It’s a chunky paperback, but the print is large and the writing style is very accessible. It was a hugely enjoyable read that really got me thinking.

Gary Taylor really doesn’t rate Freud that highly, Freud saw castration, and all sexuality as unchanged in meaning and constant irrespective of period or culture. From Gary’s researches, its clear that the cultural meaning of the penis and the testicles and their relative importance has changed greatly over the last few hundred years, as does the view on castration and eunuchs.

Freud and his successors thought that Castration involved removal of the penis, not the testicles and so based much of his theories on that interpretation. This was based on a slow change over the centuries since the Reformation that saw sex move from a solely procreative activity to be just as much a recreative activity, thanks to increasingly available and sophisticated means of preventing conception.

The chapter titled “Contest of the Genders” discusses incest in terms that strike me as recognisable from my own exposure to an abusive relationship. It’s fascinating that the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton understood that incest and child abuse are abuses of power, highlighting (to me) Freud’s essential misunderstanding and misogyny.

It was fascinating to read that castrated men are often paler than non-castrated men; it seems that testosterone also helps with skin tone, however the pale skin only occurs for those castrated before puberty, but did cause people in the ancient world to add a deathly pallor to the list of other eunuch-tells such as squeaky voice and soft skin (Page 140). The pale skin helped associated eunuchs with the underworld.

I believe Gary’s essential understanding of the difference between pre-Renaissance association with the testicles as the source of fertility and the post-Renaissance focus on the penis (as the source of fun). He rather missed out on the ancient world’s association of the penis with animal lusts; smaller penises were favoured as more civilised. Penises are all over Pompeii – go take a look: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/stone-phalluses-of-pompeii.

My degree was in Ancient History, so I particularly loved the trip into ancient history to find out about the dichotomy between service and sacred eunuchs, although I was shocked to read that under Constantine, the emperor who legitimised Christianity, it not only became illegal to make Eunuchs, it was legal and mandatory to kill them. Christianity had travelled a long way already from the religion of brotherly love. I already had an understanding of how the early church slowly adapted its message to be more palatable to Roman sensibilities. It seemed that Jesus liked eunuchs . The proselytism of the new Christian church relied upon the figurative castration of the bible’s literal meaning, and therefore figuratively castrated Jesus himself.

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men; and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 19:12

In infamous Gelding is mentioned on page 222. For those of you who don’t know, he was interviewed by BME in 2008: https://news.bme.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/pubring/people/A10101/gelding.html. It describes a terribly hot castration scene … which I read somewhere was a lie (I wish I could find this confession).

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A eunuch has, in addition to that sterile dildo-dick, two hands and a mouth, muscles, skin, eyes, tears, laughter, a voice, a mind. The measure of sexual manhood is the ability to deploy those varied assets to make yourself more attractive…

Page 10

The above reminded my of Shylock’s speech from “The Merchant of Venice” (“hath not a Jew eyes, etc”).

Eunuchs aren’t in fact impotent, but powerful; they are often sexually active, and capable of erections; castration does not do much suppress Eros as redirect and in some ways liberate it…

Page 16

Modern eunuchs definitely do not have to impotent, although they will be invariably infertile (was I woke this, I’m four months into my eunuch life – I can still get hard and enjoy sex, even without HRT). I’m minded of my post It takes balls to be a be a eunuch – it took strength of will to do what I did, and I reckon that its taking me some strength to fight on – getting hormones and battling the NHS and constantly fighting my own demons isn’t something that a weak person could do.

Biological evolution cannot account for the difference between the sixteenth-century emphasis on bowling balls and the twentieth-century emphasis on bowling pins.

Page 51

Historically, the testicles were seen as more important, now it is the size of one’s cock.

Control of texts represented control of spiritual and intellectual fertility; textual castration was an attempt to cut off the life-giving seed, to prevent true texts from impregnating souls – and thereby to enable illegitimate suitors to father bastard doctrines. Castration, which has always been a mechanism for controlling biological reproduction, became a metaphor for mechanisms to control textual reproduction.

Page 91

I loved this insight: throughout history, and especially since the arrival of the printing press, the desire to control what is available to read and thereby to control the propagation of thought. Thinking of the purges of heretical texts in the reformation through to Nazi book burnings and fanatical religious book banning whether in America or in the Middle East. All ultimately proving the weakness of the banning and strengthening the banned. Now the internet makes such attempts to control thought even more difficult via banning – instead those who wish to poison our minds flood us with false information.

Male violence is so routine that it seems natural and therefore largely invisible, a background roar we no longer notice. But Freud’s theory have new and profound significance to rare acts of female ferocity

Page 120

This statement is profoundly sad: male violence is almost a background noise that we are used to hearing. A violent female fascinates us and gathers much more attention that she deserves.

[eunuchs] purpose: hoc genus inventum est ut serviat, this race is made for slavery … The Eunuch therefore blurs the distinction between person and thing.

Page 147

And this explains why castration figures so much in the more extreme BDSM world, often forming a significant side-car against a “primary reason” such as a health concern or a gender/body dysphoria, but often kink can be the only explanation for a person’s desire for castration.

… they detest what they cannot describe.

Page 154

And this is the chiefest reason, I think, for any hate-crime: ignorance.

Symbolically, the eunuch, who straddles categories, is always liminal, always occupying that numinous space “betwixt” and “between”

Page 182

This creates an attraction towards castration in the kink world, whose inhabitants themselves are already at the edges of society, whether this is publicly known or not. Somebody who engages in kink is vulnerable to being discredited; this might either be to embarrass them or maybe even to destroy them. As a eunuch, I am aware that I have an indelible stigma that can be hidden but never erased. Transphobia exists, and eunuchs are a special kind of trans-person; in some way we are even more vulnerable because we refuse to play by the rules of binary gender and exist somewhere in the middle.

He tries on the shape of the cut. How masculinity is shaped, not only by fear, but by temptation; not only by physical vulnerability, but also by the possibility of a transformation that would tender him invulnerable.

Page 209

There is an irresistible draw towards castration to some men; the obsessive thinking gradually crowds all other thoughts out and the only way to peace is to lose those terrible orbs. It often starts as harmless play, a bit of banding, twisting, pegs, or needles, but gradually the durations get longer, the doses get stronger. Websites are visited, groups are joined, conversations are held with other wannabes and maybe with real eunuchs or nullos – the excitement builds. Seed is spilt. “Should I?” and “Could I?” becomes “When can I?” and “How can I?”.

Involuntary surgical castration is already almost universally condemned as brutal as ineffectual; voluntary testicle amputation may eventually be condoned as a personal freedom, just another example of kinky body sculpting, like tattoos or mould nipple rings or penis studs.

Page 222

I pray that eventually one day castration becomes respected as a valid expression of one’s identity, whether of a gender identity, a body integrity identity, or a submissive/kink identity. The reason why we cannot do as we wish with our bodies:

The worst monsters are the ones imagine they are perfect, who refuse to acknowledge their monstrousness, they want to put their noses on every one else’s faces, their own penises in everyone else’s pants.

Page 233