Aug 21, 2026 · 58 min · 24 segments
A listener asks: whose penis gets the top spot on the Wikipedia page for penis? Our quest for an answer takes us on a surprisingly philosophical journey — where we learn about the cutthroat fight to…
PJ VogtHost
Lane RasberryGuest
Leon had sent in a question, a good one, about something that it had never occurred to me to wonder about.
My question basically distills down to who is the penis on Wikipedia? How did that picture get there? And who decides whether that picture gets up there?
Uh-huh.
[laughs]
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the thing that got me to this question is, like, growing up in the early 2000s, my sexual education came from Wikipedia.
And I think what made Wikipedia really compelling as a teenager is that every anatomy page had actual photos.
You'd look up penis, you'd see a picture of penis.
Same for, like, nipples, same for vulva.
And I kind of always took that for granted, but, like, the thing I started wondering about recently is, like, how do those pictures get there? Like, who are the people that upload a photo of their penis to Wikipedia? And then, like, more importantly, who decides which penis becomes the Wikipedia penis? Like, is there a committee? Is there a rubric? Are there debates? And has that picture been the same for the last decade, or are they still accepting new submissions? Like, PJ, could you and I upload a picture? Like, could I upload a picture of my penis today? And is there a chance that they'd be like, "Yeah, actually, that is a more average penis than the one that we currently have on the site."
You know? "We're gonna accept it."
[laughs]
Not even for profit, but just for curiosity and experience and perhaps to contribute to the knowledge of global comments-
Mm-hmm
... there's some part of me that's like, "I kinda wanna know how to slide my picture in the file."
[laughs] Exactly, yes.
For a lot of people, you know, like, especially kids like me growing up online, these pictures become their baseline understanding of what bodies are supposed to look like.
When my gay ass looked up vulva as a teenager, like, that genuinely may have been the first and last vagina I ever saw.
Leon had sent in a question, a good one, about something that it had never occurred to me to wonder about.
My question basically distills down to who is the penis on Wikipedia? How did that picture get there? And who decides whether that picture gets up there?
Uh-huh.
[laughs]
Yeah.
Yeah, I think the thing that got me to this question is, like, growing up in the early 2000s, my sexual education came from Wikipedia.
And I think what made Wikipedia really compelling as a teenager is that every anatomy page had actual photos.
You'd look up penis, you'd see a picture of penis.
Same for, like, nipples, same for vulva.
And I kind of always took that for granted, but, like, the thing I started wondering about recently is, like, how do those pictures get there? Like, who are the people that upload a photo of their penis to Wikipedia? And then, like, more importantly, who decides which penis becomes the Wikipedia penis? Like, is there a committee? Is there a rubric? Are there debates? And has that picture been the same for the last decade, or are they still accepting new submissions? Like, PJ, could you and I upload a picture? Like, could I upload a picture of my penis today? And is there a chance that they'd be like, "Yeah, actually, that is a more average penis than the one that we currently have on the site."
You know? "We're gonna accept it."
[laughs]
Not even for profit, but just for curiosity and experience and perhaps to contribute to the knowledge of global comments-
Mm-hmm
... there's some part of me that's like, "I kinda wanna know how to slide my picture in the file."
[laughs] Exactly, yes.
For a lot of people, you know, like, especially kids like me growing up online, these pictures become their baseline understanding of what bodies are supposed to look like.
When my gay ass looked up vulva as a teenager, like, that genuinely may have been the first and last vagina I ever saw.
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