back
62 comments
Back when I was a regular listener to talk radio, the ads for PE snake oil were absolutely ubiquitous. They aired more than any other product I can remember (except maybe Bose Wave radio).

I never knew how to feel for this target audience. It sucks people are vulnerable to obvious snake oil ads. It also sucks that PE is a thing that's important to people.

Male body shaming is weird and oogy.

One of the funniest things is Reddit “evolving” to lock threads or downvote comments about people’s appearances on popular threads, but simultaneously embracing comments that associate a man with perceived negative qualities as having a small penis. And it will almost always be the top comment.
The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on. If a man responds in kind, people are mortified, too shocked to even speak condemnation. Likewise for prison rape. It seriously troubles me how many people celebrate the prospect of that happening to male convicts. If you suggested it as a fitting punishment for a female offender, you might not even exit the room you uttered the words in unharmed.
> The double standards are shocking. If a woman says "if he cheated on me like that, I'd (fill in horrid genital mutilation)" and everyone has a laugh about it or cheers her on.

One of my earliest memories of mom: Her in traction for two broken vertebrae, thanks to dad and a bakelite phone. Of all the relatives and friends who've been physically assaulted by someone close, about 99% were female and about 99% of them were hit by a male. The exceptions were older sisters and that ended when the younger sibling got big enough. Because size matters.

I did 25 years with a profoundly abusive spouse and know a bit about being abused by women. To believe I was at physical risk would be a sad delusion to have.

In my experience, efforts to marginalize the risk that men pose to women don't come from a place of sound analysis and good faith.

Bose Wave radio adverts on the radio. Damn.
My parents actually did buy, not a Bose Wave radio, but one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.) It came in pretty handy for sporadic weather-related stuff.
> one of the South African wind-up ones they advertised heavily just before Y2K. (My parents were insomniac Art Bell fans.)

That'd be C.Crane. Looks like he and Bell were into each other https://ccrane.com/art-bell-an-interview-with-a-legendary-ta...

I knew a few listeners who bought them, typically on credit. I inherited a couple but passed them on.
Radio and sports ads are the worst. This. Penny auctions. Crypto. Gambling. I tune out of things I might have otherwise listened to because it feels filthy.
They're still on AM radio, along with the "buy gold" ones. It's weird.
tl; dr:

Starts with some absolute horror stories (e.g. complete loss of function), continues to talk about the technology improving, but still includes horror stories.

It's not clear if the average outcome is horrible, but it sounds like people are getting paid to advocate or sued for sharing horror stories, so it's hard to trust anything.

This is so sad. I think there is an underdiscussed crisis with some segments of men.
Men have a lot of problems that are under discussed and swept under the rug. Loneliness issues, confidence issues, perception issues, issues with men thinking their life doesn't matter to just name a few. The suicide rate among men is so high for a lot of reasons.
Suicide rate is around 4 times higher for men in Western societies, but suicide attempts by women are at least twice that of men. More lethal, messier suicide methods are more popular among men, and in my opinion, it's because women are socialised to be more considerate of those who will find their body.
This vaguely reminds me of self-image problems vs. unreasonably beauty standards that we mainly associate with young women.

It’s definitely quite different in that everyone in public sees a girl’s face and the shape of her body, whereas penises are hidden by default. Also the “toxic” standard for women is everywhere across media, whereas excepting pure pornography penises are rarely and briefly shown.

But these stories are so sad. These men feel ashamed of their bodies for not “measuring up” — is this phrase itself perhaps a link between penis size and masculinity/value that is ingrained into our very language?

There has been a big effort for years to call out the harms of, e.g., airbrushing in advertising, to push for including more plus-sized models, and to generally expand the notion of beauty for women.

I don’t think there’s any such effort to claim that, say, all penises are beautiful, all men are attractive, and so on. The mere suggestion seems utterly foreign to our conception of manhood. We have billionaires and presidents still boasting about their penises. What a crazy thing to make a point of pride and shame.

With men it may be hidden, but it affects "measuring up" as you say in exactly the way that matters to most straight men: having more (or even any!) sexual partners, especially as supposedly they're having less sex than ever[0]. It's one of the many factors in the toolbox fallacy: "If only I was 'big' enough, I'd be more confident with women".

[0]https://www.healthline.com/health-news/young-adults-especial...

I don't think it really impacts how many sexual partners you will have. Maybe repeats? But even then, doubt it. Preferences are disparate.
It was hard to read. I'm here (wincing in imagined pain) shouting, "No! What if it is irreversible?! What if your dick gets screwed up?!"

I confess that after reading it I began to feel that it is even unethical to be in the penis-enlargement field.

when making fun of a man's penis size for whatever reason becomes normalized, it isn't surprising body dysmorphia becomes more prevalent. double standards galore. mens issues just don't matter.
I dunno about you, but the only people who have ever made fun of my penis were other men, and every woman I've known who called herself a feminist cared about men's issues. I first learned about the inequities in child custody impacting men from one.

This isn't a "double standard," it's what feminists have been saying for a long time, that these rigid gender roles hurt everyone (though women in particular do bear the brunt of it).

You've really never heard a woman say men with big trucks are "compensating for something" or any other put-downs related to penis size for perceived macho or overtly masculine behavior?

Here, I'll give you a segment of a Netflix special where a woman makes fun of a past boyfriend with a micropenis, does that count? Some of the audience laughs but it doesn't kill TBF. Starts at the 2 minute mark.

