An “undiscussable” is a topic that is avoided because of fear of exposing a truth that is uncomfortable to key stakeholders such as bosses, romantic partners, family, or friends. Undiscussables challenge the status quo and often provoke fear of reprisal from one of the stakeholders. An undiscussable conversation authentically entered is “straight talk.”

The following “undiscussables” are informed by the discipline of evolutionary psychology, related to contemporary heterosexual relationships, and buried in the narrative of gender politics. There is overlap and synergy among the topics but the distinctions between them are clarifying.

What do we need “straight talk” about?

• The erotic-economic bargain and collusion between men and women: the pre-eminence of physical beauty and money in mate selection – and its relative denial and cover-up. Resources for sexual access is an ancient agreement. It is the unconscious infrastructure of heterosexuality. The bargain has varying levels of influence in mate selection but it is the collusion between men and women that is the most undiscussable in this cultural moment.
• The truth about human mate value and the operation of the mating-sexual marketplace. We rate (consciously and unconsciously) others, and less accurately ourselves, on a continuum of value and desirability and we seek to get the best “deal” we can – someone at or above “our league.”
• The truth about the biology of beauty and sexual attraction. There is a hardwired male preference for women who are youthful and “signal” fertility and women often have a virulent judgment of that. Female beauty impacts men more powerfully and more often than the reverse by a large margin. Women underestimate the natural biological elements of male desire that are triggered by visual cues of beauty/fertility because they are not neurologically and hormonally constructed to have that experience.
• The immense benefits of physical beauty, especially for women (confirmed by research).  As a result of hard-wired bias, attractive people receive favorable treatment from teachers, employers, juries, and service personnel (attractive waitresses receive higher tips). Beauty tends to bring higher earnings, a higher standard of living, more suitors, better marriage prospects (marrying-up/hypergamy for women), and non-monetary benefits in interpersonal relations, such as a belief from others that you are telling the truth. Beautiful people receive more acts of helping.  Beautiful people, especially women, receive a constant flow of adoration and desire from the opposite sex.  Attractive men and women have more sex partners and have sex earlier in life. Beautiful women receive more allowances from men for character deficits and mean behavior.  Female sexuality itself is a “fungible asset,” especially for beautiful women; it can be readily “exchanged” for goods and services, providing direct economic benefit.  Beautiful women receive more valuable courtship gifts and marry more financially successful men. Thus, beautiful women are more likely to secure an easier lifestyle, more freedom to do what they want, and receive other benefits of a higher socio-economic class.   (See Science of Attraction and Beauty)
• The biological design of the male sex drive — its legitimacy and role; women’s inability to fathom the power of testosterone or understand male desire; the ubiquitous nature of female judgment and use of the word “toxic.” Male sexuality is demonized as a problem to solve rather than energy to embrace.
• The influence of cultural conditioning on the perception of beauty is minor compared to the evidence of evolutionary adaptation across human cultures over time.
• Women inextricably want to be desired and acknowledged for their physical beauty. Full acknowledgment of that would be liberating to all. The fact that women want to be (and should be) acknowledged for their character and skills is entirely beside the point to this biological truth.
• Women’s complex preferences and competing intentions for mate selection and the resulting double binds imposed on men (See Double Binds Imposed on Men), especially in current times, e.g. “be dominant yet kind and loyal.”
• “Nice guys” in America often “do finish last” in the mating game. The “problem” of nice guys is real and not completely owned and examined by women. The nice guy meme relates directly to female competing intentions, the “trade-off” problem, and the imposition of double binds.
• The operation of power, submission, and “domination” in provoking female sexual desire.
• The societal cost of “mate deprivation” and unrequited sexual desire of beta males. Many men never have sex or a partner; this is a source of societal dis-ease and illness for men.
• The oppression of beta men by “patriarchy” and their political invisibility. “For all their thinking about theories of intersectionality among oppressed groups, too many women seem to have difficulty understanding why a homeless man who whistles at a young woman as she’s off to her fancy internship every morning is not exactly a foot soldier for the patriarchy” (Meghan Daum, The Problem with Everything, 2019, Page 84).
• The oppression of men’s rights and the articulation of men’s issues. Censorship of advocates for men’s rights in the public sphere, especially in academia.
• The degree of misandry in America media and entertainment; men portrayed as stupid and emotionally deficient (especially in commercials when there is a heterosexual couple); defining male emotional maturity through a female lens.
• The falsity of a 23-cent wage gap caused by discrimination. Men work more continuous, uninterrupted hours than women and thus get paid more. Women aggregate and choose academic disciplines and job categories that pay less than the academic disciplines and job categories chosen by men. The “natural” motivations of men and women in the home and marketplace are “undiscussable” inside the narrative of this political trope. The discrimination and “opportunity gap” are small but salient. The falsity of a 23-cent discrimination gap is well-documented and articulated in research by Harvard economist Claudia Goldin and others; Goldin cites two reasons (noted above) for the aggregate gap: “temporal inflexibility” and “occupational segregation.”
• The false dichotomy of the nature-nurture debate. The human brain and culture are co-evolving at different rates and in different ways.
• The current weight given to social constructivist/nurture theories of gender difference as opposed to integrating cultural and biological theories.
• The domination of feminism in American academic institutions and in the American cultural narrative.
• The terrible condition of boys and men in our educational system.
