Am i the only one?

[transward (imported)]

My research colleagues and I have long been interested in the factors that CORRELATE with castration. (Always remember that correlation does NOT equal causation!) Some of the factors that we have found in our sample of 354 individuals in the EA Survey who were already surgically castrated include:

1) Being well-educated

48% hold a bachelor

’s degree or above –

compared to 30% in the general population

22% hold an advanced university degree – compared to 11%

Those who are better educated are more likely to understand the consequences of castration.

2) Having grown up on a working farm

18% of the eunuchs – compared to less than 2.5% of the general population

Again, they are more likely to understand castration and its consequences. If growing up on a farm were a causal factor, there would be far fewer third generation farmers!

3) Having participated in the castration of domestic animals while a child

30% of the eunuchs – no comparable data available, but this is certainly high

4) Being other than strictly heterosexual (including gay, bisexual, and asexual)

68% of the eunuchs (32% are heterosexual)

My thought is those who are outside the “cultural norm of heterosexuality” are more likely to think about their own sexuality than those who simply fit with what is presented as “normal” around them. (Their sexuality just is, and doesn’t require any thought.) I would expect that this factor will be changing over time thanks to changing social norms....

5) Having a parent or other adult authority figure threaten them with castration when they were children

18% of the eunuchs – no comparable data, but this has to be VERY high. Several individuals wrote of a parent pulling down their pants, grabbing their genitals, and holding a knife or scissors to them!

6) Having been sexually abused as a child

21% of the eunuchs

Again, this keeps sexuality in one’s thoughts

7) Having been raised in a very devoutly Christian family (as opposed to normal church-going or less devout).

37% of the eunuchs

A few comments:

#4. For much of the population, particularly the less educated, (see #1) straight, heterosexual sex is Bubba and Boopsie in the Missionary Position in the dark. Everything that falls outside that narrow box is automatically perverse & non-heterosexual. For many, even heterosexual fellatio is perverse. And castration is way outside that box, and is thus almost by definition not heterosexual.

#s 2 & 3: Since our civilization has no public role for eunuchs, and those who are take pains to hide their condition, for most of the non-farm population, castration simply is not something they are aware of, beyond a few adolescent taunts about "balls" and a few ancient references. For farm folk, castration and its effects on animals is just part of everyday life. I would suspect that something would be more common among those people for whom it was a part of their daily life.

#5: I am often a bit skeptical about these sort of stories. In running support groups for trans folk, I occasionally ran into a similar situation. A number of trans women have told stories of being dressed as girls by their mothers or sisters when they were small children, often with elaborate details of expeditions and tea parties. Later on talking to the mothers or sisters involved, I was met with a laugh and some variation of "In her(his) dreams. In reality I couldn't keep her(him) out of my underwear, dresses and shoes." Often people construct back stories to support the persona they try to project. I suspect the situation would be similar among euneuchs and their wanna-bes.

Transward

[The-Reader (imported)]

From my point of view being gay. When I was a teenager trying to date guys they would laugh at me for having a small cock. If some offered me the chance to be rid of a small cock as a teenager I would have taken it. I'd rather go through life being dickless than being laughed at. I guess that why a lot of the boys I went with were more interested in busing my balls instead. It give me pleasure to know that my balls are of use for something. Also being inferior in the dick department I guess I couldn't object if someone with a dick that he can be proud took mine. If a guy came into my life and wanted to be with me but wanted to take my dick I'd most likely let him.

[unencumbered (imported)]

I to am straight, castrated, all my kids know and that is the way it is. Its really no big deal at least not for me, hell even my friends know that are not part of this site.

River

I recently had my castration and I am straight. My (adult) kids know, as well as some of our close, mutual friends, who my wife already told. As an older, educated female, she doesn't see why I should think it would be a big deal to want to keep it a secret from anyone. For me, as long as it's limited to friends who I trust, I'm OK with it because I know that their attitudes toward me wouldn't change. They would not see me as somehow suddenly being different and would accept me as who I have always have been. While I have no urge myself to tell any of them, if they find out through my wife, it's fine with me. In my general community of casual acquaintances, however, I would worry that those people who don't really know me would suddenly stigmatize me for being "different".

