A long, hard, discussion about dick sizes in erotica.

[member9458]

So this started in the story feedback forum, in a thread talking about the joys and (mostly) pains of anonymous feedback. Turns out a few days ago, a guy with the forum handle rarmons posted this bit of feedback he recently got on a story.

http://i.imgur.com/B7fQTAO.png

For those who can't click over, I pity you, but it basically says "I'm sorry, your story is awesome, but I had to stop reading as soon as you revealed that the guy had a five inch dick. I've never been smaller than 9", so anyone that small doesn't appeal to me. Keep writing, though!"

I had to laugh, because that comment mirrored one I had gotten just days before -- except THIS dude was happy to leave a name:

http://i.imgur.com/B7fQTAO.png

He says "small dick," but my male protag was described, in hard numbers, as 6" long, 5" around. And, like the last guy, he still makes it a point to compliment me on my character's emotional development. (It's just, you know, the physical development they have a problem with.)

Now obviously I'm new here, and for all I know, the vets reading this are probably resisting the urge to pat me on the head for being so adorable. But let's talk about this, because even though it's not SO surprising that hanging your male protags like horses seems to be more for a male reader's benefit than a female's, I can't helped but be shocked about how out in the open this appears to be. You'd think a comment about a hero's inadequacy would take the form of "How the fuck is he supposed to satisfy her with that little meat? I call bullshit!" But nope: "Your story is fucking great, but I just can't relate to anyone who isn't a big-cocked dinosaur! Keep reaching for that rainbow, though!"

Let's start with the obvious question: how many authors here ever got a comment about their protagonist being too small? How many of them were from women?

(Assuming this isn't in poor taste, this may be used as material for a future submission to Reviews and Essays, because this is honestly fascinating to a sweet summer child like me.)

 

[lovecraft68]

For me it doesn't happen in either direction as I don't do 'stats' for cocks or breasts.

I'm of the school of letting the reader picture what they like. For instance, I'll say the guy has a sizable cock. So what's sizable? Some women may think that's 8" or so....a size queen may picture 10"...

Same for breasts, "Ample, small, perky tits, 'impressive chest' on the larger side, not exactly big, but more than a mouthful etc...

So I let the reader visualize what they think all those things mean.

Now that's just me and what I feel works for me, so I'm not judging how anyone does this. I will say that I do speedbump as a reader when someone calls out 9" or any size. Now if the story is good otherwise, it won't get me to stop.

But if I'm already iffy on whether or not I want to continue, and see his 10" cock, I'm going to drop it.

Again, I speak only for myself with this.

 

[sr71plt]

This long, hard discussion has been going on at Literotica as long as there has been a Literotica. I think the problem is that there are people who assume that everything written here should be written to what turns them personally on--and, I guess, by extrapolation that they falsely assume that everyone is turned on by the same images and reference indexes. They aren't. And not everything is being written to a single person's tastes, nor, I believe, should it be. Some folks are moved by words and others by images. Some writers/readers do, in fact, latch onto measurements and some don't. That doesn't mean that the ones turned on by measurements are being literal about the measurements; it means that an unusual measurement is what turns on their "turn on." There's even a difference between what straights latch on to and gays.

The bottom line is that those hammering away at not being turned on by measurements should just mind their own business and go read writers who write to what turns them on--there is no lack of stories here that would cater to them. I have never seen a post to the forum by someone saying they don't want to read anything that doesn't give its images in the form of measurement so writers should always include measurements. Maybe those are just less judgmental and pushy people than those posting ad nauseam that including measurements is an affront to the gods and every "good" writer.

 

[Serafina1210]

I've never been very explicit about penis sizes: I only mention it when they're big, and then I don't give measurements. But I did recently have occasion to look up and cite the average penis size for the American male: 5.6 inches (14.2 centimeters) in length (measured along the top) and 4.8 inches in circumference.

Now according to an article in Huffington Post (which you can easily Google), a man with a penis nine inches long when erect would be in the 99.9923th percentile--that is, 99.9923% of men have smaller dicks. I think it follows that a person who says he or she has only made love to men with nine-inch dicks or longer either 1.) spends the better part of his or her time searching out such prodigies, or (more likely) 2.) is lying through his or her teeth. I can't claim to have made a really exhaustive survey, but I'm quite sure I've never encountered a penis that size (but then the odds are against it unless you've been to bed with more than 10,000 men).

That said, a great many readers like big penises in their erotic fantasies--and who are we to deny them? I've noticed, though, that small-dick stories often do rather well in the Fetish category.

(BTW, Sir Richard Burton, the Victorian translator of the Arabian Nights, claimed to have gone all over Africa measuring men's penises, and he claimed to have confirmed what modern statistics denies, that black men have bigger dicks than white men. That's not what interests me, though, as much as the question how did he manage to do all that measuring? How did he persuade the men to cooperate, and how did he go about getting them ready for measurement? I don't recall that he ever explained.)

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, Christ almighty. Here we go again.

 

[OliviaM]

Never commented or gotten comments. In my story, I wanted to say the guy had an average sized penis, but saying "average" in erotica seems to equal "meh", so I think I went more vague than that. But it's stupid, because average is just... the average. Meaning normal. Meaning absolutely right for whatever you need it for. In what I'm working on now, the guy is bigger, so I used the phrase "above average". I'm hoping that's specific enough.

Serafina1210: I'm picturing Sir Richard Burton going around Africa. "Sir, may I stroke your penis until it is at length? No, really! My interests are purely scientific.... oh, really? Well, since we are here...."

