The patent absurdity and shallow empathy of Channel 4’s My Massive Cock “documentary”

When "My Massive Cock" aired on broadcast TV in the United Kingdom, it shocked viewers across Britain. While some parts of the hour-long show were surprisingly compassionate towards the issues that men with very large penises face, other parts were just straight-up staged fiction. The "documentary" addressed issues that well-endowed men and their partners face, but offered no solutions and only misery. It addressed the unfair fetishization of black men, while simultaneously making up scenarios to play out for entertainment.

My Massive Cock is a double-edged sword. It laid bare the frustrations with sex and objectification that men with massive cocks actually face, while simultaneously leaning into that objectification with gratuitous dick shots. One of the subjects, "Joe", was even clearly faking the whole thing by stuffing a dildo down his pants.

Let's first look at the nasty side of this sword: the exaggeration, the objectification, and the outright fabrication.

The documentary opens with a vignette of Scott, an amateur football coach (soccer for the Americans), who is actively cajoled by his friends on the field and in the locker room about the size of his penis. The camera lingers on him adjusting his large bulge. It follows them into the shower where he's shown repeatedly to be flopping it around as if to "fluff" his size for the camera.

While Scott does appear to have a large penis, every scenario with him is clearly staged, starting with those locker room showers. He feigns embarrassment later when they're at the pub, and the friends have photos or videos of him naked — which he's sent to the group chat or where he's very clearly been posing for a "hidden" camera. Scott later went on a date with a woman, which was captured on multiple cameras, where he told her of his endowment to her surprise. There was no second date. It's all staged.

Then there's Joe, who is a significant subject of My Massive Cock. And I'll just be blunt here: he's a fake. While there is footage of photos of him, there is never any direct footage of his penis as there is with others on the documentary. And while that doesn't mean he's fake, the fact the large bulge he shows both slim light gray sweatpants (come on) and in his underwear has a distinct squared-off base from the modestly large dildo he stuff down his pants does.

Joe claims to have to spend "more than £200 per year on underwear", which is a positively absurd claim, unless the weight of stuffing a dildo down his pants is ruining his underwear. There are much better underwear options for actually well-endowed men. He also claims that the substantial bulge he shows in slim-fit suit pants cost him a potential job after he was told he was being inappropriate at a job interview, while any grown man of his supposed endowment would be familiar with the need at times to minimize his bulge and how to do it.

And the silicone casting that he supposedly created, using a plaster mold set in a 2-liter soda bottle? While that's very much a silicone cast, it's clearly of a designed dildo, not his penis. It's too perfect for a casting, and there's even a hint of a mold parting line in one shot. Tragically, due to the absurd visuals provided by the dildo down his pants and the contrast it provides with his body, Joe's segments are the one bit that Channel 4 decided to make available to the public on YouTube:

All that said, while Joe is a fraud and Scott's clearly playing it up for the cameras, My Massive Cock isn't all bad. These salacious segments definitely grabbed attention, but the documentary's producers still found time to embark on a more sedate examination of what it means to be well-endowed.

They spoke with Matt, who claims to have a 10.5-inch penis, explained how it's caused him so much trouble that he sought out a urologist to discuss a reduction surgery (which he ultimately declined due to the potential complications). Despite this, he knows it's not great having a truly massive cock: "Being well-endowed gets you attention, it doesn't get you affection. Women are very curious, it doesn't mean they're suddenly going to fall in love with you. If anything, it's more of a handicap to actually getting a relationship because it's something you can't really bring up in the courtship process. If you bring it up, you're a bit sleazy. And if you don't bring it up, it causes complications." Take notes, Scott.

YouTuber Cam used his platform to explore the fetishization of Black men through the unfair and unfounded pornographic trope of the "Big Black Cock". They even went to an "all-male Black strip show" where it was shown how they use vacuum pumps and cock rings to inflate their size for the duration of the show (holding an erection for 20-30 minutes isn't easy, after all). As he said, "It really makes you feel like less of a human."

Like having a very large penis, My Massive Cock comes with its pros and cons. On one hand, it cast a harsh light on the objectification that well-endowed men can face, but on the other hand it engaged in plenty of its own objectification, either made up or fell for fake stories, and didn't do much to actually address the issues that us big-dicked guys deal with. When a penis is simply too large and freaks a woman out was framed more for humor than for the humiliation that it truly is.

There's nothing wrong with joking about big dicks — humor can be a great way to address the painful issues that come from it — but when it's only played for laughs? That's a problem.

Penises are of course a touchy subject, and documentarians are subject to the same cultural norms as everybody else. And by airing on the often-provocative Channel 4, which has also shown the series "Naked Attraction" where both men and women are posed nude for a prospective suitor to judge before any chance to get to know them as a person, they were also under pressure to find that sort of vulgar and tawdry hook to draw in viewers and generate buzz.

Had My Massive Cock just been a straightforward examination of what it means to be well-endowed it wouldn't have garnered nearly as much attention as it did. But in leaning into the obscene and fake, it left a lot on the table that could've actually helped the men they examined and their partners.