Image via strapme.
I love, love, love Scientific American writer Jesse Bering. Last night he kept me totally entertained and fascinated and all giddy with his SciAm piece Secrets of the Phallus: Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? Evolutionary psychologists decipher the “Rosetta Stone” of human sexuality. (thanks, @somadap!) It’s the best article I’ve ever read about understanding the shape (and purpose, even via ‘reverse engineering’) of the human male penis. Plus, I also got to spend the evening thinking geekily about the human male penis while drinking beer, and you know, stuff to do with penises, which is pretty much a perfect solo night in the office for a girl like me. Seriously, the best part is that Bering deconstructs every theory about cock and questions all the various cultural biases, even in science, about the wonderful male member. It’s totally enthralling, and he’s a truly great, even whimsical science writer (and evolutionary psychologist). Read and enjoy — here’s a snip:
If you’ve ever had a good, long look at the human phallus, whether yours or someone else’s, you’ve probably scratched your head over such a peculiarly shaped device. Let’s face it—it’s not the most intuitively shaped appendage in all of evolution. But according to evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup of the State University of New York at Albany, the human penis is actually an impressive “tool” in the truest sense of the word, one manufactured by nature over hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. You may be surprised to discover just how highly specialized a tool it is. Furthermore, you’d be amazed at what its appearance can tell us about the nature of our sexuality.
The curious thing about the evolution of the human penis is that, for something that differs so obviously in shape and size from that of our closest living relatives, only in the past few years have researchers begun to study it in any detail. The reason for this neglect isn’t clear, though the most probable reason is because of its intrinsic snicker factor or, related to this, the likelihood of its stirring up uncomfortable puritanical sentiments. It takes a special type of psychological scientist to tell the little old lady sitting next to him on a flight to Denver that he studies how people use their penises when she asks what he does for a living. But I think labeling it as a “crude” or “disgusting” area of study reveals more about the critic than it does the researcher. And if you think there’s only one way to use your penis, that it’s merely an instrument of internal fertilization that doesn’t require further thought, or that size doesn’t matter, well, that just goes to show how much you can learn from Gallup’s research findings.
Gallup’s approach to studying the design of the human penis is a perfect example of of “reverse-engineering” as it’s used in the field of evolutionary psychology. This is a logico-deductive investigative technique for uncovering the adaptive purpose or function of existing (or “extant”) physical traits, psychological processes, or cognitive biases. That is to say, if you start with what you see today—in this case, the oddly shaped penis, with its bulbous glans (the “head” in common parlance), its long, rigid shaft, and the coronal ridge that forms a sort of umbrella-lip between these two parts—and work your way backward regarding how it came to look like that, the reverse-engineer is able to posit a set of function-based hypotheses derived from evolutionary theory. In the present case, we’re talking about penises, but the logic of reverse-engineering can be applied to just about anything organic, from the shape of our incisors, to the opposability of our thumbs, to the arch of our eyebrows. For the evolutionary psychologist, the pressing questions are, essentially, “why is it like that?” and “what is that for?” The answer isn’t always that it’s a biological adaptation—that it solved some evolutionary problem and therefore gave our ancestors a competitive edge in terms of their reproductive success. Sometimes a trait is just a “byproduct” of other adaptations. Blood isn’t red, for example, because red worked better than green or yellow or blue, but only because it contains the red hemoglobin protein, which happens to be an excellent transporter of oxygen and carbon dioxide. But in the case of the human penis, it appears there’s a genuine adaptive reason that it looks the way it does.
If one were to examine the penis objectively—please don’t do this in a public place or without the other person’s permission—and compare the shape of this organ to the same organ in other species, they’d notice the following uniquely human characteristics. (…read more, sciam.com)
Hi Violet! It’s still biased. They based their experiments on male and female sex toys. And while dime-store dildos might look like real penises, we both know that however “anatomical” the outsides of penetratables might be, the insides are usually just polished jigs to facilitate removing all that soft, phtalate-rich plastic without tearing.
Real vaginas (like the real human beings who have them) are way more complex and dynamic.
Ev-psych types are generally trolls so look forward to arguments that men have “evolved” to be crap lovers, since pre-orgasmic vaginal tenting would tend to disrupt their semen extraction hypothesis.
If true it’s one more reason for fundamentalists to oppose talk of evolution: given the shape and placement of the penile corona, this extraction action would work much better in women-on-top positions than standard missionary. :-)
I’d almost think that fat coronas would be more of a way to provide girth in the face of those pesky inverse square laws regarding volume and pressure… but that would imply that human women’s preference was ever in the picture, and since that would fit neither The Flintstones or nor the Mad Max views of prehistoric culture the whole idea of women having a say in the matter is anathema to sociobiologists, ev-psychos and their ilk.
If *I* was conducting their experiment I’d have used three types of dildos rather than two: one with a corona and one without, as they did, but also any of the new glass dildos with multiple ridges and bulges. And I’d ask actual women which *they* preferred. Oh wait! Glass dildos with multiple bumps seem to be *hugely* popular with women who can afford them. Which automatically disqualifies it for Ev Psych research.
Penis shape is obviously evolved — there’s way more variety between species throughout the animal kingdom than you’d expect from random chance so there’s no reason it wouldn’t be selected in humans too.
What’s really frustrating about Ev-Psych types is they so steadfastedly resist the idea that humans first became able to do mind hacks when we first started using tools, and that mind-hacks by definition derail predetermination.
figleaf
I’m with Cyborg. The form seems to follow the function pretty decently.
I’m going to have to read the source material behind this article more carefully (when I get chance), but all too often when I’ve looked at pronouncements from evolutionary psychology, they are merely what might be termed ‘arguments from plausibility’ as opposed to actual scientific statements open to experiment and falsification (there’s a very good anecdote in VS Ramachandran’s book “Phantoms in the Brain” wherein, in jest, he gives a conference talk entitled “Why Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” to a group of evolutionary psychologists that was essentially a fanciful argument from plausibility only… only to be met with agreement from the audience! p289 of the Fourth Estate paperback).
Good science has been done in ‘EP’, but there is a _lot_ of merely plausible arguments where no testing either has been done or can be done (since we’ve already evolved, so to speak, the ‘experiment’ has already been carried out, its just we don’t know the experimental method…)
Apologies for the outright geekiness of the above statement! Here endeth today’s lecture!
Um, no, I’ve never, ever scratched my head and wondered why my penis is peculiarly-shaped. It seems perfectly designed to do what it does.
And, yes, I so wish puritans could evolve back into mud puppies- instantly.
Those familiar with the arguments over the human penis engineering may recognize this as another “women are receptacles not sexual beings article.” The alternative explanation for the shape and enormous size of the human penis is that it is the result of sexual selection, with females choosing to mate more often with males with the most potent phalluses.