Where are all the small dicks? 

With the golden age of studio porn well and truly finished, we have seen the decentralisation of the pornography industry. The explosion of amateur, homemade, and self-produced porn led me to hope that the ubiquity of the American-led ‘bigger is always better’ approach to cocks might finally be near its end. But, even outside of the studio porn market, the allure of fantastically huge dicks continues unabated.

I awaited the time that average and smaller-than-average guys would turn up in my feed, but the promise of expanding outside the tropes established by commercial porn never came to be. Or, if it did, it was buried under an insurmountable number of normcore jocks with comically overstuffed briefs, each with a bulge more improbable than the last.

I want to see hot guys with small cocks. Unfortunately, the internet tells me that these guys don’t exist, or if they do, that they aren’t worth looking at. This makes me wonder if guys with smaller cocks cannot see themselves as desirable and the pressures our culture places on men’s relationships with their bodies.

Despite the shift in the means of production, America has held firm their place as the pornographic cultural hegemon and with it has come its obsession with the extraordinary. For many, that is what pornography is about: a fantasy which embodies our desires. Porn that makes you want to fuck them, to be fucked by them, and ultimately to be them.

I recognise that I’ve seen as many well-defined abs as big cocks, so it’s not like the latter are the only fiction peddled by porn. Yet I wonder at what point a fantasy becomes so pervasive that it limits our imagination of what can be sexy and desirable, especially when it concerns an organ that we have virtually no control over.

These conversations always seem to lead to that inevitable question: what size is small, average or large? And how does mine compare? Despite the click-bait articles, we don't really know. We can’t rely on scientists for an answer since the research to date has been terrible. The scientific method can’t overcome the fragility of men about their penis size.

In the over-saturated Only-and-Just-For-Fans economy, men with dicks deemed mediocre (by themselves or others) turn to digital alterations and prosthetics to stand out. Popular culture has also shifted to a consistent use of prosthetics for full frontal nudity for male actors, normalising the myth that all men have (or should have) big, floppy soft—even Disney had begun digitally packing their superheroes.

Moreso than ever, men continue to mythologise their cocks. These slights of hand alienate men from the realities of their bodies and the diversity of the physical form. Because of this, many men have two dicks: the one on their body and the one they wish they had. This powerlessness lies at the centre of anxieties about cocks, body image, and masculinity.

The small dick is abject masculinity made flesh, a karmic joke on the hubris of masculine ideals and an object of inescapable contempt. It is the leading insult for a man who displays the worst traits of traditional masculinity (a la obsession with pointing out Trump’s small dick) and a go-to explanation for the most heinous acts of violence perpetrated by men (see the fixation on the size of Hitler’s dick as a motive for his atrocities).

The persistent shaming of small cocks makes many people feel miserable about their bodies. It is often framed as punching up, as a jab at the dominance of men, but length and girth aren’t equitably distributed. Such body shaming disproportionately affects fat guys, trans and intersex people, and is mobilised to promote anti-Asian racism.

The majority of petite cock porn is arranged around humiliation and chastity kinks. For some, this is hot, sexy and creative. However, it doesn’t leave space for the full spectrum of sexual activity. We must expand our sexual imaginations to ensure that fantasy doesn’t become prescriptive.

Representation can enable change but it can also enforce the status quo, in this case, hangovers from the era of studio-dominated porn. The erotic content available to us now is tired, intent as it is on keeping the worst aspects of influencer culture: a monoculture of idealised forms, thinly veiled classist social capital and artificial perfection.

In my porn consumption, I’m looking towards porn created by trans men. They are reimagining what it means for men to make sexual content, and their work highlights the endless possibilities we have as sexual agents. It’s hot and joyful and speaks to the new vocabularies we should embrace enthusiastically.