[janekane (imported)]

For me, every person is unique, so that comparing one person or one person's situation with another person or person's situation always, invariably, and inescapably results in one or another form of deception, dishonesty, cruelty, prejudice, false judgment, or other iniquitous inequity.

My medical records contain a few tidbits that may be usefully relevant, among which are: "Autism. High functioning." "Of note, he is status post bilateral orchiectomy that he had performed as a prophylactic measure to prevent prostate cancer." "He has a Ph.D. in bioengineering."

Okay, so I am one of those "highly educated" folks who successfully sought castration. While I may be about as transgendered as is anyone, I am as uniquely transgendered as is everyone else. Everyone, so I observe, has aspects of what may be called "the feminine principle," and has aspects of what may be called "the masculine principle."

In the limit, to me, the feminine principle is unconditional love, the masculine principle is conditional love, and "love" is a verb, or a verb masquerading as a noun, such that "to love" is equivalent to "being in relationship with."

Well, my grasp of existence, and existential philosophy has it that a sufficient grasp of the signification of quantum mechanics may inform the informed that everything is in relationship with everything else, and existence is made of relationships and hence, of the process of "love."

Being a bioengineer and being licensed as a professional engineer, I find that my Wisconsin engineering license requires that I work in accord with the Code of Ethics of the National Society of Professional Engineers (of which I am a member). The essential core of said Code is, to me, "as an engineer, I am to hold paramount the public safety, work in-and-only-in areas of my professional competence, and do both of those without deception. It seems to me that, to be licensed as a professional engineer and do bioengineering, I need to be competent in the areas of biology relevant to my bioengineering work, or I will be in violation of my Wisconsin engineering license.

Back in 1986, when I had my B.S. in bioengineering, and was working on my Ph.D., my understanding of biological pattern recognition and, in particular, cancer risk pattern recognition, informed me that my keeping normal testosterone levels and keeping my colon were equivalent to committing suicide by cancer, as a consciously willful act. Alas, I never learned to be actively suicidal.

I consider it profoundly likely that the manner in which I am transgendered, more likely than not, "saved my life from being dead by now from cancer." For me, parting company with testosterone has, in an overall sense, profoundly improved my subjectively experienced "quality of life."

And I have been married, in the seemingly conventional sense, since 1975. And I am autistic in such a way that I have never had the slightest interest in a sexual relationship outside of marriage, and have no recall of ever, to use a phrase used by Jimmy Carter, experiencing "adultery of the heart."

My brother was three years older than me. In 1986, he was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. In January of 1987, his testicles died, as did the rest of his body. In the summer of 1986, my testicles and colon died, what remains of my remains remains alive, or I would not likely be able to post this thread reply on this Eunuch Archive Message Board.

Presented with what I deemed a "life or death" choice, I chose both life (for most of my body) as a fair trade for death (of my testicles and colon). That I was, in 1986, sufficiently educated, sufficiently transgendered, and sufficiently autistic, as to have been able to chose both life and death as a way of staying alive is, for me, a source of inner joy beyond any power of words to convey that I expect will ever come my way.

Prior to studying bioengineering, I was a physics major at a notable liberal arts college, one which has long had an arrangement with one or more engineering schools, such that three years of liberal arts and two of engineering would garner undergraduate degrees from both. I did my three years of liberal arts, but the engineering school in that 3-2 program did not have an engineering curriculum that interested me. I found the engineering program that did interest me some six years after I finished my three years of liberal arts... So, I missed out on my Bachelor of Arts degree, even though I have the liberal arts education that could have earned me both B.A. and B.S. degrees had I gone into an engineering field that did not interest me.

So what? So what is the liberal arts class I took, called, Modern Physics. Quantum mechanics and the like. Some folks, methinks, get caught up in the "numeralotry" of quantum mechanics, treating number-crunching as some sort of idol that merits unquestioning worship. Not so, me. Quantum mechanics has most intrigued me in terms of its significance regarding the biology of the making of decisions.

