What do we really mean by "Eunuch"?

[Varys2013 (imported)]

Having traversed this site for a little while now, I've become a bit puzzled with an observation. Eunuch seems to mean a couple of different things.

On the one hand, surgical removal of the testicles is accompanied with replacement of testosterone production by some means. So, a physical modification with no other particular effects.

On the other hand, some have surgical or chemical castration, with the intent of eliminating testosterone, with or without actually removing the testicles.

Eliminating testosterone either way has a spectrum of physical and mental side effects.

So, as a eunuch, is the idea to experience the perhaps more historical aspect, of elimination of testosterone by physical castration? Or, is it the modified appearance of removed testicles, scrotum, and even penis, without the related loss of testosterone? Or some combination of all of that?

I'd never suggest someone is more or less a eunuch by these choices, but just curious about the varying definitions we may have of that term.

[Losethem (imported)]

For me the definition is simple - Have you had something physically removed down there? If you haven't, you're not a eunuch.

[JesusA]

In terms of the medical literature, "EUNUCH" refers specifically only to the testicles, and not to anything having to do with the penis. That's a separate issue.

A eunuch is defined as a natal male who has had his testicles

1) removed,

2) destroyed in place with remnants still existing (e.g., by Burdizzo or injection of toxins), or

3) chemically inactivated (e.g., by Lupron, Depo-Provera, etc.)

There are also very rare cases of anorchia, where testicles that were originally present are spontaneously reabsorbed by the body before the age of puberty. Anorchics appear in the medical literature, but are seldom referred to as eunuchs in the medical literature, even though they are males without testicles.

Someone who has had only his penis removed is technically NOT a eunuch. A nullo whose penis and testicles are both removed would be referred to as a "eunuch whose penis has been removed".

[Varys2013 (imported)]

Interesting. So the word "eunuch" has very broad definition. With testicles physically removed or destroyed in place, yet testosterone still "normal" through supplementation, one is a eunuch. Or, with testicles still in place but chemically deactivated, so no testosterone, one is also a eunuch. Living those two lives is very different, yet still considered the same under this broadly defined name.

[T. Willy (imported)]

I feel like I am somewhere in between. Years ago an accident led to an infection in one testicle and it atrophied. Next the years went by and naturally the other one got hypogonadism and T level went way down. Doctor prescribed a T shot every 2 to 4 weeks how ever it worked out in my schedule. After 3 years I would consider the testicles destroyed in place due to atrophy making them almond size and soft and almost not there. The doctor said they will never come back now after 3 years. I asked him why can't they just be taken off then and he said we don't do that. They have almost disappeared so I won't worry about it. I feel like I am sort of between being asexual and a eunuch if there is such a thing? In any case I don't spend much time worrying about it. It is really nice not have my testicles hanging down in hot weather where they used to get sat upon, caught in things, little kids jumped on them when in my lap and generally getting in the way along with wearing holes in the crotch of my pants all the time.

[T van Keel]

For me the term eunuch is connected very closely to a person who is serving as some kind of guard in mostly ancient times. This description doesn't fit me at all, so I wouldn't like it if someone calls me an eunuch. By the way, I'm still intact but seek for complete removal of my parts. I prefer to speak of me as a non-binary transgender.

[Atreyu69 (imported)]

For me the definition is simple - Have you had something physically removed down there? If you haven't, you're not a eunuch.

I've had something physically removed down there.

I was cir'ed as a baby. For me to consider a person a eunuch the something physical would have to be the balls.

[tugon (imported)]

I became a eunuch with no interest in ever using HRT. I was looking for the T free life. I wanted to live my life as a eunuch. A eunuch in the ancient sense before modern medicine knew how to create synthetic hormones. I am happy as a eunuch and living between male and female.

[sparkey49 (imported)]

I am a eunuch and consider myself to be during the 2.5 years no T and since being on T.

[colin (imported)]

As Tweedledum says - a word means exactly what I want it to.

Historically, a eunuch was created to prevent the possibility of procreation. They knew nothing about testosterone and would not have cared if they had. It was essentially a permanent and physical means of humiliation.

