A Swedish man allegedly narrowly escaped castration by his former girlfriend, after he dodged the enraged ex's opening shot from an electric stun gun.

The Local.se reports that the man had met with his ex to arrange the retrieval of some of his belongings. When he arrived though, he quickly realised the 26 year old woman from Malmo was intent on retrieving even more of his valuables.

She allegedly pointed the stun gun at his genitals and declared "I'm going to castrate you", before pulling the trigger.

However, a prompt backwards lunge saved the man from a painful volting, and the woman has now been charged with "illegal weapons possession, attempted assault, illegal threats, and abuse".

The incident has, unsurprisingly, done the rounds of the net, prompting the inevitable question, "can you really castrate someone with a stun gun?"

According to the people we fear are best qualifed on the matter, the inhabitants of the eunuch.org forum, the answer appears to be no. Contributors surmise that the stun gun was simply to immobilise the young man, prior to a lower-tech operation with a knife or other bladed tool.

Further evidence for this theory is thoughtfully supplied with a series of YouTube videos apparently showing young men applying stun guns to their genitals.