This article appeared originally at The Daily Dot, and then was reposted by Salon, which is where I found it. This article provides an honest and explicit discussion of the perils of a big penis. Men may crave the "cred" that goes with a big unit, especially in the gay world, but there are also a lot of drawbacks.

7 biggest myths about big penises

Bigger may be better, but when it comes to a partner's sexual satisfaction, size is pretty low on the priority list

Ej Dickson and Nico Lang, The Daily Dot




This article originally appeared on The Daily Dot.

Here’s a fun anecdote for your next cocktail party: When it came to providing urine receptacles for their astronauts, NASA encountered an unexpected problem. They gave their astronaut a choice of small, medium, or large sleeves to fit around their penises, but nobody would select either of the first two choices—and they kept slipping right off, leading to some unintended consequences. To fix this issue, the organization came up with a brilliant idea. They labeled them large, gigantic, and humongous instead.

Our society’s penis anxiety is deeply ingrained in the fabric of how we think about our own sexualities—and those of our partners. For a man, the ultimate dig is to suggest that he has a small penis, thus questioning his very manhood. In the case of Drake, all it took was for one message board commenter on Gawker to suggest that his disco stick was “weird,” and penis speculation quickly went viral.

Patrick Moote had a similar experience when he proposed to his girlfriend at a UCLA basketball game. Instead of accepting his offer, she walked away off camera, later admitting that the reason she wouldn’t marry him is that his penis was too small. The moment was documented on YouTube, becoming a viral phenomenon, and Moote later filmed a documentary, Unhung Hero, chronicling his exploration of society’s preferences around penis size.

How much does penis size matter and how much is myth? To address the issue, Daily Dot sexperts EJ Dickson and Nico Lang put together a list of seven reasons that penis size doesn’t matter as much as we think. The results will surprise you.

1) Bigger is only better to an extent.

Nico: I feel the same way about a nine-inch penis that I do an armored tank: They’re nice to look at, but if a guy thinks he’s parking it in my garage, he’s utterly insane. Just because you have the equipment doesn’t mean you necessarily know to operate the machinery, and there’s simply no correlation between a guy’s dick size and performance in bed. A guy with a big penis may be more confident in his sexuality, after a lifetime of having his body affirmed by sexual partners, but that can go one of two ways. Confidence can lead to incredibly sexy sex, but it also could mean that he’s the type of guy who is so “sure of what he’s doing” that he ignores communication and physical cues. Guys who haven’t been gifted with a battering ram tend to be more willing to listen and to give—and everyone loves a giver.

In addition, research has shown that while size matters to the receptive partner, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to being more satisfied either in the bedroom or in a relationship. A survey from Kenya showed that women whose partners had large penises were actually more likely to cheat, and a large penis takes so much effort that there are actual guides on how to date a guy who is “too well-endowed.” If “dating is just one big game of penis roulette,” big penises are a special kind of bullet, one that you don’t necessarily want to have to deal with all the time. Frankly, large members entail a kind of preparation and diligence that one simply doesn’t want to give all the time. That’s why instead of a military-grade member, I personally prefer “boyfriend penis,” the kind that’s just right.

Summing up “bigger is better” debate, former Men’s Health Columnist Nicole Beland put it best: “Yes, we care about the size of a man’s penis. But when it comes to sexual satisfaction, it’s pretty far down on our list of priorities.”

2) Women care about other things way more than they care about large penises.

EJ: For whatever reason, men have been laboring under the misguided impression that there is an underlying scientific reason for why women prefer big penises to smaller ones. And it is true that there are some studies demonstrating a slight tendency toward that preference. Last year, for instance, the Australian National University made headlines with a study that presented women with images of computer-generated males with varying heights and penis lengths. The researchers concluded that women demonstrated a slight preference toward men with larger flaccid penises.

The media, however, failed to pick up on two things about the study. First of all, the women’s attraction to the men actually decreased when their penis size exceeded a certain length, indicating that most women prefer an average or slightly-above-average-size penis to an extra-large one. Just like anything else in life, there’s a happy medium to be attained when it comes to penis size.

The other thing that people failed to realize about the study is that the women only preferred bigger penises when the penises were proportional to the men’s size. So for instance, while they demonstrated a stronger attraction to tall men with larger penises, they weren’t so crazy about shorter men with the same size penis. The Australian researchers surmised that had something to do with women’s aversion to dating short men, but I suspect it has less to do with that and more with the general (though far from scientifically proven) human preference for proportionality. A shorter man with a large penis sort of comes off like the Little Tramp, jauntily whistling and twirling his enormous member at passersby.

3) Just because big penises are the standard in porn doesn’t mean they should be yours in real life.

Nico: If used correctly, pornography can be a great tool for education and discourse, a subject that EJ and I explored in a previous post, but something it’s absolutely awful at is setting the tone for what our bodies should look like. Although there’s nothing wrong with very skinny women who have implants, they tend to be the unilateral norm in straight porn, just as guys with gigantic cocks are in gay porn. Because porn often plays on our desires for excess and the spectacle, pornography has a way of making everything about size for the purpose of a fantasy, an irritatingly singular one.

While it would be imprudent to suggest that these fantasies shouldn’t inform our sex life at all (because what we like to see often carries over to what we like in bed), the fantasy should not be our entire reality. This is a particular problem in the gay community, simply because we have so few representations of what queer bodies look like outside of pornography. LGBT people have made some progress in breaking the glass ceiling of mainstream media, but when it comes to pornography, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a gay porn star. I know a lot of gay porn stars, and I have an enormous respect for what they do, but I don’t think any gay porn star alive thinks that the entire gay community should form their sole opinion of what bodies are by watching Corbin Fisher. That would be like trying to understand what women are by watching the Transformers franchise.

Instead of relying on other people to create your preferences for you, we all need to go out and find out what we like ourselves.

4) The expectations around big penises are too high.

EJ: There are many people who believe that having sex with a dude with a really, really, really big penis is far preferable to having sex with a dude with a really, really, really small penis—or micropenis (pronounced mike-rah-pen-is, as in “acropolis”). I strongly disagree with this. In my experience, having sex with someone with a small penis is kind of like taking the SATs with a quantitative reasoning deficiency. It’s not ideal, and overall you probably won’t do stellar, but you can certainly compensate by your performance on other sections.

