Men do of course talk about female genitals, often in considerable detail, and with a critical awareness of taste, scent, texture, and other particulars. While we each do have our preferences, and sometimes encounter specific mismatches, there's no size or shape or type of plunce that automatically evokes a snicker among men. Briefly put, I can't think of anything I'd call an inherently deficient and unsatisfactory vagina on whose shortcomings most men would agree.

I've never known a group of men who sat around comparing penis sizes and mocking the short-membered among themselves. Indeed, I've never heard any group of men (with the exception of rappers) deriding other men for real or imagined losses in a penile-length competition. No man I know has ever described to me disparagingly another man's penis that he's seen. Nor has any man I've known ever described to a female lover -- at least not without great hesitancy and only after considerable urging -- one of his previous lovers' sex organs.

On the other hand, quite a few of the women I've known have unsolicitedly described to me their previous lovers' organs, with particular emphasis on length and girth or the lack thereof. (In several cases, these were men I knew, and who they knew I knew -- or to whom they subsequently introduced me.) Generally, they did this in comparing those other phalluses to mine in ways they clearly assumed I'd find flattering. Which it was, I suppose, though not in any way necessary; I have no insecurities in that regard.

Though, in these conversations, a few of these women have complained of encountering the occasional cock so large that penetration hurt them severely or even proved impossible, none has ever commented approvingly, and certainly not desirously. on smallness. I suspect that's a universal attitude among women, which explains why in any drama the line "I'm looking for a guy with a small cock" could only be delivered in jest.

This issue actually underpins Clint Eastwood's powerful western Unforgiven. In it, the main character -- a former gunslinging, womanizing, alcoholic reprobate (played by Eastwood, who also directed) -- has been civilized by his beloved, now-defunct wife and turned into a responsible, peaceable, teetotalling single father of two and pig farmer somewhere in Wyoming. Then he's invited to share a reward as a bounty hunter of sorts. The film's actions take place mainly between men, with women as onlookers. Yet in many central ways the film concerns men's relationships to women, and not just as subtext.

From what I've read, I'm alone in finding it noteworthy that the mission that Eastwood undertakes therein -- one that presumably allows him to set aside his vows to his deceased wife, leave his pre-adolescent children behind to cope with some mysterious disease killing their swine, and buckle on his six-gun again -- involves avenging a woman. Specifically, it requires punishing a man who mutilated a young prostitute for laughing at the diminutive size of his penis. ("Alls she done, when she seen he has a teensy little pecker, is give a giggle. That's all. She didn't know no better.") Eastwood, as Bill Munny, takes on the assignment, suffers considerably in the process, sees the job through, returns to his children, and, according to the film's coda, ends up in San Francisco running a dry-goods store.

So (though this does a fine film a great injustice) you could synopsize it as the story of a pussy-whipped ex-outlaw gone straight who straps on his pistol one last time to make the world safe for hookers who dare to laugh at the smaller-than-average sexual endowment of their male clients.

Let's leave aside the obvious fact that a whore who finds any of her clients' bodies risible and can't control her response has clearly gone into the wrong line of work. For our purposes here, what's significant is the screenwriter's and director's assumption that the audience will share their unstated conviction that there is some size of male member (we never actually see it to judge for ourselves) that a woman could reasonably find laughable, and that her doing so should be understood, accepted, and excused by all civilized folks, whereas male rage and violence in response to that behavior must remain "unforgiven" and demands revenge.

Which says, in short (so to speak): Of course size matters; if you're not well-endowed, you're a joke to women -- get used to it and get over it. Get upset if you want, but don't even think about retaliating, because a civilized man might empathize with you but it's his obligation to protect the woman who giggles at your meager endowments, even when you've paid her to pleasure you.

Though I can understand the rage, I don't justify that violence. And I'm not suggesting that there's no penis size that men generally, or I in particular, might not find amusing, perhaps ridiculous. At the same time, even if it turned out its owner was someone I found distasteful or actually loathesome, I'd simultaneously feel sorry for the guy on that score alone. It's not something I'd wish on any man.

Yet this villain's "teensy little pecker," the unseen Hitchcockian McGuffin of Unforgiven, does not earn him even a filmic instant's worth of sympathy; neither in the moment of his crime nor thereafter does the auteur urge us to consider the feelings of "Quick Mike" at that fateful moment. Apparently he's supposed to bear this most unmanning lifelong burden, and to accept female derision as a consequence thereof, "like a man." A most curious, complex message for a "man's film" to send. (I haven't yet sussed out all this film's implications, which definitely merit further analysis.)

I can't think of another film, past or present, that, even if briefly, has so foregrounded this issue. So it's worth contemplating on that score alone. But size doesn't only matter in matters phallic; it also represents that issue as it manifests itself on a broader, more public stage as well -- as Eastwood's own 6'4" frame attests.

More on that anon.