Penis Size

This post is going to be a little scattered and wonky so hold onto your hats! 

I have a job which allows me to frequently communicate with teenagers.  This means the topic of conversation often leads to sex.  Teenagers have to figure out their sexuality and stay safe and process a whole lot of information to do so.  Sometimes I might be the only adult in their lives that they feel safe enough to ask their sex questions.  Their parents might just tell them to never, ever do it or to make sure to use birth control.  This is fairly inadequate but an improvement on the sex education that I received.  It does nothing to address sexual pleasure or issues of consent.

Anyway, the topic of penis size came up and the comment was made that the reason the girl had bad sex was that the guy had a small penis.  I cringed at this remark but I simply did not know how to answer it.  I later kicked myself for not saying that penis size doesn’t matter and good sex is not based on that.  Of course, this sort of conversation would make a lot of co-workers uncomfortable.  And I have to admit it makes me uncomfortable to say that to impressionable youths, even though it’s completely true.

But my discomfort with teenagers is not the reason I wanted to post here.  I often fear that denigrating men based on their penis size may be one of the most pervasive anti-feminist things that people say.  It reinforces the idea that everything revolves around the mighty peen.   And it gives an easy, neat way to insult a man, just like calling a woman a whore or a slut.  There are so many terrible stereotypes reinforced by the penis myth:  Sexual pleasure is a male responsibility and sex with a guy with a huge penis will always be great.  The reality is that great sex can happen in the absence of a penis and a really big penis leads to pain rather than pleasure.