Is this really about dick size?

Aruging with men online and letting women womansplain women

The other night, late at night, I was browsing through Substack and a new essay popped up written by a guy about how women want big dicks and how life isn’t fair. Because I have troll tendencies, I occasionally leave unsolicited comments on things that make me roll my eyes and that was one of those occasions. In my comment I tried to dispel that “myth” or whatever, and included some basic information about female anatomy – such as the fact that unaroused vagina is 2-4 inches long and an aroused one gets up to 8 inches – based on actual science but also based on conversations that happen in women-only spaces.¹

I wasn’t only personally annoyed with the number of bizarre statements in buddy’s essay but I was also freshly inspired by recent research published on the complete anatomy of clitoris and a beautiful essay written on how ignoring female anatomy and female pleasure is not just bad for sex but can also be deadly.

“Women have been conditioned to accept that a male partner will not prioritize their pleasure. That conditioning allowed male doctors and researchers to not prioritize their health. This goes so much farther than orgasms, it is literally killing us.”

This quote is not in any way an exaggeration, and if you’re curious how the author arrived at that conclusion, go here and read the essay:

You Can’t Cum and You’re Going to Die of Lupus

But back to my comment on buddy’s essay that keeps getting likes and that, naturally, has inspired a couple of men to try to argue with me about what I said because how could I possibly be an expert on my own body?

We all know how some men feel about women’s bodies. You don’t have to look much further than abortion debates, where politicians – almost always men – continue to decide when women should stay pregnant and under what circumstances they deserve autonomy. Whether it’s Poland, Texas, Alabama, Idaho or El Salvador, the details vary but the underlying message is pretty consistent: women are treated as unreliable witnesses to our own bodies.

It is astonishing how often men argue with women about female anatomy with absolute confidence. Spend some time online and you’ll find them explaining hormones to women who have menstruated for decades, correcting women about sexual pleasure, menopause, contraception, breastfeeding or pregnancy, all while dismissing women’s firsthand experiences as emotional or biased. (Or anecdotal, like the author of the essay I commented on, who asked me if I was speaking from my own experience.)

Other men are so terrified of us that instead of asking and listening, they other us as if we’re aliens and a threat to their peace and survival. The other day, a stranger messaged me privately with a link to his essay called “Women – A Grand Mystery” in which he wrote about 3,000 words on… I’m not sure what because he has no idea what he’s trying to say either. But he talks about having grown up with four sisters whose periods were synchronizing and how traumatic that was for him: “No sooner would one female be returning to sanity, when yet another one, or two, or three, would relapse into their own monthly inner quagmire, causing various degrees of emotional turmoil.” – and the “essay” is full of gems like “female creatures” or “Did you know that God takes full responsibility for the existence of women? He created them.” (This then goes on to talk about how men should be the authority to keep women in check or make “final decisions.”)

There seems to be a peculiar belief that simply being around women, reading one study, or listening to one podcast somehow grants a broader understanding of women – or more hostility towards them as “Women – A Grand Mystery” shows – than actually living inside a female body. At the same time, women are expected to become experts on men’s bodies – our magazines, movies and sex education made sure of that – while many men have never been expected to acquire even a basic literacy about ours.

I grew up with that same hierarchy where every other issue of Seventeen or every issue of Cosmopolitan seemed to contain another explainer about what men wanted, how dicks worked, how to suck them and touch them, how to keep him interested. There were diagrams of erections, articles on male fantasies, endless tips on how to make him “come back for more.” I knew what a frenulum was looooong before I knew what the clitoral crura were. Female pleasure was an occasional sidebar, a bonus feature if there was room on the page but I honestly don’t recall a single article where we were a priority.

Which makes it almost funny – if it weren’t so consequential – that the same culture so eager to legislate our anatomy has spent remarkably little time trying to understand it. The first complete three-dimensional map of the clitoris’ sensory nerve network wasn’t published until March 2026 – which is twenty-eight years after researchers produced a comparable map of the penis. Men have never lacked confidence when it comes to women’s bodies; what they’ve lacked is curiosity. The result is that female pleasure has been treated as optional, female pain as exaggerated, and female anatomy as an afterthought until it suddenly matters – to surgery, to fertility, to childbirth, or to politics.

This is probably why even now women often dismiss their own pleasure before anyone else has to. We fake orgasms to spare egos, apologize for taking too long, assume we’re “broken” if intercourse alone doesn’t make us climax, and rarely question why so much heterosexual sex is still organized around the point at which the man is finished. Half the population has spent centuries being taught that our pleasure is optional, then blamed ourselves for believing it.

We will never ever get to prioritize women’s pleasure if we continue to dismiss what women have to say about it, including the fact that we are only now learning to prioritize it ourselves.

And maybe that’s why my comment about vaginal anatomy attracted so much attention. It was never really about penis size. It was about who gets to speak with authority. The answer has rarely ever been us, women and, truthfully, we are not asking to win an argument. We’re just asking that women be treated as the experts on our own bodies – and our experiences be treated as evidence, not anecdotes.

1. Not sure why this showed up on my substack FYP but I just glanced through the comments and I see some incels who believe a woman can “stretch” herself with sex toys and should be a virgin and my eyes rolled so far back in my head it took me a minute to recover. Anyway. Most women don’t actually care about dick size at all as long as it’s not a micro-penis. A big dick looks cool in porn but it doesn’t necessarily feel good and your point about being above the average and not hitting the places she wanted you to hit, is mildly insane. Have you actually asked a real, live woman if that was the case or you just assuming? Let’s start with those inches and then we can move into anatomy although I don’t get how in the age of Google and actual live women you’re still so misinformed but here we are. You know a vagina is highly elastic muscular canal that unaroused is usually 2 to 4 inches long, yes? When sexually aroused, increased blood flow causes it to expand, stretching to about 4 to 8 inches long. And that’s it, my friends, and I promise you most women HATE having their cervix fucked (although 30 percent of us do have cervical orgasms that can be pleasant). Second, anatomy... I suggest looking up an actual clitoral anatomy which will show you that what men (and some women) call a clitoris is just the tip of a huge organ, some of which is sort of “wrapped” around the vaginal opening (and even anal) and that swells when aroused (it’s called crura, which is sort of clitoral “legs”). What does this mean for size? Well, it means that it’s actually the girth that’s often more important, rather than the length, because the most nerve endings of a vagina are right at the opening (clitoral “legs” called crura) and then a lot of the nerve endings are also in the spongy upper area where the mysterious G-spot is located (about 4-6 inches and easier reached with a come-hither index finger than even the most talented dick). Finally, there are lots of fun ways and positions that you can use to make up for the inches, obviously doggy is probably the most common way to stimulate a woman with an even short dick but also no matter what size of dick, simply pulling out and then pushing it back in feels super nice for most women because, again, it’s the opening that’s where our nerve endings are at. Anyway, I’m sure you will disagree with most of this because you have a friend who said blah blah blah and you think you know but you don’t know and the fastest way to know is to just ask. And definitely look at some anatomical drawings of a vagina. You’re welcome. P.S. Block the incels, they bring down your integrity.