What a modern person means by the term when describing someone of the current era entirely depends upon who is using it.

[Losethem (imported)]

I've

had something physically removed down there.

I was cir'ed as a baby. For me to consider a person a e

unuch the something physical would have to be the balls.

Nit pick much? I clearly wasn't talking about routine infant circumcision. Sheesh.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

I guess the nuts have to go, at least?

-A Qing palace eunuch lost more than that....

I suspect they would not have accepted an infant circ as sufficent...

[Varys2013 (imported)]

Well that's an interesting angle. If it's to prevent procreation, a vasectomy would have counted back in the day, if they'd have known how to do that, and had that goal.

Or, if it was to prevent sexual relations at all, then just taking the balls might not be enough. To do that would require a full nullification including penis removal.

Our medical knowledge seems to make the present use of the term eunuch a very broad spectrum of situations. I don't think there's a simple neat definition anymore.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Qing court eunuchs did indeed lose balls and dick. The bits were kept in a jar for inspection, and eventually rejoin the owner at his funeral.

[Paolo]

There is some doubt as to the frequency of nullification of Chinese eunuchs, given new details that G. Carter Stent, who made this practice famous, may have made some of it up. I am sure that Jesus A. can fill us in when he has time.

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I am aware of the dispute concerning Stent's reports. I tend to think that while Stent may have invented some details he was probably depending on statements from locals who were reluctant to give factual accounts to an arrogant, impolite "red barbarian" who was probing too deeply into matters that were none of his concern. --FLO--

[JesusA]

There is actually some question about the castration status of Chinese court eunuchs. The idea that ALL had both their testicles and penis removed seems to date primarily to the work of G. Carter Stent (1877). More recent work by the young Chinese historian Howard Chiang of Waterloo University in Canada seems to indicate that Stent made up much of his description (or plagiarized it from British anti-slavery tracts about East Africa).

In his article, Stent describes the exact place where the castration of boys for the court took place. Chiang points out that the place described does not and did not exist. The word that Stent states is the proper term for the one performing the castrations appears to have been invented by him. There is NO earlier use of the word that can be found. All uses of it in Chinese can be traced to Stent. A number of claims that Stent makes about the origins of the court eunuchs of his own time are demonstrably false.

I had a brief correspondence with Chiang about Stent's description. I pointed out to him that Stent insists that there were absolutely NO eunuchs in Europe, conveniently forgetting that castrati were still performing on the London stage while he was an adolescent living there. I pointed out that Stent's description of the surgery reads surprisingly like the most vehement anti-slavery tracts of his time, decrying castrations in East Africa. (Those descriptions have also been debunked by others.)

Chiang noted that there is ample documentation of court eunuchs who retained their penis, including some 19th century woodblock prints. Rural boys tended to be castrated by the village pig-gelder and were castrated in the same fashion - testicles only removed. There are tomb statues (buried with the deceased to provide servants in the afterlife) that clearly show eunuchs with a penis - prepubertal in size. These can be contrasted to the tomb figures of soldiers, which show testicles and a large penis.

The Eunuch Museum in Beijing follows Stent's description very closely and makes no reference to actual artifacts that contradict it.

We know that many court eunuchs had their penises removed, but certainly not all of them.

Chiang is currently completing work on a new book, After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformations of Sex in Modern China. I'm looking forward to its publication.

_______

Chiang, Howard (2012). How China became a "Castrated Civilization" and eunuchs a "Third Sex." IN HIS Transgender China. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 23-66.

Stent, G. Carter. (1877). Chinese Eunuchs. Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s., no. 11.

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Well done!

The Stent account is pretty much what my Shanghai gramma and my wife have stated as fact. It is always a shock -and refreshing to know that observed facts do not fit entirely with a "received" account.

BTW, I'm always surprised that we don't have a better account of these folks, as the last Qing eunuch is only recently dead, and gave many interviews in his later years. Something as big as this, and still just in living memory should not be the stuff of such conjecture, but of documented fact?

[JesusA]

Well that's an interesting angle. If it's to prevent procreation, a vasectomy would have counted back in the day, if they'd have known how to do that, and had that goal.

