Published on 02/28/2007

I read once about an old aboriginal custom of matching women to men on the basis of penile and vaginal compatibility. Small, "deer" men were matched with deer women and the large, "buffalo" men were matched with buffalo women. How they came to determine just who was a "deer" woman and who was a "buffalo" woman was never disclosed and I can imagine a few "deer" women would have been somewhat dismayed at their designation. On the face of it I suppose this seems reasonable. Why have deer boy with buffalo girl when buffalo boy is the only man for the job? But it begins to break down when one remembers that the vagina is highly expandable. With a modicum of foreplay, deer woman can easily take on buffalo boy and may well prefer the experience. Those sensible communal minded natives no doubt came to this arrangement when they realized that deer boy would never make it in the open market. This was clearly a deer boy driven agenda.

This raises an interesting question. If the ideal size is larger than average, why isn't the average man larger? I suppose one could dismiss the question by answering "God likes to mess with our heads," but there is a genuine conundrum here. Our bodies have been sculpted over millennia by evolution to perfectly match form to function. And of all the forces driving evolution, none is sharper than female sexual selection. If women prefer to have sex with men with large dicks then the genes for large penises should quickly spread through the population. Every man should be packing a whopper. So why aren't they? Well, there are several theories.

Woman really don't like 'em big. This, of course, is a total lie. When was the last time you saw a five inch dildo?
Women may like a large penis but they're stuck with guy they get. Someone's got to end up with deer boy, right? Well, yes, but deer woman can also screw buffalo man on the side and con deer man into raising buffalo son. Think this doesn't happen? Wrong! It's been estimated that 15 percent of children in Britain are the offspring of someone other than their stated father. Studies have shown that women are more inclined to cheat at the peak of their ovulation. Even if the rate of cuckoldry were only 5 percent, buffalo man genes would dominate the population within 12 generations (in evolutionary terms, a blink of an eye).
Every man is already packing a whopper. This is actually true and lends some credence to the idea that there is selective pressure favoring larger penis size. After all, our closest relatives, the bonobo chimps, have penises that are substantially smaller than ours at 3 inches (and they're proud of them too). Gorillas at 1.5 inches would be the laughing stock of the shower room if they couldn't beat you to a pulp for even looking. Compared to most mammals, even deer boy is hung like a stallion. Evolutionary biologists have theorized that our relatively large penis size has evolved as part of ongoing selective pressures. Plausible enough. But again, we're talking sexual selection here, something vastly more powerful than adaptive selection. If the ideal penis size is eight inches, the top of the bell curve should be eight inches. The fact that it's not tells us that something else must be happening.
There may be selective pressure favoring bigger dicks but there are also selective pressures mitigating their size. Aha! This must be it. There is a limit to even runaway adaptation - a cost to every extra ounce of flesh we carry on our bones. It has to be fed and oxygenated. Limited resources tend to keep a lid on such extravagances. There's also a physical limit to what women could realistically accommodate. And a limit to what men can have hanging. Buffalo man with his big floppy dick may be the subject of every woman's fantasy but sadly, buffalo man didn't make it when the hunting party was forced to flee through the brambles (ouch). So okay, twelve inch dicks are probably out. But what about an eight inch dick? Okay... brambles again, but why not a big dick that collapses to a nub when not aroused? And how about thickness? In any size survey, women invariably choose girth over length. Why isn't the penis thicker?
The genes for dick size are passed down through the mother. Deer woman may sleep with buffalo man but give birth to... sigh... deer boy. Proponents of this theory (this is a bar table theory only. No serious scientist would advance it) speculate that the genes for penis size, like the gene for hemophilia, are located on the X chromosome. Because a woman has two X chromosomes and a man only one, a woman may mate with buffalo man but his buffalo dick genes will lose out in the long run. But anyone who knows anything about Mendelian genetics will recall that that while none of buffalo man's sons will have his buffalo dick genes, half of his daughters will. And so will half of their sons. All things being equal, as long as women prefer buffalo dicks, buffalo dick genes should propagate.
Dick size isn't genetic at all. It's determined by hormones in utero. We are all, by default, female. What turns a relatively tiny clitoris into a strapping great dick are androgens - male hormones, generated at a critical point in gestation. In fact there are women who are genetically male but phylogenically female because of a mutation that renders them androgen insensitive. There are also studies that suggest homosexuality in rats can be induced by exposing the mothers to stress at a critical point in gestation. Which is all fine and dandy, but the problem with applying this to dick size is that while the mother's hormones have an influence on gestational development, masculinization is turned on by the fetus itself, through a complex interplay of its own genes. While it's possible that because your mother was late for work at a critical juncture, you now have a piddly dick, dick size in the larger population is still genetically determined.

