The Only Size that Matters

Is apparently your own, and even then, it may be the size in your brain that matters, according to a recent survey of research on men and women’s attitudes about penis size. The survey was undertaken as part of a new proposed diagnostic term, small penis syndrome.

According to authors Wylie and Eardley, who published their proposal in the urology journal BJU International, small penis syndrome:

is defined as an anxiety about the genitals being observed, directly or indirectly (when clothed) because of concern that the flaccid penis length and/or girth is less than the normal for an adult male, despite evidence from a clinical examination to counter this concern.

In an effort to outline the concept of small penis syndrome, the authors reviewed the results of twelve separate studies on penis size, and several studies on the effectiveness of penile lengthening surgery (which doesn’t fair well). Among the findings:

• They found an average penis size to be 3.5 to 3.9 inches for flaccid length, 5.5 to 6.3 inches for erect length, and 4.7 to 5.1 inches for the erect girth. These averages are slightly higher than earlier summaries, pointing once again to the difficulty in agreeing on average penis size.
• As defined by the authors, small penis syndrome is much more common in men with normal sized penises than those with a small micropenis with a flaccid length of less than 2.7 inches.
• An internet-based survey of over 50,000 heterosexual men and women found that while 85% of women were satisfied with their partner's penis size only 55% of men were satisfied.
• In the same study 66% of men said their penis was average sized, 22% said it was large and 12% said small.
• One study found that 63% of men complaining of small penises said their anxieties started with childhood comparisons and 37% blamed erotic images viewed in their teenage years.

The skeptic in me questions the motivation and utility of this diagnosis. If we call it like it is, men are consistently given the message that their value lies solely in their penis. So it’s hardly surprising that men want to increase the size of our one important asset. And a new “diagnosis” isn’t likely to help men think outside the confines of their cylindrical shaped box.

On the other hand, this paper is refreshing in its focus on psychological and social factors and treatments, and it offers a helpful review for anyone who works with men on what exactly is statistically average out there.

Small Penis Syndrome - The Only Size that Matters

Is apparently your own, and even then, it may be the size in your brain that matters, according to a recent survey of research on men and women’s attitudes about penis size. The survey was undertaken as part of a new proposed diagnostic term, small penis syndrome.

According to authors, who published their proposal in the urology journal BJU International, small penis syndrome:

is defined as an anxiety about the genitals being observed, directly or indirectly (when clothed) because of concern that the flaccid penis length and/or girth is less than the normal for an adult male, despite evidence from a clinical examination to counter this concern.

In an effort to outline the concept of small penis syndrome, the authors reviewed the results of twelve separate studies on penis size, and several studies on the effectiveness of penile lengthening surgery (which doesn’t fair well). Among the findings:

• They found an average penis size to be 3.5 to 3.9 inches for flaccid length, 5.5 to 6.3 inches for erect length, and 4.7 to 5.1 inches for the erect girth. These averages are slightly higher than earlier summaries, pointing once again to the difficulty in agreeing on average penis size.
• As defined by the authors, small penis syndrome is much more common in men with normal sized penises than those with a small micropenis with a flaccid length of less than 2.7 inches.
• An internet-based survey of over 50,000 heterosexual men and women found that while 85% of women were satisfied with their partner's penis size only 55% of men were satisfied.
• In the same study 66% of men said their penis was average sized, 22% said it was large and 12% said small.
• One study found that 63% of men complaining of small penises said their anxieties started with childhood comparisons and 37% blamed erotic images viewed in their teenage years.

The skeptic in me questions the motivation and utility of this diagnosis. If we call it like it is, men are consistently given the message that their value lies solely in their penis. So it’s hardly surprising that men want to increase the size of our one important asset. And a new “diagnosis” isn’t likely to help men think outside the confines of their cylindrical shaped box.

On the other hand, this paper is refreshing in its focus on psychological and social factors and treatments, and it offers a helpful review for anyone who works with men on what exactly is statistically average out there.

Getting Laid Not Depressing

One of the big ticket lies that government sponsored abstinence-only sex education is required to sell us is the idea that having sex before you are married will lead to mental health problems, specifically depression.

And while its certainly true that sex can make life more complicated, and depending on the sex, more depressing, it can also make life more fun, beautiful, interesting and engaging. And I think most sexual health educators would agree that there's a balance, and that the benefits usually outweigh the drawbacks in the final tally.

So it was nice to read about a recent study out of the University of Minnesota that examined depression following first sexual intercourse. From the university's release:

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, Ann Meier, University of Minnesota assistant professor of sociology, studied 8,563 seventh- through 12th-graders over an 18-month period, measuring for depression and low self-esteem. Meier compared the mental health of teens who didn't have sex to teens who were virgins at the beginning of the study, but who lost their virginity during the 18-month period.