Einstein looked, and others still look, for a "theory of everything" in the realm of physics. I figured out, in the 1950s, that the realm of physics was vastly too small to contain any valid "theory of everything." I have long sensed, as the late theoretical physicist, Walter M. Elsasser wrote, that biology has to be the "pinnacle science." All physicists are biological organisms, thus the work of physics and physicists is necessarily a biological phenomenon.

Bioengineering? Engineering applied to the phenomenon of life. Engineering? "The efficient, economical, and effective solving of practical problems using scientific principles." The phenomenon of life? "Organisms and their substrates." Organisms and their substrates? For any specific organism, all of the rest of existence is substrate, such that every organism except one is of the substrate of that one organism.

Without its substrate, no organism can exist. Life is a process in which some aspect of that which has not before happened, is happening, and is becoming an aspect of that which has already happened. Thus, life is intrinsically a process of creative evolution, a superposition of unrealized possibilities becoming realized and becoming the substrate of what is becoming realized.

And that takes me into putting to words my sense of the theory of everything, a biological theory the realm of which is sufficient to account for everything. I find that the theory of everything has to be a biological theory and biological theories are inescapably process theories.

The theory of everything, stated in words that may be inadequate for the theory itself:

Whatever happens, as it happens, is necessary and sufficient.

Corollaries?

Whatever does not happen cannot be necessary because of the mere fact of it not happening.

Whatever does happen cannot be other than sufficient because nothing else happens.

Observe, if you will, that the pursuit of the Higgs Boson as a way of understanding existence is fraught with the error intrinsic to analytical reductionism. Analytical reductionism has been rejected by many biological theorists as being woefully inadequate to provide any pathway to a theory of biology that could be a theory of everything. The limitations of analytical reductionism have been rather clear to folks who studied biology sufficiently for more than a century, as demonstrated by the fact that Jan Christiaan Smuts had recognized the need for relational holism more than a century ago, though it took him until 1926 to find time to write, and get published, "Holism and Evolution," (I have The Macmillan Company, New York, September, 1926 printing.) Smuts wrote, but did not publish, "An Inquiry into the Whole" in 1910. (See the preface in "Holism and Evolution.")

The existential dilemma embedded in understanding the life of existence and the existence of life is that of self-reference. Only life, it seems to me, can understand life; and thus, how can life obtain an objective view of itself? How can life sufficiently transcend life as to be capable of seeing life itself as it actually is?

There is that book by the late theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen, "Life Itself," and the book by one of his students, A. H. Louie, "More than LIfe Itself." Also the second, posthumous edition of Robert Rosen's "Anticipatory Systems."

Being autistic, transgendered, and having a form of familial adenomatous polyposis, it has never crossed my mind that I can ever actually be other than "different," nor has it ever crossed my mind that anyone else is measurably more or less different than I am.

So, I put my orchiectomy in my doctoral dissertation and I recently arranged for the University of Illinois at Chicago to put my dissertation on the Internet with a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

I am not anonymous and I am not ashamed of my life in any aspect or in any way whatsoever. I have never internalized the apparent efforts of others to stigmatize me.

http://hdl.handle.net/10027/8816

[Eunuchorn (imported)]

As today is April first, Why aren't there any stories of Reballion? whether by magic or by regrowth, or science, as DNA has the information how to make the body's parts. I would think today would be great for a story where a Eunuch was fired from his job in the harem for Growing Them Back.

[janekane (imported)]

Perhaps I would wisely address the topic of this thread more directly. Depending on how one defines or understands the concept of "a heterosexual," I may easily qualify for being "a heterosexual" who actively sought, and got, surgical castration. Had I "gone all the way" with transgender MTF surgery before becoming married, my best guess is that, if I sought a partner, I very well might have sought a partner whose "bottom parts" complemented my post-SRS ones. While I suspect that is a matter of personal whimsey and not anything hinting at a moral or ethical or religious doctrine or dogma, it may also indicate that I am somehow actually heterosexual, whatever that word means.

