Castration : who are eunuchs today?
Summary
Eunuchs are a relatively discreet population badly identified. During numerous years, we considered that the voluntary castration reflected the desire of mainly psychotic individuals. Today, we discover that reality is different, and that many reasons can urge a man to wish a chemical or physical castration. This behavior goes completely against the social standards, according to which the sex is a major element for the individual and for the society. When each owes become emancipated by sex, show it, see it and make a maximum to stick on the standards, who are these individuals escaping from these frames?
Control oneself or be controlled: the voluntary castration
Any society is constituted by standards and by codes which are essential in the sociability of the individual. If we do not behave like everybody, or worse, if we are different from others , we have better find a raft and leave drowning somewhere... In our world bathed by sex and sexuality, to be suspected of a vague indifference for the thing can cost you an immediate and definitive banishment of the sphere of the trendy: the worst punishment. Regrettably, the free sex society that shows it and speaks about it a lot but does not know anything about it, contains a deceitful and eminently subversive element: the eunuch, the castrated, the castrated as a matter of fact. So those define themselves who, by conscious)and studied choice, go without the major part of their libido. Horror! Think males. How can we explain the inexplicable?
Atypical but very common: a discreet profile
Some recent studies Study from
Anthropology Department ofCalifornia State UniversityDepartment in« The
Journal of sexual Medecine »,
n°4, 2007. Survey January 2007)come today to enlighten a phenomenon
which we understand generally badly. Previously, eminent specialists who
studied the question had concluded in a unanimous way that the voluntary
castration was the evident demonstration of a psychotic disorder( Greilsheimer
& Groves « Male genital self-mutilation », 1979,
and Romilly & Isaac, « Male genital self-mutilation »
1996.). Now, it seems henceforth that only the fifth of these
phenomena is the fact of psychotic individuals, and the prostate cancer
is very far from explaining all other cases. There is really a large profiles
variety in men's who choose being emasculated. Some men begin generally
to envisage the possibility near 20 years and pass in the act on average
at about 40 years. Contrary to the psychotic, whose intellectual level
is low, the eunuch is generally an educated person, sometimes stemming
from a high cultural environment, and who distinguishes himself by no
physical eccentricity (in the considerable exception of the transsexuals).
It is indeed necessary to underline that the eunuchs know perfectly the
historic facts connected with the phenomenon, as well as the consequences
which result from their decision. Certain intellectual level is also required
to conceive in any consciousness an act so subversive towards the social
standards. Finally, if the majority of them are homosexual, a important
part of the eunuchs is also a married heterosexual.
| The Nazis consider the castration as
a preventive or therapeutic means to eradicate the homosexuality or
re-educate the homosexuals. In 1935, the penal code is modified to
allow the "voluntary" castration of sex offenders condemned
in conformance with the Paragraph 175. On May 20th, 1939, Reichsführer-SS
Himmler authorizes the castration forced for sex offenders. Their
assent is not required, he explains, because these prisoners know
that they can be once released the intervention realized successfully.
It is very likely however that before this date numerous homosexuals
(in particular those condemned for long punishments in the term of
their detention on remand) granted to undergo this mutilating operation." The Hidden Holocaust , Günter Grau Photo : Avant et après la castration. N. Jensch, Untersuchungen an entmannten Sittlichkeitsverbrechern (orig : Hidden Holocaust ?, de Günter Grau). |
 |
The peace of the eunuch or the reasons which grow
to the castration
The consequences the most known for the castration, physical or chemical,
are a fall of the libido, a genital stenosis, certain weighty gain and
decrease of the pilosity. In reality, these demonstrations are looked
for. It stands out studies and from meditative testimonies that the concerned
men try above all to get back the control of their genitalia, lived as
independents and agitators of confusion, or to offer this control to the
other one. When we ask eunuchs sample group to call upon the causes of
their castration, the play gets appreciably complicated because less than
30 % of them seems capable of making it exactly. Proof that the previously
evoked control mechanisms remain rather vague for the concerned main things.
Many different reasons can urge an individual to wish the castration.
However, the major cause is to lose libido. Answering the questionnaire
of statistical study, a man explains in the following way: " the
problems which caused me my libido affected my work and the quality of
my sleep. My sexual thoughts were obsessional and I could not release
myself from it ".
 |
Some men evoke religious reasons,
trying to annul their desire to eliminate an element of confusion
in their faith. So certain American Christian sects take literally
passages of the Bible, as this man, become an eunuch to apply the
words of Jesus: " if your right hand leads you to the sin,
cut it ". |
Finally, many eunuchs suffer from a deformed vision by their reproductive
organ. This second cause concerns a third of the voluntary castrations,
and sometimes actualizes by a total genitalia ablation. By the castration,
men imagine they could define a new balance which seem to them normal.
Among them, we find naturally transsexuals in the course of transformation,
they only represent approximately 15 % of the total. Nevertheless a rather
important part of eunuchs suffer from an identity disorder, and the castration
can be understood as a self destructive behavior.
It brings us to consider a transverse, present factor in numerous cases
and which shows itself important: the trauma of the childhood. The individuals
having undergone, for example, a father or a mother extreme reactionary
dominant will more may present a complete refusal of their sexuality.
Such trauma also explains the fact that only a few eunuchs evoke a clear
and precise reason in a desire which can become obsessional..
The gender perception
The question of sex and gender quite naturally arises when thinking about
eunuchs. So, if we exclude transsexuals, for whom the castration is only
a stage towards the feminization, the majority of eunuchs perceive themselves
as men. Another part, hardly less important, sees itself as the third
gender. Really, contrary to what we could imagine, the will of control
which dictates the castration comes along by no means with a desire of
monastic life, and even less under the cornet. So 90 % of the eunuchs,
including those who take no associated hormonal treatment, always wish
to have a sexual active life. Simply a life with their rhythm, a sex which
they could control. We can see in their initiative that eunuchs are neither
exhibiting nor claiming. The shame they feel coping with a desire which
goes against all the criteria of the manliness isolates them. For that
reason, most of the men who wish to act do not dare to speak about it
to their doctor, and Internet abounds in "cutters" in the doubtful
qualifications and in the criminal methods. According to our modern criteria,
the castrated man is the quintessence of the humiliation and the dominion.
Wish this state, as well as note C. Cheng,(" Marginalized
masculinities and hegemonic masculinity : an introduction ».
J Men’s Stud 1999)
can be thought by the society only as a major abnormality, the desire
of a madman, a psychotic. Really the society of the trash, the sex and
the violence found more subversive than its worst nightmare: the man who
did not want sex.
Physical castration, chemical castration: what difference?
There are differences of point of view between both groups which are not
unimportant. We notice for example that castrations stemming from sadomasochistic
games are physical, and those in transsexuals rather chemical, which is
a stage towards their transformation. What is then at stake, it is the
reason which grows to the castration. The men who suffer from a deformed
vision of their sex or who play sadomasochistic games have a problem with
the outside demonstration of their libido: the sex itself. Those who want
only to annul their libido may statistically choose the chemical castration,
the physical disappearance having for them no symbolic sense. It is necessary
to clarify that if the castration is the physical or chemical destruction
of testicles, the emasculation corresponds to the complete ablation of
the male genitalia.
La "guyontine" Image vue sur un site qui prône la castration volontaire des auteurs d'agressions sexuelles.