Warning: The Terrifying Truth About the Penis Snatchers

Penises are snatched in widespread outbreaks, sometimes decades apart, everywhere on earth. The best places to avoid are Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, China and the Western Hemisphere.

In 1967, hundreds of cases were reported in Singapore. The 1984-1985 penis-snatching epidemic in China affected more than 3,000 people in 16 provinces. In 2011, 19 workers in a jute mill in south Bengal had their penises snatched. In 2020, 13 cases were reported in Southern India. Those are only a few examples.

Each region has its name for this crime, but American medical literature generally refers to it as "Koro."

Usually, Koro is when someone – often someone who seems to be pissed off at you for no good reason – steals your penis, and you have to pay off a medium, psychic or witch doctor to get it back. Or it might come back by itself, or maybe you'll die from it. Often, a sympathetic mob will attack and kill the penis snatcher, commonly by immolation or by hacking the alleged culprit into pieces. The BBC reported in 2001 that, over one weekend, 12 people were attacked by lynch mobs because they were penis snatchers.

Brazil has a similar problem – about 1,000 amputated penises annually. Reuters reported that former President Bolsonado of Brazil was shocked when he found out about this and stated: "We have to find a way to get out of the bottom of this hole." Which is an interesting choice of words.

In North America, there is no public documentation of Koro, partly because of HIPAA regulations and also because male genital discussions are strictly forbidden in public except for bars, book clubs, luncheons, over dinner, gyms, locker rooms, parties, bathrooms, presidential debates, museums, morgues, the doctors' lounge, public transit, baby showers, restaurants, parks, orgies, art classes, factories, in a shrink's office, Tinder and Grindr, school playgrounds, slumber parties, elevators, Weight Watchers, urology clinics and next to any bathroom stall occupied by former Senator Larry Craig. That's all. Everywhere else in North America, it's taboo. Somehow, though, the subject always seems to be in the news or on the cover of Men's Health magazine.

Penis snatchers are among us in North America, but it's more of an invisible, subliminal emasculation by politics, economics, or religion. Cisgendered boys and adults who aren't perceived as being testosterone-fueled in terms of assertiveness are called "dickless” on the playground or behind their backs at the office. A 40- or 50-year-old stranger driving around in a new Ferrari is thought to be overcompensating for the size of his genitals. Trump says that Biden doesn't have "the balls" to win the 2024 election, and in 2020, Marco Rubio said that Trump has small hands (note that hand-to-penis-ratios have no basis in medical or biological fact, nor does Marco Rubio). Economic stressors can often make cisgender men feel self-conscious about their manhood.

And then there's religion. Gender affirmation surgery is condemned by the church, presumably because one's penis is god's gift, but unless it comes to surgery, we're supposed to pretend that we don't have one.

Koro and its equivalents in the Western Hemisphere are not made-up fables for those who experience them.

Someone thrusts upon us the internalization of fear, frustrations and pain. To quote from the beginning of this article, “Koro is when someone – usually someone who seems to be pissed off at you for no good reason – steals your penis.” That someone is society.

In his book "The Geography of Madness," author Frank Bures, who went on a worldwide search for the meaning of culture, writes,

"I […] came to see how our ideas can kill us, how our beliefs can save us, and how these things quietly determine the course of our lives. They can also cause your penis to disappear."

If you think your penis disappeared, you're not alone. And it can be cured. Tell your doctor to look up Koro, DSM-IV-TR, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.