For us females or less-athletic men, what goes on in an athletic male locker room is a complete mystery. Or at least it was until Jezebel recently shared Dr. Christopher Morriss-Roberts’ finding on what goes on in male locker rooms. The results are surprising, to say the least. According to Morriss-Roberts, a podiatrist who specializes in sports sociology at the University of Brighton, for the majority of the time, it’s a whole lot of checking out each other’s packages.

As part of his Ph.D. research, Morriss-Roberts set out to understand the typical male locker room behavior. After interviewing eight male athlete subjects, four of whom identified as straight and four of whom identified as homosexual, Morriss-Roberts discovered that regardless of sexual orientation, men spent great amounts of time looking at other men’s penises.

In Outsports, Morriss-Roberts described how, “The activity of checking out each other occurred irrelevant of sexuality and the type of sport; all participants noted that they looked at each other’s c--- in the locker room.” Penis size largely affected receiving respect from other team members; those with larger penises were revered. The sizing up also became a main source of team building among team members.

Sadly, there can be consequences for those deemed to have small penises. As Morriss-Roberts explained, “These athletes were placed at the bottom on this social hierarchy; it was suggested that they probably had to work harder to be part of the team.” In desperation to make their penises seem larger, athletes admitted to slapping them about and even forcing a semi-erection to add a bit of length. This obsession with penis size did not end in the locker room. Morriss-Roberts explained that nicknames and banter about penis size often followed the athletes in their everyday life as well.

He explained that if fellow athletes view their teammate's penis as too large to be used sexually, they were not admired. He also found that men with big penises are often viewed as getting to their current position solely on the fact that they are well-endowed, regardless of any other talents they may have. Morriss-Roberts recalled how one player commented that his teammate was only on the team because of his large penis, when in fact he wasn’t very good at the sport.