6 Surprising Sex Facts And Myths About Penises, From Size To Porn Representation
Most of us first learned about sex from our 10-year-old best friends in the late hours of an elementary school slumber party. As we grew up, we learned to separate the fact from fiction when it came to sex, but some myths, particularly those regarding the penis, have stayed through the ages. Now let’s set the record straight on this important organ once and for all.
You Know What They Say About Men With Big Feet
It’s a phrase we’re all familiar with, but believe it or not, penis size has pretty much no correlation with shoe size or the size of any other body part. In 1993, two Canadian doctors measured the height, foot size, and slightly stretched penile length of 63 men, and although the length of the penis was linked to both height and foot size, the correlation was pretty weak, Mental Floss reported. Again, in 2002, a study from the University College Hospitals in London measured penises and feet of 104 men and found no correlation whatsoever. Basically, the research determined that the only way to truly gauge the size of a man’s package was to see it in the flesh.
Bigger Is Always Better
For the most part, penises do not vary that much in size. According to Medical News Today, the average flaccid penis is between 2.8 and 3.9 inches. The average erect penis is between 4.7 to 6.3 inches. With that being said, MNT also reported that an average of 85 percent of women report being satisfied with the size of their partner’s package. Still, time and again we hear the sex myth that “bigger is always better.” And while it's true that some women do prefer having sex with men with bigger penises, there are actually some drawbacks to packing down below.
For example, there is an interesting link between penis size and infidelity; a 2014 study found that women in a village in Kenya were more likely to cheat on men with bigger penises. The researchers found that “every one inch longer penis increased the likelihood of women being involved in extra-marital partnership by almost one-and-a-half times,” The Huffington Post reported.
According to the study, the reason that women were more likely to be unfaithful to a man with a large penis was because they associated larger penises with painful sex.
“Some penis may be large yet my vagina is small, when he tries to insert it inside, it hurts so much that I will have to look for another man who has a smaller one [penis] and can do it in a way I can enjoy,” explained one woman interviewed for the study.
If He’s Still Erect After Sex, He Wants Another Go
While Hollywood may like to glamorize a night of non-stop sex marathons, in reality it’s not this easy. Men have a limit to how often they can actually have sex, and just because a man is still erect after having just finished having sex doesn’t mean he’s ready for round two just yet.
According to Women’s Health, how long a guy can stay hard afterward depends on the quality of his blood flow, his level of arousal, and whether he has the help of a little blue pill. But whether this be five minutes or half an hour, all men need a bit of recovery time between sessions, still-erect penis or not.
Ejaculation Happens In Large Quantities
Another penis myth made more popular by pornography and hollywood is that men normally ejaculate tons of semen when they orgasm (anyone remember 2000’s ‘Scary Movie’). In reality however, men ejaculate about a teaspoon of semen per orgasm. And a teaspoon is more than enough as there are normally about 200 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate, CBS reported. However, any less than this could be a sign of an underlying health problem.
Penis Size Varies According To Race
Now, this is one that even some of the most educated and skeptical of us still go on to believe. In 2015, British researchers looked at the penis measurements of over 15,000 men from all over the world and determined that there was absolutely no correlation between race and penis size, IFL Science reported. According to the research, the average erect penis length in every country is just over 13 centimeters, or around 5 inches. And although this research did have it’s share of caveats (for example, the majority of men in this study were caucasian) other studies have also determined that the link between penis size and race is based more on myth than actual science.
You Can Take A Pill Or Cream To Make Your Penis Larger
Men have been trying to enlarge the size of their penises for centuries but there is still no “magic” pill or cream that can increase penis size. Supplements and medications like Viagra can increase nitric oxide, which improves blood flow, Women’s Health reported. Still, this is more like “inflating a tire” and doesn’t have an affect on the penis’s overall size.
Although there are countless supplements on the internet and sold at alternative medicine stores, there is no scientific evidence backing their effectiveness, and in reality, they could actually do more harm than good. An internet survey conducted by the FDA in 2009 found that one-third of supplements that claimed to improve sexual function contained undisclosed prescription drug ingredients or similar substances, Men’s Journal reported.
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