The Skoptzy

(or Skoptsy, meaning the castrated), also called the White Doves, were a Christian sect whose male members, to attain their ideal of sanctity, subjected themselves to castration.

Their origin in the 18th century, their spread through a large part of Russia and into Romania and Bessarabia, the attempts by the Russian government to suppress the movement, and the theological underpinnings of the religion were described by Pelikan (8), Grass (9), and Pittard (10).

Because they believed that the second coming of Christ would occur only when the number of Skoptzys reached the apocalyptic number of 144,000, they became ardent proselytizers.

Their critics claimed that they used coercion among children and prisoners, a charge that seems warranted in view of the fact that many were castrated below the age of 10 yr, but others were religious enthusiasts who underwent the procedure voluntarily as adults.

Male members of the sect were encouraged to take either the “great seal” (removal of the penis, the scrotum, and the testes) or the “lesser seal” (removal of the scrotum and testes, leaving the penis intact). Women were not castrated, but were subjected to mutilation of the breasts and external genitalia.

In men the procedure was of great simplicity; namely, the operator seized the parts to be removed with one hand and struck them off with the other. In the early years of the sect the surgical instrument was a red-hot iron rod or poker (hence the expression baptism of fire), but instruments of castration included pieces of glass, razors, and knives. A cicatrix formed, with healing in 4–6 weeks.

In some instances the procedure was performed in stages (taking the lesser seal before the great seal). When the penis was removed, nails were inserted into the urethra to avoid strictures, and such men were said to urinate while sitting or squatting. Many Skoptzys were deported to Siberia, where they formed settlements, and the sect continued to perform castrations as late as 1927.

Persecution of the Skoptzys persisted into the Soviet era, and during the antireligious fervor in 1929–1930 they were subjected to sensational public trials and publicity. It was estimated that there were between 1000 and 2000 Skoptzy in Soviet Russia in 1930, 500 of whom lived in Moscow, but by 1962 none were thought to be alive.

Medical studies on the Skoptzy. Medical studies were performed on the Skoptzy by at least three different groups of investigators.

At the turn of the century Pittard made measurements in 30 Skoptzy men in 1 Romanian village and noted that they appeared to be taller than their peers. In 1907 Tandler and Grosz examined 5 Skoptzy men in Bucharest whose average age was 30 yr and who had been castrated between ages 5–21 yr.

Subsequently, during the German occupation of Romania in the First World War Walter Koch studied 13 Skoptzy men, all between 50 and 94 yr of age (averaging 64 yr), who had been castrated for an average of 46 yr. A variety of anthropomorphic measurements were made, and skull x-rays were obtained in some.

***

"Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men: Lessons from the Skoptzy and the Eunuchs of the Chinese and Ottoman Courts"

Jean D. Wilson, Claus Roehrborn

https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/8 ... 24/2864451

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:51 am The Skoptzy

(or Skoptsy, meaning the castrated), also called the White Doves, were a Christian sect whose male members, to attain their ideal of sanctity, subjected themselves to castration.

There are a number of posts about the Skoptsy on the Archive, all from English or German language sources. There were contemporary Russian sources that I have not been able to find, nor would I be able to read them if I did find copies. (My Russian was limited to one semester in high school in 1959, and it's completely forgotten.) It would be great to have some translations from the Russian literature about the Skoptsy, some of whom were still living in Russia in the 1970s and possibly later. One source that I keep finding reference to is

Pelikan, Evgenii. (1872). Sudebno-meditsinskie issledovaniia skopchestva i istoricheskie svedeniia o nem. (St. Petersburg: Golovin).

JesusA (imported) wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 3:41 pm There are a number of posts about the Skoptsy on the Archive, all from English or German language sources. There were contemporary Russian sources that I have not been able to find, nor would I be able to read them if I did find copies. (My Russian was limited to one semester in high school in 1959, and it's completely forgotten.) It would be great to have some translations from the Russian literature about the Skoptsy, some of whom were still living in Russia in the 1970s and possibly later. One source that I keep finding reference to is

Pelikan, Evgenii. (1872). Sudebno-meditsinskie issledovaniia skopchestva i istoricheskie svedeniia o nem. (St. Petersburg: Golovin).

For the first time I read about Skoptsy in the book by the writer

Melnikov-Pechersky (Andrey Pechersky) "White Doves" 1868

***

Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Ivanovich_Melnikov

The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem

https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2017/hathaway-chief-eunuch

One rarely finds a eunuch who has, like him, an open forehead, a well-made nose, large, clear eyes, a small mouth, rosy lips, dazzlingly white teeth, a neck of exact proportion without wrinkles, handsome arms and legs, all the rest of his body supple and unconstrained, more fat than thin.

So runs a description of the Chief Harem Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire by the French merchant Jean-Claude Flachat, a frequent visitor to the Ottoman palace during the early 1750s. He was speaking of a man who had been enslaved in his native Ethiopia, transported to Upper Egypt for castration, then sold on Cairo’s slave market. He would have been presented to the imperial palace by the Ottoman governor of Egypt or one of Egypt’s grandees, and entered the harem as one of several hundred subordinate harem eunuchs. He would have worked his way up the harem eunuch hierarchy over several decades before achieving the ultimate office on the death of his predecessor.

