Comments

1
MICRO has a bad reaction and then then blames the other guy for his bad reaction. Yeah, if you’re really phallic-oriented, maybe he’s not the right match. But don’t blame him when you were the asshole about it. He didn’t know what to do about your lost erection? I think you know more about that particular penis.
2
Reddit has an entire sub-thread related to tiny dicks. While it may not be MICRO's interest, it certainly is for many. I don't think there is anything wrong with preferences of any sort, and MICRO may not have handled the situation well, but next time I'm thinking he will be better equipped (no pun intended) to deal with the situation.
3
Although sometimes dicks are a large part of the overall package...
4
Thanks 1000X Dan, for pointing out the insulting nature and counter-productive effect of making small dick jokes on all the awesome, GGG, reasonably-sized car driving, democrat-voting dudes out there with below-average sized equipment. I am so effing sick of it.
5
I think the more important question would be is the other (micro dick) guy top or bottom? I really feel for a guy who loves to top and has a tiny cock. If that's the case, learn to love the bottom. I'm a top and I really get off on little dicks. The LW may be a cock focussed top, but there are plenty of us who prefer to be the 'big' guy. The only turn off with a little dick is when it's owner doesn't own it and acknowledge it. I'm not going to rub that little guy and coo about how huge it is. Work with what you've got. Throw your legs in the air and enjoy the ride.
6
In the words of Martin Amis:

"de Tocqueville saw this coming in about 1850 – he said, it’s a marvellous thing, American democracy, but don’t they know how it’s going to end up? It’s going to be so mushy that no one will dare say anything for fear of offending someone else."

When Dan can't say anything without qualifying it for the Twitts, when people have to identify themselves as cis-whatever, when you can't say the truth -- that someone has a small penis or a fat gut or that a penis is actually not a vagina -- then theory has trumped fact.

When Dan is worried about offending people, it's just no mother-flippin fun.
7
@5 BigIslandPlanet: What does owning it and acknowledging it look like? Makes me think of the letter earlier this year from a woman who wondered if the man she was writing about knew he had a really small penis because he didn't mention it during their encounter and she wondered if she should tell him.
8
If your only fun is vicariously enjoying a raconteur belittling some poor schmuck for not meeting a conventional standard of one kind or another, then you, in the immortal words of Dorothy Parker, suck.
9
As tempting as it is to rag on the LW I get the feeling the real problem was his lack of confidence. No one wants to be the person who has to coddle someone through a spat of self-hatred. Especially if it has to be done to get laid.

LW didn't make a good show but neither did the other guy. I wonder if they'd written in if the other guy had said 'it's a bit unusual which is why I have other parts to play with.'
10
'He seemed unsure of how to deal with it'. This has to mean he was unsure of how to deal with MICRO himself. The guy knows what his penis size is. Possibly his read was that his date was inexperienced with micro dicks and wouldn't be turned on, but he (the LW's date) was enjoying the flirting so much he wasn't able in any way to manage expectations or negotiate the situation gracefully during sex. Well, no matter in the long run--the micropenis guy will put it down to experience, and the LW is not obliged to have sex if his partner's equipment isn't exciting to him.
11
@MICRO: So this was a first date? Then you're not a dick for not wanting to see him again, regardless of the reason. If you don't want to go on a second date, don't go on a second date. Who cares? But writing to Dan and making a big drama about your preferences after one date makes you seem kind of immature.
12
It would be a shock, and I think some of you guys are a bit judgey with the LW.
The moment got lost, so wouldn't it be best to mention one's situation before the kissing starts. The LW likes this guy, and it might have gone a different way if he had been upfront and playful about it, as msanon @9 suggested.
13
Related:

I dated a guy once who never had a hard erection. We didn’t talk about it, it was what it was, and what it was was obviously soft.

Once we were chatting about his brother’s “plumbing problems” following his prostate surgery, so I took the opportunity to ask about his own “plumbing,” “Oh, my plumbing’s fine, perfectly healthy, same as when I was fourteen.” Okay then, it’s not going to change, he’s talked about it with his doctor, cool. That’s all I need to know about his anatomy. Maybe at some point we can talk about what he’s tried in terms of toys over the past forty years.

Months later I discover that he'd chosen to misunderstand me and had been using “plumbing” to mean prostate when we had definitely been using it to refer to his brother’s ED. I am not happy.

