The Burden Of Bearing A Massive Penis

[Reverend AtheiStar]

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comment..._massive_penis/

 

The burden of bearing a massive penis

 

Maybe half of my audience here will be familiar with this problem. You're a man, and you're hauling this massive, ummm, package around in your pants everywhere you go. Other men fear you, while the women worship youyet at the same time, your e-mail is stuffed to bursting with strange people making friendly offers to help you make it even bigger. It's a dilemma; you think you would be even more godlike if only it were larger, but could there possibly be any downside to it? (There is a bit of folk wisdom that inflating it drains all the blood from the brain, but this is clearly false. Men who are stupid when erect are also just as stupid when limp.)

 

A couple of recent studies in fish and spiders have shown that penis size is a matter of competing tradeoffs, and that these compromises have evolutionary consequences. Guys, trash that e-mail for penis enlargement servicesthey can make you less nimble in pursuit of the ladies, or worse, can get you killed.

 

Spiders don't have penises, actually; the analogous structures are modified mouthparts called pedipalps that the male charges up with sperm and inserts into the female's ventral opening to inseminate her. (More details on spider sex can be found in the article Spider Kama Sutra). The palps of male spiders have often evolved into quite intricate structures that are keyed to the details of the female's genital opening.

 

Many spiders exhibit sexual dimorphism as well, typically with the female much larger than the male. In spiders of the genus Tidarren, this trend is carried to an extreme, with males that may be 1% of the female's size. Here's a photo of one of these little guys clinging to his girlfriend's underside, copulating frantically (there is cause for hurry, since she might decide to eat him). While on the one hand the threat of cannibalism might be a reason to be inconspicuous and unnoticed, on the other the male needs to make species-specific displays in order to get so intimate with his mate, and needs pedipalps that she will recognize. Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing overmuch, but there may also be personal reasonswho wants to be so tiny that the female doesn't even notice when you're mating?

 

 

Male and female T. sisyphoides in copula. The minute male (indicated by the arrow) on the female's ventrum is 1% of the female's mass. (The scale bar represents 1 mm.)

 

Anyway, Tidarren has huge pedipalps. In the photo A below, they are the two gigantic balloon-like structures protruding to the left. Together, they're about the size of his head, and make up about 10% of his mass!

 

http://pharyngula.org/images/tidarren_palps.jpg

 

A male T. sisyphoides before (A) and after ( removing a pedipalp. Note the pedipalps overlap in the two-pedipalp condition (A), whereas the one pedipalp is carried in a central position after pedipalp removal (. (The scale bars represent 1 mm.)

In B above, we see a curious thing. Spiders have pairs of pedipalps. Shortly after the adult molt, male T. sisyphoides trap one in a bit of spider silk and twist it off. Voluntarily. A kind of willing hemipenectomy. One has to cringe at the thought, but I suppose I can sympathizeif I had a pair of penises the size of volleyballs and weighing 10 pounds each attached to my cheeks, I might want to get rid of one, too.

 

The question is, what do the spiders gain from this truncation? Vastly improved athletic performance, it turns out.

 

The authors measured their peak speed in short sprints, and found that it shot up from 2.7±0.2 cm/s to 3.8±0.3. They also had impressive improvements in endurance. They'd chase spiders with a soft brush until the poor fellows collapsed in exhaustion and would move no more. Spiders with two intact pedipalps would flop down after 17 min 30 s±55 s. Lose one palp, and they could keep running for 28 min 30 s±45 s. Even more severe, spiders with two palps died 53% of the time after collapsing, while the unipalp runners only died 12% of the time.

 

Note that these spiders have unusually massive intromittent organs, and these kinds of performance enhancements would not be achievable in peoplethese results have no bearing on Lance Armstrong's situation, nor should anyone fear their track coach showing up with a scalpel.

 

What about vertebrates, then? In another paper, the authors examined the size of the gonopodia in male Gambusia affinis and G. hubbsi, the familiar mosquitofish. The gonopodium is a modified pelvic fin that is used as an intromittent organ, and is a penis-like structure. Different populations exhibit different sizes of gonopodia, and those size differences are retained in the laboratory, so this is a heritable property. Take a look at these representative specimens; which do you think would be more desirable to the ladies, the hunk in A, or the puny girly-fish in B?

