Only 3.8% of African women use condoms and only 30% use contraceptives at all. The region’s high fertility rate means that more Sub-Saharans live in poverty today than in 1990.
This does seem like a big issue, glad to see somebody take the problem in hand. I hope condom makers will rise to the challenge and not just make a half-hearted, flaccid response.
Over 10 years ago, a condom company in the USA published estimates of penis sizes for each of the 50 states (based on the sizes that consumers bought in each state). It correlated -.30 with state-level IQ. I intended on writing this up; a paper with an awesome title: The relationship between penis size and U.S. state IQ: Not everything is big in Texas!, but sadly, the penis size variable correlated with no other state-level variable beside IQ. It is indeed a hard problem;)
I will have to look into this and get back to you. If real it should be fairly easy to correlate it with measures of ancestry by State? However, I fear it might be yet another hoax!
Don’t you think you might be exaggerating the importance of a less than 1cm difference?
Also, they do in fact make different sized condoms now, in a variety of lengths and girths. I suspect the STI issue in Africa may have other roots, though.
"A meta-analysis of 55,000 penises tried to combine these methods. The authors did find erect penis size tends to be larger in Africa. But because the methods and samples were so varied, the confidence interval for the African penis was enormous (12.50–17.26 cm). As such, the largest meta-analysis does not tell us much at all."
This paper identified seven studies in Africa (references 55-61) in Africa (incidentally the paper claims it has eight African papers, but then proceeds to list them, references 55-61, which is seven, not eight--it's not a very good paper). Only four were in sub-Saharan Africa (55, Nigeria; 56, Nigeria, 58; Tanzania, 61; Nigeria), and none of those measured erect penises. The other three African studies (57,59,60) are all Egyptian, and only one (60) measures erect penises. Any conclusions that paper draws on erect penis sizes in Africa are based on ONE study in EGYPT.
Interestingly, that paper concludes that "Geographic variation is consistent with prior reports with other investigators also identifying longer measurements in sub-Saharan Africans, intermediate in Europeans, South Asians, and North Africans, and smaller in East Asians." (The sole source it cites, which therefore it should describe as "a prior investigator" rather than "other investigators" is the paper by Lynn based on fake penissize.org data, referred to in this post). But actually this conclusion is flatly inconsistent with *it's own* data. As noted above, the four sub-Saharan studies it looked at only looked at flaccid penises. Looking at table 2, the mean stretched flaccid length for Africa (which includes the sub-Saharan studies and the three Egyptian studies) was 12.53cm, compared to 13.40cm for Europe and 13.75cm for North America. The numbers for the four sub-Saharan studies were: ref. 55: Nigeria, 1985, n=320, mean flaccid length 8.16cm (unstretched); ref. 56: Nigeria, 2021, n=115, mean stretched flaccid length 13.37cm; ref. 58: Tanzania, n=253 boys and men, 93 of whom were adults (19-47), mean stretched flaccid length 11.5cm amongst the adults; and ref. 21: Nigeria, n=271 men with urological problems excluding erectile dysfunction and Peyronie´s disease, mean stretched flaccid length = 13.7cm. Of the three sub-Saharan studies that measured stretched flaccid length, one (ref.58, Tanzania) is significantly below the European average (-1.9cm), one (ref.56, Nigeria) is essentially the same (-.03cm), and one (ref.61, Nigeria) is slightly above it (+.3cm). The three studies in North African countries (i.e., Egypt) that measured stretched flaccid length were: ref.57: Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 12.9cm in normal men and 11.5cm in med with erectile disfunction, ref. 59: Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 13.9cm; and ref.60, Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 11.8cm in men with diabetes and erectile disfunction, 12.77cm in men with erectile disfunction without diabetes, and 12.88cm in men without erectile disfunction or diabetes. So if you exclude the men with erectile disfunction the North African (Egyptian) mean stretched flaccid lengths (12.9cm, 13.9cm, 12.88cm) aren't demonstrably smaller than the measured sub-Saharan lengths (11.5cm, 13.37cm, 13.7cm).
Basically the authors just repeated the conventional wisdom on this subject, even though their data doesn't really demonstrate it. I guess they didn't want to make waves on this point and distract from the paper's main point, which is an assertion that globally penises have been getting larger over time (the title of the paper is: "Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis"). Like I said, it's not a very good paper.
This does seem like a big issue, glad to see somebody take the problem in hand. I hope condom makers will rise to the challenge and not just make a half-hearted, flaccid response.