 

[Jay321]

For me it doesn't happen in either direction as I don't do 'stats' for cocks or breasts.

I'm of the school of letting the reader picture what they like. For instance, I'll say the guy has a sizable cock. So what's sizable? Some women may think that's 8" or so....a size queen may picture 10"...

I'm with Lovecraft on this one. When I read a story on here, and the author starts describing that 11.5' penis and the 38H breasts, I'm pretty much done with the story.

I go light on the physical description, let the reader plug in what they like. I rarely even give blonde/brunette/redhead. If I did, the world would be overran with redheads. What if someone reading my story was turned off by a redhead?

 

[HandsInTheDark]

I'm with Lovecraft on this one. When I read a story on here, and the author starts describing that 11.5' penis and the 38H breasts, I'm pretty much done with the story.

This. I don't write measurements, I barely describe my males much at all, and while I've been known to allude to big dicks on some of my scarier male protagonists, no one is about to break out a ruler when they meet one. (My characters have other concerns at that point.) I do describe most of my females as pretty, because it's worked for the romance novel industry for decades and I trust their market research on this. But dimensions never come up unless I need to make a point (height differences can be important for setting tone - females are very aware of the generally larger and taller size of males and respond accordingly).

I simply don't get the 38H breasts thing. It screams overzealous augmentation, and all my female characters have more dignity and sense than that.

 

[tw_holt]

It might've already been said....

I stopped including measurements of breasts and penises. I'll say something is "big" which could mean whatever a reader wants. Same thing with "thick." What's thick to someone may not be to another. The reader can imagine their version of big or thick. I only state measurements when it comes to a character's height.

 

[Hypoxia]

In a couple early stories I gave non-huge dick measurements. I've never written a bust size. In a few stories I'll give stats like "She's shoulder height to his over-six-foot frame" or "The sisters stood an inch each side of five-and-a-half feet." Other than that, I'm quite ambiguous, or I use fruit or animal metaphors. 'Horsecock' and 'melons' acceptable, or my favorite:

Theirs was the stuff of legend. He was just another dusty saddle tramp with a battered Stetson, a dented Sharps carbine, a mouse-eaten bedroll, and a huge ten-pound sausage of a schlong. She was a well-worn saloon floozy with a cunt the size of Carlsbad Caverns. They were a perfect pair.​

Who needs measurements?

 

[Handley_Page]

In a couple early stories I gave non-huge dick measurements. I've never written a bust size. In a few stories I'll give stats like "She's shoulder height to his over-six-foot frame" or "The sisters stood an inch each side of five-and-a-half feet." Other than that, I'm quite ambiguous, or I use fruit or animal metaphors. 'Horsecock' and 'melons' acceptable, or my favorite:

Theirs was the stuff of legend. He was just another dusty saddle tramp with a battered Stetson, a dented Sharps carbine, a mouse-eaten bedroll, and a huge ten-pound sausage of a schlong. She was a well-worn saloon floozy with a cunt the size of Carlsbad Caverns. They were a perfect pair.​

Who needs measurements?

That's good - provided you know anything about Carlsbad caverns (although we can guess the intention). Settle for the Mersey Tunnel ?

I don't like stated dimensions. "A nice handful" of "he filled her up", is, to my mind sufficient.
However, I recall that the last time this subject was raised, I was told in no uncertain terms that there are readers for whom this information is vital.

PS. The late Spike Milligan wrote in his memoirs about a fellow soldier who was given the nickname "Plunger" on account of his penile length. He was apparently excuse from wearing shorts.

 

[oggbashan]

I wrote a story about a man with the largest one in town - without mentioning inches at all.

https://www.literotica.com/s/pride-3

 

[sr71plt]

So did I.

https://www.literotica.com/s/long-john-silverman

 

[TamLin01]

I was about to write that I'm not sure why anyone bothers with numerical measurements in stories at all. But then it occurred to me: While most of us treat cock size as a just a practical thing (as one woman memorably phrased it, "You want it big enough to feel, but not too big to fit,"), there are people for whom particularly large or particularly small cocks are a specific fetish. So for them, I suppose, a hard number is a blessing. Otherwise, it's probably not the service they're looking for.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yep, some folk (mostly always guys I suspect) need to know the tech spec stuff, just like the IT folk with their terabytes and gigahertz, and the car nuts with their cubic inches and brake horsepower. The numbers mean something to them, it's their reality overlay.

The problem for most men is that the Kinsey average is still pretty accurate (from the various data sets I've seen over the decades.... um, not personally), and doesn't align with expectations fed by porn.

I suspect every man at least once in his life has dug out the ruler, and knows exactly where he stands on the bell curve. It's the old one liner - "remember that half the people you'll ever meet will be below average...."

I was about to write that I'm not sure why anyone bothers with numerical measurements in stories at all. But then it occurred to me: While most of us treat cock size as a just a practical thing (as one woman memorably phrased it, "You want it big enough to feel, but not too big to fit,"), there are people for whom particularly large or particularly small cocks are a specific fetish. So for them, I suppose, a hard number is a blessing. Otherwise, it's probably not the service they're looking for.

 

[Kimikimidoll]

Well, I'll put my two cents in- it's not about the organ being discussed but body part sizes in general. Personally, I've noticed most men like these kinds of specifics- they like asking for the bra cup size, height, waist or hip size, and of course, the dick length. I asked why, and the reply I got was that since men are more visual creatures they need these to form a sort of picture. I think women, straight or les, are not very into these specifics; they're okay with keeping it vague.