This is not the case for men with POUSes (Penises of Unusual Sizes). While they, too, can certainly hold their own on the written and verbal sections, the problem is that, through no fault of their own, the bar is already set so high for them that it’s impossible to live up to your expectations. Their gifts in other areas, however prodigious they might be, are limited by the prodigiousness of their members.

I like to compare seeing your first POUS to seeing a David Lynch movie (for our purposes, let’s go with Mulholland Drive) for the first time. “Oh, OK, so this is what everyone’s gets so excited about,” you find yourself thinking. “This is what everyone’s talking about and quoting from when they drink too much whiskey and printing ironic t-shirts about. OK, well, let’s see if it lives up to the hype.”

Let me tell you something. It doesn’t. Much like seeing Mulholland Drive for the first time, having sex with someone with an enormous penis is an immensely disorienting experience. You don’t know what the hell is going on, and you’re kinda turned on and kinda repulsed at the same time, and all you want to do is get up and take a drink of water and collect your bearings for a minute. In the end, you’re just so overwhelmed by confusion that you shut the DVD off during the “Llorando” scene, scream “This sucks,” and go back to watching 30 Rock reruns for a while.

This is the tragedy of having sex with someone with an enormous penis: Your expectations are so high that it’s impossible for the penis to live up to them, and that’s assuming you guys even make it to the sex act at all. You see that girl on the train with her mascara running down her cheeks? That’s not a drunk chick crying over a breakup; that’s a girl who just lost the opportunity to have sex with a guy with an enormous penis. If you’re a halfway decent person, you should go over there with a tissue immediately and tell her how very sorry you are for her loss.

5) Sex isn’t just about penetration.

Nico: If you’ve ever perused the Kama Sutra, you know that the missionary position is just one of an endless number of positions available to you to explore, and penetrative sex is the same way. Only 25 percent of women are able to regularly experience orgasms through vaginal, meaning that it doesn’t matter how big her partner’s penis is. It’s not going to get her there without a little help from its friends, the vast array of options that are available outside of copulation, in order to provide the direct clitoral stimulation that sex often does not.

Even for gay men, copulation shouldn’t be the only offering at the buffet. The entire BDSM and leather movements are predicated on the idea that sexual intercourse along is just a fraction of everything that goes into attraction and arousal, and for many people, oral sex is more pleasurable than anal interaction. Many gay men report that they dislike penetrative sex, and according to research from the Journal of Sexual Medicine, only “36 percent of men reporting receiving anal sex and 34 percent of men reporting giving it.” According to Good’s Amanda Hess, this study showed that anal sex was actually among the least common sexual behaviors that queer men engaged in, below masturbation, mutual masturbation, and genital-genital contact.

To put this into perspective, around half of women report engaging in anal sex, meaning that more heterosexual couples are having anal sex than same-sex couples are. Like everything in the bedroom, these preferences are highly variable and in no way universal. In bed, one size simply never fits all.

6) Big penises can be painful.

EJ: When men discuss the merits of having a big penis, something that often gets overlooked is how excruciatingly painful it is for most women to have sex with a guy who has one. No matter how much of an ego trip it must be for a dude to be packing a Louisville Slugger instead of a Fisher Price toy, the sad truth is that it’s actually quite difficult for well-endowed men to find partners who are able to handle their equipment, because ladies, I don’t care if you’re the Virgin Mary or if you’ve had sex with the entire 1975 lineup of the New Jersey Nets: If you are not regularly having sex with a man with a big penis, it will hurt. A lot.

I would like, if I may, to share with you a personal anecdote of sorts. When I encountered my first POUS, I had been sexually active for eight years, give or take. Given the amount of time I had invested in my training, I had assumed I had already worked my way up to the Olympics, and was ready to compete with the top athletes in my field. Nearly eight hours of extensive foreplay and an embarrassing train ride on the C later, I discovered that I had not. We hadn’t even been able to have sex. I was a second-string player on a farm team, and an incredibly exhausted one at that.

Although I still look upon that day with some degree of shame and regret—everyone has their 1986 World Series moment, I suppose—I actually learned a very important lesson that day. When it comes to sexual performance, training is key. If you haven’t previously encountered a POUS, and you haven’t put in the time and effort to work up to that specific level, one of two things will happen: 1) Either you’ll be in excruciating pain the whole time, and you’ll feel like you’re giving birth in reverse or 2) You won’t be able to have sex at all, and all the lube and foreplay in the world won’t be able to wash away the shame and disappointment of not being able to take your first enormous dick.

7) Being a “size queen” leaves too many men out.

Nico: If you’re the type of person who will only have sex with guys who at are at least seven inches long (I have some friends insist upon nine), you are severely depleting your dating pool. Studies show that the average erect penis is between 5.1 and 5.9 inches long, but the actual range in terms of penis size is all over the place. An sculpture at Iceland’s Penis Museum shows the incredible diversity of male phalluses, not just in terms of size but also girth. It’s an eye-opening and powerful example of why society’s big penis fetish simply doesn’t measure up; having just one preference doesn’t just set your partners up to fail. It sets you up to fail.

Arguably, that small penis phobia is even more toxic in the bedroom than the actual phallus itself. Men who don’t have a porn-ready seven or eight inches might be dealing with a great deal of internalized shame about their privates, accrued from years of rejection by their partners or silent feelings of worthlessness. Although many studies have shown that those feelings are “all in guys heads,” as even well-endowed men deal with feelings of penis shame, that sense of dysmorphia can lead to eating disorders, depression, and anxiety. Considering the fact that around 45 percent of men report that they’re unhappy with the size of their equipment, this is a major problem.

How can we address such a widespread phenomenon? You can begin by simply shifting your own preferences. Be the change that you want to see in your bedroom.

More Ej Dickson.

Nico Lang is the Opinion Editor at the Daily Dot, as well as a contributor to L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, and the Onion A.V. Club. You can follow him on Twitter @nico_lang.

More Nico Lang.

"All you need is money or power, the notion goes, and beautiful lovers present themselves to you for the taking." Well, not so much.

For the majority of men and women, the major factor in choosing a partner is twinship (to use a Self Psychology term), meaning "this person is like me," and companionship - we want someone who's company we enjoy.

I suspect there are people of both sexes who choose partners for wealth or beauty, but those relationships are probably not going to last very long.

The Myth of Wealthy Men and Beautiful Women

Similarity and companionship are the currency of attraction, for better or worse.

