Rethinking the "Normal" Penis (Part II)

Following is a second excerpt from "Hung Like a Horse . . . or An Acorn," chapter five of Peter Lehman and Susan Hunt's Lady Chatterley's Legacy in the Movies: Sex, Brains,and Body Guys. For Part I of this series, click here.

________________

Dominant culture believes that only certain kinds of penises can bear the burden of representing masculinity and male sexuality. Such beliefs, however, negatively limit our ideas about desirable masculinity and sexual performance. A single norm such as the "large floppy penis" or the six-inch erection is the genital equivalent of the elevation of the body guy in current media narratives: a representational strategy highly invested in maintaining a belief in the importance and near magical powers of one type of man and penis, neither of which in reality possess the power representation attributes to them.

Urologists acknowledge that men with short, fully above-the-scrotum penises are normal, and we would all agree those are not large floppy organs. There is nothing wrong with those men. The problem is with singular notions of what a flaccid penis is.

The same is true with Michelangelo's David. The art historians [mentioned in Part I] were in a near panic to explain how, because of fear of battle with a giant, he could be considered normal even though he was only two and four-tenths to two and eight-tenths inches. In fact, two and eight-tenths inches is nearly double the size of some of the normal men in a recent urological study who were measured several times, presumably far from the battlefield (Shamloul). In that study, a number of men who were only one and six-tenths inches flaccid were considered "normal." Indeed, this study tells us in medical terms what anyone would see in [a] visit to the locker room. Even if David had a one and one-half inch penis that rested entirely above his scrotum, showing just a head and no shaft, there would be nothing to explain. We only think something is wrong because we expect to see something that conforms to a norm. The real question is why aren't there more, not less, men with one-and-a-half inch penises in the world of art, photography, and movies, because such men are everywhere in life?

. . . [Also] even if we thought penis size would tell us about the quality of a man's lovemaking, why do we put so much emphasis on the size of a flaccid penis since there is little correlation between flaccid and erect sizes?

. . . Kinsey (Bill Condon, 2004) is a film that provides a mature representation of a character with a small penis. The biopic-style film tells the story of the well-known twentieth-century sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson). In the scene with frontal nudity, Kinsey's assistant, Clyde Martin (Peter Sarsgaard), disrobes to sexually arouse Kinsey in a hotel room the two share on a business trip, revealing a shorter than average flaccid penis.

Indeed, he succeeds in seducing the bisexual Kinsey. Sarsgaard's penis directly challenges cultural assumptions about the desirability of the big penis, in that early in the film we see Kinsey and his newlywed wife visit a doctor to discuss their sexual problems, whereupon they learn that Kinsey's large penis is the source of her pain and their difficulties. . . . [The doctor] initially assumes that the problem is caused either by an abnormally small three-inch erect penis or a five-inch erection, which lies at the very low end of the normal range, as if he cannot imagine that an average or large penis could be the cause of such a sexual problem.

Sarsgaard's flaccid penis, on the other hand, in not only noticeably smaller than the four-inch normative flaccid penis of medical measurement but also of representation. He is at the far extreme of Kinsey, who is unusually well endowed, yet his character is highly sexual and attractive, seducing both Kinsey and later his wife. He in fact turns out to be bisexual, like Kinsey, but his small penis does not mark him as deficient, unattractive, or pejoratively deviant. Indeed, he is marked as confident in that during his seduction of Kinsey he never projects a sense of embarrassment about his body or that he will fail in his seduction – which he doesn't! He is self assured throughout.

See also the previous posts:
• Rethinking the "Normal Penis" (Part I)
• Soft
• Hard
• Not a Weapon or a Mere Tool
• Body and Soul

Images 1-4: Subjects and photographers unknown.
Image 5: Peter Sarsgaard in Kinsey (2004).
Image 6: Ronald J. Griswold.