In employing East African eunuchs, the Ottomans were following a venerable tradition. The use of eunuchs as guardians of a ruler’s inner sanctum dates to some of the world’s earliest empires. Stone friezes from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which ruled northern Iraq and Syria from 911–612 B.C.E., depict smooth-cheeked young men—eunuchs—attending the heavily bearded emperor during his hunts. In fact, virtually all pre-modern empires in the Eastern Hemisphere, with the notable exceptions of western Europe and Russia, employed eunuchs at their courts.

The great Islamic empires, beginning at least with the Abbasids (750–1258 C.E.), likewise employed eunuchs. East African eunuchs seem to have been particularly popular as harem guardians for reasons that remain unclear. Lascivious African harem eunuchs are a trope in the Thousand and One Nights tales, many of which depict life at the Abbasid court in Baghdad. In actual fact, the harem eunuchs kept the sexuality of the harem residents in check rather than facilitating it, just as their counterparts in the barracks and the ruler’s privy chamber kept the sexuality of the male pages-in-training in check.

The Chief Harem Eunuchs of the era directly encouraged trade by serving as conduits for European luxury goods to the women of the harem. El-Hajj Beshir Agha (term 1717– 46), the longest-serving and most powerful Chief Eunuch in Ottoman history, presided over elaborate nighttime garden parties at which luxurious European baubles were conspicuously consumed.

El-Hajj Beshir Agha was, according to European observers, a “vizier-maker,” in stark contrast to the Chief Eunuchs of the Köprülü era, who served at the pleasure of the grand viziers from that family. But following his death in 1746, Ottoman grand viziers began to compete with the Chief Eunuch for influence, and they often prevailed.

But the Chief Harem Eunuch’s influence extended beyond palace politics, on the one hand, and the holy cities, on the other.

Clearly, the Chief Harem Eunuch was far more than a harem functionary. His activities reinforced the Ottoman sultan’s religious and political authority while contributing to Ottoman promotion of Sunni Islam in general and the Hanafi legal rite in particular. In the course of endowing religious and educational institutions, furthermore, he contributed to infrastructural development in the Ottoman capital and in the provinces.

Eunuchs and sex : beyond sexual dichotomy in the Roman world

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/44199

Rowlands, Rhiannon M.

This dissertation explores Roman perceptions of eunuchs, particularly their perceived sex and gender.

It covers both slave eunuchs castrated as infants or young children and the galli who are self-castrated after puberty.

In observing the categories and interpretations given to eunuch bodies, I demonstrate the social and cultural elements that factor into determining what is generally considered to be biological sex.

By examining ancient Greek and Roman medical texts, I show that sex in the ancient world was considered more fluid than it is today.

One was not born with a fixed sex but rather the male sex was created by transformation through the process of puberty.

This process could fail naturally, resulting in the sex category of "female", or be interrupted artificially through castration.

While eunuchs in general were not typically considered fully male, the categories to which they were assigned varied and often depended on the age or social position of the eunuch.

Although eunuchs were ambiguous in their sex, they were not perceived as asexual. Indeed, the conceptual association of slave eunuchs with either women or attractive youths made them potential objects of erotic desire for men.

And the conceptual association of galli with cinaedi led to them being perceived as highly sexual with both men and women.

***

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bits ... sAllowed=y

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 7:09 am And the conceptual association of galli with cinaedi led to them being perceived as highly sexual with both men and women.

"Transgendered Archaeology: The Galli and the Catterick Transvestite"

Renato Pinto and Luciano C. G. Pinto

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Galli_and_ the_Catterick_Transvestite

Introduction

This paper is a rather circumscribed analysis of how an archaeological discovery that echoed across British news sites can serve as a starting point for strengthening the dialogue between archaeologists and representatives of sexual social minorities.

It also considers current (re)significations of the galli – the ancient eunuch priests of the goddess Cybele –, especially among transgender and transsexual people who may be defined, without herein entering into the detail of any scientific taxonomy, as men or women who seek to distance themselves from their biological sex or from their gender by extirpating or modifying their sexual organs, or even by systematically adopting the garments or sociocultural behaviours of the opposite sex.

This study suggests archaeology could sift more carefully through the anxieties experienced by this minority social group, when the interpretative disclosure of archaeological finds relates to sexual practices that differ from the ‘established’ protocols of masculinity and femininity in the Ancient World.

... ... ...

***

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... Galli_and_ the_Catterick_Transvestite/link/59e013afa6fdcca98420eca7/download

Nightmare looms for transgender Thais at army draft

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-thai ... SKBN1780FS

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A group of young transgender Thais sits together in women’s clothes behind rows of men, waiting for military officers to call their names and decide whether they must be drafted as soldiers.

“I was born male, so I must be here, as duty calls,” said Kanphitcha Sungsuk, 21, in a cream-colored dress, holding up a mirror to check her make-up and long black hair.

Thailand is widely seen as a paradise for gay and transgender people, but many complain of being treated as second-class citizens and the obligation to respond to the draft can be a nightmare when they turn 21.