James Hamblin | July 15 2014

Francis Cugat/Wikimedia

In one illustrious study of love (“human sexual selection”) in 1986, psychologists David Buss and Michael Barnes asked people to rank 76 characteristics: What do you value most in a potential mate?

The winner wasn’t beauty, and it wasn’t wealth. Number one was "kind and understanding," followed by "exciting personality" and then "intelligent." Men did say they valued appearances more highly than women did, and women said they valued "good earning capacity" more highly than men did—but neither ranked measures of physical attractiveness or socioeconomic status among their top considerations.

People, though, are liars. Experiments that don’t rely on self-reporting regularly show that physical attractiveness is exquisitely, at times incomparably, important to both men and women. Status (however you want to measure it: income, formal education, et cetera) is often not far behind. In real-life dating studies, which get closer to genuine intentions, physical attractiveness and earning potential strongly predict romantic attraction.

While people tend to prefer people similar to themselves in terms of traits like religiousness or thriftiness, when it comes to beauty and income, more is almost always seen as better. On these “consensually-ranked” traits, people seem to aspire to partners who rank more highly than themselves. They don’t want a match so much as a jackpot.

The stereotypical example of that is known in sociology as a “beauty-status exchange”—an attractive person marries a wealthy or otherwise powerful person, and both win. It’s the classic story of an elderly polymath-billionaire who has sustained damning burns to the face who marries a swimsuit model who can’t find Paris on a map but really wants to go there, because it’s romantic.

All you need is money or power, the notion goes, and beautiful lovers present themselves to you for the taking.

When Homer Simpson once came into a 500-pound surfeit of sugar, his id instinct was to turn it into fortune and sexual prosperity. “In America," he said, half dreaming after a night spent guarding the mound in his backyard, "first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.” That’s an homage to Scarface (in the movie the quote was “money” instead of “sugar”), and it’s where both Simpson and Tony Montana went emphatically astray.

University of Notre Dame sociologist Elizabeth McClintock has done exhaustive research on the idea of people exchanging traits. Her work was published last month in American Sociological Review, looking at data from 1,507 couples in various stages of relationships, including dating, cohabiting, and married. “Beauty-status exchange accords with the popular conception of romantic partner selection as a competitive market process,” McClintock wrote, “a conception widely accepted in both popular culture and academia.” She referred specifically to the gendered version, “in which an economically successful man partners with a beautiful 'trophy wife,'" as commonplace.

But McClintock found that outside of ailing tycoons and Donald Trump, in the practical world it basically doesn’t exist. Where it does, it doesn’t last. The dominant force in mating is matching.

What appears to be an exchange of beauty for socioeconomic status is often actually not an exchange, McClintock wrote, but a series of matched virtues. Economically successful women partner with economically successful men, and physically attractive women partner with physically attractive men.

“Sometimes you hear that really nice guys get hot girls,” McClintock told me, “[but] I found that really nice guys get really nice girls. [Being nice] is not really buying you any currency in the attractiveness realm. If the guys are hot, too, then sure, they can get a hot girl.”

Because people of high socioeconomic status are, on average, rated as more physically attractive than people of lower status, many correlations between one partner's appearance and the other partner's status are spurious and misconstrued.

“Women spend a lot more time trying to look good than men do,” McClintock said. “That creates a lot of mess in this data. If you don’t take that into account then you actually see there’s a lot of these guys who are partnered with women who are better looking than them, which is just because, on average, women are better looking. Men are partnering 'up' in attractiveness. And men earn more than women—we’ve got that 70-percent wage gap—so women marry 'up' in income. You’ve got to take these things into account before concluding that women are trading beauty for money.”

The study concludes that women aren’t really out for men with more wealth than themselves, nor are men looking for women who outshine them in beauty. Rather, hearteningly, people really are looking for ... compatibility and companionship. Finding those things is driven by matching one's strengths with a partner who’s similarly endowed, rather than trying to barter kindness for hotness, humor for conscientiousness, cultural savvy for handyman-ship, or graduate degrees for marketable skills.

At least partly because physically attractive individuals are treated preferentially by the world at large, they enjoy improved school performance, greater occupational success, and higher earnings. So these variables can be hard to isolate.

“It would be very hard to separate out class and attractiveness,” McClintock said, “because they’re just so fundamentally linked. I can’t control for that—but I don’t see how anybody could.”

Past research has found that both physical attractiveness and education “help a woman achieve upward mobility through marriage (defined as marrying a man of higher occupational status than her father),” McClintock noted in the journal article, “and help her marry a man of high occupational status, in absolute terms.” But these studies regularly excluded any evaluation of the men’s physical attractiveness, and so didn’t address the simple fact that it might just be two attractive people being attracted to one another, probably in attractive clothes in an attractive place, both perpetually well slept. Any “exchange” was an illusion.

McClintock has also found that the pervasive tendency toward rating higher-status people as more attractive seems to perpetuate itself . "Because of that," she said, "there’s a bias toward seeing women who are married to high-status men—who are themselves high-status—as being more attractive. It creates this self-affirming circle where we never even stop to ask if we perceive the man as good-looking. We just say she’s good-looking, he’s high status—and she’s good-looking in part because the couple is high-status."

“Assuming that the importance of beauty and status is gendered may cause researchers to overlook men’s attractiveness and women’s socioeconomic resources,” Eli Finkel, a psychologist at Northwestern University, told New York magazine, praising McClintock’s work. In so doing, scientists misidentify matching as exchange.

“Scientists are humans, too,” Finkel claimed, “and we can be inadvertently blinded by beliefs about how the world works. The studies that only looked at men’s (but not women’s) income and only looked at women’s (but not men’s) attractiveness were problematic in that way, as was the peer review process that allowed flawed papers like that to be published.”

“Controlling for both partners’ physical attractiveness may not eliminate the relationship between female beauty and male status,” McClintock wrote, “but it should at least reduce this relationship substantially.”

Even as its pervasiveness in popular culture is waning, the gendered beauty-status exchange model is harmful in several insidious ways, McClintock said. “It trivializes the importance of women’s careers in a social sense: It’s telling women that what matters is your looks, and your other accomplishments and qualities don’t matter on the partner market. The truth is, people are evaluating women for their looks, and they’re evaluating men for their looks. Women are as shallow as men when it comes to appearance, and they should focus on their own accomplishments. If women want an accomplished guy, that’s going to come with being accomplished.”

