The long and short of it

Let us take hold of a topic that has kept many an MTRCB censor, urologist and adult movie film star busy. Let us talk about penises. 

What really matters to the opposite sex when it comes to your favorite plaything since adolescence? Is it its length? Is it its girth? Is it how it looks like inside a bikini brief?

Well, let me tell you this much: your penis won’t be winning any beauty contests soon. We don’t have a bright red yellow-tipped penis accentuated by a bright purplish-pink scrotum like a mandrill does. Nor do we have a red penis with a blue scrotum highlighted by white pubic hair like a vervet monkey has. What do we humans have? Do we have any teeth on our penises? Or any spikes? Or even multicolored-tips? What did evolution end up giving us for ornamentation? An excess of foreskin.  

What we have down south is a rather sorry-looking spectacle. For the most part, it comes in a dull pink monotone, sports an unruly bush of hair, is often lethargic and smells like a urinal by the end of the day. A human penis is not really something that you would want to feature in National Geographic.

 Nor will your penis be winning any talent competitions soon. Most other primates have a penis bone and can make it stand at attention through sheer muscle control. Meanwhile, dolphins have voluntary control over the tips of their human-sized penises, which can swivel independently of the shaft. And as for the human penis? Ha! I can hardly get mine to sway to the tune of Careless Whisper.

But, my fellow men and your penises, you shouldn’t feel all that bad. There is one good thing that is going for you. Your boys are long. Pretty damn long.

According to The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature, adult human males have the longest, thickest and most flexible penises (not that our penises plan to do gymnastics or yoga any time soon) of any living primate. The results of the longest, este, largest scientific study of penis size ever conducted in the world have recently been published (and I hope the study does not include any centerfold pages). The penis proportions of 5,122 men were collected over a 25-year period at the famous Kinsey Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University and, for the test subjects’ sake, I do hope that their penises were returned to them after the study.

The results of Kinsey study were rather unremarkable: there was little variation in penis length. Two thirds of the participants fell within an inch smaller or longer than 6.14 inches at erect length (Actually, I may have to take some blame for the study’s outcome. I didn’t let them collect my penis, which led to such mediocre results. Oh, well. Nobody believes my proportions anyway. Not even my wife).

Now, before you take out some measuring tape, bond paper, a Pentel pen, masking tape and a sex scandal video to verify the results of the Kinsey study, keep your penis in your bikini briefs and ask yourself: Why does your penis have to be so damn long?

Will a long penis lead to monetary rewards? Is a long penis nature’s version of a built-in barometer (notice that I did not say “thermometer”)? Is a long penis supposed to help us pick up hard-to-reach objects?

In short, does longer mean better?

A gorilla wouldn’t think so.

A gorilla has three times a man’s body bulk. But the average size of a gorilla’s penis (and these are on good days) is two inches. But do you see the gorilla wearing codpieces or going for psychological counseling or surfing the Internet for Swedish pumps? Hell, no! And there’s a reason for this: gorillas have small phalluses because they do not compete with their genitals. Now, just to let my three female readers know, I copied that statement verbatim from the book Anatomy of Love. As I write this, I am trying to process the depth and innuendo of that statement. But frankly, I am just scared of a competition in which genitals are involved. 

Thankfully, the anthropologist Helen Fisher reveals to us that gorillas live in stable harems. And to win over a harem of come-hither gazing-female gorillas, you do not win them over with the length of your flesh club, you do so with the bulk of your body. However, for No Girlfriends Since Birth (NGSBs) who are foolhardy and desperate enough to give it a try, you might be able to wow some female gorillas with your six-inch (or so) wonder. Imagine that, a harem of gorillas at your beck and call. 

Which kind of indirectly leads me to my next point: maybe long penises evolved as a courtship display. Which sure beats giving the object of your affection some flowers and chocolates.

After all, there must be some reason why men developed conspicuous genitals other than to develop better hand-to-eye coordination. In many species of insects and primates, males have exceptionally elaborate penises. Some of their penises can do elaborate song and dance numbers. And scientists believe that these performers evolved specifically because females chose males with elaborate, sexually stimulating genitals.

