 Hi everybody and welcome back to our blog from the Kamasutra to 2020, where we look at your questions, your concerns, even your worries around all things to do with sex and sexuality. So as always, we have with us Dr. Anvita Madanbehel. Anvita is a psychosexual therapist and she brings the psychological perspective to the advice that the Kamasutra has to give on your questions. Welcome, Anvita. Thank you Seema and welcome everyone to our blog this week. So, Anvita, like last week I've decided to use a compilation of questions today rather than just one, because over the last couple of weeks I've actually been flooded with emails from men who are concerned about the size and shape of their penis. So I've had people writing in saying, I think I'm too small, I won't be able to satisfy my partner, somebody else writing in and saying, I think my penis is too thin, I've had people really worrying that they've got a curved penis and others talking about crooked penises. So there's been quite a lot of concern and worry amongst these men who have been writing in. But what's very interesting is two underlying points that have come up in every single email. One is that they all want to know whether this has happened to them, this shape that they don't think is normal has happened to them because they have masturbated or masturbated too much. And the other is that will they be able to satisfy their partner in bed with what they see as an issue with their penis? Now, I have to tell you that this is one of the things that the Kamasutra actually talks quite a lot about, interestingly. But before I tell you what the Kamasutra says, tell me what is your opinion on this? So Seema, what really stood out for me when you had spoken about this question and we were researching on it? I was reading this book, which we refer to a lot called The New Male Sexuality. And one of the things that the author says, which I find very interesting is that Freud coined the term penis envy. And he said, you know, it's interesting penis envy exists, but apparently it only exists amongst men, because women rarely talk about penis sizes. Like two women are talking about their sexual experiences. They never speak about, you know, penis sizes or shapes or anything. But men seem to be so concerned with the shape, the size, who has it longer, who has it wider, what does the shape look like? And what he also mentions is that in reality, for most heterosexual men, they would have rarely seen an erect penis in life. You know, like in real life, very rarely would have heterosexual men seen an erect penis. So the idea coming from of what is the perfect penis, if you've not seen penises, where is this idea coming from? And one thing that we say a lot is no two penises look alike. There is nothing known as a perfect penis. Every penis looks different. Some are shorter, some are longer, some are wider, some are thinner, some are crooked. Some, you know, when erect tilt towards the right, some tilt towards the left. Every penis looks different. So this idea of a perfect penis is actually doesn't exist. There is nothing known as a perfect penis. So that's interesting because you're absolutely right. Normally heterosexual men, adult men, would not actually stand together and compare their penises. So they've never really seen another one in life. I guess the only place where they would see another one is in porn, in pornographic videos. Yeah. So men would have seen a flaccid penis, a soft penis, you know, gyms are the ways changing rooms and otherwise, but an erect penis is only seen in pornographic material and industry now that does billion dollar businesses. And they have so much software and technology that they are airbrushing everything to look a certain way, something that they want to sell. There's so much technology and software that goes into altering images to make them look a certain way that nothing that we see on pornographic videos is actually real. It's all orchestrated. It's all manipulated. It's all edited to look a certain way because they want to sell a certain image. That's so funny because one, I didn't actually think of that. I must admit that. But yes, you're absolutely right because they would either be also putting little prosthetics on or doing other things to make it look different. And that reminds me funnily enough of that episode from Friends. Do you remember that where Joey has to go for an audition where he has to do a nude scene in the shower. And Monica makes him a little extra bit to add on to his penis. She makes it out of lunch and meat or pork slices or something. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do remember that. And once again, this idea that they wanted to make it look bigger as if that was important. And so that's something that pornographic videos and movies make sure that they're selling something. Even the color or they would do a touch up or they would do makeup or they would take away any blemishes from a penis. So there's a lot that gets changed. They'll have some face models and then they'll have some other people, different body models. So that also they change. So a lot of editing goes into the porn industry and how they make porn videos. And it is one of the things that we really say in sex education. And when we talk about the porn industry is don't replicate it in your relationships because it's something that has been, you know, it's like, it's like choreographing a dance. They choreograph something, but you know, they have models and they have dummies and they have so much is going on. So when anybody tries replicating it, it's actually impossible to replicate it because that's not physically possible. You can't have somebody hanging from the wall and you know, things happening simply because that's not possible. So don't try and replicate that because don't sort of go according to the examples that you see in pornography and start trying to compare your sexual organ to that because it's never going to be the same. Because it's not real. Yeah, exactly. So interestingly, like I said, the Kamasutra has a lot to say about shapes and sizes. You know, I've been saying this for a long time and I think I'm probably going to have to say this for another 50 years before maybe it sinks into people. The Kamasutra is not a book about positions. There was a reason why the positions were created. Now, Vatian says that when two people have sex, the idea is that it should be deeply mutually pleasurable. If it is not deeply mutually pleasurable, it is no point having sex. But one of