Saturday, December 08, 2007

Penis hacking all the rage in Thailand

They have been boiled, fed to ducks, even attached to hot air balloons and cast into the night sky - when it comes to permanently depriving a cheating lover of a recently severed penis, the imagination of the wronged Thai woman knows few bounds.

Thailand has become the world centre of penis reattachment surgery, but then it has been forced to be. While not unique to the kingdom, penis severing has been honed here to its most devastating effect through a mixture of infidelity, assertive womanhood and a national cuisine that lends itself to a kitchen full of sharp knives.

The men are now fearful of a rash of Thailand's most notorious crime of passion, according to the surgeon who has stitched back many a male member for grateful patients.



Sitting in his office at Bangkok's Paolo Memorial Hospital, surgeon Surasak Muangsombot recalled how he re-attached his first phallus in 1978 and soon discovered that penis hacking was a peculiarly Thai form of sexual violence.

Doctors and psychologists blame the attacks on a mix of Thailand's tradition of polygamy, which was banned about 100 years ago but still persists, and the fact that the phallus is revered as a symbol of power and fertility.

The phenomenon has become so widespread that doctors have had to keep up with increasingly inventive and angry wives and lovers who want to prevent the offending item from being reattached. The latest case was reported on Tuesday when a 29-year-old farmer in northeastern Thailand was admitted to hospital with a severed penis, claiming that his wife kicked him. Such was the length of her toe nails, she severed his penis.

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