About your body – Male

Body changes

In boys, puberty starts later than girls – after the age of 10 or 11, but can be anytime between 10 and 18, usually around 13 or 14. Your voice ‘breaks’ and becomes deeper. Hair grows in various places on the body – including the face, under the arms, on the legs, chest and around the base of the penis. The body starts to sweat more – and the sweat is smellier so both boys and girls need to wash more. Spots and blackheads may grow on their face, neck, chest and back. You get taller and more muscular and your shoulders widen. Your genitals (penis and testicles) get bigger. Body changes usually carry on into your late teens or early twenties. These are some of the more obvious changes. But there are others, emotional as well as physical. Changes during puberty vary amongst boys, for some young men they may happen slowly and gradually and for others, changes may be more sudden.

The Penis

The penis has two main parts, a head (or glans) and a shaft. The head of the penis – particularly its rim – is much more sensitive than the shaft. The penis gets thicker and longer during puberty.

About half of men are circumcised – the flap of skin round the end of the penis (foreskin) is cut away, usually for religious reasons, when they are a baby. When you get an erection, the foreskin stretches. The head of the penis is then completely exposed. If the penis is not circumcised, it’s very important to keep it clean under the foreskin. If it is not kept clean every day, a yellow-white creamy substance called smegma builds up. This is normal but perhaps a little unpleasant. A man should be able to pull the foreskin back to expose the head of the penis. A tight foreskin can make erections painful, if there seems to be a problem, talk to your doctor. Normally a man’s penis is soft and hangs down. But when he gets sexually excited (and often even when he doesn’t) he gets an erection. A penis is used for two jobs, peeing and sex. When the penis is erect he can’t pee easily because a muscle closes off the bladder. The shape of an erect penis varies. It usually curves upwards slightly, and may point to one side. Erections (hardons, boners, stiffies) occur in males of all ages, including babies and old men.

How do erections happen?

Is it bone? Is it muscle? Does the penis fill with semen? No, it fills with blood. There are no muscles in the penis, that’s why it can’t be moved very much. The penis is a kind of sponge that fills with blood when a man is sexually excited (but not necessarily). They can be unreliable. Erections can come and go without warning. They can happen at a moment’s notice, sometimes in embarrassing circumstances. And they can vanish just as easily. Alcohol can cause an erection to droop as can fear of being laughed at, of coming too soon, or of causing pregnancy. Waking up with an erection (‘morning glory’) is very common. There isn’t much evidence to say exactly why they happen, it is likely that it’s simply the leftovers from the last dream you had. Erections during sleep are quite common, this might happen up to five or six times a night and no one really knows why. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are dreaming about sex. Waking up with a stiffy might make you want to masturbate but strangely enough, often the first erection of the day isn’t a very sensual one. Usually if you ignore it it’ll soon go limp and you can carry on with your day.

Size

Many young men think that their penis is smaller than anyone else’s. This is unlikely. Adult penis sizes do vary, but not by as much as you might think. Adult penis size is usually about 6cm to 10cm long when soft, and about 12cm to 19cm long when hard. The thickness of a man’s erect penis is usually about 3 to 4cm across. Most 12 year olds, before sexual development, have a penis that is 3cm to 5cm long when soft and usually less than 8cm long when hard.

Despite best efforts, (like physical exercise or stretching it) there is not a lot that can be done to make a penis larger or smaller (without surgery). Boys often can get anxious that size really matters, it’s good to reassure them that size really doesn’t matter. Most prospective partners look for personality over willy size!

As a rough rule, the larger a penis is when soft (flaccid), the less it grows when hard. If it is small when soft, it will probably grow more when hard. Penises that are short when flaccid but more average when erect are sometimes called growers, where those with greater flaccid lengths that increase little when erect are known as showers.

The penis and balls can shrink in reaction to cold temperatures or nervousness, referred to by the slang term “shrinkage”, due to action by the cremaster muscle. The same issue affects cyclist and exercise bike users, with prolonged pressure on the perineum (the area between the balls and the anus) from the saddle, and the straining of the exercise causing the penis and balls to contract involuntarily which is sometimes referred to as “gym balls” or “saddle balls”. An incorrect saddle may ultimately cause erectile dysfunction.