This entire article is hilarious (as well as informative).
Over 10 years ago, a condom company in the USA published estimates of penis sizes for each of the 50 states (based on the sizes that consumers bought in each state). It correlated -.30 with state-level IQ. I intended on writing this up; a paper with an awesome title: The relationship between penis size and U.S. state IQ: Not everything is big in Texas!, but sadly, the penis size variable correlated with no other state-level variable beside IQ. It is indeed a hard problem;)
I will have to look into this and get back to you. If real it should be fairly easy to correlate it with measures of ancestry by State? However, I fear it might be yet another hoax!
Don’t you think you might be exaggerating the importance of a less than 1cm difference?
Also, they do in fact make different sized condoms now, in a variety of lengths and girths. I suspect the STI issue in Africa may have other roots, though.
I welcome your trenchant perspectives
In an article on contraceptives
If they're the wrong size
Tears well in one's eyes
And cause one to utter invectives
https://www.youtube.com/@Resident_Poet
I thought I read somewhere in Kinsey that black men had the biggest schlongs, and Asians the smallest.
And that man was dedicated to hands-on research!
"A meta-analysis of 55,000 penises tried to combine these methods. The authors did find erect penis size tends to be larger in Africa. But because the methods and samples were so varied, the confidence interval for the African penis was enormous (12.50–17.26 cm). As such, the largest meta-analysis does not tell us much at all."
This paper identified seven studies in Africa (references 55-61) in Africa (incidentally the paper claims it has eight African papers, but then proceeds to list them, references 55-61, which is seven, not eight--it's not a very good paper). Only four were in sub-Saharan Africa (55, Nigeria; 56, Nigeria, 58; Tanzania, 61; Nigeria), and none of those measured erect penises. The other three African studies (57,59,60) are all Egyptian, and only one (60) measures erect penises. Any conclusions that paper draws on erect penis sizes in Africa are based on ONE study in EGYPT.
Interestingly, that paper concludes that "Geographic variation is consistent with prior reports with other investigators also identifying longer measurements in sub-Saharan Africans, intermediate in Europeans, South Asians, and North Africans, and smaller in East Asians." (The sole source it cites, which therefore it should describe as "a prior investigator" rather than "other investigators" is the paper by Lynn based on fake penissize.org data, referred to in this post). But actually this conclusion is flatly inconsistent with *it's own* data. As noted above, the four sub-Saharan studies it looked at only looked at flaccid penises. Looking at table 2, the mean stretched flaccid length for Africa (which includes the sub-Saharan studies and the three Egyptian studies) was 12.53cm, compared to 13.40cm for Europe and 13.75cm for North America. The numbers for the four sub-Saharan studies were: ref. 55: Nigeria, 1985, n=320, mean flaccid length 8.16cm (unstretched); ref. 56: Nigeria, 2021, n=115, mean stretched flaccid length 13.37cm; ref. 58: Tanzania, n=253 boys and men, 93 of whom were adults (19-47), mean stretched flaccid length 11.5cm amongst the adults; and ref. 21: Nigeria, n=271 men with urological problems excluding erectile dysfunction and Peyronie´s disease, mean stretched flaccid length = 13.7cm. Of the three sub-Saharan studies that measured stretched flaccid length, one (ref.58, Tanzania) is significantly below the European average (-1.9cm), one (ref.56, Nigeria) is essentially the same (-.03cm), and one (ref.61, Nigeria) is slightly above it (+.3cm). The three studies in North African countries (i.e., Egypt) that measured stretched flaccid length were: ref.57: Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 12.9cm in normal men and 11.5cm in med with erectile disfunction, ref. 59: Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 13.9cm; and ref.60, Egypt, mean stretched flaccid length 11.8cm in men with diabetes and erectile disfunction, 12.77cm in men with erectile disfunction without diabetes, and 12.88cm in men without erectile disfunction or diabetes. So if you exclude the men with erectile disfunction the North African (Egyptian) mean stretched flaccid lengths (12.9cm, 13.9cm, 12.88cm) aren't demonstrably smaller than the measured sub-Saharan lengths (11.5cm, 13.37cm, 13.7cm).
Basically the authors just repeated the conventional wisdom on this subject, even though their data doesn't really demonstrate it. I guess they didn't want to make waves on this point and distract from the paper's main point, which is an assertion that globally penises have been getting larger over time (the title of the paper is: "Worldwide Temporal Trends in Penile Length: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis"). Like I said, it's not a very good paper.