She found that while the majority of teens did not experience depression as a result of first-time sex, some did -- those being the youngest teens (girls who had sex before age 15 and boys who had sex before 14) and whose relationship was not emotionally close and dissolved after sex. Girls in this group were particularly vulnerable to depression.

While these results aren't like to surprise many (except those who actually believe everything they hear in abstinence-only class) the study remains important both for the empirical evidence it brings to a topic lacking in empirical evidence, and for the way it complicates the topic by describing the role of sex in the lives of teens as it actually exists, in all its confusing glory.

Aneros Prostate Massager Review

The Bottom Line

Good quality, well designed toys for men are rare in the sex toy industry. Aneros stands out as something that is simple, but works incredibly well.

Pros

• Design is specifically for prostate stimulation
• Material is smooth and seamless
• Easy to Clean
• Several styles to suit different tastes

Cons

• Stimulation can be too intense for some
• Men with enlarged prostates will likely find this product uncomfortable and/or painful
• Product is relatively expensive.

Description

• Made of a firm hard plastic material
• Smooth and seamless, and designed specifically for prostate stimulation
• The grooves are made to press against the prostate, no other toy has this same precise design
• The curled handle can also stimulate the perineum
• The handle also allows for subtle changes in pressure and motion against the prostate
• Available in five styles

Guide Review - Aneros Prostate Massager

When I first came across the Aneros I felt that it was a bit of a scam. Essentially a small piece of plastic with a very high price tag. But after checking it out, and speaking to hundreds of guys who have used it I’m singing its praises.

The Aneros isn’t for everyone, it’s designed specifically for prostate stimulation, and the stimulation it provides is intense. For a lot of people who like it they may still not use it all the time (think of it as a special occasion sex toy). But what makes it worth the money is that the design delivers on the promise. It makes prostate stimulation very easy, and it fits like a glove…well you know what I mean.

And the design doesn’t end with the insertable part of the toy. I love the handle. For one thing, it makes it very easy to use the toy once inserted. While the Aneros site talks about not holding the handle at all, I love the subtle movements it allows. The handle also can provide stimulation of the perineum. The stimulation is limited by the thinness of the handle itself, but it’s clear that the designers thought of this and set out to make it happen.

While I’m still hesitant to recommend it for everyone because the price is out of reach for some people, if you’re interested in prostate stimulation, and the Aneros is in your budget, I would highly recommend it.

Sex Toys that Changed the World

While these sex toys may not have actually changed the world, they did change the sex toy world, and the sexual world view of many of us who are fans of these groundbreaking products. Each of these sex toys offered genuine innovation, something new, and in doing so they made us do something new with ourselves.

Hitachi Magic Wand

View Full-Size Vibratex As the guillotine was the French Revolution and the couch to psychoanalysis, so the Hitachi Magic Wand is to the sex positive women's movement and more broadly the pro-masturbation movement. Thanks in large part to women like Betty Dodson and to its simple and functional design, the Hitachi Magic Wand remains a bestseller at most high end sex shops and by far the fastest and easiest way to have an orgasm. Read Review

Rabbit Pearl

View Full-Size Vibratex First designed in Japan, this toy and its comrades offered a revolutionary design element, a clitoral stimulator that offered simultaneous vaginal penetration and clitoral stimulation. Through its starring role in a Sex and the City episode, the Rabbit Pearl vibrator has arguably did more for bringing sex toys out of the closet than anything else in the vibrators long and storied history. Read Review

Coil Electric Massager

View Full-Size Enter any respectable sex shop or "small appliance" section of your local department store, and you'll find a "coil" electric vibrator that doesn't look much different from the models designed over eighty years ago. This vibrator has no moving parts resulting in a virtually silent but powerful vibration. Dubbed "the parent vibrator" coil massagers allow almost anyone needing privacy a powerful buzz without the questioning knocks on the bedroom door "what's that humming?" Read Review

Fleshlight

View Full-Size While sex toys were traditionally marketed to men, the intended end user was usually women, and toys made for men were largely poorly designed and of poor quality. The Fleshlight raised the bar exponentially with a revolutionary material, a practical design, and a marketing campaign that glorified male sexual pleasure without making fun of men or women.

Fukuoku

View Full-Size The Fukuoku revolutionized both vibrator design and sex toy marketing. A lightweight vibrator that fits on the finger and allows for simultaneous skin to skin touch and vibration, the Fukuoku may be the first example of the power of television, women's magazines, and the Internet in grassroots sex toy marketing.

