Perception of penis size has become very warped. This is the result of a number of factors, including the advent of pornography, photography, photomanipulation, and dishonest reporting of penis size. This site aims to convene and present all the tools that are useful for healing the warped perception one may have.
When one is looking to learn about the world, generalizations are fundamental. Those generalizations will be presented without citation. The strength of this site is not the interpretation of scientific data. You can always go look for the actual studies yourself; they are numerous. The general conclusions that can be agreed upon from the gestalt of all data and experience largely match the scientific data anyway.
Click here for a metric version of this article.
Let’s begin with reality.
The global average penis size is 5.5 inches. Five point five inches. Five and a half inches. 5 1/2 inches.
5.5 in
5.5 inches
5.5 inches
5.5 inches
Yes. That’s it. Sometimes different averages come up, as you should expect when repeating random samples. Sometimes it’s 5.1 inches, sometimes it’s 5.9 inches. A study here and there might conclude 4.9 inches, or 6.1 inches. A human penis is typically about 5.5 inches long.
Measure yourself.
Yes, seriously. You may feel silly, you may think that it’s a very very dumb thing to do. Well, it turns out, it is a very very not dumb thing to do. It is good policy to know all your own measurements at least roughly, and your penis should not be excluded.
There is a right way to measure. It’s called erect bone-pressed length. To find it, induce as strong an erection as you can, stand up, lay a hard ruler flat along the top of your penis, and push the ruler in towards your pubic bone. Try to straighten out any curve you may have, but be gentle; it is possible to fracture your penis, though it is unlikely you could do it to yourself without meaning to. The farthest point the ruler reads is your standardized erect length.
If you do anything else, like measuring along a side or along the bottom, or reading the curve of a measuring tape down your glans, you are doing it wrong.
You should also find your erect girth. Use a measuring tape to measure the circumference of the thickest point of your penis, excluding the glans. You can also use a piece of paper or string and translate the measurement to a hard ruler. This is your erect girth.
What is the reality of penis size?
The chart below are how the statistics fall. This is a distribution chart. It has no y axis because it’s already understood that a higher y value represents a greater incidence of that x value. The x axis maps to bone pressed erect length.
The average is 5.5 inches. You can see that the range of penises generally includes everyone somewhere between 3 inches and 8 inches. Outside of this range are extremely rare outliers. You can see that the standard deviation is pretty tight at ~.7 inches. You can see that plus or minus one standard deviation covers the lengths between 5 and 6 inches. This range of plus or minus one standard deviation covers 68% of the population. Think about that. Almost 70% of men have a penis between 5 and 6 inches, bone pressed.
Plus or minus 2 standard deviations covers 95% of men. Think about that. How many men do you know? How many men do you meaningfully interact with in the course of a normal week? You’d have to look around to find a man who is the 1 in 20 who falls outside of that range of 4.1 inches to 6.9 inches. On reflection, 95% of men are inside of 4 to 7 inches.
Plus or minus 3 standard deviations covers 99.7% of men. You would have to search for a long time to find a man who is the 1 in 335 men who falls outside that range of 3.4 inches to 7.6 inches. And that’s on either side of that range. If you wanted to find a man who was on the large side, you would cut the probability in half; you’d be looking for the 1 in 666 men who is larger than 7.6 inches.
Let’s do it again for girth.
The average erect girth is 4.6 inches. You can see that the range of girths generally includes everyone somewhere between 2.8 inches and 6.4 inches. Outside of this range are extremely rare outliers. You can see that the standard deviation is even tighter at ~.6 inches. You can see that plus or minus one standard deviation covers the girths 4 and 5.2 inches. This range of plus or minus one standard deviation covers 68% of the population. About 70% of men have a girth between 4 inches and 5 1/4 inches.
Plus or minus 2 standard deviations covers 95% of men. You’d have to look around to find a man who is the 1 in 20 who falls outside of that range of 3.4 inches to 5.8 inches.
Plus or minus 3 standard deviations covers 99.7% of men. You would have to search for a long time to find a man who is the 1 in 335 men who falls outside that range of 2.8 inches to 6.4 inches. And that’s on either side of that range. If you wanted to find a man who was on the thick side, you’d be looking for the 1 in 666 men who is thicker than 6.4 inches.
That can’t possibly be right!
Largely, yes, these are correct. Subjects who have micropenis or consider themselves exceptionally below average are usually excluded from studies, so they could not be dragging down the numbers.
On the off chance that you are surprised to find yourself at the outskirts of these numbers, believe it! And if it’s your girth measurement that’s outside the average, you may want to see if different sized condoms fit you better.
To automatically calculate where you fall along these distributions, visit https://calcsd.bitballoon.com/ .
Where do they find those giant porn dicks, then?
Most porn actors have penises somewhere between 6 inches and 8 inches. Yes, really. Even those who claim absurd lengths past 9 inches, are almost always misrepresented. With the right camera angles, good presentation and body type, and very small females, a 6.5 inch penis is passed off as 8 inches. Yes, really. A 6.5 inch penis is already big. Put up against a tiny female actress, the deception can be impressive.
