I noticed long time ago that in many online communities, people tended to vanish shortly after their surgery.

It worried me: were they ok? Did they have any regrets, or complications?

It creates a problem whereby the online spaces are populated with only a small number of actual eunuchs and nullos who are sure to be the ones with happy outcomes.

Could anything be inferred from the way that so many stop contributing to the communities?

After my surgery, I continued my blog, set us up a community wiki, and was a regular visitor to the online spaces.

But, over the months, my visits to the online communities grew less and less frequent.

And today I realised that I have become one of those who disappeared from the online fora. I still check in from time to time, but I very rarely contribute.

The online fora are mostly occupied by people wanting castration or nullification. These people need safe spaces to learn and gain support. The kind of dysphoria that so many of us suffer from is not understood, recognised, or supported by medical professionals, so community is key.

There is one space which appears to be occupied primarily by eunuchs and nullos. The conversations there are much more about life amongst the detesticulated. But it’s quite a quiet community, with no sensationalist images posted and certainly nothing about how to perform self-castration. They are all about life as a member of the detesticulated.

And the reality is that once castrated, life is different. There are different problems and opportunities for eunuchs than pre-surgery people.

Perhaps, once the urgency of dysphoria fades, many simply drift back into ordinary life, no longer defined by what they lacked.

As a friend once observed “I am just as castrated washing the dishes”.