So this is just one more place where upward mobility is, it seems, a myth. But in this case, no love is lost. Within the gendered beauty-status exchange model, physical attractiveness “might enable class mobility for women,” yes, McClintock wrote, but not without ensuring the women’s economic dependency on her husband and anachronistically ignoring her valuation of his physical attractiveness.

“It also sets up this idea of marriage being mercenary,” McClintock said, “which doesn’t fit with our usual conception that we kind of like our spouse and we want someone that we get along with. It’s not just this trade of his money for her beauty, and he’s going to dump her as soon as she starts to get some wrinkles around her eyes.”

10 Ways Porn Perpetuates Myths About Men and Sex

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Via After Hours LifeHacker, this is an interesting compilation and debunking of myths around sexuality. Most of them were familiar to me, a couple are new.

10 Stubborn Sex Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked

Adam Dachis

myth busting

Friday 8:00am

 

Perhaps you've heard that size matters, women are naturally more bisexual than men, or that tantric sex means everlasting orgasms. The fact is, none of these things are quite true. Sex has been around forever, but we're just starting to understand it. Today we're debunking 10 of the most common sex myths to set the record straight.

I like sex as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to pretend for a second that I'm an expert. To help get to the bottom of each myth on our list, I requested a little help from some top sexologists: Dr. Debby Herbenick (research scientist at Indiana University, sexual health educator at The Kinsey Institute, and author multiple books including Sex Made Easy), Dr. Lindsey Doe (doctor of sexual health and host of Sexplanations), and Dr. Amy Marsh (clinical sexologist and sex counselor). Let's get down to business and find out what we do know.

Myth 1: Penis Size Matters

Men seem to care a lot about the size and shape of their penises, but do women—or even other men? And how much does it actually affect performance in the bedroom? Some argue larger penises can create a more intense orgasm during penetrative sex. Others presume that men with smaller members make up the difference with added effort. So is it all a wash in the end? Debby argues it can depend on the person but ultimately has more to do with a psychological connection than anything else:

To some people, size does matter. They may wish their partner were longer or shorter or thinner or thicker. The bottom line, however, is that research consistently finds that sexual satisfaction is more influenced by psychological connection, intimacy, and relationship satisfaction–not just the size or shape of a person's genitals. In our study of more than 1600 men, we found the average erect length was about 5.6 inches, with most men hovering around that average. How two people connect through sex is typically more important than the size of the parts, however. A great book for better technique? "Great in Bed."

Amy agrees, and notes some men might underestimate what they've got and that there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to genitalia:

Size matters to those who let it matter, and that includes men and women. People have and inflict too much body shame about genitals. Some even worry when they are "average." For example, men who look downward at their penises (or who have belly fat) may see them as smaller than they actually are. Sometimes a larger penis may be "too large" for oral sex, but just right for penetration. Or a smaller penis may feel just right for oral sex, as it can be taken more completely into the mouth. Motion, rapport, depth of intimacy, lovemaking skills, and/or positions often have more to do with partner satisfaction than size.

So what should you do if you're unhappy with the size of your package? Stop worrying so much about what you're working with—whether too large, too small, or too average—and figure out how you can use it to please your partner. Any partner worth your time won't reject you solely based on the size of your penis, and if they really want something different from time to time you can supplement your sexual regimen with toys.

On the other side of the issue, if you have a partner who struggles with his size, be supportive. If the sex is good, let him know. When it isn't, make suggestions that will increase your pleasure. It may be his insecurity, but good partners should help each other.

Myth 2: Men and Women Reach Their Sexual Peak at the Same Time

1

When do men and women reach their sexual peak? Some believe men get there sooner in their late teens and early twenties while women experience similar results a little later in life. Debby believe there's no real way to know for sure:

I hear this all the time and everyone means something different (frequency of sex, enjoyment of sex, ease of orgasm, etc). But however I look at it, I can't make full sense of it. Do men have easier erections at 18 than age 70? Sure, but the sex may be more meaningful and satisfying at 70 than 18 (generally speaking). Enjoyable sex can happen at any age. It's rarely all physical or all emotional. Sex is this fascinating place where our bodies and emotions and past experiences and future hopes collide, and that can result in something pretty spectacular at any age. If you think you've reached your peak, forget it. The best may still be yet to come.

The same advice goes for those who haven't reached their peak. You shouldn't worry about it. So long as you're comfortable with who you are, understand your own body, and remain reasonably open to new experiences, you should have no problem enjoying a satisfying sex life. Whether a "peak" comes or not doesn't matter much if you're having a good time.

Myth 3: Most Women Can Achieve Orgasm From Vaginal Sex Alone

2

Wouldn't it be easy if orgasms resulted from simply following instructions? Just insert Tab A into Slot B, move it around for awhile, and enjoy. Perhaps because it more often works that way for men, this unfortunate myth arose for women. Most don't achieve orgasm from vaginal sex alone even though it's possible—anatomically speaking. Debby explains:

It's not that simple to determine who "can" have an orgasm from a certain type of sex (after all, whether someone has an orgasm during sex depends on more than just their ability, but also on how they feel about their partner, their partner's technique, etc). And when women have orgasms from penile-vaginal intercourse, it's not always clear-cut how exactly the orgasm came to be. After all, the clitoris has inside parts and outside parts and intercourse stimulates both. The vagina, including the G-spot area, is also stimulated during intercourse as are nerves around the cervix, including the vagus nerve, which is one pathway to orgasm.

Continuing on that theme, Amy notes that orgasms can occur in all sorts of ways:

Humans have been studying one another sexually for thousands upon thousands of years. Yet for all that time spent diligently exploring one… Read…

Human beings can achieve orgasm in all kinds of ways. Mary Roach, author of Bonk, found a woman who could think herself to orgasm and another who orgasmed while brushing her teeth. However, the persistent emphasis on vaginal orgasm at the expense of clitoral stimulation is incredibly damaging. It's more more accurate to say that the "majority of women" will need some kind of consistent clitoral stimulation in order to experience orgasm. And we should also remember what sex researcher Mary Jane Sherfey asserted as long ago as 1966: "the clitoris is not just the small protuberance at the anterior end of the vulva."

So how do most women achieve orgasm? Debby breaks it down:

What we do know very clearly is that women and men experience orgasm through diverse sexual behaviors. According to data from our 2009 National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, most women (about 2/3) have orgasms when they have sex, and this could be from vaginal, clitoral, breast or other kinds of stimulation. And yet in another study, nearly 1/5 of women reported preferring oral sex in order to have an orgasm.

