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PENIS PANIC!!! - PART 1Coming to Terms with Genital Retraction Syndrome
In 2003, the Middle Eastern Research Institute reported on a new craze sweeping the Sudan. People believed that foreigners were roaming the streets of Khartoum and causing the penises of locals to melt in via handshakes and “electric combs.” According to Ja’far Abbas, a Sudanese writer, “No doubt, this comb was a laser-controlled surgical robot that penetrates the skull [and moves] to the lower body and emasculates a man!!” Abbas also claimed that the supposed comb-wielding thief was “an imperialist Zionist agent that was sent to prevent our people from procreating and multiplying.” The penis-melting Zionist cyborg comb is just one case of koro, or, as it is better/more funnily known, “penis panic”—an outbreak of mass hysteria that every so often causes hundreds of people in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia to run around clutching their genitals and those of their loved ones. There are three principal symptoms of koro: sweating, dizziness, and/or spasms; a consuming fear that the penis will retract into the abdomen and cause instant death; and the use of bizarre methods to keep the penis from retracting into the body, including strings attached to the shaft of the penis, steel clamps, safety pins, chopsticks, and family members taking turns at holding the penis. I guess that last one is both a symptom and a makeshift solution. The word “koro” comes from the Malay-Indonesian word for “tortoise,” in reference to the similarity between the motion of a tortoise retracting its head and long, wrinkly neck and the dreaded movement of the penis into the body. Although it’s far rarer, there’s a female version of the condition, in which ladies worry that their breasts will retreat into their chests like the magical islands of Brigadoon. For as long as men have had penises, they have been scared about losing them. One of the earliest descriptions of koro comes from an ancient Chinese medical text dating to approximately 400 B.C. In traditional Chinese medicine, the condition was known as “suo-yang,” which translates roughly to “Bye for now, penis. Hope to see you again soon,” and taken very seriously. In his 1834 compendium of remedies, Pao Sian-Ow recommends several methods of treatment for suo-yang, including taking warm alcoholic drinks and rubbing the affected crotch with the ashes of burnt female undergarments. Today medical science is pretty sure that penises can’t really suck back into the body and kill you, so why do the panics persist? Dr. Robert Bartholomew is an expert in mass hysteria whose book Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns, and Head-Hunting Panics devotes an entire chapter to koro. According to him, it’s a simple matter of creating new avenues of credibility. Take, for example, the Great Singapore Penis Panic of 1967. It all began with rumors that were given attention in the national media. According to the press, a large supply of pork had been contaminated with hog cholera vaccination. One newspaper reported that a recently vaccinated pig died after its penis vanished into its own body. People who had recently eaten pork began looking at their own penises in an entirely new light, and the panic set in. It’s important that these events occurred during a very stressful time in Singapore’s history. The British were just moving out of the area, and tensions between Muslim Malays and the Chinese were at a breaking point. In fact, many Chinese believed that the Malays (non-pork eaters), were poisoning the meat to wipe them out. This psychologically strained atmosphere, along with the pork’s imagined but believable threat to the reproductive abilities of the Chinese (who place a relatively high value on this ability) created, as Bartholomew implies, an ideal environment for a koro frenzy. Nearly 500 cases were reported in all. DEREK SMITH http://iamgettingfat.blogspot.com TO BE CONTINUED PENIS PANIC!!! | 1 | 2 |
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