Balls

Men have two balls (testicles, testes, bollocks, nuts, nads) hanging in a bag (scrotum) outside the body, just behind the penis. The balls produce sperm that join with a woman’s egg to make a baby. The balls are connected to the penis by a long thin tube. Both semen and pee from the bladder pass down a tube through the penis. This tube is called the urethra. The semen is then stored at the base of the penis until the next ejaculation. One ball (usually the left) often hangs a little lower than the other. This is so they don’t bash into each other when running. They should be about the same size and weight.

Scrotum

Balls hang in a soft bag – the Scrotum. The scrotum hangs outside the body because sperm need to be kept cooler than the internal body temperature of 37ºC. Sperm are damaged or killed by heat. The scrotum is usually darker in colour than the rest of the skin and is hairy. When it’s cold, the scrotum puckers up and becomes very wrinkled. When it’s warm, the balls hang loose, and the surface is smooth.

Genital awareness

Spots, bumps and moles are common on the scrotum and penis, and don’t usually mean anything. A plastic protector, or ‘box’ is advisable when playing sport where a blow, boot, or ball could damage the testicles. Cancer of the balls (Testicular cancer) mostly affects young men, between the ages of 15 and 35. Almost 100% of all cancers of the testicles can be cured if detected early enough- that’s why young men (and men of all ages) should examine themselves every month. Warning signs include: a dull ache in the balls, sensitive small hard painless lump areas, one ball growing larger than the other, one ball growing heavier than the other and blood coming from the penis.

Checking your balls is easy! You should look for changes in size or signs of any lumps or bumps. Examine each ball in turn, using both hands, gently roll the ball between your thumb and index finger, you will find a hard sausage-shaped ridge on top which is normal (the epididymis, where sperm are stored). If you find other lumps or are not sure then you should seek further advice and examination by a GP and any necessary tests or scans can be arranged.

Most men and boys rub themselves to get an erection and to have an orgasm. Masturbation (wanking, jerking off) can start as young as 5 or 6 though it can’t lead to ejaculation until sexual development has taken place. One of the most common worries is not so much about the act of masturbation but how often it’s ‘allowed’ or ‘healthy’ to do it. The truth is there’s no medical reason why masturbating four times a day will do any harm. Several times a day is not unusual, nor is less often. Most young men will at some point experience a wet dream; where they wake to find they have ‘come’ in their bed. It may be embarrassing to mess the sheets, but it’s completely normal and should not be anything to worry about.

Ejaculation

Most young men ejaculate (come, have an orgasm) for the first time between the ages of 10 and 18 – usually at the age of 13 or 14. Sexual excitement causes muscles at the base of the penis to contract hard and semen to spurt out. During a man’s orgasm, about 3 to 15 contractions occur. Each lasts about a second. The first 3 or so are usually the most intense. Sometime ejaculation may pump semen quite a distance. At other times, it just dribbles out. Semen may be thick and creamy in colour, or thin and watery. Semen (spunk) is a milky liquid in which the sperm swim. Sperm are needed to fertilise an egg in the woman to make a baby. It only takes one sperm to fertilise an egg. Each ball produces about 2000 sperm per second (200 million sperm every day). When a man comes, he squirts out on average a teaspoonful of semen containing 300 million sperm. How often a man ejaculates varies, some men can ejaculate several times a day, others less often.

Common concerns:

Premature ejaculation, coming too quickly, or the fear of coming too quickly, has got to rank up high on the all-male ‘Worry Top Ten’. The concept of premature ejaculation or coming too quickly suggests that there is a right time and a wrong time to come, which isn’t strictly true. Some men decide that the right time to come is after or at the same time as their partner comes. The reasoning behind this is the idea that a ‘good lover’ can hold back his ejaculation until his lover has enjoyed sex fully and had their own orgasm. There is no right or wrong time to come. Some men come in a minute, others can last fifty minutes. This doesn’t mean the man who lasts the longest is the better lover. Sex isn’t just about thrusting and pumping for hours on end.