We can hash out statistics all day, but ultimately we still have a problem: orgasms are less common for women than men. For women who have difficulty achieving orgasm, Debbie recommends reading Sex Made Easy and Becoming Orgasmic for a little help.

Myth 4: Men Can't Have Multiple Orgasms

Men are known for shutting down and going to sleep post-ejaculation (for biological reasons), so the idea of multiple orgasms sounds almost ridiculous to many people. That said, it happens. Some men can do it naturally, but most have to work pretty hard. Amy explains:

Men can, but it's usually learned skill involving Taoist or Tantric techniques which include breath control and making a distinction between ejaculation and orgasm. You can find these techniques in books like Mantak Chia and Douglas Abram's account of Taoist sexual practices, The Multi-Orgasmic Man. It's interesting to note that sex researchers William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian said that 12% of men they'd studied were reporting multiple orgasms.

Debby notes that there are some men who can ejaculate repeatedly, however:

There are the rare men who can ejaculate over and over again, kind of how many women can orgasm repeatedly. Why this differences occurs is not well understood – and there's no sense it can be taught (these men seem to have some physical differences from other men).

While some men can ejaculate more than once, most can't and never will. That said, men looking for more than a single orgasm can teach themselves to achieve them.

Myth 5: Women Are Naturally More Bisexual

Females are generally considered a more fluid gender in regards to sex, but does that mean men are less likely to be bisexual? According to Lindsay, the answer is pretty straightforward:

Nope. While there is no consistent data on how many people identify as bisexual, we do see stats where there are twice as many bisexual men as there are women. Sexual orientation is natural, and no more for one gender than others; it may be more socially acceptable and therefore easier for women to express more flexibility or fluidity with their sexualities but this does not equate to their identities nor does it exclude the men who experience attraction for their sex and other sexes.

Debby concurs, citing a few studies of her own:

Sizable minorities of women and men have had sex with same-sex partners. For example, in one of our national studies, we found about 15% of women had had oral sex with another woman and about 11% of men had had oral sex with another man. Far fewer women and men identify as gay or lesbian or bisexual. Research suggests that both women and men may be somewhat "fluid" in their sexual feelings and behaviors.

Why is this myth so prevalent? It might have to do with higher amounts of "lesbian" pornography aimed at straight men, or a perceived cultural preference towards homosexual sex with women rather than men. While a number of factors may have contributed to this misinformation, it all started with a 2005 New York Times article that argued bisexual men do not exist. More recently, that study was finally debunked. Bisexual men have known this for years that they exist, but now science is finally backing them up. Tell your friends!

Read the rest of the article to see the other five myths.

Anna Pulley - 10 Things Porn Gets Horribly Wrong About Men

From Role/Reboot, Anna Pulley exposes 10 things about men that porn gets "horribly wrong." And my first thought was, "Only 10?"

This is a good article - with a little humor to lighten things up. The only one I really did not know was that gay male porn stars make 3x as much as straight porn guys. Good for them.

10 Things Porn Gets Horribly Wrong About Men 

By Anna Pulley
January 07, 2014


This originally appeared on Alternet.org. Republished here with permission.
Here are the biggest male myths we find hardest to swallow.

We recently told you our biggest grievances involving women in mainstream porn. Making a comparable list for men, however, proved to be harder (sorry) than it initially seemed. Partially because, in mainstream straight porn, which is produced, funded, run, and directed by men, the focus is almost entirely on the porn actresses. Rarely do we get sweeping slow pans of pectoral physiques, zoomed in facial grimaces, or the come-hither eyes that women make at the camera. While we do often glimpse extreme penetration closeups, with its accompanying, and at times mesmerizing, ball pendulums, little attention is paid to much else.

Further complicating our attempts is that very few scientific studies on porn have been done (except in the realm of addiction and why no one will think of the children). But! A peer-reviewed Porn Studies Journal is slated to come (sorry again) in 2014, so perhaps this will change soon. In the meantime, some of our stats come from self-proclaimed “idea detective” Jon Millward, who crunched numbers from the Internet Adult Film Database (like IMDB, but for smut) which boasts data on 151,946 titles and 129,831 performers/directors, but as is to be expected, much of Millward’s data focuses on the ladeez.

Despite these obstacles, when it comes to the topic of men, porn still gets a lot wrong. Here are the 10 biggest male myths we find hardest to swallow (not sorry about that one, actually).

1. Only one erogenous zone exists.

In mainstream and especially hardcore porn, men are often reduced to little more than walking, grunting penises who experience no other pleasure except from their deep-V diver. Like RoboCop, but for sexual purposes only. Again, since the onus is on the women in porn, some disregard of male bodies is to be expected. While we don’t expect to be regaled with the pleasures of their watercolors hobby or anything, a little attention could be paid to other erogenous zones, like nipples, necks, thighs, asses, and even balls, which are largely ignored, in porn as in life.

2. Size is subjective.

While no hard or even soft data exists on the average penis size of porn stars versus the average Tom’s Harry Dick, the porn-star-penis-as-huge trope is certainly prevalent and used to sell a variety of pumps, pills, and other penis-enlargement doodads, banking on men’s insecurity and Photoshop to hawk their wang wares. But just as technology can make Smurfs three-dimensional, porn cinematography can make a penis appear larger than it is, with lighting, camera angles, makeup, and even the placement of one’s penis next to, say, a diminutive porn actress. Everything looks big when you stand next to a girl who weighs 80 pounds.

3. The everlasting boner.

In typical porn scenes, men are required to bang longer than the Salvation Army drum on the Easter Day parade, i.e. for 30-60 minutes or more. Despite what you may have heard in Boyz II Men songs, non-porn intercourse typically lasts between 3-7 minutes. As Seymore Butts told Forbes: “The most difficult part about being a male porn star is the hard-on. They have to get it up and off on cue essentially and all the while in between maintain [it] for two to three hours. This must be done under the most difficult of circumstances, including not being attracted to their female co-star, having sex in the most uncomfortable settings, i.e. on hard surfaces, cold/hot weather, etc., and/or having to stop frequently for direction or shot setups.” Male porn performers also use Caverject—a drug injected directly into their penis to maintain those impossible erections, bringing new meaning to the phrase “working stiffs.”

