Ideology & Anxiety: What Can We Learn From Penis-Shrinking Panics?

Sex, Gender, and Mass Social Delusion

In his fascinating book on mass psychogenic illness (MPI) and social delusion – Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns, and Head-Hunting Panics (2001)¹ – the social psychologist Robert Bartholomew touched on a topic sensitive to at least 49% of us: the social proclivity in certain quarters of the globe toward penis-shrinking panics. Especially common in East and South-East Asia, the phenomenon of koro is perhaps one of the most bizarre, yet instructive, examples of mass delusion to be found in the textbooks of anthropological research.

In a nutshell, the term koro seems to be rooted in the Malay word for ‘tortoise’ (the reason will be immediately apparent), and alludes to the sudden and alarming event of acute penis-shrinkage. By this, we do not mean the kind that affected our long-suffering hero George Constanza, but the kind that would entail the total disappearance of the appendage in the absence of swift intervention.

The most common intervention would begin with simply grabbing the fading phallus until help could be summoned from friends, family, neighbors, or passers-by. Further treatment would be sought from a variety of directions, ranging from the attaching of weights to beatings of the afflicted individual organized by concerned parties. It seems that the presence of some malign spirit was often deemed responsible for the ailment, so thrashing the ghost out of the patient [no, not that] was a common response to the situation.

However, in more recent times, a less severe course of action has proven just as effective. Calm the patient down, show them that their penis is not shrinking, and tell them that it is not possible for the penis to shrink in the manner they envisage. This treatment seems to have a 100% success rate.

Of course, all this is rather funny, but Bartholomew is right to point out how this sort of thing does not exist out there in some anthropological niche of our imperious imaginations. The susceptibility to delusional panic is universal, as the rest of his book makes all too clear.

How can any sane group of people become so out of touch with reality as to believe that their sex organs are shrinking and disappearing?… While these episodes may appear humorous to Westerners, they offer a valuable lesson because they show how vulnerable we all are to mass delusion (Bartholomew, 2001: 146).

Examples of mass social delusion in the Western context include medieval dancing manias, demonic possessions of nuns, serial gas attack scares, UFO crazes, Phantom sniper attacks, sneaky street-slasher epidemics, and of course the (much overhyped) martian invasion panics of the kind spearheaded by Orson Welles in 1938. While acknowledging the general aversion to the term hysteria, Bartholomew also delves into ‘mass motor hysteria’ and ‘mass anxiety hysteria’, which are less social delusions as they are chronic and acute physical symptoms induced by stress and anxiety, triggered by collectively shared events, and spread through social settings (i.e. MPIs). Here, we are more concerned with the mass social delusion, although features of the MPI are instructive.

It is a sobering moment, when one realizes how prevalent mass social delusions have been in Western societies, predicated as their self-perception is upon rational, disciplined, and scientific thought. Of course, even a passing familiarity with either history or our fellow citizens should remind us of how ridiculous such assumptions are in reality. However, too often we forget that intelligence and education are no inoculation against the suasive power of the mass social delusion.

When mass delusions occur in non-Western countries, it may be tempting to think of the people in the cultures affected as backward, primitive, or uneducated. It cannot be overemphasized that collective delusions and epidemics of hysteria are limited only by plausibility. If an idea is believable to members of a particular group, then it can become real in its consequences (Bartholomew, 2001: 145).

Now we start to get close to something interesting. The role of underlying plausibility in mass social delusions. These mass delusions do not spring from nowhere. It seems that a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for social delusion is the pervasive presence of an underlying idea that enables and facilitates its spread. In the context of less developed social formations this might come in the form of superstitious belief, customary practices, or mythology. In Weberian modernity, this substratum of idea is more likely to take the form of pervasive ideology. It seems that the existence of a relatively coherent ideological framework is an important ingredient for the metastasis of the mass social delusion. This would help explain why education is no protection, and in fact could prove to be an active catalyst for social delusion.

Another recurrent feature to both MPIs and social delusions is fear, or more accurately anxiety. In a more traditional society, anxiety over basic reproduction and subsistence takes centre stage in the preoccupations of most people.

What the manifestations of koro in quite diverse populations of Asia and Africa have in common is that they are triggered by imaginary threats to procreative ability in cultures that place a very strong emphasis on this ability (Bartholomew, 2001: 147).

