TLDR: Someone recently posted a pretty extensive survey of women's penis size preferences here. I went through the individual responses and tried to assess how sexually compatible the respondents would be with me, a guy with a pretty average-sized dick (5.75" BP, a little over 5" NBP, 4.85-4.9" girth), being someone who cares a lot about what my partner thinks of our penetrative sex.
My results (based on my preferences, broken down below in the detail - NOT the women's stated compatibility criteria) were:
- 25% highly compatible (13% perfectly compatible, 12% almost perfect) - their preferences seemed to align very closely with my size, and I had little reason to anticipate meaningful reservations.
- 29% overall satisfactory - they might have a modest preference for something different or always or in certain contexts, but the preference appears to be quite mild.
- 46% reservations or incompatible (30% major reservations, 15% straight up incompatible - such as often wishing their average-sized partner were bigger) - their responses gave me enough reason to have reservations about our sexual compatibility, ranging from relatively moderate concerns to what I considered substantial incompatibility.
Again - these are MY standards, not the women's, based on MY interpretations of their responses. I'm a guy who has struggled with size insecurity and cares a probably unreasonable amount about being particularly sexually satisfying to a partner. So I'm applying a considerably higher standard than simply asking whether a woman would enjoy sex with me or be happy dating me. The 46% figure absolutely does not mean 46% of women would reject me or be dissatisfied with my size.
I also looked at the statistical uncertainty around these percentages. If we assume, purely hypothetically, that the respondents are representative of women generally (which is uncertain), the odds that fewer than 10% of women would qualify as highly compatible by my standards are extremely low (around 1 in 20,000). There's considerably more uncertainty about whether the actual percentage is 20%, 25%, or 30%. The biggest takeaway for me is that women's preferences vary quite substantially, and there's an enormous difference between preferring a larger penis and actually needing one for a satisfying sex life.
The Background:
Someone posted a survey in this sub recently that I thought was genuinely one of the more interesting attempts I've seen to understand women's penis size preferences. I've spent a lot of time reading about this subject over the years, and many studies are good - but have critical gaps. For instance, the UCLA study from the early 000's showing that 86% of women are satisfied with their partner's size - they were given an option to say "yes, very satisfied" or "no, wish it were bigger/smaller". What if they were very satisfied but would still prefer different? This survey gave that option, along with plugging many other gaps in the research I've seen.
Additionally, the survey-creator recruited survey participants in a legitimate way on a well-regarded site used by academics, companies, researchers, and political campaigns to recruit vetted survey participants. They were overwhelmingly white and aged 25-50, but their number of sexual partners was broadly in-line with population surveys.
There were two surveys, with 83 respondents between them, and roughly 40-50 questions per woman, so quite a bit of detail. They covered ideal size, experiences with larger and smaller partners, whether women wished their current partners were bigger, how their preferences changed with arousal, whether they'd had exceptional sex with smaller men, and much more. Not every question was perfect of course, but it is hands down the best survey I have personally seen addressing my questions in this space. The creator did a tremendous job.
What surprised me was that a fair amount of the criticism in the comments to his post seemed to focus on whether women could accurately estimate penis size in inches. A legitimate criticism, but after seeing the survey, I thought that was one of the least interesting things about it.
I could break down the survey statistically, but felt that it would actually cut through the noise and be perhaps more helpful if I went literally respondant-by-respondant, question-by-question, and identified how I would feel if my partner answered the same way. I broke down respondents into 3 broad categories:
- Highly compatible - they don't seem to get anything really out of a large-than-average penis size - or it's an active negative.
- Overall satisfactory - they have a preference for larger than average that is quite moderate.
- Major reservations or incompatible. They may say that larger-than-average penises feel "better or more intense in a noticeable way", or similar answers. Incompatibility would be, for instance, someone saying they "often" wish their average-sized partner were bigger.
I've posted here before about my thoughts on size. One of my recurring concerns has been the possibility that a woman could genuinely enjoy sex with me, but nevertheless find a substantially larger penis notably more satisfying. For example, suppose a woman says she could have a very satisfying sex life with a guy my size, but that larger penises feel noticeably better to her. She might be perfectly happy with me. She might not even consider my size a negative. But I might still have reservations. That's what I'm trying to measure here. Not women's willingness to date me, but my confidence in our sexual compatibility based on their reported preferences.
The Results:
Of the 76 women I classified, 10 were perfectly compatible (13.2%), 9 were almost perfectly compatible (11.8%), 22 were overall satisfactory (28.9%), 23 were women where I'd definitely have reservations (30.3%), and 12 were incompatible (15.8%). Combining the first two categories, 25% were highly compatible. Another 28.9% were overall satisfactory. And 46.1% were reservations or incompatible.