 

 

Representative laboratory-reared G. affinis males derived from predator-free (A) and predator ( populations. Arrows indicate the gonopodia. Note the larger gonopodium in A. (Bar, 5 mm.)

 

The authors tested whether size makes a difference in a clever way, with fish porn. You can show fish videos of other fish, and they react to the images as they would to the real thing, approaching and trying to interact with them. They showed female fish two videos of a male fish, one unretouched, and the other completely identical except that the gonopodium was digitally enhanced to be 15% larger.

 

Given a choice, females flirted with the large-gonopodium male 81% more often than the small-gonopodium male. You knew that would be the case, didn't you?

 

Before you rush to open those penis-enlarger ads, though, that advantage doesn't come for free. They also measured burst-speeds in startle-escape responses, the fast tail-flick dart fishes use to get away from the lunge of predatorsand the large-gonopodium fish were significantly slower. That large object hanging off the fish represents a good bit of drag, reducing speed, maneuverability, and endurance, and may also be something to catch the eye of predators.

 

This study went a step further and looked to see if gonopodium size has consequences in the real world. They sampled populations from lakes and ponds that were either free of piscivorous predators (the open bars in the chart below), or contained beasts that would chow down on Gambusia (the black bars), and measured gonopodium size. Males in predator-free waters had gonopodia that were on average 12% larger than their more harried conspecifics.

 

 

Divergence in gonopodium size, controlling for body size, between predator regimes in G. affinis (A) and G. hubbsi (. Data were pooled across years for both species. Least-squares means ± 1 standard error from ANCOVAs are depicted. Open bars represent predator-free populations, and filled bars represent predator populations.

 

The lesson is clear. If you live in an environment where you can afford to be slow and lazy, sexual selection can take over: the females will preferentially mate with the fish with the larger gonopodia, driving up the average size over generations. If you have to be nimble and swift to stay alive, natural selection will cull out the males with oversized genitals.

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Langerhans RB, Layman CA, DeWitt TJ (2005) Male genital size reflects a tradeoff between attracting mates and avoiding predators in two live-bearing fish species. PNAS 102(21):7618-7623.

 

Ramos M, Irschick DJ, Christenson TE (2004) Overcoming an evolutionary conflict: Removal of a reproductive organ greatly increases locomotor performance. PNAS 101(14):4883-4887.

[sonofspong]

Guys often brag about dick size, but in reality it seems that a huge dick is nothing but problems. I had a friend who was supposedly very large (I had never seen it, so don't ask) He said his huge wang was more of a burden if anything else... it got in the way, so to speak, and he couldn't wear shorts. In addition, I had a female friend who said one of her boyfriends was hung like a horse, but intercourse with him hurt. Several other women I knew have generally said huge wangs hurt, and they would prefer and average size one.

[Reverend AtheiStar]

Guys often brag about dick size, but in reality it seems that a huge dick is nothing but problems. I had a friend who was supposedly very large (I had never seen it, so don't ask) He said his huge wang was more of a burden if anything else... it got in the way, so to speak, and he couldn't wear shorts. In addition, I had a female friend who said one of her boyfriends was hung like a horse, but intercourse with him hurt. Several other women I knew have generally said huge wangs hurt, and they would prefer and average size one.

 

I've heard the same. The vagina is only 9 inches deep, anyway. Also, most importantly, it's girth that is important -- 2/3 of vagina is numb! It's the thick schlong that's not too long that wins at the end of the day, apparently!

[Thurisaz]

It's the thick schlong that's not too long that wins at the end of the day, apparently!

 

Like we say over here in Germany... "Kurz und dick - Frauenglück! Lang und schmal - Frauenqual!"

[Reverend AtheiStar]

It's the thick schlong that's not too long that wins at the end of the day, apparently!

 

Like we say over here in Germany... "Kurz und dick - Frauenglück! Lang und schmal - Frauenqual!"

 

I can see the rhyming, but what does it mean?

[Thurisaz]

It's the thick schlong that's not too long that wins at the end of the day, apparently!

 

Like we say over here in Germany... "Kurz und dick - Frauenglück! Lang und schmal - Frauenqual!"

 

I can see the rhyming, but what does it mean?

 

Pretty much the same you said...