So where does this leave us? None of these theories by themselves can explain why we're not all walking around with whoppers in our pants. But perhaps the final result involves an interplay of all the factors. Women may prefer big dicks, but their choice of mate is more varied and complex. As one woman said to me, it's not what's inside you, it who's inside you. This would go for the men they choose to have affairs with as well. In other words, dick size is a factor, but it's not the factor. Other adaptive pressures come into play and before you know it you've got a bunch of deer boys running around. Either that or maybe God really is just messing with our heads.

The Broken Penis

Years ago, when I was a young man and National Lampoon was still funny; the magazine published a fold-out poster of a man in a ski lodge surrounded by a bevy of buxom ski bunnies. The man had a large cast on his penis and a larger smile on his face as the bunnies gathered to sign the cast. But in case any of you lonely snowboarders out there are thinking of slamming a door on your dick to effect a similar response, you may want to reconsider. For one thing, you don't get a cast. For another, it hurts like hell.

Penile fracture is rare (only 1,331 cases reported in 2001) but it does occur, probably more often than it's reported. You may wonder how this is possible given that the penis, even when it's erect, is little more than an inflated balloon - there's no bone inside. But as the saying goes, you either bend or you break, and the same principle applies to dicks. Sufficient rigidity and sufficient force are all it takes.

What "breaks" is the tunica albuginea, the tough fibrous tissue that sheaths the spongy corpus cavernosa. The tunica albuginea is normally strong and flexible. If it wasn't, Puppetry of the Penis would be more like the Hannibal Lecter show. But as the penis elongates during erection the sheath becomes stretched thin. It's still strong and it takes a considerable force to tear it but it's an inconvenient fact that the tunica albuginea is at its most vulnerable just when the penis is hard and capable of breaking.

In mild cases of penile fracture the tunica albuginea is the only penile component that's compromised. More often, the corpus cavernosa is ruptured as well. Given that the cavernosa at this point it suffused with blood, its rupture leads to the rapid outflow of blood into the surrounding tissue. Erection is lost immediately and the affected area becomes bruised and swollen - it's sometimes referred to as an "eggplant deformity," owing to the shape and discoloration. I've seen the pictures and it ain't pretty. No ski bunny is going to want to look at it, let alone sign it. In severe cases (approx. 10 percent), the urethra itself is ruptured and blood can flow out of the urethral opening. That's pretty bad but luckily that's about as bad as things get. In none of the reported cases was the outer skin torn. Your penis may break but it's not going to break off.

Not surprisingly, the highest incidence (33 percent) of penile fractures occurs during sex. The main culprit seems to be the woman-on-top position and it's easy to see why. When she's doing the ol' urban cowboy on you, things can slip out. The stats didn't breakdown into which way the woman was facing but given the underlying physics it probably doesn't matter. It's gravity times mass coming down on your upright dick; and as the song goes, "when an irresistible force meets an immovable object... something's gotta give."

Of course, if one-third of fractures occur during sex, that means two-thirds don't, and given that a penis can only break when it's erect, you gotta ponder at the kind of misadventures some guys get into. Reports include turning over in bed (yeah, right), falling while putting on clothes and excessive force used to conceal an erection. The latter is responsible for most of the penile fractures reported in the Middle East where men live in crowded conditions and wear loose clothes that are inclined to "tent."

Other stated causes include industrial accidents, gunshot wounds, sex-play (as opposed to intercourse) and well... you name it. If you can imagine it, it's probably been done. One reported incident occurred in a corral with a 36 year old ranch-hand. A horse was apparently involved. Enough said about that.