More recently, the twentieth century outbreaks of koro have coincided with social unrest and political turbulence associated more with the modern mass society. The 1967 Singapore outbreak of koro revolved around ethnic tensions in the Malay peninsula, and seemed to be triggered by rumours that the pork supply had been compromised.

This koro epidemic in Singapore happened at a time of political uncertainty. British withdrawal from the Malayan peninsula occurred amid high ethnic tensions between Muslim Malays, who never eat pork, and the pork-eating Chinese, many of whom suspected the Malays of engineering the alleged swine poisoning (Bartholomew, 2001: 148).

In mainland China, numerous koro epidemics have likewise been connected to periods of intense political and social anxieties.

Epidemics of koro/suo-yang (in Cantonese, suk-yang) are well known in South China. In the southern part of Guangdong province, outbreaks of genital shrinking panics were officially recorded in 1865, 1948, 1955, 1966, 1974, 1984-85, and 1987. Most of these years were times of political and socio-economic unrest in China (Bartholomew, 2001: 149).

So, what we have to confront in the mass social delusion is the co-presence of two sufficiently widespread social conditions: ideology and anxiety.

This brings us neatly (if abruptly) to the issue of gender dysphoria, the explosion of the sex reassignment industry, and the role of transgender ideology. A thorny issue to say the least, but perhaps one that could be enriched by a reading of Bartholomew’s book, if we lay aside for a moment the metaphysical debate on whether or not in fact ‘trans-women are women’.

While there is a longstanding and very small minority of individuals who have suffered personally and socially from a profoundly problematic relationship to their own sexed bodies (i.e. transsexuals, 0.01%), the development that has taken the Atlantic world by storm over the last several years is the rapid proliferation in the number of those seeking sex/gender reassignment through puberty blocking medication, cross-sex hormones, and ultimately surgery (i.e. the ‘transition pipeline’). Behind this, there has emerged a vastly sweeping trend of rigidly structured and astonishingly clichéd gender fluid self-identification in the population at large far beyond anything of historical familiarity.

What has shocked many people – including significant numbers of older transsexuals – is two things: the large proportion of teenagers and children in this wave and the speed with which the transition process has been radically shorted in duration. As summarized by Helen Joyce, the (more than) suspicion is that a social contagion is at work (watch!), and one that is being unhelpfully helped along its way by a complex of ideology, political interests, and social media dynamics.

Whether it is the scandal of the Tavistock Clinic in London, or whether it is whistleblowers from institutions like the Washington University Transgender Center in St Louis (MO), the damage being done to young people is now emerging into the light, and the role of improper (to say the least) medical practice synthesized with political activism is now clear. What the public has been told about gender reassignment medicalization, or rather what the public has been willing to hear, no longer matches the reality of what has been happening to thousands of children and young adults, who are often suffering from a variety of psychogenic conditions or disorders. These revelations are the reason that one needs to take seriously the role of mass social delusion in the admittedly broad framework of contemporary transgenderism.

Bracketing momentarily the matter of fetish or autogynephilia, and focusing just on gender dysphoria, the accelerated expansion we have been witnessing is to be found primarily among the young. It is here that the term “collective delusion” probably has its greatest traction. Bartholomew uses the term ‘delusion’ to signify the “rapid, spontaneous, temporary spread of false beliefs within a particular population”, and something that is “socially constructed” (Bartholomew, 2001: 12). Whether we are dealing here with ‘false belief’ is a contentious matter, but let us assume that, while gender dysphoria is not false (it is a real condition or disorder), the content of the self-perception entailed in the dysphoria is false (biological sex cannot be changed). This would mean that socially widespread and sudden gender dysphoria could count as a social delusion that falls under the subcategory of “mass wish-fulfillment” (Bartholomew, 2001: 21-23).

We would then have to identify the presence of anxiety and ideology, to arrive at Bartholomew’s conditions for mass social delusion.

Are there pervasive and identifiable conditions of mass social anxiety in the contemporary North Atlantic, particularly among the target population (GenZ/Y)?