While a vasectomy would meet some of the original desire for castration, even 4,000 years ago it would not have met all of the reasons for which slave boys were castrated.

Castration clearly predates the origin of humans. It is known that both chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest relatives, (as well as other animals) will try to bite or rip off the testicles of defeated rivals after a fight for dominance. Some of the earliest clear statements of human castration follow the same pattern of castrating the defeated, with no concern over whether they survived the surgery.

Knowledge of castration was important for the domestication of large animals - goats, sheep, donkeys, etc. Castration was performed with the expectation that the animal would survive and become more valuable as a result. The castrated animals were calmer and easier to handle than intact males. Castrated sheep give a better quality of wool than either females or intact males. Castrated donkeys were just as able to perform valuable work without being distracted by female donkeys.

Finally, about 2,100 BCE, in the city of Lagash in ancient Sumer, the idea of castration of slave boys for domestic service began. At least that's the earliest record of the practice.

Lagash was famous for it's large weaving establishments, with weaving performed by slave women. The women had many children by various men, probably mostly their supervisors. The girls followed their mothers to become slave weaving women. The question was what to do about the boys. Someone had the idea of castrating them and setting them to work pulling barges on the canals alongside their castrated donkey counterparts. The words in Sumerian for "eunuch" and "castrated donkey" are the same.

All other tasks for eunuchs come after this. One of the very earliest other tasks after the hauling of barges was to serve as praise-singers to the gods. Their powerful, and still treble, voices sometimes came together in choruses of over 100 castrati. They seem to have become attached to temples to serve the gods before they began to serve as attendants for the women of powerful men.

The personality differences of eunuchs from intact men are at least as important as the sterility and relative lack of sexual interest. Most eunuchs in history served in administrative functions, not as guardians of someone else's women. Because of the important functions that they could perform, it was not long before even important families began to castrate a son or two. We know that some important eunuchs in the palace of the Assyrian kings were close members of the royal family. The eunuch head of the treasury under Artaxerxes I was his brother's son. The head of the palace guard was sometimes a eunuch cousin of the king, castrated as a boy and growing up with the future king.

Vasectomy would provide the sterility, but not any behavioral or physiological changes. It would also not be clearly visible. Castration removes the testicles completely so that a eunuch is clearly different from an otherwise intact, but vasectomized, male. A quick inspection can determine that a male has been castrated. It's difficult to tell if he is otherwise sterile if he has intact testicles.

[T van Keel]

Thanks for the good summary.

The question was what to do about the boys. Someone had the idea of castrating them and setting them to work pulling barges on the canals alongside their castrated donkey counterparts.

Isn't it somehow stupid to castrate someone who has to do heavy physical work? As far as I know castration reduces physical strength in human beings. Even if the donkeys do most of the pulling, the boy needs also good strength.

[paring (imported)]

Thanks for the good summary.

Isn't it somehow stupid to castrate someone who has to do heavy physical work? As far as I know castration reduces physical strength in human beings. Even if the donkeys do most of the pulling, the boy needs also good strength.

According to my personal experience, no one should expect castrated men to perform better, physically or mentally, than an intact men. It's just a matter of time before the eunuchs lose their strength and their mental clarity, if they are castrated in adulthood. The "relative lack of sexual interest" is true but it isn't completely eliminated. It's rather common to see former dominant men or heterosexual men turning gay or bottom after castration. Eunuchs might be less agressive but still can fight if needed. One thing Jesus didn't tell, there is a big difference between pre and post puberty castration. Those castrated before puberty don't experience the testosterone withdrawal. That why most eunuchs here are on TRT. I had to quit anti androgen after 8 years non stop to alleviate the bad side effects, the lack of sex drive has never bothered me though.

[JesusA]

T van Keel and Paring bring up a couple of interesting points.

While it is true that eunuchs, even those castrated before puberty, are usually not as physically strong as intact males, geldings are not as strong as stallions and oxen are not as strong as bulls. The castrated versions are still considered more useful for physical labor because they are generally easier to manage and are not as interested in the female of the species. Neither "improvement" is an absolute. Castrated animals of all species may still have some interest in females, humans much more so than others. Castrated humans are also not necessarily much easier to handle than intact males, though they are considered to be so from long historical experience. Most eunuchs in history were castrated before puberty, not as adults, so their experience would be quite different from those castrated today as adults.

