All About The PenisGay men have bigger penises. Or do they?All About The Penis Home PageOh dear. Who could make this stuff up? I sometimes wonder what these academics have to do all day, some of the stuff that they come out with. But in my fearless quest for the truth, I feel I have to bring you this material. Now, I know that this is actually unlikely, so it leaves me in a dilemma: what could possibly lie behind the assertion that gay men do indeed have bigger penises than straight men? (Especially bearing in mind that the whole range of human sexuality is so fluid, and many men are neither gay nor straight but somewhere in between.) Well, first of all you probably remember the name Alfred Kinsey. He was the pioneer American researcher who went into men and women's pants, a journey where no-one had previously dared to go. And among the data he gathered was a lot of stuff about penis size (although in truth he asked men to measure their own penises and send the results in on a postcard, but sometimes myth is more appealing than reality). And of course, being a man who wanted to know it all, he asked the men if they were gay or straight - a pretty amazing thing for the time, because many men who were gay would not have been able to articulate that fact, being married or unaware of their true orientation. So how reliable would the answer to that question be? Who knows? But years later, this material provides ample scope for researchers with time on their hands, or, I suppose, researchers who have a point to prove. So - if you thought six inches, give or take a tenth of
an inch, was the length of the average male erection, then think again.
Averages like this are made up of groups of men, and they conceal subtle
variations in the data. Fortunately, we have
Uh-ho. First of all, can you really measure to a one-hundredth of an inch using a ruler? No? Then does that not put some doubt on the data? Well, yes, but let's press on anyway. The data is based on the archived measurements of 5,122 penises included in the Kinsey Report (measurements taken between 1938 and 1963). Men were asked to define their sexual orientation, and measure their penises (among many other things), and this is what the data, many years on, appears to show. And in fact the men were asked to measure around their penises as well.....oh dear......the same thing happens: men who are straight have smaller circumference as well as smaller length! The straight penis circumference is 4.80 inches, while the gay penis penises in at 4.95 inches. But what is going on? Why woudl this be so - if it is true at all? Bogaert says that it may have some connection to prenatal hormones which can affect the structure and size of the genitals and certain parts of the brain that determine sexual orientation. We do know that gay men seem to have certain differences in brain structure, though, like all these issues, this is a hot political potato and biologically still unresolved. However, the proponents of theories which suggest that biological factors affect sexual orientation do seem to gain some comfort here.... What, though, about the dreadful possibility that men aren't always, shall we say, totally truthful when talking about penis size? Well, the rebuttal is clear - would it make any sense for gay men to boast more about their penis size than straight men? (Er....I don't know!) And as if I'm dealing in trivialities, the mainstream media has not really reported these astonishing claims. The London Evening Standard mentioned it on August 24th 1999 but beyond that .....silence. Or maybe not.....try typing "penis size and sexual orientation into Google". |
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