“Most are stressed and worried that they will be undressed, stared at, or humiliated in public,” said Jetsada Taesombat, executive director of the Thai Transgender Alliance for Human Rights.

“Some are so stressed out they want to commit suicide to avoid conscription.”

Every April, Thai men who turn 21 must either volunteer to serve for six months or take their chances in a lottery, where a choice of black ticket lets them go home but a red ticket means they must serve for two years.

A conscript’s death following a beating by soldiers this week highlights the brutality of army life that many men want to avoid. Conscription can also mean serving in the south, where Muslim Malay separatists are fighting an insurgency.

Exemptions are made for those who are physically or mentally incapable. They are also made for trangender women, but only if they can prove that they are not faking it.

A doctor takes them to a private room, or behind a wall, to see whether they have breasts or have undergone a sex change.

Those with physical alterations, who show “gender identity disorder”, are exempt from the draft and need never return, but those who have not undergone such changes must return for up to two more years, unless an army hospital certifies they have the “disorder”.

Transgender women say the reference to a disorder stigmatizes them, although the army has softened its description from the previous “permanent mental disorder” and says it has improved the way they are treated.

“The army is instructed to treat and respect transgender women as women,” said Lieutenant Colonel Ongard Jamdee, who is in charge of a recruitment center in Pasi Charoen, Bangkok.

Transgender women figure on television, in beauty pageants and at hair salons and cosmetics counters in Thailand. But they cannot change the gender designation on their identity papers, despite a 2015 law against gender-based discrimination.

Some transgender women told Reuters they had been told to leave women’s toilets so as to not “frighten” women.

“Society looks on and thinks we are accepted, but it’s actually not so,” said Khwan Suphalak, 23, adding that hotels had barred her entry over her gender. “We’re always treated differently.”

After four decades of struggles, K is finally happy

https://genderqueer.me/2016/03/23/fv-ou ... of-binary/

As a child, I assumed that everybody was, like me, intrinsically genderless; that everybody just casually functioned within the confines of their gender for no better reason than that was the gender they got randomly assigned to.

Apparently others could do that easily, so I should too. Moreover, I figured there must be a kind of silent convention that one was not meant to not talk about it. Why? “Because” — the universal shut-down answer given to children questioning adults about tough topics. Like everyone else, I could see there were enough subjects that children were not allowed to know the complete truth about, so what was one more?

It made a kind of sense to me at the time. It sounds like an implausible conspiracy theory in retrospect, but what did I know? I followed what I thought was expected of me and allowed myself to be cast as a boy.

Clearly I held myself to this standard rather too well. I probably shouldn’t have. Oh well. Or maybe I couldn’t have done much about it anyway: times were different in the ‘80s.

When adolescence came around, gender started to actually matter. I needed a new coping strategy. I don’t really know how, but I just convinced my mind to censor my own thoughts, to shield myself utterly from the topic of my gender. I couldn’t even think about it.

It took fifteen years for the mental dam to break. Panicking, I learned about myself all over again. After that, I wanted desperately to come out, but I was thoroughly insecure and timid and ashamed because I didn’t think that being genderless would qualify as trans, afraid and perplexed about how I should explain it to others. I was transfixed, unable to take any action at all.

I didn’t manage to work up the conviction to tell another living soul for four more years. Even after that I still moved slowly, imperceptibly.

Over the course of three or four more years, through my mid 30s, I began to come out. First I shared with my very best friends, then to a trickle of people (including family), then more and more as it got easier to tell, including select coworkers and acquaintances. My closest friends and family got the detailed discussion of what genderless meant for me and how I came to know myself.

Perhaps a dozen or two more got a shorter version. Anyone else would probably have guessed that I was trans, but assumed I was on my way to female. During the same time period, I transitioned my appearance, which mainly consisted of facial hair removal, (head) hair transplant, avoiding all clothing (like formalwear) that is highly gender-specific either way, and selecting clothing that is approximately feminine, but never categorically so. I also stopped using gendered washrooms.

Always the worst part, the part that I dreaded, was the moment of change itself. Whether it was a new style of clothes I had never dared to wear before, or a conversation in which I revealed the truth to my parents, or a request to call me by a new name, I absolutely hated drawing attention to myself and the changes I was making.

Even though I knew the change would make my situation indescribably better, I desperately wanted to find an inconspicuous way to get there.

In all these cases, I would have given anything to avoid or skip the event by using magic if I could, moving straight past the discomfort into the new normal as if the old version had never existed. I had to be coaxed and prodded by helpful friends into making these scary changes, one by one.

On the medical side of things, those same friends helped me to make appointments I couldn’t work up the courage to make on my own. I was seeking nullification surgery: complete removal of the genitals without constructing anything else as replacement (just the minimum to enable normal urination).

I was granted a consultation at the local hospital’s gender clinic. After evaluation, I was invited to sit down to hear what they thought of my case.

A whole panel of collaborating doctors and therapists were already in the room when I walked in. They could not have made the setting more intimidating if they’d tried; I was like a defendant in a court of law invited to come hear the verdict.

