Unabridged original interview

Dear Prof. Littara. We met during your interview at the Milan Press Club and we agreed that I could conduct a longer interview with you after your book launch. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this spontaneous opportunity. I am planning my own book on the subject of female sexuality through the ages.

You have dedicated over 30 years of your professional life to surgical penis enlargement, is that correct?
Yes, to the chagrin of my wife and probably also our dog(laughs).

I have actually dedicated my life mainly to this operation, but I also really enjoy it. On the one hand, helping patients directly and, on the other, helping to reduce the number of extremely poor outcomes through my work at the training academy.

According to my research, you run the only training academy for surgical penis enlargement in Europe. Why does this academy exist at all?
Because this operation is not part of the medical training and also not part of the specialist medical training of a surgeon, urologist, plastic surgeon or any other doctor. This means that if a doctor wants to start with this operation, he either does it on a learning-by-doing basis, which is usually disadvantageous for the patient, or looks to see if there is a training institution. I wanted to offer this to improve quality and therefore opened the academy.

During your time as Professor of Urogenital Constructive Surgery at the University of Pisa, did you not introduce this operation to your students?
At a state university, you are bound to the curriculum to a certain extent, even if you had a special position there. It is not possible to train specifically for a single operation there.

How important is experience in such an operation?
Allow me to answer this question in a little more detail. Experience really is the basis of surgery, i.e. everything you do with your hands. In this respect, it is of course important whether a surgeon has done something 10 times or 1,000 times. But experience should not be the only criterion when choosing a doctor. I regularly give this answer to journalists who ask me why I only state that I have performed 7,000 operations or even fewer in old interviews. In fact, after more than 30 years of intensive work, I would come up with much higher figures, but that is irrelevant. There is the basic finding that experience can make you good. But the fact that someone has performed 1000 operations only means that they have performed 1000 operations. Ideally, he has become better and safer as a result, but he may also have performed every single one of these operations equally badly. If he is not suitable for it.

Do you know how good or bad other medical colleagues are who also offer this operation?
Yes, I know a lot about their abilities. From the corrective surgeries or their time at the academy. Patients come to see me more often when operations have gone wrong elsewhere and, at the latest during a corrective operation, I can see what the other person has done, i.e. whether they are suitable for this operation or not.

So have you already seen everything there is to see or can you still be surprised?
Yes, and much of it you don’t even want to see.

What is the risk of this operation apart from the risk of getting the wrong doctor?
Thankfully, the operation has a low surgical risk if performed correctly. This is mainly due to the fact that the organ itself is not changed, only its position in relation to the rest of the body.

I think I can do this operation quite well(grins broadly), so the risk is even lower when I perform it. But even if doctors were gods, every surgical procedure would still have a residual risk, unless in their capacity as gods they had the ability to influence nature as a whole.
Unfortunately, the real risk with this operation is that the patient does not behave as he should in the five weeks after the operation.

As nice as it is that a man is highly enthusiastic about a larger penis after the operation, this enthusiasm and the impression of now being able to do “everything” is bad for his behavior for the five weeks of the healing phase.

What exactly do you mean by that?
That he wants to use it too soon and doesn’t realize that he has to follow our instructions for post-operative physiotherapy in individual cases. To the extreme, which in turn amuses me: twice in my working life I have received a call from a hotel employee asking if we could come and catch our patient walking naked along the hotel corridors and proudly presenting his now larger penis.

Are you pulling my leg now?
No, it has happened. But only twice, but with the corresponding amusement of everyone involved.

Let’s move on to my actual topic. We had a very pleasant and relaxed conversation because you were fascinated by the fact that I am one of the few women who is open about her fascination with the male genitalia. She was particularly surprised to hear that I have no problem saying that a penis has to be a certain size to look stimulating in my hand or to have an effect on me. In your experience, how open are patients’ partners about this topic?
To be honest, unfortunately not much has changed in the last 20 years. Despite all the emancipation efforts, it is still a taboo subject. Imagine the reaction of a father, especially an Italian one, when his daughter raves about how great she thinks her partner’s genitals are at the dinner table, for example, or even tells him that she loves the size and all the things he can do with them. You can’t imagine that situation(laughs).