I’m not hung up on penises. I had terrific sex as a lesbian. Each size and shape has its own advantages. Sure, a dick hard enough to pound nails has its charms, but I’d much rather blow a softie than a stiffie. There were stiffies in my teens and twenties. I’m in my fifties now. I expect more softies.

But if you refuse to use your words I’m going to lose a lot of respect for you. I volunteer the fact that I gush, explain how I deal with it and ask how you feel. I set expectations with you in advance that I am not going to swallow and reassure you that it’s not because I'm disgusted. If I ask nicely about your dick I want the respect of an answer.

Neither guy in the letter behaved well. The LW didn’t ask nicely and his date didn’t volunteer. Ignoring things doesn’t make them go away. (Teeth being the exception.) They’re each justified in being disappointed in the other. They should also put some effort into being disappointed with themselves and figuring out how to do better next time.
14
Nice one Allison. " a dick hard enough to pound nails has its charms," how I long for those days. And I didn't really appreciate it all when I had it. The things one takes for granted in one's youth.
15
If there are men around who get off on other men with smaller penises, wouldn't it be better for the latter to seek out these men. Save a lot of heartache.
The LW walks away, feeling bad about himself, which is fitting. Reflection helps us not to repeat the same moment where we lose empathy because of one perceived flaw.
The other guy, he's hurt. So why put himself thru it over and over. Be upfront and playful, and seek out men who delight in his size.
16
Is there a difference between a micropenis and just being small? Like there's a difference between just being short because everyone in your family is short and being short because of dwarfism.
17
Queen_of_Hurts @ 6
I don’t know, maybe the high demand for offending others is in line with the current wave of extreme assholism we see in the US and elsewhere.

The way I see it, giving one the option to self-define as a “cis whatever” or whatever else is actually saying the truth, or attempting to, in a way that could have helped the couple in question.
In a more relaxed, open environment their pre sex conversation could have included something like, “Just to let you know, I have small penis. My friends say I give a great head, and since you mentioned earlier that you’re mostly top I think we have plenty to start working with. BTW, what’s your take on toys?”

Some more: Since we’re dealing with a gay couple it seems like most comments so far were in relation to that.
Alison @ 13 touched a bit on what it feels like in a F/M “cis opposite gender” relationship.
Maybe others, not to mention small penis havers themselves, (who may feel more comfortable say “a friend told me” or “my younger brother” since this is not a common category to come out as,) can point to what works for them or doesn’t.
In porn small penis often comes as a humiliating fetish, and I’m sure this is only a small fragment of the picture. Lava @ 15, not everyone wants to be fetishized.
18
CMD @ 17 - "not everyone wants to be fetishized"

There's a huge gap between letting people know what you've got and being fetishized for it. I agree with Lava @ 15.

The men who get off on other men with smaller penises don't necessarily fetishize small penises (I'd say that they're more likely to fetishize their own penis or, as B.I.P. said @5, "prefer to be the 'big' guy"). But whichever way, they ENJOY them, and isn't that the point?
I've seen more than a few profiles online where guys say right out (or even put it in their handle) that they have a small dick. It's there, it's out of the way, those who are still interested can show their interest and all others need not apply. It does save a lot of heartache, IMO.

And it's the same for anything that might not be appreciated by all. Personally, I'm always glad when some guys' profile show or say how big their cock is, because if it's more than a manageable size, I'm definitely not interested.
19
Once slept with a guy with a micro penis and there was that awkward moment, went to give him head and for a second it was confusing until he quietly said, I’m sorry, I have a small penis.” I felt bad and said, that’s ok. But then he proceeded to eat me out in a way no man has ever done before and it was awesome! My main concern was that he wouldn’t be able to get off inside me, but he did just fine. Didn’t turn into a relationship for other reasons but I think back on it fondly from time to time...
20
Queen @6: Seems like de Toqueville was 100% wrong, going by the state of America today. He couldn't possibly have foreseen Twitter.

Good point about "small dick" jokes, which I've been guilty of making when, for instance, someone conspicuously revs the engine of his sports car.