But worse than that was the pronouncement. The senior doctor callously declared that my request was completely ridiculous, non-sensical, that I could not possibly actually be genderless.

I walked out of there devastated. It’s a very, very good thing I had friends to support me. I still can’t believe how that doctor can have been so insensitive and reckless. But that’s in the past, and it gets vastly better after this.

Since the gender clinic that failed me was prominently part of the national public care care system in Canada, I was pretty sure that system as a whole would be a closed door to me.

Well, good riddance: I really wasn’t looking forward to arguing with their bureaucrats to get them to pay for a surgery they never heard of that’s not on their approved list while they pay for other people’s binary transgender surgeries automatically. So I went international. It would mean I would have to pay for the surgery myself.

My most helpful friend did research and found a surgeon for me in the US who was willing to give me what I wanted. This doctor placed stronger-than-normal requirements on one of the necessary letters of recommendation, insisting that it be from a WPATH-listed psychiatrist who practiced in the doctor’s own country.

This was an onerous requirement that would require me to travel internationally over and over again to get my recommendation, but after the devastating experience with the doctor at home I was willing to agree to just about anything.

Meanwhile, I must say that the social aspect of my transition was proceeding very well indeed. I received nothing but respect, support, curiosity, and love from my all of family, all of my friends, and those coworkers I was close enough to share this with. I am very fortunate to have had such positive experiences.

But there was still something bothering me. While I got all those beautiful reactions from my loved ones, it often felt like complete understanding and complete acceptance were elusive.

I truly appreciated everybody’s efforts and enthusiasm, but fully comprehending and internalizing what it meant for me to be without gender was just out of reach for them.

On a more pragmatic note, I was facing many uphill battles, feeling completely daunted by them. Could I have proper public washroom facilities? Could my gender be accurately indicated in (or omitted from) my passport? Could I get people to consistently designate me with the they/them which they struggled to do? Could I avoid gendered formal forms of address?

Would I ever wear a swimsuit again? Could I ever blend into a typical crowd? How could I continue properly speaking French (which requires that all adjectives agree on gender)? These things wore me down.

I believe strongly in getting those problems fixed for the benefit of the entire non-binary trans community, but I’m not an activist, I never wanted to rock any boats. I need to leave those tasks to stronger fighters (whom I am happy to stand behind in the shadows).

The culmination of this uneasiness is that I changed my gender from none to female. I suspect this change was building up over the course of many months, but when it finally happened it was shockingly sudden: around 8pm on a particular Wednesday evening. And that was that.

I didn’t have to worry about non-binary integration problems any more. And I was already unfailingly passing as a woman in public anyway, even though that hadn’t been my intention.

I wasted no time in sharing the news with friends and family. In many cases, the reaction was palpable huge relief. Finally this was a gender they could understand intuitively and without reservation.

I admit that I felt relief in turn, though it’s impossible to say how much of that was caused by my simplified integration and how much by making my loved ones more comfortable.

Previously perplexing situations became obviously correct overnight. For example, one of my friends asked me on the spot to be a bridesmaid at her wedding, a suggestion that would have been very upsetting to me just weeks before.

The unexpected switch occurred less than three weeks before my scheduled surgery, the year I turned 39. The surgery was changed at the last minute from nullification to feminizing vaginoplasty.

And that was that, again. Ironically, I could have had that surgery in my own country under the national health care coverage.

Did I really “jump” between genders on that day, or was I always a binary woman and just didn’t know it? Perhaps I am still actually genderless and chose an easy way out, one that works well enough in practice yet betrays my true gender.

Who cares? I used to feel the need to analyze and justify my gender, especially to myself. Now it just doesn’t matter anymore. Years later, I’m happier than I ever thought it possible to be, and that’s so much more than enough.

Some years on from this, I moved to the UK to start a new job. Nobody in the whole country knows I’m trans. That’s a novel experience, and also completely normal at the same time. Being trans is not a part of my daily life. And I’m happy to live that way right now.

I know that there are those who hold all kinds of non-binary genders, more genuinely that I turned out to do in the end. This world still needs help to understand and respect and include.

I know because I was there: I will never forget the years I spent struggling with non-binary gender. It was difficult, but precious. I hope I can help in a small way, from the shadows. But for me, the story is mostly over.

How Gurmeet Ram Rahim Forced Castration On Young Men

https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2018/05/gu ... astration/

** Excerpted with permission from “Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim: A Decade-Long Investigation” by Anurag Tripathi, published by Penguin India. 4th May, 2018 **

In January 1996, Hansraj moved to the Dera headquarters in Sirsa.

The same year, in the presence of his family and a few other sadhus of the Dera, Gurmeet Ram Rahim formally ordained him as a sadhu after administering two pieces of sweet to him.

He was assigned to be a part of the Shahi Bhajan Mandali.

With his natural flair for music, Hansraj soon became a popular bhajan singer at the Dera. He started strumming a guitar and with regular practice, became good at playing it. Soon, Hansraj was made the head of sound system management at the Dera.

‘In 1999, some other sadhus and I came to know of an experiment of castration on a horse at the Dera. The animal died after three months.’

