Is having a small member a big issue?

• Both men and women seem obsessed by the size of the male organ
• We find out why and talk to a Nairobi-based doctor who has done several penile enlargement surgeries

Despite recent crusades by relationship experts and marriage counsellors on the importance of skill over size, some men still feel the need to have heavy ‘machinery’. The bigger the ‘weapon of mass procreation’, the better. Or so they think.

Read newspaper classifieds every day and you instantly get the feeling that the penis enlargement industry is still vibrant, with insecure men employing all manner of remedies to increase the size.

“Maxman,” one ad reads. “Your presence needs to be felt”. One may not be wrong to think that there is a groundswell in penis enlargement products.

Gels, as plain and transparent as the gel in a shop next door, are being peddled around to desperate consumers who urgently need size. They all want 'heavy artillery'.

Men of all colours and creed are secretly roaming alleyways in search of backstreet herbal concoctions that promise instant ‘filling up’.

Charles* is one such user. He started with a herbal cream. Hear him: “For maximum results, the seller insisted that I have to get a full range of the products. These included soap, a topical cream and some edible powder to be consumed with meals.”

At the time he was procuring for the cream, Charles says his esteem had plummeted owing to constant quarrels with his wife.

“It had reached a point that my wife started saying that I wasn’t getting her to the point she would want to get sexually. That really messed my self-belief.”

For some reason he interpreted his wife’s criticism to be about size. He says: “My mind just went to size. And I told myself I needed to get an upgrade.”

A big penis, Charles says, makes a man feel confident about his performance between the sheets.

“It is a rubber stamp mark that the job will be done well; swiftly and with precision,” he says.

While no study in Kenya has ever measured sexual satisfaction against penis size, studies elsewhere in the world suggest that not all women think size is important.

A 2016 survey conducted by British online medical website Dr.Ed asked 1,148 males and 973 females (all aged between 18 and 75) about their sexual health and happiness.

Slightly more than two thirds (67.4 per cent) of the women interviewed felt that size was somewhat important. Only 11.2 per cent said it was very important.

Over a fifth of the women said penis size was not important- at all.

Yet, to some men, size (whether their female partner cares about it or not) continues to matter.

Sample this. It is Monday morning a couple of weeks back. The morning sun is shining bright outside. At the lobby of Avane Clinic in Parklands, Nairobi, Kamal* emerges from the doctor’s room with some wobbliness in his step.

Evidently, the doctor must have worked on something in between Kamal’s legs. I am right: Kamal had just undergone a medical penis enlargement procedure.

“A man cannot go to war without a high calibre weapon,” he says, with a suppressed chuckle.

His doctor, Dr Pranav Pancholi, a venereologist and a cosmetic dermatosurgeon, says that men like Kamal are often looking for confidence.

“The question is: ‘What is the man feeling? Does he believe he can do a good job?’”

Without believing in himself a man – whether with a big or small penis – is not likely going to give a woman fulfilling coitus, Dr Pancholi says.

“A confident man is ready. As I treat my patients I am solely focussed on giving them back their confidence,” the medic, a Harvard trained specialist, explains.

According to Kamal, the size of a man’s penis matters. “If it is not big enough, how do you expect to make your presence felt or memorable ­­­impact?” he asks.

Not that he is expecting an answer: he already knows the answer. “A big penis makes a man confident. And a confident man always does a good job,” he adds. The price of the procedure varies, depending on how small the organ to be fixed is. But on average, he charges Sh45,000.

Kamal’s inference is aptly explained by the findings of the British study; which adduces that men’s size anxiety is mainly based on what a partner might think.

Counselling psychologist, Catherine Mbau, explains that penis size matters in the larger testosterone filled bailiwick of men’s existence.

She says: “It is all about ego. It is about dominance: so that he is seen (by his partner) as the ultimate male; unmatched by others.”

Even so, Wanza*, a single lady from the leafy suburbs of Kileleshwa, says that size matters.

“It should not be too small,” she says, “neither should it be too big.”

Too small and a woman is likely going to feel nothing. Too big on the other hand hurts, she says.

“Medium is always the best as it can get as far as it is necessary without causing pain and discomfort,” she says.

Njeri*, a university student, however disagrees with her. According to Njeri what really matters is “the health of a relationship.”

She argues: “If we have been fighting with my boyfriend I doubt I would enjoy sex with him: the size of his penis won’t matter. Sex is satisfying when the man has shown that he genuinely loves and desires the woman.”

Njeri says that even a small member can satisfy a woman, “provided the man has made the lady receptive to him and employs quality bedroom skills,” she says.

It should be said though that men love comparing with each other, giving birth to the phrase ‘who has the balls’.

Before being circumcised, *Shitsia was chided by his age mates not to go ahead with the procedure.

“Boys will always find ways to undercut each other. My age mates probably wanted to hurt my feelings. But it was true: compared to them mine was really small,” Shitsia says.

Circumcision, his friends warned him, would get rid of the little God had given him. But he had to go through the procedure as his culture demands.

Now married with three children, Shitsia says he cannot tell if he has truly been satisfying his wife. What he knows is that the tool has been able to do its job as God intended.

“Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to make her pregnant,” he says smiling.

Be it as it may be, Shitsia wouldn’t mind boasting a bigger phallus. He says it would make him much more confident among his peers.