"Small penis energy": why we shouldn't perpetuate phallic size as a source of ridicule

Andrew Tate went for wool and came out shorn.

The former British-American wrestler,

of toxic masculinity and climate change denier, woke up one fine day wanting a fight, looked on social media for a scapegoat on which to vent his anger and thought of Greta Thunberg.

Tate assumed that the usually energetic and vehement Swedish activist would be easy prey for her sarcasm and tried to provoke her with a somewhat infamous tweet: "Give me an email address where I can send you the list of my 33 cars, all they are very polluting”.

The 15-year-old Thunberg might have been outraged at this display of arrogance and dubious taste.

But the 19-year-old, much more seasoned in Internet brawls, limited herself to glaring at Tate with a memorable reply: "Of course, enlighten me: smalldickenergy@getalife.com (something like energiadepenequeño@buscateunavida.com)."

Technical KO?

Judging by the reaction of the majority of Internet users, without a doubt.

Tate had not boasted on this occasion of the size of his penis, but rather of the power of his car, which, as the psychologist and humorist Flavia dos Santos points out, "comes to the same thing."

Big, powerful, loud cars are often seen as attributes of masculinity, sort of like the feathers with which peacocks try to overwhelm potential mates in galliform courtship rituals.

With her blunt reply, Thunberg hit the nail on the head: the phenomenon of overcompensation, that is, the tendency to boast about the horsepower of your car (or money, or lack of sensitivity and scruples) on the part of of those who hide deep insecurities.

A few so much and others so little

Tate took the blow badly and went into delirium mode, adding to his embarrassment.

Perhaps he could have tried the countercultural strategy of making himself dignified and reproaching Thunberg for settling a controversy by bringing up the (alleged) size of the penis of his interlocutor.

Even if it hadn't worked: social networks are well aware of Latto, the rapper from Columbus, Ohio, and her song

, in whose chorus the expression big dick energy appears, an attempt to heal the scars of a wounded masculinity.

It was clear to everyone what Greta was talking about.

Yes, please do enlighten me.

email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022

Beyond the anecdote, if this crossing of Twitter slaps in a corner of the network makes something clear, it is that the stigma of the small penis is still in force.

Or, put another way, that some men continue to be mortified by the suspicion (or the certainty) of having a below-average copulatory and urinary organ.

The subject has been studied extensively.

Among the most humorous studies is that of Christopher Morris-Roberts, a doctor and professor of sports sociology who demonstrated in 2014, with a field survey, that British athletes, whatever their sexual orientation, continue to look askance at men's penises. his teammates in the dressing room to compare it with his own.

What's more, Morris-Roberts also concluded that in the phallocratic regime that, in his opinion, still prevails in the sports locker room, a small penis is associated with excess body fat, lack of bellows, lack of ambition and even poor lifestyle habits. healthy.

Of course, the expert, as a good graduate in podiatry that he is, took the opportunity to deny an urban legend with a lot of prestige: there is no correlation, neither direct nor approximate, between the size of the feet and that of the penis.

Tell me how tall you are and I'll tell you what you charge

Another delusional-looking study?

Let's see what you think of this: yes, there is a correlation between the virile member and the salary.

But it's not what some of you may be imagining.

In reality, Americans with small penises charge much more.

Those who move in the 7-8 centimeter range, that is, the micropenis threshold, earn an average of $76,000 per year, while those who exceed 17 centimeters earn 50,300.

The data was provided by a digital bazaar,

, and was replicated somewhat uncritically by newspapers such as the

(VI) or

The

Andrew Tate, left, before he became a controversial celebrity, during his stint on the British edition of 'Big Brother' ('Big Brother') in 2016. Karwai Tang (WireImage)

It is, most likely, one of the many “absurd or spurious” correlations that social scientist Carl Bergstrom denounces in his book

Calling

World

.

And it has, as the journalist Ben Cost points out, a possible sensible and mundane explanation: "men who earn less money tend to boast more about the size of their penis."

Or maybe the opposite is true: it's those who assume their penis is small who tend to brag more about the money they earn.

By now, some of you may be asking a troubling question: what is meant by a small penis?

The answer is not simple, because, as the journalist Clár McWeeney recalls, "big and small are deliberately vague categories that arise from the imperfect intersection between biological realities and social expectations."

In other words, before ruling that a penis is too small, "one should consider what the organ itself is for and what are the minimum dimensions it needs to be able to perform its function."

A "functional" penis is one that serves to urinate without problems.

And if it is also suitable for coitus, it is also sexually functional.

If we talk about the standard dimensions, the world average stands at 13.58 in 2022, although with very significant geographical variations, from the 17.61 centimeters registered in Ecuador to the 10.4 in Cambodia.

Spain, with 13.85 centimetres, is a bit above the average, roughly in line with Western European countries such as Belgium, Ireland or the United Kingdom, but well behind the 15.35 attributed to the Italians. and the 15.74 of the French.

And yes, we are talking about erect penises.

Of course, industries such as pornography, erotic literature or conventional cinema have given us very different impressions.

It is enough to glean the stories published on a popular erotic narrative page in Spanish to stumble over and over again with phrases like this: "I have a normal penis, barely 20 centimeters."