4. Mo’ money shots, mo’ problems.

If sex acts in porn were relative, then we’d all be giving and getting a lot more facials. According to Millward’s porn study, 87 percent of porn actresses will “take a facial” at least once in their careers. For comparison, 62 percent will do anal, 31 percent swallow, and a mere 6 percent will be fisted. The money shot is the most common way to end a porn scene. As with all things, of course, there are probably some men and women who enjoy capping off their night with a little sperm in the eye, but it’s also safe to say that the vast majority do not.

5. The jackhammer.

Porn would have us believe that the only tried and true way to fuck a woman is to pound her so hard that the cervical force and momentum spontaneously cause her to travel back to the Triassic period to bring back a tooth from a Therapsid with which to conquer our reptilian overlords in 2057. Really hard, in other words. Of course, a good deep-dicking can be enjoyable (and even preferred!) from time to time, but every time? And for an hour? And no breaks to drink Gatorade laced with speed to keep up the fervent drilling to China? Also, no one ever sweats. Maybe that’s why they keep all the dry ice around.

6. Very little variety of roles for men.
While women can be a wide variety of stereotypes (the randy MILF, the randy sorority girl, the randy babysitter, etc.) the profiles of men in the International Adult Movie Database are sadly bland. They either do boy/girl scenes or they don’t. Even when they do get to play an actual role, it is often the uninspiring pizza delivery guy (“I ordered extra sausage!”), or some kind of repair man. “You know what this sink needs? Twelve inches of reinforced steel pipe. C’mere ladies.”

7. Neither here, nor hair.

Like women in porn, the standard for male porn stars is to partake in bushwhacking (as well as scrotum-shearing, chest-clipping, and rectal-region hair removal). This manscaping, and other body hair removal, is for aesthetic reasons: to make one’s penis appear larger, smoother, and cleaner. While non-porn male deforestation has certainly seen a rise (there are a bevy of articles on the topic, major razor brands have launched all-body shavers for men, salons are offering more male services, etc.), there isn’t much research on its overall prevalence. But, a 2008 study from Australia found that 82 percent of gay men and 66 percent of straight men removed their pubic hair at least once, although the largest percentage of both groups said they did it “rarely.”

8. It pays to be gay.

While there are few cultural rewards for bisexual men, except perhaps in the realm of increased hair products, in porn at least, there are definite financial benefits. Gay porn pays about three times as much as straight porn. For this reason, many straight male porn performers have done gay porn, enough to spawn the term gay-for-pay. We can’t say the same for non-porn dude experimentation, as much as we wanted Brokeback Mountain to become a phenomenon.

9. Porn stars weigh less and have more piercings.

The average male porn star weighs 167.5 lbs, 27 pounds less than the national average for men. It makes sense that porn stars would be in better shape than many, considering the physical demands of say, the Standing 69 or the Lawnmower. Aside from weight, however, attractiveness of male porn stars seems more often than not based largely on...how to put it...the quality of the wood. One time we watched a near-elderly man, who looked like a penis with eyes, nail his hot secretary and the sight was so ghastly it almost turned us off porn indefinitely. Speaking of appearances, male porn stars also are more likely to have at least one tattoo (9.5 percent more than average), and a body piercing (13 percent more than average).

10. Male porn stars really get around.

Male porn stars are far more prolific than your average dude (duh), but also considerably more than female porn stars, when it comes to number of partners. Millward again: “The 10 most prolific male performers, on average, have slept onscreen with 1,013 different women each (45 a year for an average career length of 22.4 years). Whereas the 10 most prolific women on average have slept with 148 different men (eight a year for an average career length of 17.7 years). The most prolific of them all, Tom Byron, has slept with 1,127 different women. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, non-porn men have an average of seven sex partners."

Follow @annapulley on Twitter.

Danny Baker - 13 Myths Surrounding Mental Illness (Good Men Project)

Danny Baker offers an important post on the myths of mental illness over at the Good Men Project. For a lot of us, especially readers of this blog, these are common sense and we know better - but there are a lot of people who hold these beliefs or variations of them, especially men (it's weak to ask for health, we should just get over it, and so on).

13 Myths Surrounding Mental Illness

December 13, 2013 by Danny Baker

From the belief that mental illness doesn’t exist to being able to just “get over it,” Danny Baker lists 13 myths surrounding mental illness that can hinder recovery.

—   In no particular order, here are 13 of the most widespread myths surrounding mental illness in the 21st century.

1. Mental illness doesn’t exist. Just because mental illnesses are invisible on the surface, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t real. We can’t see gravity, either – does that mean that that’s made up? Furthermore, through various brain image technology, it’s actually now possible to observe differences in the brain between people with certain mental illnesses and people without them.
2. Mental illness is rare. On the contrary, approximately 1 in 4 people suffer from a mental illness.
3. You don’t know anyone with a mental illness. Again, since mental illness affects 1 in 4, then unless you live by yourself on a raft in the middle of the ocean, then it’s almost certain that you do.
4. If you have a mental illness, then it means you’re crazy. No! If you have a mental illness, then all it means is that you have a mental illness – a condition that can be treated just like physical illnesses can.
5. Mental illnesses are lifelong and impossible to treat. I kind of gave the truth away in myth 4, but it’s worth emphasizing: treatments today are more refined than ever before, and as a result, most mental illnesses are able to be recovered from, or at the very least managed.
6. If someone has a mental illness, than they’re to blame for it. While I do believe that sufferers need to take responsibility for their illness and be proactive in trying to recover, it’s critical to note that absolutely anyone can fall victim to a mental illness. Mental illnesses tend to be caused by a combination of genetics, brain chemical imbalances, psychological trauma and environmental stresses; since so much of this is out of a person’s control, then blaming them for developing a mental illness is extremely unfair.
7. Only people who are weak ask for help. It’s really the complete opposite – it takes self-awareness to admit that you have a problem, and given the stigma surrounding mental illness, it takes a lot of courage to ask for support. And on a more fundamental level, seeking help is just the smart, logical thing to do. Just like physical illnesses, mental illnesses require treatment in order for the sufferer to recover – so if you want to get better and return to living a healthy life, then you have to get help. Otherwise your illness will always impair you.
8. People with a mental illness can “just get over it”. Again, mental illnesses are illnesses. You can’t “just get over them”, in the same way you just can’t get over a physical illness like cancer.
9. People with a mental illness are violent. This is nonsense perpetrated by the media and television shows. Numerous studies have shown this to be blatantly untrue. For example in the US, a nationwide study by NIMH showed that only 4% of violent crimes are committed by people with a diagnosed mental illness. Additionally, the study showed that people with a mental illness are 11 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than the general population.
10. People with a mental illness are incompetent. Because mental illnesses are treatable, then most sufferers who are getting help are able to work and live productive lives. In fact, it’s well known that depression rates are particularly high in the legal profession, which is proof that people with a mental illness can still be extremely high functioning. Furthermore, since mental illness affects 1 in 4 people, chances are that you work with one or multiple sufferers, even if you don’t know it.
11. Mental illnesses don’t affect teenagers – any problems they’re experiencing is just part of going through puberty. Granted that one’s adolescent years tend to be more of a roller coaster than most, but it’s ludicrous to assume that this is the root of all their problems and that it’s impossible for them to suffer from a mental illness. In fact, studies show that across Australia, the UK and the US, as many as 1 in 5 teens will experience depression before they reach adulthood – and that’s just one of a myriad of mental illnesses.
12. People with a mental illness – particular those suffering from depression – are attention seekers or drama queens. In fact, it’s usually the opposite, which is why the majority of sufferers hide their pain with a smile, and why their most common response to “how are you” is “I’m fine”.
13. I can’t do anything for someone with a mental illness. While it’s true that you can’t snap your fingers and make them recover, you can help immensely by being a good friend – by doing your best to understand them instead of judging them, by showing them respect, by listening to them when they need someone to talk to, and by putting your arm around them when they need your support.

