Penectomy

Genital area of male after partial penectomy.

Not to be confused with Castration.

Penectomy is the practice of surgical removal of the penis for medical or personal reasons.

Cancer, for example, sometimes necessitates removal of all or part of the penis. In very rare instances, botched circumcisions have also resulted in full or partial penectomies, as with David Reimer. Celibacy is an exceptionally rare ground for penectomy.

Genital surgical procedures for trans women undergoing sex reassignment surgery do not usually involve the complete removal of the penis. Instead, part or all of the glans is usually kept and reshaped as a clitoris, while the skin of the penile shaft may also be inverted to form the vagina (some more recently-developed procedures, such as that used by Dr. Suporn Watanyusakul use the scrotum to form the vaginal walls, and the skin of the penile shaft to form the labia majora). When procedures such as this are not possible, other procedures such as colovaginoplasty are used which may involve the removal of the penis.

Issues related to the removal of the penis appear in psychology, for example in the condition known as castration anxiety, which happens as a result of a man having anxiety as to whether he may at some point become castrated.

Some men have undergone penectomies as a voluntary body modification, but professional opinion is divided as to whether or not the desire for penile amputation is a pathology, thus including it as part of a body dysmorphic disorder.

Males who consider themselves third sex will sometimes want an emasculation, i.e., they opt to be castrated and penectomized.

See also

• Castration
• David Reimer
• Penis transplantation