SOME SEXUAL ANATOMY: THE PENIS
The penis is a man’s most obvious and talked about sex organ. Most men at some time or another have worried about the size of their penis, just as women concern themselves with their breast size. Surveys of women who have had many sex partners show that a man’s penis size really does not matter when it comes to sexual satisfaction, but even though most men know this, about a third still wonder whether things wouldn’t just be that little bit better if they had a longer or thicker penis. The size of an un-erect penis does not seem to matter very much because, apart from very small and very large ones (which are somewhat uncommon), the majority of penises erect to about the same length and circumference. Just as we cannot possibly say how often a couple ‘should’ have intercourse, we cannot say how long a penis ‘should’ be. Men’s erect penises in fact vary in dimension less than other parts of their bodies.
There are all kinds of myths connecting penis size with the size of a man’s body, his race, his amount of sexual activity, and so on but careful research has shown that all such old wives’ (or husbands’) tales are based on hearsay. There is no definite correlation between penis size and body size, and black men do not have longer penises than white men. One of the many clever things about the vagina is that it can adapt to a penis of any size and can do so painlessly and pleasurably. So the same woman can get exactly the same level of vaginal pleasure from a
five-inch and a seven-inch penis.
The penis is a tube-like structure, but although it looks like one tube, it is in fact three. As you look down on the penis from the top there are two tubular masses of tissue under the skin called the corpora cavernosa. They are called cavernosa because they are cavernous in structure and can swell to accommodate large volumes of blood. The third cylindrical structure in the penis lies on the under surface and is called the corpus spongiosum. It ends in a bulbous swelling (the glans) which is the sensitive tip of the penis.
The corpora cavernosa swell when a man becomes sexually aroused and an erection occurs because more blood flows into the penis than is allowed to flow out. The penis has to swell and become rigid to fulfil its sexual function — that of placing semen high up in the vagina near the cervix.
The urethra is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the outside. It terminates at the tip of the penis in a thin, slit-like opening.
Semen comes out of this same opening, so the urethra has a dual urinary and sexual function in men. During ejaculation the muscle at the base of the bladder, which is normally contracted except during urination, compels the semen to travel down the penis instead of entering the bladder. Certain medical disorders and some drugs can so alter this muscular mechanism that the man ejaculates semen into his bladder instead of down his urethra.
The shaft of the penis is covered with dark, loose skin which looks rather delicate and thin, and this skin continues below over the scrotum as a more wrinkled, thicker and hairier covering. The skin protrudes over the tip of the penis as a loose fold called the foreskin.
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