, too. Whut? Just about any woman giving birth has a vagina that is elastic enough to accommodate a birthing infant. That’s the way vaginas are built, they can expand. Whether she is a 5 foot tall waif or a 6 foot tall Brunhilde, their vaginas are basically expandable. (Not that it is comfortable for anyone, not that it has much to do with birthing problems, but a 6 pounder can shoot out of a tiny woman or a larger woman.) Penises can impregnate whether they are 2" shrimps or big-ten-inch porno whoppers. … And it’s mainly MEN who fret over size, as if bigger is better! Something to show off in the locker room, hey, lookit this!!! I say most women don’t want to be pounded by gigantic eggplant size wangs except in porn movies, where is where most men get their information. And if they do need a thing the size of a loaf of French bread stuck up in there to get off, there are places I have heard on the internets where you can buy replicas to seal the deal. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/48 "2018-03-12T22:03:58Z")
Again, the comparison isn’t between normal men and John Holmes. It’s between our closest relatives among the great apes and normal men. Compared to chimpanzees or gorillas, the human penis is, in fact, huge. It’s not as huge as a baguette, but that’s not what we’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2018, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/49 "2018-03-12T23:09:45Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > I’m pretty sure that early on in our evolution, the guy who got the most gals was handier with his club than handier with his penis. > [@sbunny8](#): > > When **smithsb** said “the guy who got the most gals was handier with his club”, I assumed he was referring to the situation (often depicted in cartoons) where the man hits the woman over the head with a club, drags her back to his cave, and has sex with her unconscious body. In other words, rape. Hi sbunny. I was refering to the old comic staple of Og clubbing his woman and dragging her off. I did not carry my thoughts on to the, “actually it’s a rape” angle. I apologize for my comment. I was also thinking of the, “good provider” skill. Should have just gone with that. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/50 "2018-03-13T02:33:19Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > > [@sbunny](#): > > > > When **smithsb** said “the guy who got the most gals was handier with his club”, I assumed he was referring to the situation (often depicted in cartoons) where the man hits the woman over the head with a club, drags her back to his cave, and has sex with her unconscious body. In other words, rape. > > Hi sbunny. I was refering to the old comic staple of Og clubbing his woman and dragging her off. I did not carry my thoughts on to the, “actually it’s a rape” angle. I apologize for my comment. > > I was also thinking of the, “good provider” skill. Should have just gone with that. Author Timothy Beneke used to ask his audience to visualise “a cave man” and then asked what the “cave man” was doing, and people in the audience would describe him dragging the unconscious woman by the hair. And he used this beginning to examine our unquestioned / unspoke [attitudes towards rape](https://www.coursehero.com/file/p7okcs1/In-the-following-exercise-Timothy-Beneke-developed-items-1-7-in-his-book-Men-on/). **smithsb** , in other words, is far from being the only person who has never stopped to rethink that socially-shared tableau and realize that it is a depiction of rape. And (as Beneke points out) it is instead thought of as “this is how we would behave if civilizing influences didn’t inhibit us”, i.e., the notion holds that (although we don’t consciously _think of it as rape_) we would naturally rape and only cultural inhibitions explain why we don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/51 "2018-03-13T11:04:59Z")
I dunno; my default image has him dragging the club itself. And if I call up a more action-oriented scene, then he’s fighting a sabretooth or a mammoth. Though I suppose that dragging the club might have originated in cartoons as a more family-friendly shorthand to represent dragging a woman. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/52 "2018-03-13T12:56:32Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Again, the comparison isn’t between normal men and John Holmes. It’s between our closest relatives among the great apes and normal men. Compared to chimpanzees or gorillas, the human penis is, in fact, huge. It’s not as huge as a baguette, but that’s not what we’re talking about. You can say that again; the average gorilla penis is 3-cm. In their book [_Sex at Dawn_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn), Ryan and Jethá posit that while gorillas’ competition is external – a male gorilla fights other males to keep them away from his harem, humans’ is internal. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors shared sexual resources as they shared everything else. > [@wiki](#): > > They think that much of evolutionary psychology has been conducted with a bias regarding human sexuality. The authors argue that the public and many researchers are guilty of the “Flintstonization” of hunter-gatherer society; that is to say projecting modern assumptions and beliefs onto earlier societies. Thus they think that there has been a bias to assuming that our species is primarily monogamous despite what they argue to be evidence to the contrary. They argue for example, that our sexual dimorphism, testicle size, female copulatory vocalization, appetite for sexual novelty, various cultural practices, and hidden female ovulation, among other factors strongly suggest a non-monogamous, non-polygynous history. The authors argue that mate selection was not the subject of much intragroup competition among pre-agricultural humans, as sex was neither scarce nor commodified; rather sperm competition was a more important paternity factor than sexual selection. They assert that the human penis is uniquely shaped the way it is so that it can go deep and scoop out their rivals’ semen. This would point to a weak selection for large dicks unrelated to women’s preferences. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2018, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741/53 "2018-03-13T19:33:28Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > Hi sbunny. I was refering to the old comic staple of Og clubbing his woman and dragging her off. I did not carry my thoughts on to the, “actually it’s a rape” angle. I apologize for my comment. > > I was also thinking of the, “good provider” skill. Should have just gone with that. No apology was necessary. It’s just something that has changed about our species and continues to change. But every once in a while, it’s good to look back and say, “Huh, look at how weird that seems to us by modern standards.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-penises/809741.md?page=2)