Without being drawn into a long empirical analysis, the suspicion would have to be that there are, particularly among GenZ and younger Millennials (as has been well laid out in the work of Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff.² Contemporary to the period of transgender proliferation (2010s), GenZ in particular has been subjected to waves of anxiety-producing psychosocial developments. There is the post-2008 economic malaise that has disproportionately affected younger cohorts and that has emplaced a stubborn pessimism regarding future material prospects. The political turmoil unleashed post-2016 by Trump Derangement, Brexit, extinction activism, and so on, all contribute to a heightened tension in public discourses. Then there is the post-2020 COVID saga, lockdowns, and all the folderol of masking and compulsory vaccinations that can only have screwed deeply with children and teenagers, a group for whom the puberty gauntlet is already traumatic enough.

Stuck behind laptops and android screens, and forced into the labyrinthine back-passages of the SubReddit sewage system, it is hardly surprising that anxiety (particularly over one's own body) has driven countless, stressed out, and wayward adolescent souls into a search for meaning, explanation, identity, and validation via the Internet. The guidance they have found there has been catastrophic for many.

Is there an enabling ideological framework rendering the social delusion plausible?

Obviously, there is. Transgenderism and the broader gender identity ideology behind it, has been pushed by strategically positioned Gramscian thought-leaders (‘authority figures’), who have been furnished with an awesome distribution system in the form of social media that doubles as a panoptic technology capable of isolating individuals and re-programming their relationship to the wider social group.

Together, socially pervasive somatic anxiety and a handy ideology capable of rendering the prognoses of transgenderism plausible have combined to produce conditions ripe for mass social delusion. Social media has provided the Gutenberg press for this postmodern reformation. Writing of mass social delusions, Bartholomew enumerated some of the factors involved in its spread, most of which will be immediately familiar today.

Many factors contribute to the spread of episodes [of social delusion]. The mass media, low education levels, the fallibility of human perception, cultural folk beliefs and stereotypes, group conformity, and reinforcing actions by authority figures (e.g. politicians) or institutions of social control (e.g. military agencies) (Bartholomew, 2001: 12-13).

Let’s break this paragraph down.

Mass media has pushed transgender ideology and provided opportunities for influencers who promote somatic intervention through medical procedures (e.g. Dylan Mulvaney, Jesse Sullivan, Jeffrey Marsh).

In education, teachers, school boards, and curriculum producers have pushed transgender ideology, enforced policy changes designed to promote self-identification according to that ideology, and have restructured the institutional environment to isolate children from other influences (i.e. parents) – watch recommended summary by Helen Joyce!

One point to bear in mind is how ‘low education’ does not seem to be a decisive factor, because the phenomenon is present through educational tranches of the population. However, those most vulnerable to dis-orientation and medicalization do seem to be from lower educational groups (but then those groups are always on the receiving end of elite-driven behavioral trends – Big Tech CEOs push Tiktok, but forbid their own children from even possessing an android device).

The fallibility of human perception is a constant, I would argue.

Cultural folk beliefs are a little more tricky to identify in adolescent transgenderism, but with latitude one might locate this in the gravitation toward gender conforming symbols and signs that is typical to transgender performance in practice. If gender identity ideology denies the reality of sex, then gender stereotypes become necessary landmarks and coordinates for the gender transition dynamic (pink and dresses mean girl, blue and short hair mean boy, as one sees acted out so frequently among trans-aspirants). This has irked many gender-critical feminists, to say the least.

When it comes to group conformity, the implementation of policy from authoritarian HR departments in a culture of censorship and ‘cancelation’ is something with which we are all now familiar. For peer pressure among the young, look no further than the frightening work of Abigail Shrier.

Reinforcement from authority figures has been covered above, while institutions of social control pushing transgender ideology range from media organizations (e.g. MSNBC, Netflix, Disney) through ESG-driven corporations (e.g. Anheuser-Busch) and government bureaucracies (e.g Sam Brinton, DOJ), all the way to police forces (e.g. UK College of Policing).

For those wondering how “military agencies” might act as enabling ideological authority figures in this area, skeptics should just check out the lecture tours delivered by the US Health Secretary – and USA Today ‘Woman of the Year’ – Admiral Levine. Otherwise, readers of The TransAtlantic might already be familiar with this iridescent edifice…

GCHQ Building (Cheltenham, UK). British version of the NSA

If we are right in seeing what is happening as a form of mass social delusion, the ultimate question then becomes a simple one: what are we to do about it? Bartholomew’s answer is subtle but simple. Do not validate or affirm.