In fact, anthropologist Maxine Sheets-Johnstone argued that the reason men evolved to walk upright was to make our penile display more effective (and perhaps because it was easier for men to look down instead of looking behind for your penis). For example, when a male chimp tries to solicit a female, he opens his legs, displays his erect penis, then flicks his phallus with his finger as he gazes at his potential partner. It’s that easy.

Sigh. If only we could flick our phalluses to attract our potential partners. Don’t human females realize that when we publicly display our penises to them, it is in celebration of a legacy of millions of years of evolution that men should be proud of, and not something that should lead to our arrest? Perhaps we males need more than just an awesome penile display. Perhaps we also need to wear bikini briefs, a red bandana, and have an awesome catchphrase like “Seeeezzling hot!”

Quite intimidating, I admit. Which leads us to my third point: males could have evolved large penises to intimidate other males.

In The Human Instinct, fertility specialist Robert Winston stated that a long, diabolical-looking phallus has the potential not only to attract females but also to frighten off other competing males. I know exactly what he means, I’ve been scared off by some uncircumcised penises in my lifetime. Some penises from the wrong side of town have even held me up at knifepoint. And Ron Jeremy, Peter North and George Estregan put the fear of God in me as a child, and it was not only because my folks might catch me watching triple-X videos on their Betamax machine. (May I digress and ask a philosophical question: Is there such a thing as “double-X”?)

But even scarier than George Estregan’s penis is the fourth possible reason behind a long penis: sperm competition (I told you nga already I didn’t like competition among genitals. But a competition among sperm? This is just too much). 

According to The Mating Mind, sperm competition explains the mating tactics of insects. Most female insects are highly promiscuous and copulate with several partners. After copulation, they either eject the sperm or store it for a couple of days months, or even years, while the sperm earns interest. So males are forced to compete inside the female’s reproductive tract.

A male damselfly uses his penis to scoop out the sperm of other paramours before he himself ejaculates. Some male insects try to dilute the sperm of the competition or shove it out of place. Still other species adapted for sperm competition by evolving penises with scoopers, scrapers, suckers and flagella for removing rival sperm. 

In other semi-promiscuous (whatever that term means) animal societies where a female mated with several males, it was the male who delivered his sperm closest to the uterine cervix that would have the best chance of impregnating his partner. So, unless your swimmers have the athleticism of Michael Phelps, a long phallus might have been designed to give your DNA material a head start.

Now, this leads me to my own speculations on the evolution of the human pee-pee. Firstly, I am glad that human society was not built to be overly promiscuous (whatever that means). Because if that was the case, then I would really hate to have a penis that had opposable thumbs. Secondly, if a long penis was the result of evolutionary prerogative, then the late John Holmes was probably the most evolved man in the world.

Therefore, my fellow evolved pink hairless apes, let us celebrate with what little (or what a lot) we have peeking out flaccidly from that little patch of pubic hair down there. It may not be able to do any scooping, it may not be able to do any cartwheels and it may not be in Technicolor, but it gets the job done. However, before you erect to do any damage and become as haughty as Floyd Mayweather, Sr. before the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, know that your favorite sparring partner is not on the top of the heap when it comes to the other penises of the animal kingdom. 

Blue whales and humpback whales can crush you with their penises which measure up to eight feet long. Bull elephants, on the other hand, have penises averaging five feet in length. Although the bull elephant may not be able to crush you with his penis, he can still manage to slap you around with it a couple of times. Meanwhile, the boar has an 18-inch penis that ejaculates a pint of semen. That’s some clean-up job for researchers.

But the best reason to remain humble over your little pride and joy? Scientists at the University of Alaska recently reported a specimen of the Argentine Lake Duck with a penis nearly half a meter long, the same length as his body. And — get this — its phallus is shaped like an overlong corkscrew. 

So stop intimidating those poor gorillas with your penile display, or else an Argentine lake duck is gonna come over and corkscrew you over.  

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For comments, suggestions or if you want to participate in the next Kinsey survey text <PM POGI> for Globe, Smart and Sun subscribers. Or email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net.