# Why Thai Women Cut Off Their Husbands' Penises **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 25, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034 "2012-11-25T02:27:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/1 "2012-11-25T02:27:07Z")
New overview on this [here](http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/nov/19/improbable-research-thai-women-cut-off-penis). Thailand is infamous for wives slicing off the penis of a wayward husband as he sleeps. As such, Bangkok has become a hub for penile-reattachment surgery. Not to be outdone, the lovely ladies here have devised more extreme measures. One lady tied her husband’s penis to a helium balloon and released it; one fed it to the ducks out in their yard (the link above mentions the old Thai saying: “I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat”); still another popped it into the blender. These are NOT Urban Legends, but rather well-documented instances. An Agence France-Presse story on it can be found [here](http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/07/08/2003178134) in the _Taipei Times_. I like this part: **He said his hardest case required bribing an angry wife to confess its location in a septic tank and the hiring of a wrecking crew to retrieve it. “I asked the nurse to clean it up well and warned the patient that he may get septicemia and he said, `do your best and if it gets septicemia I will die with my penis.'” “It was 15 hours between it being chopped off and reattached, which is much longer than the books say it can be done, but I went ahead and to my surprise everything went fine,” he said.** Fortunately, it’s not really _that_ common, which is why it’s generally big news when it does, especially if it involves one of the more creative disposal methods. But it probably happens more than it does in other countries. I myself have manage to escape this fate … so far, heh. At least, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/2 "2012-11-25T02:40:50Z")
:: important safety note: do not annoy Thai ladies :: ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/3 "2012-11-25T02:46:47Z")
Not quite the same thing but this reminds me of an incident back when I was working in prisons. We had a prisoner who broke a mirror and managed to slice off a good portion of his thumb. While he was being treated we started looking around for the missing piece of thumb so we could sent it out to possibly be re-attached. But we were unable to find it. It wasn’t until he got to the hospital that the prisoner finally decided he could trust a nurse there. When she asked him where the cut off piece was, he told her he had flushed it down his toilet “so the guards wouldn’t get it”. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/4 "2012-11-25T02:53:13Z")
… and hear I was, thinking the punchline was going to be about exploding penises explaining how the country got its name. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/5 "2012-11-25T03:00:54Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#): > > … and hear I was, thinking the punchline was going to be about exploding penises explaining how the country got its name. That would be the capital. 😉 What one hears most often is that Bangkok may be short for Bang Makok – _bang_ meaning “village on a stream” or even just “place of” and _makok_ being a type of local olives. But that’s not definitive, and there are other explanations too. The Thais always call it Krung Thep, which means City of Angels. Los Angeles, if you will. Although Krung Thep is short for it’s full name: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit Which translates to: City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Visvakarman at Indra’s behest. Schoolchildren have to memorize this. The wife says she’s long forgotten it though. ---
**Author:** ![Lukeinva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lukeinva/32/17872_2.png) [@Lukeinva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lukeinva)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/6 "2012-11-25T03:41:57Z")
_Yeouch_, or however you say it in Thai. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/7 "2012-11-25T03:59:13Z")
> [@Lukeinva](#): > > _Yeouch_, or however you say it in Thai. This! ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/8 "2012-11-25T04:29:36Z")
As someone in another thread said, it adds insult to injury to then be told you need _micro_-surgery. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/9 "2012-11-25T05:23:07Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Not quite the same thing but this reminds me of an incident back when I was working in prisons. We had a prisoner who broke a mirror and managed to slice off a good portion of his thumb. While he was being treated we started looking around for the missing piece of thumb so we could sent it out to possibly be re-attached. But we were unable to find it. > > It wasn’t until he got to the hospital that the prisoner finally decided he could trust a nurse there. When she asked him where the cut off piece was, he told her he had flushed it down his toilet “so the guards wouldn’t get it”. Honest truth, I lost my fingertip in college down a drain. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/10 "2012-11-25T05:39:25Z")
> [@](#): > > The Thais always call it Krung Thep, which means City of Angels. Los Angeles, if you will. Although Krung Thep is short for it’s full name: > > Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit Is there some cosmic law that all Cities of Angels must have some ludicrously long official name? ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/11 "2012-11-25T17:11:14Z")
so they’ll grow back longer and thicker? ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/12 "2012-11-25T18:31:39Z")
If this is a recurring thing in Thailand then I suppose it’s likely that somewhere out there is a guy who’s had reattachment done more than once (presumably by different women)? A guy whose “take away” from a vengeful penectomy was “hey, this is a solved problem”? ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/13 "2012-11-25T18:49:30Z")
Don’t just sit there, **Sam**. There’s a fortune to be made selling cast iron codpieces. ---
**Author:** ![Find\_Friends](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c37758/32.png) [@Find\_Friends](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Find_Friends)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/14 "2012-11-25T19:20:55Z")
_ **A slice of life?!** _ ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/15 "2012-11-26T01:07:43Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > If this is a recurring thing in Thailand … Well, I think that’s why the ladies are doing it. The husband’s thing keeps recurring. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/16 "2012-11-26T01:17:42Z")
Holy shit that is fucked up. What kind of penalty does such an act carry? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/17 "2012-11-26T01:19:29Z")
I’ve not actually heard of any husband pressing charges. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/18 "2012-11-26T01:26:25Z")
Apparently [koro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koro_%28medicine%29) has some traction in that area. It was long thought a cultural delusion, but now it appears that they’re right! ---
**Author:** ![ladyfoxfyre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@ladyfoxfyre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladyfoxfyre)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/19 "2012-11-26T01:29:58Z")
I’d imagine pressing charges would make her pretty mad. And _you don’t want to see her when she gets angry_. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034/20 "2012-11-26T01:35:50Z")
> [@olivesmarch4th](#): > > Holy shit that is fucked up. What kind of penalty does such an act carry? A career in torture porn? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-thai-women-cut-off-their-husbands-penises/642034.md?page=2)