1. https://youtu.be/QQXGEd-8Hws

It will continue to be underdiscussed unless there is big money in it. Males are disposable genetically and evolutionarily.
From a technology point of view there is a lesson in how a company controls the media it's customers consume. How alternative sources of data get discredited and how untrusted the information found online is. The result, when you can't trust anyone, is to trust the source you want to believe. Many men want to believe they'll get a bigger penis.
From the article:

> Some implants got infected or detached. Others buckled at the corners. Occasionally these protrusions broke through the skin, forming holes that would fester. The hole of the health­-spa vice ­president was so tiny that he originally mistook its fermented odor for an STD.

> Later, doctors unaffiliated with the Pe­numa would compare such penises to “a torpedo,” “a penguin,” “a pig in a blanket,” “a beer can with a mushroom sticking out on the top” and “the tipped-­down nose of the Concorde.”

IIRC the Kamasutra says there's 3 genital sizes for both men and women; big (horse/elephant), medium (bull/mare) and small (hare/deer). It says you can have great sex with up to 1 size difference, and although the woman being one size smaller is preferable to her being one size bigger, it calls equal unions the most perfect ones. And that's just refering to vaginal intercourse itself, of course there is so much more to sex.

I don't know what my point is, other than: don't fret! If you find someone you like, and who likes you, a lot of silliness and unfounded fear will fade away.

To add to your point, I think the article highlights one reason to be interested in the procedure that is not about body obsession:

> after five kids, their wife couldn’t feel them anymore

Seems like today this can only be remedied by a woman with kegel exercises, and if she is not up for it, there is nothing you can do as a man to shrink the size gap.

who's to say she isn't trying? gotta pick up the slack, kinda like how there's an option for male birth control.
I wonder what the kama sutra's model has to say about surveys indicating that women who have sex with women tend to have significantly more satisfying sex lives than women who have sex with men. Presumably, for the purposes of the model that its authors are getting at, the magnitude of "size mismatch" between two mares is infinitely greater than that of a mare and a horse or hare. Which might imply that the model is deeply, fundamentally broken.

It seems to have a track record of breaking people, too.

I can’t say I have any insight into the sex lives of lesbians, but size seems unlikely to be the driver of that vs. things like empathy, more equal sex drives, and no pressure to get off before the other partner.
Strap-ons come in any size. It can be difficult to find ones which allow full control / subtleties but the harnesses from Aslan leather do a pretty impressive job of providing full control over the dildo.
I didn't mean to cite it as an authority on everything, but the bit about genital sizes struck me as sensible, certainly more sensible than just obsessing about having a huge penis.
The summary actually does it’s job:

> Kevin said that he had undergone five surgeries with Elist, including two upgrades, a revision and a removal, and his penis no longer functioned.

Still, Kevin had always found the surgeon to be caring, if a little preoccupied. “He reminded me of Doctor Franken­stein — the intensity of him wanting this thing to come to life,” Kevin told me. It sounded strange, he acknowledged, but before each operation he’d been filled with excitement. “You just feel relieved that you’re fixing something,” he said.

At an appointment earlier this year, Kevin said, Elist promised to fix him again with a sixth procedure, but one of the surgeon’s assistants discreetly advised against it. Kevin thought he could spot “the other experiments” in the clinic from their loose-­fitting sweatpants and the awkward way they walked. There were so many men waiting to see the doctor that they spilled into the hallway.

…

I think I’m of the ideal height, with the ideal penis size… so there’s a requisite for this entire article that I just won’t understand. But that last paragraph would scare the hell out of me if this was something I was interested in.

Is there anything left after 5 surgeries? After 6? There has to be a lot of scarring inside and out.
Only thing that actually works without horrifying side effects is a Bathmate. Even then, the results are quite limited, and very temporary.

C’est la vie

Some good old-fashioned body positivity might work even better with even fewer side effects.
Communication and creativity can do almost anything, but dysmorphia is a hell of a drug.
> A year had passed since Mick’s ex­plant, and he’d entered a serious depression. He’d barely noticed when pandemic restrictions were lifted, because he’s continued to stay in his bed. Originally six and a half inches erect, he had lost an inch of length.

Dude was already above the average cited in the article before he went under the knife. That's some tragic dysmorphia.

The saddest stat in the article is that the overwhelming majority of patients were already average or above. That alone should be considered a dereliction of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. This type of procedure should be banned for anyone already over 4 inches.
Most are scam , I think. Random stuff: - [big gun] :) , is exception, not rule. Exercises, luck, pillows? Stop working after 30s? Not much old movie performers? small is better than nothing no? I mean, some nice women are happy with their half centimeter! I guess some women have their own fun/thing. Cant compete with [dildo dragon] thing [dildo/dragon/glove] thing can be men's best friend. Helps to fill the void :). It is an art, though.

not native sorry!

Reading this made me extremely uneasy. My impression - perhaps it's just being hopeful for a material solution for a psychosis of the mind. But when I think on that impression isn't a pill just about any fleeting vice the same as what these men have suffered. Maybe I'm not better. We need avenues to help each other. To talk with another. Maybe there's an opportunity to create something?
Reads like a horror story
Wow. That is so sad to read.
I didn't read past jellyfish. That's enough nightmare fodder for me
penumba!

  > Elist sat behind an imposing desk in a borrowed office and spoke about his
  > forthcoming book, a collection of parables for spiritually minded surgeons
  > titled "Operating with God." His ghost­writer had rendered his voice so
  > skillfully, he said, that he'd found himself moved to tears while reading
  > it. Beside a gilt statue of a jaguar in the corner of the room, someone had
  > propped a mirror with an image of Jesus etched at its center. As Elist
  > recounted passages from his book, his merry face, crowned by a hair­net,
  > hovered next to Christ's.
The above reads like a Tales From the Crypt movie script, in the leadup to Elist slicing into yet another victim's Johnson.