Hansraj said this was the first time he had heard about castration. He heard that the chief had decided to conduct the same experiment on humans.

Initially, a member of the senior management staff known to be close to Gurmeet was made to undergo the operation. In late 1999, the chief called a meeting of 500 sadhus at the Dera headquarters.

These sadhus were part of Dera Sacha Sauda’s Saint Brahmachari Sevadar group.

During that meeting, the sadhus were told that they had to go through a minor surgery which would bring them ‘directly in touch with God’.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim explained that this surgery would take away all their worldly worries and bring them a step closer to heaven.

The sadhus were then introduced to two doctors— Dr Pankaj Garg and Dr M.P. Singh. Gurmeet said that these two doctors were trained in the ‘special surgery’ and added that it would be painless.

After the meeting, Gurmeet met the sadhus one-on-one. ‘Those who agreed to go through the surgery at that time did not exactly know what it was all about.

They were treated royally that day,’ Hansraj recalls. Those who refused to comply were humiliated and abused by Gurmeet. Some were even sent to the torture room and beaten up for days.

To begin with, two sadhus, Ratan and Dharam Singh, who was also the personal cook for the Dera chief, underwent the surgery.

Makeshift arrangements were made inside the gufa and the doctors mentioned by the Dera chief in the meeting conducted the surgery.

Mohan Singh Diwana, Mittu Singh and Gurjant Singh, three close aides of Gurmeet, were the next ones on whom the surgery was performed.

These sadhus were strictly told not to reveal to other sadhus that they had been castrated. Gurmeet told them to propagate among others that after the surgery, they could see God and felt close to Him.

They were to tell the other sadhus that the surgery had led their mind to a higher realm of spirituality and they could now communicate directly with the Supreme Power because of their enhanced powers of concentration.

At the chief’s directions, the castrated sadhus conducted meetings with eighteen to twenty young sadhus on a regular basis in an attempt to brainwash them and make them believe that the surgery would miraculously transform their lives.

In October 2000, Hansraj was travelling with Gurmeet Ram Rahim to his hometown in Gurusar Modia in Rajasthan. ‘I was a bhajan singer, so Gurmeet used to take me along to his hometown every time he visited, to perform bhajans.’

On the way, Gurmeet told him, ‘Tum par rehmat ho gayi hai’ (You have been blessed), and that soon, Hansraj would have a vision of God. ‘Little did I know that this trip would ruin my entire life.’ Hansraj was then seventeen years old, and completely unaware of the trap he was falling into.

Dera Sacha Sauda runs a hospital at Gurusar Modia, Gurmeet Singh’s village in Sri Ganganagar district. According to Hansraj, most of the initial castrations were done at this hospital.

He said that the Dera chief asked him to go to the hospital and meet Dr Garg and Dr Singh, and say to them, ‘Mujh par rehmat ho gayi.’ (I have been blessed.)

When he went to the hospital that evening and told the doctors exactly what the Dera chief had asked him to, they smiled and offered him a cold drink.

‘Even before I could finish half the bottle, my head started spinning and I began to hallucinate. Soon, I fell unconscious, to wake up three days later.’

His ordeal had only just begun.

On regaining consciousness, he found his private parts bandaged. ‘I was in immense pain. I cried out and was given painkiller injections,’ he said, recalling the horror.

In the evening, when the dressing was changed, he realized that his testicles had been removed. ‘Out of fear, dejection and pain, I urinated on the bed itself,’ he said, tears welling in his eyes while recounting that day.

He wanted to die. His belief in the Dera and its chief was shattered. He felt betrayed.

‘Where to run away, whom to tell what has happened to me, how will I live the rest of my life—these were some of the questions running through my mind.’

He confronted the doctors who operated on him, only to be told that he was ‘chosen’—he had been specially ordained by ‘God’ Gurmeet himself, and should have no reason to complain, nor should he tell anyone at the Dera.

‘I refused to eat anything. I was just crying and thinking of my parents. After some time, I fell unconscious again.’

Even seventeen years after the surgery, Hansraj says that the pain refuses to go. ‘Sometimes it hurts so much, it feels as if hundreds of scorpions are biting me at the same time.’

Hansraj was discharged from the hospital the next day and sent to Sirsa. There, many sadhus his age asked him the reason for his despondency, but he kept it to himself.

There were two reasons for that—he feared for his life, but perhaps the greater one was that he felt ashamed. Soon after he returned, another sadhu his age was summoned by the Dera chief.

‘Uspar bhee rehmat ho gayi.’ (He too was blessed.) That sadhu, also a minor, was sent to the same hospital in Gurusar Modia.

‘When he came back, he was seething with pain. His operation seemed to have gone wrong and there were blood stains on his pyjamas.’

This pattern of selecting young boys and sending them to be castrated continued for a long time. Hansraj said that from his group alone, more than twenty minors were sent for the surgery.

With the number of castration cases increasing in number, keeping it secret became difficult. Soon, most of the sadhus at the Dera became aware of it.

Some tried to flee to avoid it. Those who were caught trying to escape were beaten up and put in the torture room for days.