Unless MICRO was Date's first lover, which is highly unlikely given that they fucked, or tried to, on the first date, he's dealt with this situation before. Perhaps he uses guys' reactions as a screening tool for whether they're decent people, in which case you seem to have failed. MICRO answered his own question: "I'm sure he'll know it's because of what happened in the bedroom that I don't want to see him again". So the issue isn't "should I date this guy again," it's "how can I stop feeling guilty for being a jerk." The answer is to own his jerkiness, apologise to Date, and be better prepared for dealing with small-dicked guys should he come across (heh) another in his future dating pursuits.
21
Ankyl @7: I was wondering the same thing. I was in a poly relationship for four years with a man who had a small penis. He was bi so he had to have known. It didn't seem to bother him and, as a result, it didn't bother me -- we had non-penis-centric sex and, when engaging in PIV, chose positions that suited a smaller dick. Years before, I dated a different small-dicked guy who was self-conscious about it, and that was kind of a drag. So if "own it" means focus on it or apologise for it, then I completely disagree with your advice.

Lava @15: I'm beginning to see why the practice of sending dick pics is more popular among gay men than with straight women.

Fichu @16: The definition of a micropenis is "a dorsal (measured on top) erect penile length of at least 2.5 standard deviations smaller than the mean human penis size,[1] or smaller than about 7 cm (2 3⁄4 in) for an adult when compared with an average erection of 12.5 cm (5 in).[2] The condition is usually recognized shortly after birth. The term is most often used medically when the rest of the penis, scrotum, and perineum are without ambiguity, such as hypospadias. Micropenis occurs in about 0.6% of males." (Wikipedia) In practice, I'd say a micropenis would be a penis so small that it's more or less just the glans.

Final take: MICRO says "I also feel like if he'd said something along the lines of, "Look I know it's small, but if you do this it'll feel good," I could have worked with it. But should he really have to do that? I'd hate to have to explain about my body every time I have sex."
Two points there:
1. Lots of us have sexual quirks that we do in fact have to explain every time they have sex -- or at least every time they have a new partner, which for some of us is more often than others. Alison warns lovers that she ejaculates; I usually have to ask partners to slow their pace, as I can easily get overstimulated. This isn't quite the same thing as saying "I have a small penis" which is obvious to anyone who gets that far. Should Mr MICRO feel obligated to disclose a micropenis as a potential dealbreaker along the lines of being married or non-op transgender? I have more sympathy for the idea that it's his partners' responsibility to be gracious.
2. Why would there be any difference in what feels good to a small-dicked guy? It's not as if his penis doesn't have the same nerve endings and functionality as a bigger one.
22
Ricardo @ 18
Thanks for pointing to a scene I’m not familiar with.
As a part-time femdom videos browser I stumble on occasion on a (quite often) horribly acted and executed small penis humiliation scene.
Yet another proof that porn should not be used as an educational reference.

BDF- welcome back. SL was not the same in your absence.
23
CMD @ 22 - Which is why I prefer homemade porn. Hardly educational, but better acted.

I'm not into humiliation, so I've never been involved into such a scene. That said, I've had sex with many small-dicked man who owned it, and there was zero discomfort. One of them was a top and gave me a fuck I still remember nearly 20 years later (and definitely not only because of the surprise factor - my sphincter ajusted to his girth, as it should, he was extremely energetic, he had me in every imaginable position and he lasted an eternity; great fun was had by all involved).

The only ones I've been with who had any problem with their penis size were the ones on steroids, really.
24
Thanks Ricardo @18, I was going off what BigIslandPlanet @5 said. Sometimes CMD you are such an old woman. Hey, join me. Both old women together.
25
Second CMD, Fan.. great to see you back. And Allison too, then LateBloomer dropped in on the weekend.
26
I've never come across men with petite/ smaller cocks. The LW said about an inch erect, if I recall.
I don't like this micro word, it's negative from the start. We don't say micro breasts.
27
Just stop making jokes altogether.

Stop.

Those days are long gone.
28
21-BiDan-- Thanks. I must not be asking my question correctly, or I'd find the answer myself. I'm wondering if micro-penis is something medically different from just small on a scale from small to large. I mean, breasts can be anywhere from size AA to double DD. You expect small breasts to run in families of small breasted women, but they're all normal breasts capable of breast-feeding children. Alternately, there might be hormonal reasons why breasts don't develop in puberty. Is micro-penis like that, something where there's something medically different or maybe something where the condition affects development otherwise?
29
Lava @26: Google micropenis, it is actually a technical term.