What are some of the other mental illness myths you’ve heard? If you suffer from a mental illness, what are some you’ve heard that are specific to that particular illness?

10 Fascinating Facts About Men, Sex and Testosterone (Alternet)

Ah, testosterone, that much maligned hormone that makes men manly and makes women want men. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminists blamed testosterone for all of the world's ills - rape, murder, wars, and various other forms of violence. Like this:

For all our squinting at the two sexes to blur them into duplicates, few hearts race when passing gaggles of giggling schoolgirls. But any woman who passes a clump of testosterone-drunk punks without picking up the pace, without avoiding the eye contact that might connote challenge or invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block, is a zoological fool. A boy is a dangerous animal. –Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

"Testosterone-drunk," how witty. How misguided, as well.

This article from Alternet looks at to facts (and clears up some falsehoods) about testosterone.

10 Fascinating Facts About Men, Sex and Testosterone

There's far more to male sexuality than meets the eye.

AlterNet / By Liz Langley

 

February 12, 2013

Our culture has endowed women with some exotic qualities -- mystery, hidden depths, secret knowledge; all very alluring. But also very explainable. For a long time, women had little voice, so of course we were a mystery. Mute the TV and you won’t understand what the show is all about.

Men, by contrast, are alleged to be much more direct; even their primary sexual characteristics are obvious, hanging out there like an awning, compared to the secret gardens of women. In fact, the male stereotype was so set in my mind that the first time a straight man said to me, “It doesn’t always have to be about sex,” I looked at him like a puzzled dog. Men, I thought, were supposed to be relatively simple creatures, driven by sex, food and sleep (and sometimes Star Wars).

In reality, men are every bit as complicated as women and thoroughly fascinating in their sexual mechanics, hormonal fluctuations and brain functions. Here are 10 fun facts about male sexuality that make men a little easier to understand.

1. "I’m not gay but my boyfriend Testosteronius is."

Male sexuality was a different ballgame in ancient Roman times than it is now. One’s sexuality was defined not by preference for one sex or another, but as being “active” or “passive.” Active meant you were the penetrator and passive meant you were the penetrated. Sex was more about social status than anything.

N.S. Gill on About.com, reports that men of “good standing” were active, and they “initiated acts of penetrating sex. Whether you did this with a female or a male, slave or free, wife or prostitute, made little difference -- as long as you were not on the receiving end, so to speak.” (Only freeborn youths were out of bounds.) It’s actually quite complicated, but, writes Markus Milligan in Archeology News, “From a societal perspective, to be 'passive' or 'submissive,' threatened the very fabric of masculinity, with feminine traits, submission and passive mannerisms being an act of the lower class and slaves.”

So in ancient Rome if you were on top you were a top. We’ll call you Testosteronius.

2. Making a man out of you.

Let’s keep talking about testosterone, or T, because there’s no discussing male sexuality without it, the “quienes mas macho” of hormones, the thing that literally makes men men. All embryos develop the makings of both male and female sex organs: testosterone, under certain conditions, stimulates the growth of the male organs. It waves its magic wand and voila! You get a magic wand.

And once it’s made you a boy it doesn’t just leave you hanging; it accessorizes you as a male, making your voice deeper, your body hairier and muscle mass bigger. You also get that most useful and attention-getting of ornaments, the testes, which in turn, produce testosterone, though it’s regulated in the brain by the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, a little love triangle known as the HPG axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, gonad).

So that’s some of the technology of testosterone, which you probably think of as being at the helm of the male sex drive and manly traits. Interestingly, less than 100 years ago no one thought about it at all. Harvard Medical School associate clinical professor Abraham Morgentaler writes in Testosterone for Life (source of the HPF info) that, “For several thousand years, farmers have found that castrating domesticated animals made them infertile and more docile as well as greatly reducing their sexual activity. They did not know, however, that they were reducing a specific substance, because testosterone was not identified until the 1930s.”

By 1935, shortly after the T molecule was discovered, it was synthesized and in use as a medication (it still is: see #4).

3. T for two.

If you want to hear/read an amazing story about the power of this hormone, check out the Testosterone episode of This American Life in 2002, when producer Alex Blumberg interviewed Griffin Hansbury who transitioned from female to male five years before the story was produced. Hansbury’s first injection of testosterone was huge, giving him twice the amount that usually circulates in the system of high-T men. The changes were fast and included a raging libido (“It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind”) and…seriously…a sudden interest in science. From the transcript, Hanbury says:

“….I cannot say it was the testosterone. All I can say is that this interest happened after T. There's BT and AT, and this was definitely After T. And I became interested in science. I found myself understanding physics in a way I never had before.”

Blumberg’s response to Hanbury’s first admission to a new love of science?

“You’re just setting us back a hundred years, sir.”

4. Man-o-pause.

Sometimes testosterone goes on the decline, usually in middle-aged men. When it does, they experience something very similar to menopause, only it’s less obvious because men never stop getting their periods (well, you know what I mean).

It’s called andropause, and the symptoms -- lowered sex drive, fatigue, lack of interest in work and hobbies, mood swings, loss of muscle mass, hot flashes -- are often mistaken for run-of-the-mill aging.