 

"short and thick - women's joy. Long and slim - women's torment"

[Reverend AtheiStar]

It's the thick schlong that's not too long that wins at the end of the day, apparently!

 

Like we say over here in Germany... "Kurz und dick - Frauenglück! Lang und schmal - Frauenqual!"

 

I can see the rhyming, but what does it mean?

 

Pretty much the same you said...

 

"short and thick - women's joy. Long and slim - women's torment"

 

Ah, I see. Doesn't rhyme so well in English, though. lol...

[sonofspong]

I found this post on Craigslist.org. I think it fits this topic quite well.

 

 

Rant: My giant dick.

 

Where to begin? I hate my giant dick. I haven't always hated it, mind you, just for the last, oh, 17 years or so.

 

I loved my dick when I was 13 and had a nice 7 inch tool. I'd put it through its paces regularly and just couldn't wait to share it with some of my female classmates. At 14 I was starting to get just a little concerned as I then had a 9 inch member. It was great, but I was hoping for no further growth. No such luck. By the time I was 16 or 17, the growth finally ended. Unfortunately, not before I had reached my freakish proportions.

 

It's 12 inches long. It's about as big around as one of those tall cans of Coors Light (horrible beer, by the way). It doesn’t help that I’m a shower, not a grower. When flaccid it’s still 9 inches. In high school I picked up nicknames like cackyderm (creative), kickstand, and “the plunger.” I was smart, funny, athletic, and well liked, though, so the kidding was not mean spirited. I know that some awkward big dicked guys must go through much worse in high school.

 

Now, I’m sure some guys are thinking that this doesn’t sound like a problem and they wouldn’t mind swinging a stick like this around. Trust me, it sucks. To understand what it’s like to live with a giant dick you have to throw out everything you know about normal life. I love sports and athletic activities. Unfortunately, my dick loves this too and celebrates by flopping around like a frog on a frying pan. An extra large heavy-duty athletic supporter is an absolute must. Go without, and I could end up with a black eye. Of course, by the time I get everything stuffed into the supporter I look like I’ve crammed a grapefruit down my shorts in case I need a snack at half time. If the supporter fails, my dick will fly out of there like the spring snakes in one of those novelty cans of mixed nuts. I hope there aren’t any kids watching the game. I really enjoy swimming, but water + swim trunks = cling = gasps. My next house will have a pool and a tall fence.

 

How about non-athletic activities like, say, walking down the street? First off, boxers are out. No one wants to see that coming toward them. Even briefs only do a marginal job of keeping everything from swinging around. All new clothes must be tried on to see if they pass my dick visibility test (DVT). Jeans fail. Many slacks fail. Most shorts fail. Need to sit on the toilet? Hold on to snakey or he’s going swimming.

 

Fine, but it’s gotta rock in the sack, right? Wrong. Don’t get me wrong, it gets hard as a rock and stays that way, but finding someone able to work with it has been difficult. I’m a nice, attractive, and successful guy so I have met a lot of women who wanted to get down with me. That is, until they see my dick. My first time was when I was 18 with a friend’s older sister (23). The look on her face when she saw it erect was one of surprise, incredulity, and fear. To her credit, she was willing to give it a go, but it would only go so far. Guys, you know how great it feels to pound away “balls deep”? I don’t. I have yet to find a woman who can take it all. A lot of women have simply said, “Forget it” once they see it. Last month I met a really nice woman who followed me back to my place from a Belltown bar. We got close and it was getting hot until ol’ dicky came out. The look on her face was one of actual horror (you know, eyes bulged, hand over a gaping mouth). Without saying a word, she bolted up, grabbed her clothes, and was out the door. You’d think it had five dragon heads at the end (it doesn’t, by the way). How about a nice blowjob? Maybe if there were a bunch of female versions of Steve Tyler out there I’d actually be able to get one. That leaves few options. I’ve gotten very good at going down and handjobs are about all that works with most ladies. Given the crap shoot of reactions from new partners, masturbation has been my best option overall.

 

I know things could be worse. I’m 6’2” and 220 pounds, so at least it doesn’t look like an actual third leg like it would if I were 5’1”. It’s also not bent, doesn’t just get to half mast, or have any of the other physical problems a dick can have. But it’s a damn hassle every day. I’d give my left nut to give up 4 inches and some girth.