One thing I have recently learned is that a micropenis can be a characteristic of an individual who is intersex, ie who does not have XY chromosomes and/or whose genitals are ambiguous. To be assigned male at birth, the penis must be a certain length; if it is not, sometimes the child is raised male, and sometimes they are subjected to surgery and raised female. I briefly dated a male-raised person who later discovered he was intersex, so when I hear of abnormally small (as an inch would be) penises, my immediate thought is the guy may be intersex, as an estimated 1 in 2,000 people are. (See "Hedwig And The Angry Inch" for a pop culture example of this phenomenon.)
30
@26 I believe micropenis is a medical term with a definitive criteria. We don't say "microtits", but we have plenty of illustrative nicknames for small-chested women; I recall a classmate who was known as "The Great Plains". There's the ever present "itty-bitty-titty-committtee", ol mosquito bites, I could go on and on. I suppose there are probably women who naturally don't have mammarys or have ones that cannot produce enough milk for a child, but I bet you that's a medical condition as well.
31
@29 - If I recall the movie correctly, Hedwig's inch was angry because it was the result of a botched operation, not because they were born that way.
32
BDF @ 29 - Sanguisuga is right @ 31. Hedwig wants to get married to this American soldier to get out of East Germany so he has to become a woman, but the operation is botched and there remains an inch. I think it's Hedwig who's angry, though, and not so much the inch itself, because the soldier drops her soon after arriving to the U.S. (but "Angry Hedwig and the inch" wouldn't have been such a catchy title, I guess).
33
Just because science or medicine have a label, doesn't mean it has to cross over into everyday usage.
What if we started saying micro and macro fannies ( pussies)? Horror.
34
@6: “de Tocqueville saw this coming in about 1850 – he said, it’s a marvellous thing, American democracy, but don’t they know how it’s going to end up? It’s going to be so mushy that no one will dare say anything for fear of offending someone else."

Why are you regurgitating that alt-right bullshit?

Can you actually quote what de Toqueville felt about the nascent American democracy that is actually relevant to our current sex-positive culture where we feel empathy for others? Can you cite a pertinent reference beyond the usual conservative “brits are effete and Americans are rugged individualists” narrative?

Don’t be trashy, the “not pc culture” running things are ruining things for all of us and calling us “snowflake sjws” or however you feel about those who are kind to a fellow hunan being is emboldening Trump and lumping you in with that garbage.

If you’re going to try to be persuasive, a quote of a likely misquote is not the way and the “kids these days are too soft” has been used since the days of oral history.

It’s not insightful, just yelling at the clouds (please forgive the Aristophanes/Socrates pun.)
35
@33: “What if we started saying micro and macro fannies ( pussies)? Horror.”

But women are born with a wide variance of physicality and the occasional macroclitoris?
36
Sanguisaga/Ricardo: I stand corrected regarding the origin of Hedwig's inch. The rest of my post regarding intersex people in the real world should be accurate.

Lava @33: Undead is right; intersex individuals are sometimes raised as men (with micropenises) and sometimes as women (with macro clits). Women aren't generally in the habit of sticking rulers up their vaginas, which would really be the only means of knowing whether one is larger or smaller than average in that department. However, if a woman did have an unusually short vagina, thereby preventing intercourse with all but very small-dicked men, there probably would be a medical term for this condition as well.

My micro tits have saved me quite a bit of money if nothing else. I've probably heard more disparaging terms for them than dear Sportlandia, but I managed to score two (two!) bras for $14 in the girls' department at Target last week. There's something to be said for failing puberty!
37
@33 Lava you are completely right about the use of the term micro. The female equivalent would not be about clit size (because function for personal pleasure and reproduction is intact) but vaginal opening size, which varies by person and throughout one's life, and yes, indeed, the horror.

These terms do exist for multiple parts of the female anatomy, we do not use them.

There is no reason to use medical terminology as the default in the vernacular as we are not all participating in 24-7 medically oriented role-play.

@35 I vote macroclitoris is what we should be calling penises. Might help a hetero teen boy or two be useful to girls a bit faster. Medically accurate, everyone starts out phenotypically female in utero. Then everyone's penis is automatically huge by default (did you see the macroclitoris on that guy???).
38
With regards to breasts, severely underdeveloped breasts are indeed referred to as micromastia, hypomastia, breast aplasia, and a couple other terms. While I agree that using the vernacular is fine, I don't understand this idea that clinical terminology is offensive because the prefix means small or that people shouldn't default to medical terminology (especially if one's training is in a related field.) I can only imagine the field day that would have ensued if this implication had been made with Mydriasis, Hunter, and Venn present :) Fichu, micropenis is, in fact, a medical condition and not simply a value judgment in relation to other penis sizes. It can be caused by endocrine problems, structural abnormalities, or as part of a syndrome like Klinefelter. Here is the NIH article on it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article…
39
@38 I don't know to what extent this responds to what you're saying, but allow me to take something out of context just for fun:

"I don't understand this idea that clinical terminology is offensive"

Medical terminology can indeed be offensive. How about "geriatric pregnancy"? (Ageism may be at the root of this visceral reaction to the term "geriatric" but my point is that people are nevertheless offended by it.) There could be other, better examples. (After all, vernacular can be euphemistic for a reason.)

