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Watch your meat, men! Male sex organs are getting sliced off at an alarming rate as the end of the millennium approaches.

Nov. 9: An Australian man was happily poking his penis into an estranged wife, reports the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Their coitus was cruelly interrupted by the woman's angry ex-husband, who knifed off the rod of his rival.

Sept. 27: A suicidal 42-year-old man near Yale University tried to bleed himself to death by pruning off his phallus. The Connecticutter survived, and was impelled by a local judge to accept reattachment, says AP.

Sept. 3: Sex offender John Henry Brown was grossly abbreviated in an Oklahoma prison by his cellmate, James Todd Frosig. Physicians' attempts to sew the pedophiliac prick back on were unsuccessful, notes AP.

Aug. 30: A young Pole butchered off his bratwurst near Warsaw, in an inexplicable act of self-mutilation. Five hours later, doctors at Bialystock Hospital successfully stitched his sausage back into his groin, reports AP.

John Wayne Bobbit remains the most famous "Lost Weenie" cut-case; in 1993 he was dismembered by his allegedly battered wife, Lorena, who drove off through Virginia streets with the dick. When the cock was found curbside, John was granted a second stiff life. Since then, he's proved his resiliency in porn films, such as "Frankenpenis" and "John Wayne Bobbit ... Uncut."

No one knows how many men have had their fifth limbs amputated, but a "No-Penis Club" posted by Spy magazine suggests that amateur penectomies occur internationally. Vengeful clipping by husbands and ex-husbands, like last week's Aussie incident, seem to be a strictly Anglo-nation hobby: the only other cases on record happened in Alabama (1988) and Kansas (1989).

Wives whittling husbands is a multicultural phenomenon, however. A machete was utilized in the Philippines in 1993 to deter a drunk spouse demanding sex, a razor blade was employed in Bangladesh in 1992 by a woman whose husband wanted a divorce, a knife did the trick in Russia in 1992 when Tamara's husband told her she "was too old" and scissors did the snipping in Hong Kong in 1987 when Lin Yuk-sang's wife discovered that he had a mistress (she flushed his penis down the toilet as well). Lorena Bobbit herself was Ecuadorian.

Oddly enough, the greatest penis peril resides in the owner's own hands. The recent Connecticutter and Pole have only their own mad brains to blame, and they're joined by an odd Australian in 1992 who hacked off his hose because he was mad at a woman. Voluntary "male nullification" is also a kinky trend that cutting-edge body modifiers are currently exploring. Online chop-talk praises the "smoothie" look one achieves, if one also adds simple castration.

How many victims die? Miraculously, my extensive research failed to find a single fatality in any of the weenie-removal reports. Although blood loss is enormous, the attacked scrotal area clots and heals itself quickly.

I hope I never have to find out.
salon.com | Nov. 12, 1999

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