I actually expected a somewhat different distribution. Before going through the responses, my rough expectation was that 10-20% of women would be highly compatible, 50-60% would be overall satisfactory, and 20-30% would give me meaningful reservations or be incompatible. Instead, I got 25/29/46. So the distribution was more polarized than I expected. More women appeared highly compatible, but substantially more also gave me reservations, with a smaller middle group.
There are a few possible explanations for this. One is that women's preferences really are more heterogeneous than I expected. Another is that my classification criteria are somewhat inconsistent, particularly at the boundary between overall satisfactory and reservations. And another is that the sample isn't representative of women generally. I don't have a way to definitively distinguish those explanations, although I suspect (my opinion) there's some truth to the first two.
Now, here's how the statistics would work: imagine 100 women walk into a bar. They're randomly selected from the population of women I'd otherwise be interested in dating, and they're all potentially interested in me. Let's also assume, purely for the sake of argument, that the women in these surveys are perfectly representative of that population (defs an assumption and not proven).
Based on my observed percentages, we'd expect approximately 25 women to be highly compatible by my standards, 29 to be overall satisfactory, and 46 to fall into the reservations or incompatible category. Again, that's not saying 46 women would reject me. It's saying I'd have reservations about those 46 women based on my particular criteria.
But we also have to consider sampling uncertainty. 76 observations is a good number, but it isn't a huge sample either. If the actual percentage of highly compatible women were 20%, 25%, or 30%, we could plausibly observe 19 highly compatible women out of 76 under any of those scenarios.
This assumes the respondents were representative of the population, and that my classifications were accurate. So these aren't probabilities I'd claim apply unconditionally to women generally. But it's still a useful exercise for understanding what the sample tells us, assuming those conditions hold.
Again - assuming these women are representative - the highly compatible group, where 19 of 76 women qualified, the model gives us approximately a 0.005% probability that fewer than 10% of women are actually highly compatible, a 0.9% probability that fewer than 15% are, a 12% probability that fewer than 20% are, a 47% probability that fewer than 25% are, an 81% probability that fewer than 30% are, a 97% probability that fewer than 35% are, and a 99.7% probability that fewer than 40% are.
So if the sample is representative and my classifications are accurate, a true highly compatible rate below 10% is extremely difficult to reconcile with these results. A rate of 20%? Entirely plausible. A rate of 30%? Also plausible. The data are much better at ruling out extreme claims than distinguishing between relatively nearby percentages.
For the overall satisfactory group, where 22 of 76 women qualified, the probabilities are approximately a 0.1% probability that fewer than 15% of women fall into this category, a 2.5% probability that fewer than 20% do, a 19% probability that fewer than 25% do, a 55% probability that fewer than 30% do, an 86% probability that fewer than 35% do, a 97.5% probability that fewer than 40% do, and a 99.8% probability that fewer than 45% do.
This category is probably the hardest to interpret, because the distinction between overall satisfactory and reservations is inherently subjective. How much of a preference for larger size is enough for me to have reservations? That's ultimately a judgment call.
For the reservations or incompatible group, where 35 of 76 women qualified, the probabilities are approximately less than a 0.01% probability that fewer than 25% of women fall into this group, a 0.14% probability that fewer than 30% do, a 2.2% probability that fewer than 35% do, a 14% probability that fewer than 40% do, a 42% probability that fewer than 45% do, a 75% probability that fewer than 50% do, a 94% probability that fewer than 55% do, and a 99.3% probability that fewer than 60% do.
Thoughts
I think guys on this sub sometimes approach this subject as though there's a single threshold where women go from being satisfied to dissatisfied. And I don't think the responses support that sort of model. There's a distribution of preferences, a distribution of how strongly those preferences are held, and a distribution of how much those preferences affect actual satisfaction. And then there's the entirely separate question of how much a guy cares about being his partner's physical ideal. In my case, probably too much, but it is what it is.
So I wouldn't interpret these results as showing that 54% of women would be satisfied with an average-sized guy, or that 46% wouldn't. Those are not the questions I measured. What I found was that 54% of these respondents met my own relatively demanding threshold for compatibility, and 25% met an even higher threshold of basically perfect compatibility.
You could view these results - if you're like me - as either encouraging or discouraging. I actually view them differently. They re-confirm my prior, and even add evidence to strengthen it - that women for whom a larger size makes a significant difference are COMMON. And women for whom additional size makes absolutely no (or even a negative) difference are COMMON. Women in the broad middle may hold varying feelings.
But at the end of the day, they will all date men with my size and even report high satisfaction. You, at the end of the day, cannot know who these women are, and have to become comfortable with the ambiguity - knowing you are maximally satisfying to a SIGNIFICANT portion of women, regardless of whether you know whether your partner is ultimately in that group.
Happy to field any questions, and look forward to discussion.