I find that my life is far more framed, in terms of my relationships with other people, by my being autistic far more than by my being transgendered (MtFtE?). I have a fairly recent copy of my primary care physician's records, and, therein is stated, verbatim, "Autism. High functioning." If there is such a thing as being certifiably autistic, I suppose I am certifiable. In speaking with my primary care physician's assistant, I was told that for me, autism "is a proven diagnosis."

It is fashionable to refer to people of the autism spectrum as being "persons with autism." I am not fashionable, I prefer being as truthful as possible over being fashionable. I find that I do not "have autism" any more than "autism has me"; I merely find that I am autistic.

With the aforementioned as preface:

Two (or more, as far as I am concerned) people do what makes their lives more satisfying while not actually setting out to hurt each other or anyone else, and I simply and gladly rejoice.

As I do not allow anyone, not myself nor anyone else, and especially not an adversarial court judge or any other official of any other organized and established religion (I find that the Anglo-American Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence is, from a biological (hence, scientific) perspective, an absolutely unconstitutional (according to the best biology-based interpretation of the U.S. Constitution that I have yet been able to assemble) religious establishment) to use any form of "theory of mind" to coerce, intimidate, or terrify me into surrendering my inborn conscience to any sort of coercively imposed social (groupthink-based) contract.

As a licensed professional engineer having bachelors and doctoral degrees in bioengineering, it is my observation that the social contract notion of guilt is a trauma-based psychotic delusion.

Perhaps I can state that more directly and with lessened opportunities for misunderstanding(s):

In my licensed capacity of Wisconsin Registered Professional Engineer (something simple to check with the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services) (license No. 34106-6, also simple to check), I find that the present system of law and jurisprudence in the United States of America is, in essential form and in function, a purely religious establishment, the essential central dogmatic doctrine of which is a massively human-brain-damaging psychotic delusion, so massively damaging as to apparently render a vast majority of people who have incorporated said psychotic delusion into both their theories-in-use and their theories-espoused incapable of accurately, consciously understanding the scientific nature of truth and/or truthfulness as aspects of actual, objective, directly-observable, scientifically-testable existential reality.

More concisely, I find that the belief that people make avoidable mistakes or have avoidable accidents is a delusional belief; a belief that is itself of the nature of an unavoidable mistake or unavoidable accident.

For those who have looked at, read through, or downloaded my doctoral dissertation, I offer a simple request:

In the whole of my life, I have never observed so much as one actually-avoidable accident or actually-avoidable mistake. I have been told of avoidable mistakes and accidents by many other people many times, and have always found the belief that any mistake that was actually made or any accident that actually happened to be a form of misunderstanding about the actual nature of accidents and the actual nature of mistakes.

When I got to the age of the commonplace infant-child transition, typically around 18 months of age, I did not go through that transition, and so never, in the social developmental stages of infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, became a child. Therefore, I could never transition from child to adolescent or adolescent to adult. I have, as best I can discern, a form of infantile autism as my lifelong, post-birth, psychosocial development level.

I have never learned that I, or anyone else, has ever done anything that is actually wrong. I have never learned that any person has ever been an actual wrongdoer.

And yet, one of my doctoral thesis committee members wrote of me to the effect that he found me to have the highest ethical standards of anyone he had ever known. I find I was born with a form of moral compass that guides my ethical sense, and I can finally begin to describe it in words, though it has taken me more than 70 years to learn how to find words that work for me.

My conscience works rather like this:

If it is helpful, it is right.

If it is right, it is helpful.

If it is hurtful, it is wrong.

If it is wrong, it is hurtful.

AND it is right to learn what is hurtful, because, without having learned what is hurtful and how to avoid it, choosing to avoid what is hurtful is impossible; therefore actual wrongdoing is impossible.

Accordingly, w

hatever happens, as it happens, is necessary and sufficient,

if only because what does not happen as it does not happen simply does not happen.

In my dissertation is a lifelong observation of mine to the effect that no mistake ever actually made could or could have been avoided, and this is actually true regardless of the nature of the mistake made or its consequences.

in the same basic manner, it is my lifelong observation that no accident that ever actually happened could or should have been avoided, and this is actually true regardless of the nature of the accident that happened or its consequences.