So, let's say your partner and you are playing bucking bronco. She gets thrown and comes down hard. What happens next? According to most accounts the first indication that something has gone wrong is an audible cracking sound. That's right, folks, you can actually hear your penis snap. The second thing you'll hear is a high pitched screaming sound coming from your mouth. The pain is described as - take your pick - intense, acute, severe, extreme. Seems breaking one's penis is every bit as painful as most of us imagine it would be.

Okay, so your girlfriend is crying, you're still screaming and your once mighty dick is hanging like a ripe plum. What do you do about it? Well what you shouldn't do is pop half-a-dozen painkillers and sleep on it. A broken dick is considered a medical emergency. Go to the hospital. If it isn't a full moon on a Saturday night you'll likely be seen to fairly promptly. The first order of business will likely be a cavernosography to determine the extent of the damage. Your dick will be injected with contrast dye and x-rayed. If there is significant leakage it means your corpus cavernosa has been ruptured and you could be facing surgery.

As a treatment for penile fracture, surgical intervention is relatively new. Historically, the treatment of choice for penile fractures consisted of cold compresses, pressure dressings and splinting, coupled with the requisite analgesics and anti-inflammatory medications. Prior to the 1980s this was pretty much what you got. But the complication rates for non-surgical therapies were very high (up to 53 percent). Typically, this involved penile abscess, plaque formation, painful erections, significant penile curvature and in some cases, complete erectile dysfunction.

In the bad old days when your dick broke, chances are it stayed broke. With surgery, however, the complication rate is less than 4 percent and this figure includes those cases of delayed presentation (after 48 hours) where guys were too embarrassed to check-in until their dick was well and truly fucked-up. The idea of someone slicing into your swollen prick is almost as wincing as the idea of the fracture itself but in the literature at least, direct surgical intervention is recommended by the vast majority of authors.

All-in-all the prognosis is better than it might seem. You may not get to wear a cast but you do get to have sex again. And with a dick that doesn't look like the letter "J." So with that in mind, lie back, throw caution to the wind and let your girlfriend practice her rodeo skills. You only live once.

The American Penis: In Circumcision We Trust

In the mid 20th century the vast majority of males in the English speaking world were circumcised shortly after birth. By the end of the century the percentage (excepting the U.S.) hovered in the single digits. In New Zealand and Britain the neo-natal circumcision rate is below one percent. It is a stunning reversal, a medical about-face in the same league as Thalidomide. But it didn't happen overnight. It happened in different times and places for different reasons.

In Britain, the procedure was de-listed by the National Health Service (NHS), following the publication of Douglas Gairdner's article, The Fate of the Foreskin, which was perhaps the first substantive criticism of prophylactic circumcision. The rate of circumcision dropped sharply after the NHS stopped subsidizing it, suggesting that while parents might have been comfortable with hacking a chunk from their baby's penis, they weren't actually prepared to pay for it.

In 1970 an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Fetus and Newborn Infants declared that there were "no valid medical indications for circumcision in the neo-natal period." In the face of reactive criticism the AAP subsequently appointed a task force to study the issue. The task force largely reiterated the earlier findings and suggested that "good hygiene would offer all the advantages of routine circumcision." Ultimately however, the AAP, ever politically mindful, recommended that the decision be left to the parents and doctors of the newborn. But given cultural inertia and the financial self-interest of the doctors, it's perhaps not surprising that routine circumcision continued more or less unabated in Canada and the U.S. It's also debatable how widely-read the report was, after all, the publications of the AAP don't often figure in bestseller lists. And in any case, it would take more than the watery recommendations of an esoteric task force to change the direction of a juggernaut like routine infant circumcision.

But the cultural tide did begin to turn in the early eighties. In 1980, Edward Wallerstein, a secular Jew, published Circumcision: An American Fallacy. Although not widely read at the time, the book represented the first unambiguous broadside directed at the practice of routine circumcision. Other anti-circumcision tracts followed, but nobody was more influential in the anti-circumcision movement than a nursing student named Marilyn Milos. In a 2002 interview with Cat Saunders, Milos described witnessing her first infant circumcision...

