“XL 4 XL ONLY” ARE SIZE QUEENS GETTING COCKIER?

My penis size is a bit above average.

When erect.

I think.

I’d know for sure if the NHS-stated UK average (5–7 inches) wasn’t so ambiguously broad. (The global average, by comparison, is a curiously precise 5.16, as per a 2015 Guardian report.) Some guys I’ve slept with, I hope, would say I’m undershooting myself. More still, I fear, would say I’m grossly exaggerating. Or so says my “inner saboteur”, to quote RuPaul. (Stay with me; my fascination with my own penis will last a little longer, then I’ll get to the point.)

Suffice to say, I’ll never be ‘XL’ — no penile implants for this cosmetic surgery sceptic, thanks — and I’m OK with that. Most of the time. Perhaps I’ve just been coldly rejected by one too many size queens, including one recently with whom, I later discovered, I share mutual friends. What prompted me to write this article, however, was a Scruff profile I stumbled across last year, and the discrepancy between the man’s inclusivity-preaching bio (‘no racists, no Tories, no transphobes’) and his display name (‘XL 4 XL’). ‘Isn’t this self-satisfied, shallow individual,’ I asked myself, a feeling of inadequacy overcoming me, ‘contradicting himself?’

But why should a stranger care about my feelings? Why would he when he doesn’t know I exist? Scarier still, could I truly say, for all my own inclusive ideologies — for all my railing against the objectification of women’s bodies — that I’ve never rejected someone (online, never IRL, and only indirectly) over the size of their penis? Am I therefore any better than anyone who’s rejected me for having less than a 10-inch rager? And what about the dick-size preferences apparent in our global porn consumption? The most popular videos on tube sites say it all.

Are we, fundamentally, a community of body-shamers — or do we