Silicone Dildos

View Full-Size The introduction of silicone dildos represented the first time sex toy customers were put first in the minds of manufacturers. The material was ideal for its intended purpose, easy to clean, warms to the touch, and able to be sculpted and colored in a wide range of options. Scorpio Products" Gosnell Duncan was the first to make these beloved toys available, and he inspiration has been both duplicated and expanded on. Read Review

Cyberskin

View Full-Size Cyberskin, a material first created by Topco Sales (and now often imitated) represented another genuine revolution in material, offering a "dual density" material that's firm at the core and soft on the outside, offering a surprisingly realistic feel. The revolution had its limits as the material remains easy to break and difficult to clean, but it was also the first packaging to cite NASA research. Read Review

Eros Silicone Personal Lubricant

View Full-Size Eros was the first widely available silicone-based lubricant. Offering a fundamentally different lubrication "feel", silicone lubricant doesn't dry up, is condom compatible, and can be less likely to cause irritation or reaction, all offering a true innovation from traditional water based lubricants. The success of the Eros model can be found in the dozens of companies now manufacturing silicone based lubricants. Read Review

The Cone

View Full-Size

Truly innovative sex toy design, The Cone vibrator's counter-intuitive shape invites you to re-think how you want to use a vibrator. The Cone is another example of merging good design (high quality silicone, powerful motor) and smart marketing, which has allowed the product to quickly make its way into the shopping carts and bedrooms of sex toy fans around the globe.

Aneros anyone?

I have been reading about the Aneros, the male prostate stimulator. It is suppose to give males the orgasm of a lifetime. Works on it's on hands free. In case you don't know, this device goes in "the exit hole". which is why I think more males dismiss the device and regard it as gay. Well, I am very intrigued by the Aneros although I have never had anything go in that hole and never wanted anything to go in. Me question is, has anyone here had any experience with it or know anyone that has?

India New Condom with Vibrating Ring

A new condom with a vibrating ring has sparked a furore in a central Indian state, where ruling Hindu nationalists say it is a sex toy and should be banned.

The government of Madhya Pradesh, which earlier this year banned sex education in schools, said the 'Crezendo' condom was not an aid to family planning and AIDS prevention, adding its use could be "against Indian culture".

"Condoms, when used for pleasure with a device like a vibrator, become a sex toy, and sex toys are banned in India," asserted Kailash Vijayvargiya, public works minister in the state, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"We will certainly ban the product if it is found to be violative of the law or even if its use is found to be against Indian culture," he said, adding that the government should "promote family planning and not sex toys".

‘Yoga, not sex toys’

"It should encourage yoga that helps conserve and increase energy," he says.

"I am discussing it with the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan."

Crezendo condoms, launched on the Indian market about six months ago, include a tiny battery-powered vibrator attached to a ring which is designed to sit at the base of the condom.

Mukesh Gupta, the distributor of the product in the state, said Crezendos simply offered a novel way of encouraging safe sex in India — which with its population of 1.1 billion has the largest number of HIV-AIDS cases worldwide.

"It is not a sex toy but simply a pleasure enhancer that is in great demand by the people," he says.

Sex toys that show your team spirit

Of course, the world’s corporations wanted a piece of the most popular sporting event on the planet, the World Cup of soccer, now being contested in Germany. Big name sponsors like Philips, MasterCard and Budweiser are there and you can buy all kinds of licensed products like colorful hats and scarves — the Euro-version of our big foam “Number 1” hand.

One endorsement deal that wasn't, however, made news a few weeks ago. It seems the German sex shop chain, Beate Uhse came out with Ollie K and Michael B vibrators and a David B dildo. To anyone who knows soccer, it appeared as if stars Oliver Khan, Michael Ballack and David Beckham had lent their names to a line of sex toys.

They hadn’t. After a minor blitz of publicity and a threat of a lawsuit, Beate Uhse dropped the names.

But fear not! The World Cup has still generated a new phenomenon in sports — one we’ll probably see linked to every major international event from now on — the sex product tie-in. And why not? If Viagra can sponsor a NASCAR team, why can’t, say, Manchester United sign off on love balls?

The love balls, used for vaginal stimulation, are out there, shaped like little soccer balls and available from a variety of European and Latin American sex shops. You can buy them for 60 reals in Brazil, and about 5 euros in Italy, Holland, the UK and Germany.

Never want to be too far away from soccer strategy, no matter what else you may be doing? How about the Dolly Dolphin Football edition vibrator selling from at least one German sex shop for 49.80 euros. The Xs and Os and lines of player movements are inscribed along the shaft so you can really, um, internalize the game.

Dream teams
Looking for great sports movies like “Knute Rockne, All American,” or “Pride of the Yankees?” That’s covered, too, with World Cup porn DVDs like “Shoot for the Goal” available from a French shop (with a promise of Un match hyper hard dans un monde sportif corrompu et perverti!), and “Dream Team Holland!” Judging from the cover box — always the most reliable way to know what’s inside — there are women, and there are soccer balls, and there are soccer jerseys that aren’t worn much. Bound to be a classic.

By the way, in case you’re not a fan of the Dutch, you can also choose from Dream Team Italia, Dream Team Deutschland and Dream Team Espana. Isn’t it great how sports brings people together?

