Penis Blog

Penectomies are commonly performed for penis cancer and gender reassignment cases.

I therefore winced slightly on learning that as well as phantom limbs, there are phantom penises, experienced by those who have undergone a penectomy (a word which is well worthy of a wince in itself). V.S.Ramachandran, who devised an ingenious way of using mirrors to help people with phantom limb pain, by fooling the brain into briefly believing that the missing limb was back, has now turned his attention to penises, together with P.D. McGeoch. This time the research is not about pain relief, however, but gender identity, where the possession or lack of a penis is clearly highly relevant.