While it is impossible (fortunately) to run psychological tests on prepubertal eunuchs, we did run the full Big Five Personality Test as part of the second survey that we ran on the Eunuch Archive. We have results for those castrated (as adults) and not using HRT. They can then be compared with a matched set (for age, SES, etc.) of eunuch wannabes. This gives us some idea of the impact of loss of testosterone on a brain that has already been masculinized, as the male human brain is masculinized even before birth. Three of the five scales show interesting differences between the two groups.

The Big Five may be the most used personality test in the world. It has been translated into many languages and given millions of times.

Everywhere the Big Five has been administered there is one significant difference between males and females. Males are significantly higher on the Emotional Stability scale. For the eunuch population of the Eunuch Archive, there was not a significant difference in Emotional Stability from the intact males. They were, however, slightly more emotionally stable, just not quite to the level of statistical significance. In other words, what change we saw was in the direction away from female. Castration does NOT make a eunuch's personality more female.

The eunuchs in the survey showed significantly higher levels of Conscientiousness. This demonstrates better ability (on average, not necessarily for every single individual) to concentrate on a task. Not multi-tasking, but the ability to take charge and see a job through to its completion. To focus on what needs to be done and exclude distractions.

The other scale on which the eunuchs were superior (and far superior) was that of Agreeableness. This involves the ability to cooperate and to work well in groups.

If you were to try to establish an ideal government bureaucracy, what personality traits would you most like to emphasize?

Eunuchs were the consummate bureaucrats for the great empires of Eurasia over a period of 4,000 years.

These same abilities served them well in other tasks as well. For example, in the feared Assyrian army, there were ranks of eunuch archers. Work in tight formation, as a group, and focus clearly on the task at hand. The Assyrian war chariots were also usually driven by eunuchs. They were not the one or two-person chariots of movie fame, but held three to five. There was a eunuch driver for the steeds and to make the decisions and with intact men with swords and spears on the back (with greater upper arm strength and little need for thought as the eunuch driver moved them into position). Again, the personality traits fit the task.

Would we be better off if those military personnel in Utah who direct our drones in the Middle East were eunuchs? Better able to concentrate without distraction? More emotionally stable? Better able to cooperate in their work-groups? They certainly do not need physical strength for their work.

What other modern tasks might be better performed with eunuch personality?

[Varys2013 (imported)]

Wow, that's a level of detail I've never heard nor considered. Thanks! Fascinating....

To go from the sublime to the ridiculous, I wonder if there would be any need to castrate Vogons (Hitchhiker's Guide reference, FWIW)? They're the ultimate bureaucrat species to begin with. Imagine a Vogon eunuch!

[tugon (imported)]

The personality differences of eunuchs from intact men are at least a

s important as the sterility and

relative lack of sexual interest. Most eunuchs in history served in administrative functions, not as guardians of someone else's women. Because of the important functions that they could perform, it was not long before even important families began to castrate a son or two. We know that some important eunuchs in the palace of the Assyrian kings were close members of the royal family. The eunuch head of the treasury under Artaxerxes I was his brother's son. The head of the palace guard was sometimes a eunuch cousin of the king, castrated as a boy and growing up with the future king.

Yes the personality certainly changes. As I have posted before I am not the person I was before or even the person I thought I would become. I am me, unexpected but happily floating free of gender.

[2deadballs (imported)]

Historically a eunuch was a boy castrated without his consent so that "he" could perform a specific social function. Basically both testicles have been removed. Although mine make no testosterone due to a bacterial infection in both, they are small, numb, infarcted. I have practically no sexual interests however because I do use Androgel on rare occasions in the middle of the night erection that I take advantage of to produce a small orgasm and small amount of ejaculate. In a way I guess some might call me a eunuch, but I consider myself somewhere in the midde. Part eunuch, but not completely since I still have my useless testicles.