I know for myself that the size of my partner’s penis plays a decisive role. But what do you tell other journalists or female journalists who ask you this question whether size is important and if so, why?
This question always amazes me, because most of us studied biology at school, including behavioral science. Everyone should still know the term key stimulus, and the penis and its appearance is a central key stimulus for sexuality. And we know from behavioral science that animals react more strongly to a key stimulus the larger it is. This is of course the same with a penis.

But it is not just a key visual stimulus, it is above all a mechanical instrument. And here, too, the question arises as to how one can even entertain the idea that the size of a mechanical instrument can have an influence on its function and effect.

So the question is quite clear: yes. And there is no need for a grandiose medical explanation, because our school knowledge of biology and physics already gives us the answer to this question.

I sometimes get the impression that journalists expect me to answer the question in the negative, apparently in the hope that I am helping the old patriarchal structures to survive.

How often are you interviewed on this topic – after all, you are considered by many journalists to be the grande dame of surgical penis enlargement?
Again, please allow me to give you a more detailed answer. Interviews are for young doctors. You’re always happy to be asked about something that you can then publish on your homepage as proof of quality, no matter how insignificant or bad the interview was.

Later, interviews become a real nuisance, because you have to take time for them that is lacking elsewhere.
After 30 years, I no longer have to keep telling journalists how good I am at this operation, how much experience and research I have gained, at which congresses I have spoken.

So I can consider myself lucky because otherwise they turn down interview requests?
On the one hand, I really enjoy this interview and I would like to support you in finishing your book.

On the other hand, of course, I give interviews from time to time. For example, if the topic is particularly exciting or the question is unusual.
And I try to bring society more into the modern age with my answers. It is sometimes very surprising that male journalists ask questions that female journalists would never dare to ask or are even criticized by their male colleagues.

Yes, I experience this myself in my circle of friends. When I talk about size and the importance of size for my sexuality, I am often looked at disparagingly as if I have broken the taboo of daring to present a penis as possibly defective.
Your sentiment is exactly right. And if the two manufacturers of erection-enhancing drugs hadn’t spent billions on their advertisements, which revolved around the malfunctioning of the male sex organ, the attitude towards this topic would be even more conservative, even more patriarchal.

I experience even more, when I have asked this question I know exactly which of the men in the group has a small penis. Namely the man or men who, when I ask this question, give their wives a dirty look so that they don’t say anything about the subject. But isn’t it bad to keep such an important topic so quiet?
A society has to decide for itself whether it is bad or not, but in any case it makes no sense medically, because you can do something about it.

But isn’t it also bad for men to possibly suffer from something they are not allowed to say?
That brings us back to my main topic. Which is why I’m dealing with this. The suffering of men. Let’s take the issue of premature ejaculation. There are a number of reasons for this, but one very big reason is that the man has such a significant problem with his penis size that it puts such a psychological strain on him that the erection takes a very long time to build up. And then he is already so far gone that the end comes quickly. This is not a pleasant situation for either of them and neither of them dares to talk about it.

How do you see the future of this topic, will society become more open because we women are gaining more power and are therefore more confident in expressing our wishes?
Not in the near future. Looking at the past, I would say that this may be the case in 15-20 years.

But the patriarchy is still so overpowering that – as you can see in your own circle of friends – women are brainwashed, so to speak, or at the very least intimidated by an immense, deep-seated intimidation in their unconscious, because they themselves repeat the patriarchy’s guidelines, however nonsensical they may be.

So first there would have to be a change in the patriarchy, and then the realism of the mass of women.

I don’t see it, especially in view of current social developments, because the old gender roles seem to be increasingly on the rise again, even in seemingly more liberal Northern Europe.

So you and I are exotic?
So to speak (laughs)

Prof. Littara, thank you for the very pleasant interview.