Genital Shrinking Panic

Penis panics are surprisingly common. Known to psychiatrists as koro* victims believe that through some magical means, typically the action of a sorcerer, their genitals has disappeared or shrunken.

In Singapore in 1967 hospitals were swamped by men who believed that their penises were shrinking . They were so scared that many were using rubber bands or clothes pins to try and halt the shrinking. Fortunately, thanks to some very good public news conferences the Health Ministry was able to calm the masses and the panic fizzled out.

Last week Reuters reported that the Congo is the latest country to be hit by a wave of alleged penis thefts. What makes this more than the usual panic is that the police, rather than calming the situation, have actually arrested 13 suspected sorcerers.

Police claim that they arrested the men as a precautionary measure, to avoid a repeat of an incident in Ghana when the suspects were beaten to death by an angry mob.

* thought to come either from the Malay word meaning “to shrink”: keruk. Some people believe it may in fact come from the Malaysian-Indonesian words for tortoise kura, kura-kura, and kuro