...the baby let out a piercing scream - his reaction to having his foreskin pinched and crushed as the doctor attached a clamp to his tiny penis. The infant's shriek intensified when the doctor inserted an instrument between the foreskin and the head of the penis, tearing them apart. Then the baby started shaking his head back and forth - the only part of his body he could move - when the doctor used another clamp to (lengthwise) crush the foreskin, which he then cut. This made the foreskin opening large enough to insert a circumcision instrument designed to prevent the head of the penis from being severed during the surgery. During the last stage of the operation, the doctor crushed the foreskin against the circumcision instrument, and then, finally, amputated it. By that time, the baby was limp, exhausted, spent. To see part of a baby's penis being cut off - without anesthesia - was shocking. Even more shocking was the doctor's comment, barely audible under the piercing screams of the infant: "There's no medical reason for doing this."

Milos was transformed by the incident. She began a campaign to inform parents at the hospital where she worked of the trauma their infant sons would face. One can imagine this was the last thing parents, who had already decided on circumcision, wanted to hear. The hospital brass told her to keep her mouth shut so she made a video of a circumcision. When told that the video was too much for parents to see, Milos retorted; "Then, it's too much for a baby to endure!" The hospital did what any organization does when faced with an employee telling a stark and disquieting truth - they fired her. Far from shutting her up though, the dismissal gave Milos the time and energy to pursue her crusade unfettered. In 1986, she formed the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), a coalition made up of anti-circumcision activists.

From its inception NOCIRC proved adept at grass roots organization and self-promotion. Perhaps no single entity has done more to place circumcision within an ethical rights based frame of reference: boys had the right to an intact foreskin. Parents and doctors had NO right to subject children to the pain of surgery and the permanent loss of this birthright. This shift to a moralistic perspective allowed passion to enter the debate and, as anyone who has witnessed an anti-globalization rally can attest, moral indignation can be powerful force.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of Marilyn Milos and NOCIRC volunteers, infant circumcision became a salient issue with surprising speed. Scarcely a year after NOCIRC was formed; Phil Donahue devoted an entire hour to the debate. A year later the man who came to define pediatric medicine, Dr. Benjamin Spock, reversed his original position and came down hard against infant circumcision. "Leave his poor little penis alone," implored the eminent Dr. Spock. By the 1990's, the anti-circumcision movement was a global force. The first International Symposium on Circumcision held in 1989 adopted a declaration of basic rights and NOCIRC is now a member of the International Coalition for Genital Integrity, an umbrella organization for anti-circumcision groups worldwide.

NOCIRC, which now boast 110 centers, spawned a veritable alphabet soup of similar minded organizations, each sporting a clever acronym. There's the National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males (NOHARMM - Get it? The first dictum of medicine: "First do no harm") Then there's Doctors Opposing Circumcision (DOC), Musicians United to Stop Infant Circumcision (MUSIC), and of course the National Organization for Restoring Men (NORM), a support group for men who want to restore their foreskins.

But the problem with any moralistic cause is that it's often defined (or hijacked) by zealots who take positions that are so freakishly out-there, they alienate those who might otherwise join the movement. Such may be the case with those who suggest that the psychological shockwaves of infant circumcision are life-long, and are in part responsible for the violence endemic in American society. The case apparently hinges on the fact that America is one of the very few countries where the majority of males are still routinely circumcised at birth and America is violent so... hey, connect the dots.

The argument loses its foundation, however, when one considers that other countries that still practice universal infant circumcision - South Korea being the obvious example - are largely non-violent. Ditto for the Jews who - Book of Joshua aside - are not generally defined by their murderous rampages. For the men who claim to feel "overwhelming fury, rage and a desire for vengeance, desire to torture, maim and utterly destroy any human being who ever had anything to do with performing, ordering or requesting circumcision," I'm going to suggest other contributory issues may be at work.

Despite the fact that international sentiment has turned decidedly against the practice, routine infant circumcision continues to have its defenders. In fact, one could say a backlash to the backlash has begun to take root. Several websites are devoted to the promotion of infant circumcision and there are indications that rates in the United States may actually be increasing. Next week, thin as it may be, I'll present the case for circumcision.