Embracing a Eunuch Identity (Richard Joel Wassersug)

https://www.tikkun.org/embracing-a-eunuch-identity/

| February 24, 2012

“I will give them an eternal name which will not be cut off.” —Isaiah 56:5

One does not have to identify as gender variant to be challenged by the problem of when, where, and to whom one “outs” oneself. Outing oneself is something members of all nonvisible minorities face at one time or another in secular society.

People who are religious, for example, yet not so orthodox as to sport a cross, turban, or yarmulke, must decide how, when, where, and if to let others know of their history and theology.

In addition to being Jewish, I am a member of a definable gender minority that has been conspicuous throughout history. I am a eunuch.

Although eunuchs are more common today than ever before, we are, paradoxically, also more invisible than ever before. Nowadays people like me rarely out ourselves to anyone except very close friends and family.

So who are we? We are genetic males who have been castrated—i.e., had our testicles removed or destroyed—but not out of any desire to transition to female.

We are different from male-to-female transsexuals, who often choose to undergo castration, along with estrogen therapies and other surgeries, to feminize their bodies.

Unlike transsexual women, the vast majority of eunuchs never desired feminization. A tiny percentage of men in the Western world who identify wholly as male desire to be free of testosterone, the main androgen that fuels our manhood and that is made in our testicles.

Most castrated men in our society, myself included, were happily functioning males though until illness overtook us and we were offered chemical or surgical castration to slow the progression of our disease. We are in some ways transgender. Although we do not desire to be feminized, we are emasculated.

In our society most individuals, transgender or otherwise, buy into the “binary”—i.e., if not male, then female—and hold to the belief that emasculation is obligatorily coupled with feminization.

But this is not necessarily true for those of use who are castrated as mature adults. We pass as males in public, but reside in a gendered no man’s land. Study after study of men on androgen deprivation therapy out of medical necessity confirm that patients feel less manly, but not necessarily female.

Similarly medical research shows that transwomen and prostate cancer patients do not react identically to “androgen-deprivation.” As many would expect, different desires and cultural expectations influence how castration affects cognition, mood, and other mental processing.

Judaism and Castration

As a Jew, I have felt drawn to seek out the Torah’s passages on castration during my attempts to understand my own transformation. The Torah takes a harsh stance on emasculation. Unlike other groups in the Middle East, Judaism has never condoned castration either as punishment or to produce a servant class of court functionaries. Indeed, castration was seen as a foreign practice, as a scripture speaking to the exiles warned that their sons would “be made eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon” (Isa. 39:7; 2 Kings 20:18).

Both Deuteronomy 23 and Leviticus 21 state that a male lacking intact testicles is excluded from the Temple and from participating in sacrificial offerings. He is seen as defective since he cannot fulfill the basic commandment to breed.

Isaiah, however, views castrated males more positively and states that those who kept the Sabbath and the covenant with God will have “a name better than that of sons and daughters” and that God “will give them an eternal name which will not be cut off” (Isa. 56:5).

These two divergent views of the emasculated individual continue today, for an androgen-deprived male can either view himself as crippled or as something special. I choose to go with Isaiah, for I see myself as different and empowered, rather than disabled, by having my brain no longer awash in testosterone.

Coming Out as a Eunuch

Most of us who are androgen deprived today are prostate cancer patients who were offered castration as a treatment to slow the growth of our cancer. Androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer is a hundred times more common than surgical and chemical castration for all other reasons combined, including reassignment surgeries for males transitioning to females.

More than 250,000 males living in North America right now, including myself, have been castrated to treat prostate cancer. Few people, however, are aware of our existence, because we hide.

We hide because it is shameful to be castrated. There are many reasons for the shame, and one is surely castration’s historical application as corporal punishment for inappropriate sexual behavior. Indeed, chemical castration with the same or similar drugs used to treat many prostate cancer patients is currently offered to recidivist sexual predators in several states in the United States.

Although this treatment in North America is voluntary and not court-imposed, castration for reasons other than as part of sexual reassignment has become linked in the minds of many to punishment for heinous crimes.

I elected to come out of hiding when I learned that denial was not an effective psychological strategy for dealing with the changes one experiences in response to androgen deprivation. I was also inspired by information on the social roles of castrated men in history and in the Hebrew Bible.

Shortly after I outed myself, my teenage daughter said, “Dad, when most people out themselves, they open the closet door and just come out. You, Dad, you went through the wall.”

My daughter was reacting to my public announcement in an interview on national radio here in Canada and in essays in various publications beginning with Out magazine (2003) and later in the New York Times (2007), that I was a eunuch. Her reference to going through walls was more apt though than she realized.

The transgressing of walls and barriers is not only central to my own story, but has been uniquely significant for eunuchs throughout history.

The Stigmatization of Eunuchs

“Eunuch” simply means a castrated man. However, terms such as “castrated,” “neutered,” “emasculated,” and “eunuch” tend to be applied metaphorically and pejoratively to politically impotent individuals regardless of their sex, gender, and gonadal status. Germaine Greer’s 1970 feminist polemic, The Female Eunuch, famously affirms this.