the first prerequisites to a good pleasurable sexual experience is that the sexual organs should be compatible. They should be around the same size because if you think about it, if the woman is too big and the man is too small or the man is too big and the woman is too small or any of these different combinations, it's not going to be either comfortable or easy or pleasurable for both partners. So the positions were created because obviously also you can't really find a partner based on each other's sizes. I mean, when was the last time you actually sent in a marriage proposal to somebody saying, but could you also please let us know the size of the person? It's not really possible. So the positions were created to make these sexual organs sizes compatible. So if the woman was too big and the man was too small or too thin, then it was recommended that she try positions where her thighs are closer together or her knees are drawn up or she's lying on her side, something that will actually make her smaller. And vice versa, if the man was too big and the woman was too small, there were different positions recommended for that and so on and so forth. So 2000 years ago, they had already taken this into consideration and said everybody is different. The size and shape is not what we're talking about. It's not necessarily essential to the act. It's how you do it and what you do with it. An extension of that that I would like to add in is that we actually say that the penis has a life cycle. So an adolescent penis looks different from a middle-aged penis versus an elderly person's penis. And it basically changes in erection. It changes in quality of erection. It changes in how soon you can get an erection. So all these things will be different. And as you can imagine, an adolescent penis gets erection quicker, lasts longer, ejaculation is very quick. And then there can be erection pretty soon with changes with age. Like by the time you reach the 70s or 80s, you might not be able to get an erection in 24 hours. So what the positions you were talking about suddenly helped me realize that maybe with age even you might want to change the position. So what gave you pleasure in the 20s might not give you pleasure in the 30s or 40s because your penis has changed. With age, the penis changes and the erection quality changes. And that's very important to note. So that I guess answers the other question that keeps coming back that I have masturbated to a certain extent. Is it, has this happened to me because of masturbation? But in actual fact, it is the normal biological cycle of the body that as you get older, there are changes in the penis. And it's got nothing to do with masturbation. Or does masturbation affect it? I'm sorry. Will you answer that? No, so masturbation doesn't, you know, change or impact your penis in any way. There is no way there is a normal it's connected. The penis changes is connected to the hormones in the body and the norm of physiology and with age the penis changes. The only thing that we will see and we say this only when we're talking about, you know, excessive amount of masturbations in a day that the penis might feel sore at times. If you keep, you know, the friction, anything that you keep there be too much friction, there will be soreness there. But that would only last for that day. Or, you know, it'll be a temporary issue. It wouldn't cause changes in the lifetime. Like that wouldn't happen. It won't cause lifetime problems. There only might be soreness. Like if you've done excessive amount of masturbation in a day, there might be some soreness that we might, you might experience. Okay, and also you said earlier that, you know, as the penis becomes erect, it takes on a slightly different shape. So some curve left, some curve right, some curve upwards, but they all basically do have a curve. There is no such thing as far as I know as an absolutely straight erection. Is that? Yeah. So, you know, and some might say, oh my penis looks very erect. But what I was remembering when you asked that question is that when we used to do sex education, one of the things that we used to tell young people, young people is that if you think about it, the penis is slightly curved because the vagina has a curve in it, you know. So it needs to go like this in some ways. That's how the body shape is made. If it was a straight penis, it would actually hit the wall. It would hit the pelvic bone actually. It would hit the bone. So it actually is made in such a way that it goes under and above. So to actually, if we think about it as a puzzle, it only fits when it's slightly curved. It actually doesn't fit properly if it is completely straight. Interesting. So I hope that the people listening in are actually paying attention to this point because the worry about the curvature is so intense with a lot of people. Now, there's something else I want to tell you. So, you know, there's a lot of people who will always say to me over time that about monotony and how, you know, things get monotonous. So this whole idea, even if you had one type, according to the concept, even if you had one type of penis, every now and then they suggested things that you could do, aside from different positions, to just change the experience of the love making by just adding things to your penis as part of the love play. So sometimes they would recommend if people had erection issues, they would recommend wearing a prosthetic of some kind over your own penis so that it changes. It gives you a bit of variety. And one of the things that always really fascinates me is this idea that they would occasionally wrap a string of pearls around their penis before making love. Because not only does it change the thickness, but also changes the friction or the feeling of the penetration. Now, this bit always fascinates me, but tell me, is this from your experience, something that is actually true? Do you think that it's just one of those fantasies that were created? No, so it actually sounds very similar to what we would recommend today if there was an erection problem or people use it as a sex toy is a cock ring. So a lot of men, heterosexual or homosexual, use something called a cock ring which basically goes towards the end of the penis and that helps keep the blood for basically in the penis so the blood doesn't go back too quickly so the erection stays for longer. And it actually stimulates the male or the female that you're having sex with. So that's something that is actually quite popular and it's easily available. And when