Paperback: Why is the Penis Shaped Like That? by Jesse Bering (Corgi, £8.99)

 
William Leith25 July 2013

Jesse Bering has been called “the Hunter Thompson of science writing”. “For as long as I can remember,” he tells us, “I’ve been sincerely curious, and vocally so, about certain ‘inappropriate’ matters.”

Here, he tells us, with bracing frankness, about penises, testicles, the female orgasm and female ejaculation.

He explains that Michael Jackson might have been a “hebephile” — “a newly proposed diagnostic classification”.

He studies semen, suicide and podophilia, which is “the love of feet and, often, by extension, shoes”.

So: female ejaculation is real, and the penis is shaped not only to be a inserter of one’s own semen, but a tool to scrape away the semen of others.

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