When not considered criminal deviants or victims of gender politics, eunuchs in contemporary discourse are perceived as pusillanimous individuals, entrapped or complicit in the evil activities of others. Given such stereotypes, it is not surprising that few castrated males today openly acknowledge or accept a eunuch identity.

When I became castrated, I was surprised by the magnitude of the physical and mental impact of androgen deprivation. The physical changes included a 10 percent gain in weight as fat, loss of muscle mass, softening of my skin, and loss of most of my body hair. Most surprising, though, was how my mind worked when androgen deprived.

The medical literature focuses on two psychological features: diminished libido and hot flashes, which androgen-deprived males share with menopausal women. But researchers are increasingly aware that androgen deprivation is also associated with heightened emotionality often displayed as empathetic lacrymosity; i.e., tears shed in witnessing the sorrow or joy of others.

Sadly, many prostate cancer patients find such displays unmanly and try to hide them. I instead have elected to embrace this, for I have found that accepting this change enriches my life and my connection with others.

On Eunuchs, Angels, and Exodus

In trying to adapt to androgen deprivation, I became curious about how androgen-deprived males functioned in the past. One of the first things I discovered was that, unlike the contemporary stereotypes, historically eunuchs were rarely social outcasts or politically powerless. On the contrary, they were the chamberlains, diplomats, and senior government officials in all major, long-lasting, dynastic governments across Asia for the last 3,000 years.

Cowardly? Hardly. Many eunuchs were military leaders (e.g., Cheng Ho, Narses) and some were brutal assassins (e.g., Mohammad Khan Qajar). At the same time, some eunuchs in the early Christian world were philosophers (e.g., Abelard, Origen of Alexandria), and several achieved sainthood (e.g., St. Ignatius of Constantinople).

Then I discovered the hypothesis of such classicists as Kathryn Ringrose that the eunuchs of antiquity were the models for angels in the Bible. The similarities are striking. Both eunuchs and angels have beardless faces. Both are nonreproductive. Both are depicted as taller than normal mortals. And when we say that someone has an “angelic” voice, we mean the higher-pitched voice of the castrati.

All the physical traits of angels characterize males castrated before puberty. God is perceived as surrounding himself with angels as advisers and emissaries. Kings and emperors in antiquity were similarly surrounded by eunuch advisers and emissaries.

This analogy, more than anything else, has helped me recognize and adapt to the side effects of androgen deprivation, and overcome the stigma of castration.

This phenotype for angels is more closely linked to Christianity than to Torah. Angels are common in the Torah, but their physical features are not defined there. Nevertheless, angels show up early and often in the Torah.

In Genesis we find them guarding the gates of Eden after Adam and Eve’s departure (Gen. 3), informing Sarah that she will bear a child (Gen. 18) and stopping Abraham from sacrificing that same offspring (Gen. 22).

By the time we are half way through Genesis, their major social roles in relation to humans are clear. The angels of the Bible are guards and messengers.

But the strangest, and to me most intriguing, reference to angelic entities in the Torah comes in Exodus where directions are given for the construction of the Ark that will house the commandments and reside in the Holy of Holies on the Temple Mount. The Israelites are told to fabricate a cherub at each end of the Ark (Exod. 25:19). The cherubim are to face inward toward each other with their wings “spread out above the Ark, shielding the Ark” (Exod. 25:20).

What is so problematic here is that these cherubim are permanent, tangible objects, neither animate beings nor supernatural spirits. In Judaism, there are not supposed to be any figures, figurines, or forms that might be deified. Why were the Israelites asked to carve figurines for their most sacred site, but slammed for toying with idolatry vis-à-vis a golden calf (Exod. 32)?

No sacred individuals other than the Lord! Yet there—on the Ark itself, which contains the words “no idols, no other Gods,” are winged figurines. What are these icons doing in, of all places, the Holy of Holies?

I believe that a reasonable interpretation of these figurines is rooted in the social roles of eunuchs in Near and Middle Eastern antiquity. Knowing how the eunuchs of Asia served emperors on Earth helps us understand how angels and cherubim served the Lord in Heaven (or at least were perceived to do so by the authors of Exodus).

The first thing to recognize is how common eunuchs were in antiquity. Archeologists have found much evidence of eunuchs in ancient courts, such as that of Hammurabi, which preceded the Exodus by about five hundred years. Art work and descriptions of emperors from well before the time of the Exodus present kings and rulers of those times flanked by beardless adult men, who, simply by being beardless, are identified by historians as eunuchs.

Eunuchs themselves are found in Jewish history, most famously in the Egyptian court at the time of Joseph and in the Persian court at the time of Ahasuerus and Esther.

Angels in the Torah are the Lord’s trusted messengers; the word angel comes from the Greek word angelos (messenger). In a similar way, eunuchs of biblical times were the emperors’ messengers and guardians. If a successful kingdom on Earth was maintained with the help of eunuchs, it is logical to suppose that a kingdom in Heaven would have a similar class of citizens.

Some problems in the Torah text beyond Exodus 25 can be resolved relatively easily by accepting the idea that angels are, in fact, modeled after eunuchs.