• The natural and predictable loss of erotic power of post-menopausal women and failure of women to honestly grieve that without judging and being resentful toward men. “The last thing evolutionary psychologists would expect to find (in their research) is that a plainly postmenopausal woman is sexually attractive to the average man. They don’t find it.” (Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, 1994, p. 65)
• Failure to appreciate (and remember) the degree of female privilege that comes with erotic power over men for a large portion of a woman’s adult life. Recognizing female privilege in no way denies the existence of male privilege. Both exist. We talk (incessantly) about male privilege. We almost never talk about female privilege.
• All male behavior is consciously or unconsciously a response to female choice in mate selection. The erotic power of women is “first cause” because that is the power that sustains and populates the planet.
• Male power is rarely (perhaps never) an end in itself. Male power is always a means to sexual access at the deepest evolutionary level. Sex is always the ultimate ends. “Trophy” wives or girlfriends are sought because of sexual attraction to them first and foremost, and they serve as status displays for sexual access to the next woman (“mate copying effect”). Male status aspiration and power displays are a result of their adaptive success in attracting women.
• The actual fact of reproductive variance. From the DNA record: in aggregate, women have had greater access to sexual activity than men in the history of humankind. Approximately eighty percent of women produce offspring, compared to just forty percent of men (Is There Anything Good About Men, Baumeister, p. 64).  The majority of men are absolutely cut off from sexual reproduction because a few alpha men have multiple partners.
• The continued double standard, predicted by evolutionary psychology, of women needing male traits of self-confidence, independence, good employment, enough money, and clarity about a career as a precondition for choosing a man, whereas none of those conditions are common deal-breakers or essential for a man to be attracted to and choose a woman.
• The prevalence of domestic assault on men and lack of support services for men. According to CDC (2010), one in four men in the U.S. (29 million) has been slapped, pushed, or shoved by an intimate partner in his lifetime, with five million male victims in the year 2009. This is no way denies the frequency and lethality of domestic assault on women. CDC: nearly one in three women experienced these behaviors in their lifetime, approximately 4.3 million in 2009; notably, .7 million less than reported for men in that particular year.
• Penis size does matter to women. The answer to the question, “does penis size matter?” is nuanced because it relates to the following variables: 1) the consideration of girth and/or length, 2) female preference for appearance, 3) sexual functioning and coital technique, 4) physical characteristics of the particular female vulva/vaginal tract, 5) the relative priority of penis size preference among all the other preferred male traits (physical, character, and resource provision), 6) inclusion of non-penetrative sexual practices or non-coital penetrative practices, and 7) the direct experience of male self-confidence and potency relative to penis size.
  • In spite of, or because of all those variables, numerous studies indicate women have a preference for a larger than average flaccid and erect penis and that men with a relatively larger penis were rated as being relatively more attractive (Mautz et. al, “Penis size interacts with body shape and height to influence male attractiveness,” Australian National University, 2013). Women also preferred a larger penis for a short-term encounter than for a long-term relationship. This is predicted by the female short-term mating strategy described within the science of mate selection and evolutionary psychology.
  • Researchers Geoffrey Miller, et al, in “Women’s Preferences for Penis Size: A New Research Report Method Using 3D Models” (2015), reported that a larger penis is perceived as more masculine and attractive. In this study, 27% of women ended a relationship due, in part, to the size of their partner’s penis, with three times as many women citing the reason as “too small” vs. “too big.”
  • An internet study (Lever et al. 2006) of 26,247 heterosexual females found 94% of women who reported that their current partner’s penis was “large” were “very satisfied” sexually but only 32% of women who reported their partner’s penis was “small” were very satisfied sexually, and 68% of those women wished their partner’s penis was larger. (It is worth noting that assessments of small vs. large were readily made by women in this study.)
  • In Why Women Have Sex, David Buss and Cindy Meston found, among women, 237 reasons for having sex, and cited a category of reasons called “curiosity.”  The number one curiosity for women was whether penis size made a difference during sexual intercourse.  If a woman enjoys having her cervix stimulated during intercourse, then size (length) can matter, according to Buss and Meston. Russell Eisenman and researchers at the University of Texas in Edinburg asked fifty women whether penis length or width was more important for sexual satisfaction.  Forty-five out of fifty said width was more important.  None of the women said they were unable to tell the difference.  Buss and Meston suggest a wider penis could provide greater clitoral stimulation during intercourse as well as more stimulation of the outer, most sensitive portion of the vagina.
  • Justin Lehmiller, in his comprehensive survey of American sexual fantasies (Tell Me What You Want, 2018), found that women fantasize about an erect penis length of 6.9 inches! (Lehmiller’s sample was skewed young in age and perhaps influenced by porn viewership.)
  • In a sample of 15,000 men, the British Journal of Urology International found the actual average erection length was 5.16 inches. Aside from the science, evidence from contemporary entertainment (stand-up comedy, T.V. sitcoms, and movies), reveals a plethora of references to penis size, often with mockery for the undersized male and adulation for the “well-hung.”
  • We may indulge a politically correct position of how “penis size does not matter,” (or in the current environment, how a penis itself is quite unnecessary) but it is not “straight talk.” It is apparently not true for many women. The truth, not as entertainment, seems a bit more undiscussable.
  • There are exceptions. Blogger Shannon Ashley for Medium recently (March 2019) did an entire piece on penis size, saying “I can’t respect folks who crack jokes about a micropenis.”
  • See future blogs for further review of these studies and others, as well as related historical, cultural, and psychological issues around penis size and other phallic preoccupations in art, mythology, and literature.