Did You Know That

… The Visayan men that the Spaniards first came in contact with in the 16th century wore a pin through their penis for greater simulation of their sexual partners? The pin called “tugbuk” was inserted during childhood.

They were small bars of brass, gold, ivory or lead or a little tube of tin driven across the head of the penis to protrude on both sides. They served to anchor a kind of ring or cog wheel with blunt teeth called “sakra.”

These ornaments required manipulation by the woman herself to insert, and could not be withdrawn until the male organ was completely relaxed.

There were reports, too, of men in Surigao and of Tagalog mountaineers east of Laguna de Bay who implanted pellets between the penis’s skin for the same purpose of simulation.

These devices were of sufficient bulk to produce pain and draw blood, and could cause crippling complications for both partners. But foreign observers noted that some women preferred to have sex with men with “sakra.”

The custom startled Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English observers and scandalized missionary clergy of all orders.

“Certainly a device no man could have invented,” the Spanish Juan Martinez wrote in 1567 “were it not by revelation of the Devil, the inhumanity of the pain being so great which the youth suffer in the piercing.” (Source: “Barangay: Sixteenth Century Philippine

Culture and Society” by William Henry Scott)