In recent weeks — that is, before someone shot Trump, as I started writing this before that happened — I’ve seen more chatter about micropenises than I had in awhile. What appeared to be the source then came across my feed: A viral tweet from Twitter user Samantha that stated, “a girl NEVER forgets her first micropenis,” to the tune of over 17,000 retweets and 200,000 likes.
Micropenises are an easy target for humor and scorn. But in a world increasingly averse to punching down, why are we still entertaining this in 2024?
Let’s get the “body positivity” argument out of the way. In the age of Ozempic and filler, I’m not going to pretend the body positivity movement had any lasting effect on society, other than some clothing brands offering a wider range of sizes. And even if brands did that, they might’ve still reversed course post-dissolved Kardashian BBL.
Even in its peak, the body positivity movement barely reached men anyway. We make fun of men who are short and men with small dicks. Make no mistake: This is a function of patriarchy. Dick-measuring contests are by and large done by men themselves. While women obviously bear the brunt of misogyny and patriarchal ideals, men are also victims. Big dicks, big feet, big muscles — it all signals that you’re the most “manly” of men. Obviously, this is all very cisnormative.
As writer Temuka Zoidze said last year, the feminist movement has allowed women to reject societal beauty standards, and openly discuss their negative impacts. Men, however, remain mum about this. Regarding the big dick ideal, Zoidze wrote, “It's rare to encounter a man who openly discusses how this universal construct of masculinity has negatively affected him. What men have often delegated as the cornerstone of their identity has paradoxically become a weakness for them.”
Women feed into male beauty standards too, such as with ridiculous height requirements for dating. This is because women are taught that to be feminine is to be small, thus they must be smaller than their partner to be worthy. But this reasoning is, by and large, subconscious. They claim they “want a tree to climb” or want someone to reach items on the highest shelf.
Then there are the female “size queens,” who 1. appropriate gay slang and 2. write off anyone who may be amazing at sex — a learned skill — in favor of someone with a monster cock — which is out of anyone’s control.
That’s the tragedy of making fun of people with small/micropenises: Anyone can be great at sex, no matter their body. Anyone can suck at sex, too, but actually pleasuring one’s partner takes a back seat to Big Dick in the contest of masculinity. I’ve heard too many anecdotes of such men who are snores in bed because they think their size gives them a pass from actually learning about their partner’s anatomy and preferences.
The joke of it all is that cisgender, heterosexual women orgasm less with cishet men than they do with women and themselves. Laurie Mintz, author of the orgasm-centric book Becoming Cliterate, has asked thousands of women their “most reliable route to orgasm.” Only four percent said penetration alone. FOUR. Clit stimulation is the way for the other 96 percent, either by itself or paired with penetration. And a big dick can’t do what fingers or a toy can do in that regard, unless you tease the clit endlessly with the tip, I guess.
So someone with a monster or a micro has basically — besides that four percent — the same ability to make someone with a vulva cum. Yet, small dicks are the butt of the joke in our society. As Zoidze wrote, saying someone has a small dick is a way to demean them, to challenge their manhood.
Take Showtime’s The Curse, where an apparently essential part of Nathan Fielder’s character Asher was that he had a micropenis. In the first episode, Asher and his wife Whitney (Emma Stone) have sex. Asher uses a toy on her that they call “Steven,” while he masturbates.
Psychology of the characters aside, the scene is hot.
Why are you booing me? I’m right. The fictitious couple found things that worked for them — toys, a cuckold fantasy — and both Whitney and Asher cum. But, we do have to talk about the psychology: Whitney fantasized about having sex with another man, and she told Asher when he could watch and when he could step in. This, in conjunction with the micropenis, signaled that Asher was submissive to Whitney, somehow less of a man.
The Curse pilot aired last year, but it’s the latest example of a micropenis in mainstream media. It perpetuates that stereotype about micropenises — or, at the least, uses it as a character trait to perpetuate it to the audience. Which sucks! That sucks. The silver lining is that we did see the couple be creative in the bedroom.
If you make fun of someone with a micropenis — or refuse to sleep with them — I will assume you lack that sexual creativity, as well as prowess. We only get one body in this lifetime and, barring plastic surgery and the like, we can’t change it. But tweeting that would probably get me far fewer retweets.