Consider the puzzle of who actually spoke to Moses and Abraham—an angel or God. In several places in Genesis we have passages like “An angel appeared before Abraham,” which is then immediately followed by words like “the Lord said to Abraham.”

So was it the Lord or an angel who appeared before and spoke to Abraham? Talmudic scholars have taken up this problem, but have not resolved it (see “angels” in Encyclopedia Judaica, Macmillan Publishers, 1971).

In the context of the role that eunuchs played in Asian cultures at that time, when the emperor’s eunuchs spoke, the emperor spoke. So by analogy, when the angels spoke, it was understood to be the word of the Lord ... without question. To say “the Lord said,” when the words actually came out of the mouth of an angel, was not ambiguous, given the total authority of angels to speak the words of the Lord.

Returning specifically to Exodus 25, we have in the next line the Lord telling the Israelites, “There I will meet with you.” This is a profound moment in Judaism. For here God declares that on that very site, he will be in among the people!

But if the Lord were really to dwell among the people, and he is of human image/form, how would the people know that it really was God and not false (lesser) deities, or an insane man just claiming to be God? How would they, how could they, tell that the entity was the Lord?

One answer is the presence of the Lord’s eunuch-like minions. An emperor in those biblical times would never be out in public without eunuchs surrounding him.

People could tell that the emperor was near just because his eunuch corps was there. The existence of an equivalent angelic class interceding between man and God right there on the Ark affirmed both the Lord’s divine status and the immediate presence of the Lord within the Holy of Holies.

The cherubim on the Ark affirmed the validity of God’s genuine presence and authority.

With cherubim shielding the Ark, the people had visual evidence that there must be an important ruler of truly divine status nearby.

The mere presence of the cherubim thus helped “announce” the presence of God, just as eunuchs of that day would “announce” the presence of any major mortal ruler.

In having the eunuch guards—in the form of permanent, concrete, tangible cherubim—the Lord’s presence could never be doubted. A material, iconographic, angelic presence right on the Ark precluded doubt that the Lord’s angels, and thus the Lord himself, were only spirits, apparitions.

Angelic Empathy

Knowledge of eunuch history and its links to biblical angelology helped me recognize, accept, and openly acknowledge the changes androgen deprivation caused in my personality and interactions with others. I have felt privileged knowing that it was people like me who gave the world its predominantly positive perception of angels.

Somewhat puzzling, given their roles as esteemed advisors, guards, and emissaries, is that historical and contemporary eunuchs are described as moodier and more emotional than men with normal levels of testosterone.

Cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy find themselves crying about little things that they would never have reacted to before. But what exactly sets them off? It may be a TV commercial or a news story in which a person triumphs ... or fails.

There may be substantial therapeutic value for those on androgen deprivation therapy in exploring the idea that their crying is stimulated by genuine compassion—angelic compassion—toward others. The emasculated male’s tears are not necessarily a shameful sign of self-pity and uncontrolled despair.

Angels cry, yet no one diagnoses them as depressed. When we say, “the angels wept,” that surely does not convey an image of self-pity. Angels in liturgical texts often cry; they cry even though they suffer no physical pain. Nor would we suppose that they are distressed by their fate. They cry in response to both the sufferings and successes of humankind.

Passing through Walls

The core story of the Torah is one of a passage and a change of identity, namely from that of entrapped slaves in Egypt to free Israelites in Canaan. For our ancestors to escape Egypt, receive the Torah, and accept the change in their identity, they had to cross barriers—the Red Sea, a wall of water, being the prime example. Forty years in the desert affirms that this transformation was neither fast nor easy.

The liminal status of court eunuchs, who were neither males nor females, neither commoners nor kings, gave them a unique privilege, the privilege of passage through palace walls.

This meant that they could on one hand mingle with the masses, while on the other, be free to enter the inner court (e.g., the Forbidden City in Beijing) and the most important sites of government. They both guarded the portals and were free to pass through them. My daughter called it like it really was: I came out “through the wall,” just as eunuchs of antiquity were uniquely empowered to do.

Eunuchs inhabit a gender space that is partially male, partially female, but not completely either. In gender-segregated cultures, our in-betweenness allows us to be able to transgress both worlds.

The eunuchs of antiquity could pass through literal and social walls and live in the world of both commoner and king. Being neither fully male nor fully female, they could also emotionally function in both gender terrains. In the same way, angels could transgress the borders of Heaven and Earth.

They, too, were liminal beings, neither deities nor mortals, but something in between. Like the eunuchs on Earth, they left no descendants, but were granted access to both the natural and supernatural worlds. Recognizing that angels are modeled after eunuchs helped me understand not just Torah passages, but also what boundaries I traversed when I elected to accept rather than hide or deny my medically prompted emasculation.

I wish more men, androgen-deprived for whatever reason, and who suffer in silent shame, could learn what I learned from studying the angels and eunuchs of antiquity. Sadly, too many of those men closet themselves solely to avoid being seen as less of a man than they used to be. A richer life would be available to them, if they were only willing to see the empowerment in accepting change and coming out of that closet.