Mutant Dick Report

Disclaimer: Some of you might remember this column from a few years back when we still lived at Viceland. When we moved to VICE.com, though, it disappeared, so now we've dug it up. Enjoy.

Hey, you rapidly decaying protoplasmic sacks of calcium and shit, my name is Dr Mona Moore. Obviously, that is not my real name, but I am a real doctor. Don't feel bad for me, though, because it means I will always have a job, an apartment ten times bigger than yours and the right to tell you what to do simply because I will always know better. Enjoy my column!

BOLLOCKS TO THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH - MUTANT COCK REPORT

You would think having two penises would make a man into walking double-ended sex goliath, a master of simultaneous ejaculation and duel penetration. But alas, apart from having the very cool party trick of being able to pee out of both – there is no joy in suffering from what is medically known as diphallia or penile duplication. Rather than mastering the useful skill of tag-teaming your own anatomy, calling one off the bench when the other is fading, tragically both penises are most likely impotent, and sufferers often have all sorts of other more undesirable urinary and genital complications.

Only one in 5.5 million men are born with this and there are three types. The macho chap above has true diphallus with two independent penises, there also is bifid phallus, which basically means the penis is split in two, or what the man in the picture below has, pseudodiphallus – having a wee rudimentary penis in addition to his other one. The more fully developed your second penis the less likely they both are to function normally.

That is apart from one 24-year-old man from Uttar Pradesh in India, who is one of the only recorded cases in medical literature of having two fully formed and fully functioning penises. But rather than rejoice in the plethora of sexual possibilities, he admitted himself into hospital to have one of his members amputated because he wanted to have a normal sex life. Boring.

The situation could be worse. One in 30 million men (okay its not likely but it is awful) are born with penile agenesis – translated as no cock at all. The scrotum, testes and testicular function are usually normal, but then instead of a penis there is just fleshy nothingness like a pantless Ken doll. This means they are in every way male except where it counts. To make matters worse, as it’s a bit tricky to make a penis out of nothing. Doctors normally decide to lop off the balls as soon as possible, and use the scrotal skin to fashion a vagina of sorts – what is known as a vaginoplasty. And the poor little mite has no say at all.

There is a vast range of grisly genital anomalies that can afflict men. Fat kids aren’t just the brunt of the playground’s jokes but can also suffer from hidden penis. This is when the penis becomes lost and entrapped beneath the folds of fat.

Webbed penis is similar and more common. A web of scrotal skin obscures the usual penis angle and it can become buried in a tent-like fold of skin. Recircumcision to remove the excess skin can make the situation worse by drawing hair-bearing scrotal skin onto the penis. So basically you end up with a hairy cock. Yum.

There is very little that can be done for the one in 200 men born with a micropenis – usually no bigger than two inches erect – and in most cases they cannot have sex or pee standing up.

But one of the most common deformities, which in fact, many of you male readers may suffer from, is hypospadias. If you find you pee at a skewif angle and coat your jeans in piss, you may have had a defect in the formation of your urethra, so the opening normally at the glans or tip of the penis is in slightly the wrong position. As many as one in 125 men are born like this, but in the most extreme cases the hole can be located anywhere along the underside of the shaft or even in no man’s land between your arse and balls called your perineum. Nice and convenient.

That’s enough to make any of you grateful for your fully functioning 3.5 inches.

Previously: How to Drink Yourself to a Bleeding Arse