While my thesis field work involved about 400 people, none of whom could actually demonstrate that any actually-avoidable mistake had ever actually happened, since I defended my dissertation in 1997, I have shared my research with nearly 3000 more people, without coming across anyone who could actually demonstrate that any actually-avoidable accident or mistake was actually possible.

So, I herewith request anyone who reads this post and reads my dissertation and who can actually demonstrate that one or more actually avoidable mistakes or actually avoidable accidents are within the realm of actual existential possibility to share with me the demonstration.

Why so many repetitions of the word, "actually"? Perhaps because I can dream up gaggles of hoardes of immensities of hypothetically avoidable accidents and mistakes, not one of which is outside the realm of actual absolute existential impossibility.

I never learned to think in words, so ideas communicated to me in words have to be translated by me into meanings, and every hypothetical account of an avoidable mistake or avoidable accident that I ever have heard of contains intractable internal contradiction.

The technique used in my field work, asking three questions:

1. "Ever make mistakes?"

2. "Ever make a mistake you shouldn't have made?"

3. "Ever make a mistake you could have avoided?"

Resulted in two percent of people answering, "No," to the second and third questions.

Interestingly, to me if to no one else, the Centers for Disease Control conducted a telephone survey of parents during 2011-12, including cellular telephones in the survey, and the CDC reported that essentially the parents called reported a diagnosed autism prevalence rate of two percent.

It is my (wild?) conjecture that the two percent of my thesis field work may be of the autism spectrum, and that autism has been around for a very long time at a rate of, perhaps, two percent, and the autism epidemic may be a result of more accurate awareness and diagnosis of autism...

What has this to do with the topic of this thread? My research appears to me to demonstrate biological diversity in a way not necessarily well recognized in the past.

A very few people, asked, "Ever make mistakes?" have replied, "No."

A couple people, asked, "Ever make mistakes?" have replied, "No. I only have learning events," or, "Of course not! I only have learning experiences."

So, I find that the belief that people make avoidable mistakes has been an unavoidble mistake, unavoidable because the learning required to recognize that fact has not heretofore happened.

Also, similarly, I find that the belief that avoidable accidents happen has been an unavoidable accident, one heretofore not avoidable.

The way I know that an accident was not actually avoidable is simply that it was not actually avoided. I do not live in a hypothetical world in which tangible reality does not actually exist.

The way I know that a mistake made was not actually avoidable is simply that it was not actually avoided. I do not live in a hypothetical world in which the impossible is mandated and the possible is forbidden.

Therefore, I find that all actually-avoidable accidents and all actually-avoidable mistakes are always actually avoided, such that I can never know what any actually avoidable accident or mistake was because no actually-avoidable accident or mistake ever was or ever will be.

Hypotheticals are not actualities.

Being of a scientist-sort, I have to regard my work as an exercise of biological theory. The nifty thing about scientific theories is that they are intrinsically falsifiable if actually false.

I structured my thesis, with the 1993 U.S. Supreme Court Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals decision clearly in mind. In his partial dissent in Daubert, Chief Justice Rehnquist commented that he did not understand how the falsifiability of a scientific theory was an essential aspect of the scientific validity of the theory.

The theory that people make avoidable mistakes is, in my view, an essential (core) part of the Anglo-American Adversarial System of Law and Jurisprudence.

The theory of my work, that no avoidable mistake can ever be made, is a dichotomous alternative to the theory that people make avoidable mistakes.

The scientific construct that apparently escaped Renhquist is that of scientific theory conditional proof based on constructing a null-hypothesis and an alternate hypothesis as a pure dichotomy, such that falsifying the null hypothesis establishes the alternate hypothesis.

Consider the null hypothesis that it is actually impossible to demonstrate the actual happening of any actually-avoidable mistake or accident, and the alternate hypothesis that it is possible to demonstrate the actual happening of one or more actually-avoidable accidents or mistakes.

Consider the null hypothesis that it is actually possible to demonstrate the actual happening of one or more actually-avoidable accidents or mistakes, and the alternate hypothesis that it is actually impossible to demonstrate the actual happening of any actually avoidable mistake or accident.