The Women's Football Survival Kit contains a TV remote control jammer.

Of course, it can also drive people apart, especially husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends. Actually, I know a few female soccer fans who are more rabid than most guys, but men do get carried away sometimes and neglect the women in their lives, especially during the World Cup, which has already run for two weeks and will run for a little over two weeks more.

So British sex shop Love Honey is offering the Women’s Football Survival Kit for L8.99. It contains red and yellow cards labeled with male sins, a whistle and a TV remote control jammer, which, if it actually works, may well be grounds for divorce.

Better, I think, to relieve your frustrations with Love Honey’s World Cup Victory Vibe, a small bullet vibrator decorated with the red English Cross of St. George. It’s L9.99. The store also sells Durex England Supporter World Cup Condoms which are, well, just a variety of condoms, but hey, labeling is everything.

Sex toys are 'Dangerous'

Sex toys are becoming increasingly popular among the younger generation of this world. It is normal for a sex toy to be used in masturbation and in some forms of pornography.

No one would have guessed that a simple vibrator, described as an adult novelty device, could cause so much fear and inconvenience at an airport.

It was only last Monday that a vibrator was found left in a bin at the Mackay Airport in Queensland, Australia. Due to the "humming" of the device, officials at the airport were led to believe that it was a bomb and so took the necessary measures to protect the premises as well as the many commuters.

The eruption that occurred was not the "eruption" that the device was meant for but this resulted in the shut down of the airport for almost an hour. Everyone was evacuated from the airport, and several flights departing and arriving the airport were delayed.

The police were just about to call in the bomb expert, when an unidentified passenger recognised the contents of the package. If this individual did not step forward, the schedule of the third largest airport in Australia would have been disrupted even further bringing the airport to an unwanted climax.

Australia has implemented heightened security measures since the September 11 attack on the United States. The fear of them being attacked caused them to believe that this vibrator was more than it actually was. A simple sex toy such as this has implemented fear in thousands of people present at this airport.

How about some sex toys from Jamaica?

MOST JAMAICANS I know, raise their eye brows whenever the term 'sex toys' is mentioned. Many conjure up sleazy sex joints where dirty, old, sex-starved old men (and young men) go to masturbate in booths that show porn clips.

Others feel that sex toys are for 'maama men' who need to satisfy their women but are sexually deficient and need sex aids to help them out. The association of porn magazines and sex toys (such as artificial vaginas or full-size dolls for lonely men to take home) can be an obnoxious thought to the religiously conservative. Some of the negative reactions to sex toys are also results of the cultural pressure for men to be sexually adept. And, on top of it all, the sale of such items in Jamaica continues to be prohibited by law.

NON-DEMAND SEX

One of the solutions to much of the sexual dysfunction among Jamaicans is deflating the cultural pressure to be sexual heroes. Ignoring the sexual superman myth would reduce the tendency toward sex becoming a stage performance. Sex was created for lovers and love, the active ingredient, is patient and kind.

If the sex act becomes something that gives non-demand sexual pleasure without psychological pressure or guilt and a form of emotional closeness between two adult persons then adding a sex toy to the mix is less intrusive. And such non-demand sexual activity may not require penile penetration at all. To begin to appreciate the purpose of some sex toys is to be open to other forms of sexual gratification as complementary to what you do now. A sex toy such as a vibrator can spice up an otherwise so-so sex life for those who have been in committed relationships for more than five years.

So what are sex toys? A sex toy is any object or mechanical device that is made primarily to facilitate human sexual pleasure. The term does not include contraceptives, condoms or pornography.

A PLUG FOR VIBRATORS

There are many types of sex toys such as dildos (penis-like objects), vibrators, sexual lubricants, rings, and the list goes on. But the most commonly-useful devise is the vibrator. A vibrator is a battery or electrical-powered device that comes in different shapes and sizes; it vibrates with much more intensity than a hand, penis or mouth. Since most women reach orgasm through clitoral stimulation rather than thrusting alone, the shape of a vibrator is not as important to women as the erogenous zone it hits. The devise is very useful for women who have difficulty reaching orgasm and for men who want to explore their erogenous zones. Here are some benefits of a good vibrator:

Vibrators can help you learn more about your body and increase your ability to reach orgasms much more easily.

Vibrators are a good way to start communicating with your partner in the bedroom.

Vibrators enhance love making (but they do not replace it).

Vibrators can do things that people cannot do - they can vibrate!

Vibrators are ideal sex toys for safer sex.

Since we all feel very strongly about what we do behind closed doors, introducing an unfamiliar, foreign object such as a vibrator may seem intimidating. You may want instead to introduce more familiar things such as grapes, jellies, honey or wine during the sexual encounter.

Make this year a sexually fulfilling one by stretching your creativity in the bedroom and finding new ways to make your love making more adventurous.