 

To those guys who wish they had a massive dick instead of their average or below average one, I say enjoy what you have. Things could be worse: your wish could come true.

[Reverend AtheiStar]

I found this post on Craigslist.org. I think it fits this topic quite well.

 

 

Rant: My giant dick.

 

Where to begin? I hate my giant dick. I haven't always hated it, mind you, just for the last, oh, 17 years or so.

 

I loved my dick when I was 13 and had a nice 7 inch tool. I'd put it through its paces regularly and just couldn't wait to share it with some of my female classmates. At 14 I was starting to get just a little concerned as I then had a 9 inch member. It was great, but I was hoping for no further growth. No such luck. By the time I was 16 or 17, the growth finally ended. Unfortunately, not before I had reached my freakish proportions.

 

It's 12 inches long. It's about as big around as one of those tall cans of Coors Light (horrible beer, by the way). It doesn’t help that I’m a shower, not a grower. When flaccid it’s still 9 inches. In high school I picked up nicknames like cackyderm (creative), kickstand, and “the plunger.” I was smart, funny, athletic, and well liked, though, so the kidding was not mean spirited. I know that some awkward big dicked guys must go through much worse in high school.

 

Now, I’m sure some guys are thinking that this doesn’t sound like a problem and they wouldn’t mind swinging a stick like this around. Trust me, it sucks. To understand what it’s like to live with a giant dick you have to throw out everything you know about normal life. I love sports and athletic activities. Unfortunately, my dick loves this too and celebrates by flopping around like a frog on a frying pan. An extra large heavy-duty athletic supporter is an absolute must. Go without, and I could end up with a black eye. Of course, by the time I get everything stuffed into the supporter I look like I’ve crammed a grapefruit down my shorts in case I need a snack at half time. If the supporter fails, my dick will fly out of there like the spring snakes in one of those novelty cans of mixed nuts. I hope there aren’t any kids watching the game. I really enjoy swimming, but water + swim trunks = cling = gasps. My next house will have a pool and a tall fence.

 

How about non-athletic activities like, say, walking down the street? First off, boxers are out. No one wants to see that coming toward them. Even briefs only do a marginal job of keeping everything from swinging around. All new clothes must be tried on to see if they pass my dick visibility test (DVT). Jeans fail. Many slacks fail. Most shorts fail. Need to sit on the toilet? Hold on to snakey or he’s going swimming.

 

Fine, but it’s gotta rock in the sack, right? Wrong. Don’t get me wrong, it gets hard as a rock and stays that way, but finding someone able to work with it has been difficult. I’m a nice, attractive, and successful guy so I have met a lot of women who wanted to get down with me. That is, until they see my dick. My first time was when I was 18 with a friend’s older sister (23). The look on her face when she saw it erect was one of surprise, incredulity, and fear. To her credit, she was willing to give it a go, but it would only go so far. Guys, you know how great it feels to pound away “balls deep”? I don’t. I have yet to find a woman who can take it all. A lot of women have simply said, “Forget it” once they see it. Last month I met a really nice woman who followed me back to my place from a Belltown bar. We got close and it was getting hot until ol’ dicky came out. The look on her face was one of actual horror (you know, eyes bulged, hand over a gaping mouth). Without saying a word, she bolted up, grabbed her clothes, and was out the door. You’d think it had five dragon heads at the end (it doesn’t, by the way). How about a nice blowjob? Maybe if there were a bunch of female versions of Steve Tyler out there I’d actually be able to get one. That leaves few options. I’ve gotten very good at going down and handjobs are about all that works with most ladies. Given the crap shoot of reactions from new partners, masturbation has been my best option overall.

 

I know things could be worse. I’m 6’2” and 220 pounds, so at least it doesn’t look like an actual third leg like it would if I were 5’1”. It’s also not bent, doesn’t just get to half mast, or have any of the other physical problems a dick can have. But it’s a damn hassle every day. I’d give my left nut to give up 4 inches and some girth.

 

To those guys who wish they had a massive dick instead of their average or below average one, I say enjoy what you have. Things could be worse: your wish could come true.

 

My wife is calling "Bullshit!" lol... She'll chime in with her criticism.