Methinks that interchanging the null and alternate hypotheses does no harm to the evidence that no actually avoidable accident or mistake is plausibly, intelligibly, actually ever possible.

It only takes one actual, scientifically-verifiable, actual demonstration of any actually-avoidable mistake or accident to demolish my doctoral thesis and dissertation as a work of accurately valid science.

Billions of actually avoidable accidents and mistakes are supposed to be happening every day on this earthly planet. Why has no one ever been able to actually show me one of them?

Surely, as I have asked to be shown, the difficulty cannot be mine.

"Am I the only one" who understands the world through the life of a 73 year old infantile-autism person?

[tiny3inctim (imported)]

I too am a male who has attractions to females only, but seeking to be asexual. What exactly does that make me? But I think I am in your camp too kitchkinet18.

[Dave (imported)]

I too am a male who has attractions to females only, but seeking to be asexual. What exactly does that make me? But I think I am in your camp too kitchkinet18.

Not every man wants sex as much as the other.

Contrary to the commercials for all those "male enhancements" and erection aids, not every man has to have sex to be fulfilled as a man.

So if you are a man seeking to be asexual then you are still a man.

[boytocut19 (imported)]

My research colleagues and I have long been interested in the factors that CORRELATE with castration. (Always remember that correlation does NOT equal causation!) Some of the factors that we have found in our sample of 354 individuals in the EA Survey who were already surgically castrated include:

1) Being well-educated

48% hold a bachelor

’s degree or above –

compared to 30% in the general population

22% hold an advanced university degree – compared to 11%

Those who are better educated are more likely to understand the consequences of castration.

2) Having grown up on a working farm

18% of the eunuchs – compared to less than 2.5% of the general population

Again, they are more likely to understand castration and its consequences. If growing up on a farm were a causal factor, there would be far fewer third generation farmers!

3) Having participated in the castration of domestic animals while a child

30% of the eunuchs – no comparable data available, but this is certainly high

4) Being other than strictly heterosexual (including gay, bisexual, and asexual)

68% of the eunuchs (32% are heterosexual)

My thought is those who are outside the “cultural norm of heterosexuality” are more likely to think about their own sexuality than those who simply fit with what is presented as “normal” around them. (Their sexuality just is, and doesn’t require any thought.) I would expect that this factor will be changing over time thanks to changing social norms....

5) Having a parent or other adult authority figure threaten them with castration when they were children

18% of the eunuchs – no comparable data, but this has to be VERY high. Several individuals wrote of a parent pulling down their pants, grabbing their genitals, and holding a knife or scissors to them!

6) Having been sexually abused as a child

21% of the eunuchs

Again, this keeps sexuality in one’s thoughts

7) Having been raised in a very devoutly Christian family (as opposed to normal church-going or less devout).

37% of the eunuchs

For 1) well, i'm at university (undergraduated);

For 2) i've nothing to do with farmers

For 3) i didn't

participated in the castration of domestic animals

About 4) i'm gay, bottom, very submissive -actually seeking real owners, i'm seeing a top and having some preliminar treatment of the parts, by having testicles tied

5) my first sex experience (passive) with an older boy involved in some simulated way castration threatening at the beginning

6) i've not been abused when child

7) my family is strictly catholic

[daifu-orchid (imported)]

Cheer up! I'm also straight and surgically nutless. (More on than another time, perhaps.) Currently life is good. My wife knows and we still enjoy sex as ever. HRT (T-cypionate injection 200mg alternate weeks) keeps things outwardly unchanged. I have not felt the need to share with anyone else, as it doesn't seem to concern them. Would it upset them? Probably some, and with unknowable consequences, so I figure some things are best kept to oneself. So why am I here? There are many benefits to sharing life's adventures and challenges. Sometimes we need support and sometimes there is much solace in giving a helping hand.

The whole process has given me at least some insight into how it feels to become and be a eunuch. My story is not your story, but if we didn't think we have worthwhile common ground, I guess we would not be here? So, if you are, or about to be a eunuch, know there is much help and support here. We seem to be a very varied and supportive bunch -and a good thing too!