Sadly, this flies in the face of an entire machinery, the purpose of which is to compel each of us to do precisely that.

If we are dealing in fact with a social delusion – irrespective of whether it contains a much smaller number of non-delusional instances that deserve understanding, empathy, and accommodation – then affirmation is the worst thing to do. In a closely tangential discussion on mass psychogenic illness, Bartholomew cites from psychiatrist Simon Wessely’s study Mass Hysteria, Two Syndromes? (1987).³ For Wessely, to control the delusion, we have “to remove the advantages of the sick-role by withdrawal of social validation” (Wessely, 1987: 188). With Bartholomew in loose agreement, Wessely goes on to emphasize the point.

Should social validation be granted, the epidemic may persist. This can occur when onlookers have a vested interest in supporting the authenticity of the hysteria (Wessely, 1987: 188).

Ideology again. This is especially true when that affirmation comes from authority figures – e.g. parents, teachers, doctors, politicians, police chiefs, judges, academics, news anchors – which is precisely the source of affirmation currently being pushed on young people right now. The role of immediate authority figures seems to be particularly important in the extent and speed of metastasis.

The actions of authority figures such as teachers or administrators, either through calm reassurance or expressions of outward anxiety, can validate or defuse situations (Bartholomew, 2001: 33).

What role do we think authority figures like teachers and activist clinicians are playing in either speeding up or slowing down processes and developments? A glance onto social media is enough to answer that question. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. Just think of the pressure brought to bear from ideologized teachers and indoctrinated helicopter parents onto social media-saturated teens who are busy “relabeling mundane symptoms in closed, cohesive social units, which were instigated and maintained by the erroneous beliefs of hypervigilant authority figures” (Bartholomew, 2001: 44).

In these circumstances, Bartholomew warns against “public confrontation, exhortation, and other coercive measures”, as they “typically aggravate the situation” (Bartholomew, 2001: 46). Instead, we should “utilize counseling and open communication to counteract misinformation and rumor” (Bartholomew, 2001: 47). However, this has its problems, not least because such cautious and sympathetic counseling has been labeled ‘conversion therapy’ in the twisted logic of trans-pipeline advocates. Unsurprisingly, questions raised when delusional symptoms present “often engender hostility from defensive parents [and other interested parties] who challenge claims that the outbreak was ‘psychological’” (Bartholomew, 2001: 46). On top of the obvious emotional investment and stress entailed in these traumatic situations, one can just imagine how preparatory ideological indoctrination can only strengthen the ferocity of such reactions. Difficult times are ahead.

So it seems that the penis-shrinking panics of South-East Asia are in fact small fry when placed next to the transgender social delusion that has swept many youngsters along over the last several years. However, by virtue of its social and cultural distance from our own lives in the North Atlantic, the phenomenon of koro does have the capacity to illuminate through juxtaposition something of great psychosocial significance in our own societies.

Far from exemplifying group psychosis, mental disorder, or irrationality, penis-shrinking panics are a timely reminder that no one is immune from mass delusions and that the influence of culture and society on individual behavior is far greater than most of us would like to admit. This is a valuable lesson to remember at the dawn of a new millennium. It is easy to think of past or non-Western delusions with a wry smile as if we are somehow now immune or that those involved were naive and gullible. Yet the main reason for the absence of penis-shrinking epidemics in Western societies is their incredible nature. It is simply too fantastic for modern Westerners to believe. But it was not that long ago that some Westerners believed in disappearing genitals (Bartholomew, 2001: 157).

Well, today a species of belief in disappearing genitals (but not limited to genitals) has unfortunately returned in another form. The question we must ask ourselves honestly, regardless of individual cases, is whether or not this is in some respect a mass social delusion, and, if so, what is the role being played by an ideology that makes something that is so immediately unbelievable sufficiently plausible to become a social delusion. More to the point, what is the role of authority figures, and is that role a constructive one? If not, what are you doing about it?

Endnotes

1. Robert E. Bartholomew, Little Green Men, Meowing Nuns, and Head-Hunting Panics (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2001).

2. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind (New York: Penguin, 2018).

3. Simon Wessely, “Mass Hysteria, Tow Syndromes?” Psychological Medicine 17, no. 1 (1987): 109-120.