you're talking about the penis prosthetics, those are also available where both men and women tend to use it or vibrators, you know, in some ways, vibrators kind of fill that gap as well. So it's quite interesting that they have mentioned that 2000 years ago and we are using similar things today. And the fact that they took into account that everybody is differently made and that pleasure is the ultimate aim. So whichever way you do it, but you change things around in order to make yourself more compatible so that you can have more pleasure. And I just think that that's really amazing. And it's all done without any kind of judgment. That's what I love about what the Kamasutra has to say about this. Yeah, for me, you know what's most concerning about this question is the like you said right at the beginning was the mental pressure that men take on about their penis not fitting an idea. And what I want to emphasize is that it is an idea we every penis like I said looks different shape different. So it's something that has been sold to us and it's very similar to body image we all feel like we need to be a body type. And so everybody's running or chasing this dream of a perfect penis that does not exist. So I think it causes more mental and psychological pressure, actually, but there is no solution to it. So people just keep worrying to it to a certain extent where we've actually had people come in and said that they want to get cosmetic surgery done because their penis doesn't look. You know, it doesn't look straight or it's crooked or it's not good and they think that that's what's causing, you know, sexual problems, and we have to really work with them to say that every penis is different. That's not what's causing the sexual problem and cosmetic surgery might not be the right way to go. I do think I feel very concerned for a lot of men because I can't even imagine what the pressure looks like if you need, if you're considering cosmetic surgery. So in closing, I'd like to wrap up all the advice that we've shared with you today. You know, all of you who have written in to us and even those of you who haven't written in, because I know that this is an issue that a lot of people face, a lot of men seem to face this idea. And there is this great worry about the shape and the size and the thinness and the thickness and the length and so on of the penis and this desire for the perfect penis. And having all these worries seems to somehow somewhere translate into a great deal of mental stress, which not only impacts your, your mental health, but also your sexual health because it impacts your relationships eventually. So I think this is really important. So the first thing that Anvita mentioned and the Kamsutra mentions is that there is no such thing as one specific size, just as body shapes are different, sexual organs are different in every little way. No two penises are alike. So stop worrying about what you think it should look like. You have what is your body shapes penis. It is the one that has been given to you and it's absolutely fine. Number two, a lot of people have been worrying about whether masturbation is what's causing all these issues. As Anvita says, every penis has a life cycle. It starts off in a certain way. It changes to something else. It is part of the biological function of the body. It's not because you have been masturbating. I think what Anvita mentioned is that what can happen with masturbation if you masturbate too much is that you end up giving yourself a soreness of the skin, which can become a little bit inflamed or painful. But I think you said, Anvita, it only lasts the day normally. Well, it depends person to person, but it's a temporary condition. It doesn't change the penis in any way. Great. Okay. Number three, our advice to you is to understand and practice different types of positions that might be able to help you in your particular penis size and shape. Everybody is different. This is something that you will have to experiment for yourself. But hey, what a great experiment to be trying out. Actually trying to figure out different ways of having sex that are going to bring you and your partner more pleasure. So don't look at it as a chore and something that you have to worry about and think of it as a seriously great pleasure seeking exercise. Okay. Different types of positions, what you do with it, they've said it's an old cliche. It's not the size that matters. It's what you do with it. But in actual fact, it is the ultimate truth and everything doesn't have to involve the penis. So don't worry about it. If you want to be a great lover, it's not your shape and size that matters. It's what you do with it. And I think finally this idea of getting stressed about it and wanting to compare it with other people and wanting to go out and get cosmetic surgery done to actually make it longer or shorter or different colors, you know, just change the skin tone, etc. Get that out of your mind. Your penis is made for your body shape. And really please don't mess around with it because there are so many nerve endings in that organ that you really don't want to go there and try and do things with it for cosmetic purposes, which frankly don't matter to anybody doing things for cosmetic purposes and ending up with more problems. But is there anything that you would want to add because I know that we've talked about on a generics level, you know, generally speaking, but is there any specific thing that you wanted to add to that? So there are just two things that I want to add is that one, that you know, I think the more we worry about the shape and size that actually has the greater impact on people's sexual life and psychological life. So that has a higher correlation than actually the size and shape of the penis. So like you said, stop worrying. But the only thing that I will add is that if there is any pain in the penis or that there is pain during erection or during sex, then please go seek professional and medical advice because there might be a condition that you might be experiencing. So if there is any pain, then please do go and seek professional advice. And if, you know, in any way that you're having, you're experiencing any sexual problems, then once again, go seek professional help. It will be something that a medical or a psychosexual therapist might be able to take care of. Great. And in the meantime, we wish you both good mental health as well as good sexual health and we'll see you here next week. We'll see you here next week again with a new question.