Well no, gentleman: you have a manly member well above the average, worthy of a very well endowed Ecuadorian.

(Almost) any penis will do

The sexologist Eva Moreno is blunt: "Penises of 20 centimeters or more may be abundant in porn, but they are completely rare in everyday life."

What's more, she remains to be seen, "to what extent are they fully functional, since they can create discomfort and, in some cases, make intercourse difficult and make it painful or less pleasant."

This figurine of a man with a disproportionately large penis, dated to around 100 BC, shows that the mythology surrounding phallic size goes back a long way.Unknown (Heritage Images via Getty Images)

Despite everything, Moreno believes that "reasonable and satisfactory" use can be made, both in civil life and "in sex conceived as a game", of an above-average penis.

Also a small one.

For her, "size does not matter, or matters rather little."

Another thing is that a substantial number of men "continue to suffer the ravages of a deficient psychosexual and affective education, which is provided by the heteropatriarchy, and they feel frustrated, dysfunctional and incomplete if they do not live up to a toxic fantasy, that of the huge penises that porn sells us.”

She encounters it daily, both in her office and in the sex shop she owns: “Most of those who suffer from that small penis stigma ask me for effective methods to fulfill their fantasy of powerful masculinity.

And my job is to tell you that there aren't.

Yes, they can take an Andean maca pill, which increases muscle irrigation, or a Viagra to promote and maintain an erection.

And in an extreme case they can resort to invasive surgery and put on a prosthesis.

But the sad truth, or the good news, depending on how you look at it, is that they don't need it, because it is the emotional baggage associated with unrealistic expectations and an unfair stigma that makes them not accept themselves as they are and that causes them, in many cases, sexual performance problems such as erectile dysfunction.”

For Moreno, the diagnosis is clear: “Nothing bad happens to the vast majority of penises.

Even a micropenis can be perfectly functional in the context of a richer, more varied sexuality, less focused on intercourse and more on communication, play and empathy."

After all, "if two women can pleasure each other, why couldn't a man satisfy his partners, whatever the size of their penis?"

Back and forth pleasures

Moreno invites men, especially young men, "to stop perpetuating stereotypes and look at an open, sincere and trauma-free sexuality, a field in which many women are already settling."

The challenge is to "overcome once and for all the sentimental havoc caused by those group masturbations in high school, that sidelong look at the size of your partner's penis in the bathroom or in the showers, that first emotionally immature couple who it created traumas and insecurities because, perhaps unintentionally, it charged you with the responsibility of satisfying it”.

He also recommends "relativizing porn, understanding once and for all what it is and what it is for."

It's a fantasy".

It is not a sex education school, but we have turned it into something similar "because of our inability to introduce healthy, sensible, and realistic content on sexuality into the educational curriculum."

In the same way that superstition proliferates when there is no science, "sexual obscurantism grows in the vacuum that we adults create by not finding the appropriate way to educate children, adolescents and young people about sex, each according to their level of knowledge." maturity and evolutionary moment”.

Elena Requena, also a sexologist, agrees that, as a society, "we continue to associate masculinity and power with the size of the penis."

This is due to a cultural stereotype of sexual potency and reproductive capacity that is the result of specific historical circumstances: "In ancient cultures, such as that of classical Greece, small penises were considered more harmonious and were associated with ideals of beauty and wisdom", an idea recovered later "by the art of the Renaissance", very little slave to contemporary phallocentric logic.

Topics of extreme toxicity

Among the men who come to the Requena clinic with doubts about the suitability of their penis, "those who perfectly fit the average dimensions predominate, but are still convinced that they do not measure up."

This distorted vision is fueled by both social prejudices "and the type of pornography that is consumed."

In the absence, once again, of "inclusive and quality sexual education, erotic encounters between individuals continue to be burdened by the weight of false expectations."

Requena categorically affirms that "we must banish once and for all that idea that the bigger the penis, the more masculine or the better lover its owner will be, because it is not like that at all."

The sexologist refuses to enter the thorny issue of standard sizes.

In her opinion, she is of no real importance: "All penises can give pleasure to the extent that they are part of a body that our sexual partners can find desirable."

Furthermore, "from an anatomical point of view, in the case of vaginal penetration, it is the initial third (that is, the first five or six centimeters) that has sensitivity and, therefore, provides pleasure in a relationship with coitus." ”.

So far, what sexology has to say about it.

The rest is simply a matter of individual preference: "There will be people who find a penis of certain dimensions more attractive, but that is highly variable."

In order to allow ourselves the luxury of enjoying, once and for all, unprejudiced sexuality without traumatic emotional ballasts, we must ignore, according to Requena, "counterproductive and dangerous messages" such as the one transmitted to us by

porn "with its fixation on large penises ” (XI).

Although the problem is not so much the porn itself "as the lack of reliable information to dispel misconceptions."

Sex education should be "the cornerstone on which to lean so that no man becomes traumatized by the dimensions of his penis."

Not even those who compensate for possible deficiencies by boasting about how much their motorized fleets pollute.

They too, in the opinion of the sexologist, have the right to "feel desirable and relate to themselves in a more amiable way."

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