Not that Durex and the DPS have not taken safeguards against humorists and delusionists. Are penises, then, like people, getting bigger? If men’s ears have pricked up at this point, the answer is no: The depersonalised and anonymous nature of the Internet almost certainly explains the apparent increase. The bulk of Kinsey’s data came from self-measurements (marked off on the edge of returned postcards) all the data in the Durex and the Definitive Penis survey undertakings were collected in this way-the DPS giving the average erection as 6.3 inches, with Durex giving it as 6.4. The problem for researchers has been that they have had to rely on participants providing their own measurements.

In the round, the institute found that 18 in 1,000 men have an erection over the median Durex and the Definitive Penis propose this figure to be between four and eight times greater. And where the institute’s data showed that erections above 9 inches are so rare (a word, incidentally, that Kinsey himself always used rather than “big”) as to be statistically immeasurable, both surveys have suggested that 1 in 100 men posts double figures. But Durex and the Definitive Penis Internet surveys, while stressing that their core findings are consistent with Kinsey, have cautiously proposed that there are more very big penises-between 4 and 7 in every 100 men reaching 8 inches, between 30 and 40 in every 1,000 reaching 9, and between 10 and 30 in 1,000 reaching beyond. When the Kinsey Institute reviewed its founder’s data 30 years after it was published, in the light of subsequent findings, it showed that 1 in 100 men reaches beyond the 5- to 7-inch erectile median to 8 that 7 in 1,000 men go beyond 8 and only 1 in 1,000 touches 9. But there should be solace for the average man in knowing that he is statistically within touching distance, as it were, of some 90 percent of all his fellows. Many American men, according to the Kinsey Institute, believe the average erection is 10 inches-this despite (or because of) frequently accessing Internet pornography in which participants have shaved off their pubic hair to increase visibility and many have used a vascular device to pump up temporarily. Even the most balanced of men is capable of half-believing he is under-endowed. The most frequent question on all Internet Q-and-A sex sites continues to be, “Is size important?” A downloadable chart of four outline drawings (“low average” to “extraordinarily large”) can be found on the net, which a man can print out and use as a template against which to judge himself. And yet … he can’t help believing that it is. His common sense tells him that it will certainly not be the major or controlling factor in a woman’s response to him. Intellectually, a man knows that the size of his penis shouldn’t be specifically relevant in a relationship, to him or to a woman.

Excerpted from God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penisby Tom Hickman, out now from Soft Skull Press.

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