Notice that no girth measurements are ever supplied by pornography. That is because if you are already clueless enough to believe their length claim, you have no idea what you’re doing in regards to penis measurements anyway.
Please visit https://pornmeasurements.tumblr.com/ for an in depth disillusionment of camera tricks in pornography.
Hands
The effect of differently sized hands on the apparent size of a penis is drastic but not well known. In the chart below, notice how a large male hand can be more than 4 inches wide, and a small female hand, like those of porn actresses, is smaller than 3 inches. See the comparison of a male large to a female small.
The result of this difference can be dramatic:
A certainly large penis, a 7 inch penis, can look mostly unimpressive in a large male hand. In a small female hand, it can appear sensational.
Body Size
Height and body type can have the same effect on apparent penis size. A large penis will look commonplace on a large man. It will look shocking on a small ectomorph.
The upper and lower extremes were included to emphasize the effect.
Understanding Sizes
Most people have a terrible understanding of what these sizes can actually mean in the real world. Girth in particular is more obscure. A few Reddit users were helpful enough to show us how these numbers play out.
We begin with the control. Her hands are 3.5 inches wide, which is a female large in our earlier chart.
Here is a girth of 3 inches:
Here is a girth of 4 inches:
Here is a girth of 4.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 5 inches:
Here is a girth of 5.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 6 inches:
Here is a girth of 6.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 7 inches:
Penises are not perfectly circular, of course, but this serves as a guideline.
Another Reddit user offers us a look at how these girths appear next to her body of 5’4″ and 110-115 lbs.
We begin with the control:
Here is a girth of 4 inches:
Here is a girth of 4.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 5 inches:
Here is a girth of 5.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 6 inches:
Here is a girth of 6.5 inches:
Here is a girth of 7 inches:
Here is a girth of 7.5 inches:
This is what a girth of 8 inches looks like, presented for completeness since it is not a possible penis girth:
She additionally offered: 33.5″ bust, 23.75″ waist, 36″ hip, 32C bra size.
The average female height is just under 5’4″. The average male height is 5’9″.
Another Reddit user gives us a comparison to what appears to be a slightly larger woman:
More size and perspective
A good way to visualize the variety of penises is with cylinders. Remember that a cylinder will typically contain all of the penis described by its measurements, so there can be a lot of volume not filled in the cylinder by a penis.
The large cylinder below is 7 inches by 5.5 inches, and the small one is 5.6 inches by 4.8 inches, an average penis.
What follows is a focus on the larger sizes and how they can be made to appear even larger using simple perspective tricks. Pictures are an 8.4oz Redbull can, a 16oz Monster can, and a 24oz Monster can, among other things.
Again, using simple tricks of perspective, anything can be made to appear big:
And that’s penis size.
If you’d like to see actual penises measured, visit https://www.reddit.com/r/penismeasured/ . There are a larger percentage of larger penises because those men are more likely to show them. Many are also being measured incorrectly. Some are still utilizing perspective tricks.
If you need to see what average penises look like in a pornographic context, visit https://www.reddit.com/r/realitydicks/ .
Hopefully by now your brain is beginning to heal from the wound pornography inflicted on you. There is a great deal to be said about how damaging pornography is to the consumer. It is recommended that you not consume pornography at all.
What are the sources of the misconceptions?
When filmed pornography became popular, it was more expedient to use a subject with a larger penis, as it made it much easier for the camera, and therefore the viewer, to see what was going on. This effect appears to have snowballed, embedding itself in American culture in particular, and through it, the world.
The modern evolution of pornography can feature claims of absurd lengths such 11, 13, 15 inches or above. Such claims are physically impossible, and would be totally unworkable.
Claims that 7 inches or 8 inches are average are usually jokes, and also absurd.
Most people have not developed the skill of estimating sizes without a ruler. That leads to jokes such as this one:
Dildos
Dildos can seem enormous as well. They do tend to be large, but that is in order to make the product viable for a larger range of customers. The video below helps provide perspective on the true consumption of these products.
The dildos are long because the woman is free to insert however much she sees fit and at her own pace. A dildo of 6 inches is a very different experience to a penis of 6 inches attached to a man’s body. What appears to be more important is the dildo’s girth.
Dildos are marketed and sold as perhaps 7 inch or 9 inch dildos, but that is the measurement of the overall product. The insertable length of the dildo is usually about 2 inches less by design, due to the modeled testicles or suction cup or what have you.
Race
The idea that black men have larger penises is entirely a fabrication of the pornography industry. There is no data to suggest such a thing is the case. Studies that have show this are based on self reported data. Of the usable studies that have examined penis size by country or race, it is typically found that European nations, i.e. white men, have the largest penises, though not by much–perhaps 6.1 inch averages in those countries where black males showed 5.1 inch or 5.4 inch averages.
Asians do show lower averages as well, in far east and Indian subcontinent, though again not by much–perhaps averages of 4.9 inches or 5.1 inches.
The averages do differ a bit by race, but not by much. Statistical inductions apply only to the population and not to individuals, as they still vary widely, and observations about an individual apply only to the individual and not the population.
Unraveling Size 