Damon Raskin, an internist who sub-specializes in men’s health issues and is the supervising doctor for Ageless Men’s Health.com said in a phone interview that the natural decrease in testosterone affects some men more than others. And even younger men can experience sudden drops in testosterone, sometimes for unknown reasons, or because of genetics, diabetes or opiate abuse.

“As men age it is normal for testosterone to fall and some men are more sensitive to the fall than others. Sometimes men can have low testosterone and have no symptoms,” he says. A simple blood test from their primary care doctor can let men know if they have low T and if so they can get testosterone replacement therapy, usually a gel, patch or a injection.

Some of the symptoms of low T can also be confused with depression. Raskin says, “When I see a new patient who comes in thinking they may be depressed one of the blood tests that I do is a testosterone test. I check the thyroid, see if they’re anemic and check their testosterone.”

Bottom line: you can find your mojo. The answer to where it went might lie in a simple blood test.

5. A little squeeze goes a long way.

Before you get to middle age you should know something: Kegels are not just for women anymore.

Kegel is an exercise that strengthens the muscles of the pelvic floor so you can sail gracefully into your later years with fewer worries about incontinence and your internal organs slipping around like luggage on a turbulent flight. They’re done by squeezing internal pelvic muscles and can be done on the sly, anywhere. Women will often joke while they’re sitting at their desk or standing at a bar that they’re doing their Kegels “right now!”

But men should be doing Kegels too, because in addition to those health benefits they can also lead to stronger orgasms, prevent prostate trouble, problems with erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. Dr. Chaves at AskMen.com provides some additional exercises men can do to work the Kegels, my favorite being “For more advanced muscle building, you can place a light towel over your erect penis and squeeze to 'lift' the towel.”

When you can throw it out the window give me a call. Or at least put it on YouTube.

6. See ya!

Sure, I’d like to see that towel trick. Who wouldn’t? But it’s one of those great bromides that men are actually the more visual sex and two studies have indeed shown marked differences in the visual processes of men and women.

A 2012 study from the Center for Behavioral Science by Emory University researchers found that women are better at discriminating between colors while men are better at perceiving “fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli,” than women. A 2004 study, also by Emory University researchers, found that when men and women looked at erotic photos both sexes reported the same levels of arousal but set off “a frenzy of activity, particularly in the amygdala of the men.” (The amygdala is the part of the brain's limbic system that is associated with emotion and anticipation.)

So we already knew that men and women see things differently in the figurative sense. Now we have some evidence that it’s true in the literal sense.

7. Sighs matter.

If men do, indeed, have a better eye for visual detail maybe that explains why they seem to fret over penis size despite stories like the one in Men’s Health that reported in one of their own surveys that only 7% of “sexually satisfied” women said size was “critical” to their desires.

But men will worry, no matter how much women tell them they shouldn’t. Even famous men worry. The wonderfully named Jay Dixit writes about the size matter in Psychology Today, reporting that he-man Ernest Hemingway once tried to reassure F. Scott Fitzgerald, telling him, "There's nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened," and "It is basically not a question of the size in repose. It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle."

Perhaps, The Medium-Sized Gatsby just wasn’t a title F. Scott was comfortable with.

8. Size really doesn't matter, but it's interesting.

I hesitated to include this next item, but it’s so weird and funny I have to tell you: there are now two apps for your phone that measure penis size.

The Predicktor, an Android app developed by a Toronto physician and the team at The Doctor Says, seems the more lighthearted of the two; read the story and video on the National Post website. You enter certain numbers, like the size of his “feet, his height, ring size, whether it’s a porn star (etc, etc.)” which leads one to wonder how to ask a guy all these things without him just saying “It’s six inches, okay? Is that okay with you?” It’s got all kinds of genital fun facts and is meant to reassure men that they’re probably more normal than they think. And if it doesn’t The Doctor Says also has an app where you can test your anxiety.

Then PC Magazine reports on “Condom Size,” an app for the iPhone which is meant to accurately measure you and see what size condom you ought to be wearing. The app invites the user to hold “his hard member against inches or CM on sides of the screen,” where there’s a yellow tape measure. (There is also probably the chance of you accidentally taking a picture and sending it to your boss because that’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen to you.) The user is also asked to take a piece of string, wrap it around to get an accurate measurement and hold that up to the “digital ruler."

So, this is an app for people who can’t work a tape measure. If you can’t work a tape measure how can you afford an iPhone?

Glamour says “The app will give him his results, including a recommended condom brand but also…his world ranking according to penis girth and length!” A score of 100 percent isn’t a perfect score, it’s average. Anything over or under is, well, over or under.

9. The boy can’t help it, but neither can the girl.

So there are a couple of stereotypes we’ve dealt with here, like men’s visual nature being different and men worrying about penis size. A couple of items in this list from LiveScience, 10 Things Every Woman Should Know About a Man’s Brain, break those stereotypes, including their emotionality and vulnerability to loneliness. When it comes to cheating and one-night stands, the next study has no gender bias to offer. Another LiveScience story reports that in a 2010 Binghamton University study 181 young adults were asked about their sexual history and then DNA tested. Those with a variation of the dopamine gene DRD4 were more likely to report one-night stands and infidelity (dopamine is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward).

Researcher Justin Garcia said this doesn’t necessarily let the horn dogs off the hook because some people without the variant screwed around too, and some with the variant didn’t, just that “a much higher proportion of those with this genetic type are likely to engage in these behaviors.

Soooo, a dolphin might bite you and a shark might not bite you, but it’s more likely that a shark will bite you. Got it. Keep an eye out for sharks.

10. Come and get it and come...and get it.

Finally, all that sex has got to make you a little hungry so we’ll leave you with some more advice from AskMen.com, this one a list of the 10 Foods That Increase Your Sperm Count (just FYI: a new study from Harvard says a little less TV and a little more exercise will help, too). Of course, there are oysters which “contain a potent amino acid that increases testosterone in males and progesterone in females,” but the story also offers some surprises like garlic, which is full of allicin which increase blood flow to the nether regions, and bananas which are not only shaped appropriately, but full of vitamin B for stamina and bromelain which increases male libido.

But the most important one this week is dark chocolate, which “contains L-Arginine HCL, a powerful amino acid that has been clinically proven to double sperm and semen volume.”

~ Liz Langley is a freelance writer in Orlando, FL.