Or, consider the way statisticians use the word "normal."

Yes.

Normal.
40
@39, Obviously, anyone can be offended by anything, because they will have their own associations with any given word. Medical terminology describes things, or at least tries to describe things, objectively. Most of the time they do not describe what is good or is bad, just what is (one exception that comes to mind is malignant/benign.) So while geriatric pregnancy may be offensive to some people because the word geriatric has negative connotations for them, it is still an accurate term when used literally. The fact that some people are ageist doesn't mean that the term shouldn't be used. When it is clear that a word is being used in its technical, most literal sense, I don't understand the problem. And having been around here for quite a while, I can attest that most everyone here, certainly Lava, Fichu, and Bi are very intelligent and more than able to detect whether words are being used in a vernacular or technical sense. ps. I am fine with normal if it is explicitly being used in a literal context.

41
@40 You mentioned context. Right, context matters.
42
I'm going to hop in an add that it doesn't help things when people start to decide technical terminology is offensive, just because they can make a connection in their mind to an idea that someone somewhere might find offensive. We do actually need language; we do need to be able to describe things. Technical terms do this well without carrying any of their own connotations. Let them be. Let slang be where we duke out our bitter associations. It's hard enough already to express things without getting all tangled up in attempts not to offend. It's a well-known weakness of the Left (of which I am a bleeding-heart member) and we shouldn't make it worse than it is.

(And being the flavor of geek that I am, I absolutely mean to include "normal" here, as well as "abnormal." It has a technical meaning. That meaning is only offensive to a listener if that listener thinks abnormal means bad. It says a lot more about the listener than the speaker.)
43
@42

"That meaning is only offensive to a listener if that listener thinks abnormal means bad."

Context doesn't matter? Well, then. Let's go up to a bullied gay teen and say, "Dude, you're not normal." If he's offended by it, that just means he doesn't know what "normal" means. Right? It's his own fault! Let's see how that works out for you--and for him.
44
@43: Sorry to be unclear; of course context matters. My meaning is that if someone chooses to be offended once the technical context of the word has been made clear, that's on them. So to my mind, for instance, medical terms aren't offensive. They're describing something specific in a medical context and they don't carry connotations. Otherwise, how *are* we supposed to describe specific things?

That said, the fact that you can offend a teenager (of any variety) isn't much of an argument against something; teens get offended when you look at them. My assumption when interacting in this forum is that we're all adults.
45
Um, and just because I've apparently already come off as super obnoxious, I'm going to jump in here and mention that even in its technical meaning, 'normal' isn't an adjective that modifies an individual. It modifies a group, a distribution. So if you were being truly technical, you wouldn't be able to say 'you're not normal' to someone anyway :)
46
@45 Not really obnoxious, no. It just made me think of those pedantic people (I've seen them) who use "retard" as a verb while sputtering, "BUT!!! BUT!!! BUTT!!! THAT JUST MEANS 'TO SLOW DOWN'!!!! IF YOU'RE OFFENDED THAT'S YOUR OWN FAULT!!!!" Yeah. Uh-huh. Don't pretend you don't know better.

Keep fuckin' that chicken.

Thank you for clarifying your actually perfectly reasonable position.
47
@46: The word "retard" absolutely serves a legitimate purpose in musical notation. Should it no longer be used (the accent is even on the second syllable) because some people insist it can have no other meaning but the one they find offensive. The word existed long before the pejorative use of it was adopted. Again, context.
48
@47 I've seen "ritardando" in notation, never "retard," but I'll defer to you that its usage is indeed a Thing. (On the other hand, if an accent is included, then it's clearly distinguished from the disparaging English term, so even then, it's different.) But yeah. Context indeed matters, which is exactly the point I've been making starting with post 39 above.

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