If we lived in a world where castration & nullification were safe, inexpensive, hassle free and relatively painless I think there'd be much less interest in it on this message board. I think that for some of us the allure of castration-if you can call it that-is the fact that it's so hard to have done.

Atreyu69 (imported) wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2014 5:51 pm If we lived in a world where castration & nullification were safe, inexpensive, hassle free and relatively painless I think there'd be much less interest in it on this message board. I think that for some of us the allure of castration-if you can call it that-is the fact that it's so hard to have done.

I think in some respects that you are alluding to the people who are here for fantasy purposes. That is by far the greatest majority of people on the EA. On the other hand full regular members consistently over time averages about 250 unique people per day. Many of these people are transgendered - a good number male to female, and quite a large number male to eunuch. There has to be a certain amount of fantasy involved (after all what are dreams?), but that does not make the interest any less real. There are those also who are experiencing BIID (Body Integrity Identification Disorder) where one's select body part is not compatible with their being, their sense of self. Castration is a very common BIID among those who experience this. The eunuch surveys could provide much better discussion of numbers and experiences. There also are/have been a number of members who seriously follow this forum and do sincerely seek castration in order to deal with issues like "excess libido" and fear of or response to sexual misconduct. So no, this place is not all about fantasy. The desire is often quite real, but the means are often very difficult to obtain. This place offers the experience of knowing that we are not alone, that this can be accomplished, and the support of others who have been through it all.

Well said kristoff.

There are quite a few (relatively speaking) individuals who have a castration fantasy with no intention of ever giving up their testicles as well as those who are actually seeking as kristoff mentioned.

For me, this forum provided the necessary information to accomplish something I'd thought about for 30 years and seriously wanted for probably ten years but there was just no viable way. Even then I spent almost a year saving the money for the procedure and on the advice of many members here, used that time for a chemical castration trial run and that proved to me that what I'd been seeking was right for me.

Yes, I suspect that a table of EA users, counted by some of the categories that K mentions, real vs wannabe, m2f, m2e, f2m, something2something, BIID, sexual behavior issues, libido control, partner preference...

The numbers may do much to show that those who find themselves such a group are not so unusual as they thought. I have no idea if it is correct, but the it might turn out that there are a surprisingly high number of full members who are surprisingly (to society at large) happy with their condition. Maybe this is a useful start for a wider debate?

A count like this would be sadly unscientific as those who arrive here are a self-selected group and almost certainly bear no predictable relationship to an overall population census. However it might be a start for both academics and those who fear that they are more alone than is actually so?

Maybe good to note the famously great kindness of so many EA folk who showed me soon after I lost both, that not only is castration not the catastrophe that society at large predicts, there are many who actually prefer to live this way. So, EA didn't help me decide to proceed, the urologist did, but EA made the result much easier to adapt to, and eventually prefer. So, I came to recommend the eunuch state to anyone who after due consideration wants it. How different from before!

Should we consider nullification the same way? My instinct is no, because personally, castration was a necessity to be adapted to, and nullification would be a wholly elective choice arrived at between me and my spouse of many years. Logical? Probably not.

Why do I treat a nullification freedom of choice as instinctually different? I find it harder to disentangle the learned societal response from the logically ethical. Maybe with first-hand experience, I would treat them more alike. Perhaps the nullo who maintains HRT is a very different creature from the one who does not, and there are many other factors, orientation, etc that I know little about. I feel we need more wisdom on the topic, perhaps best from those with first-hand knowledge?

Atreyu69 (imported) wrote: Fri Feb 07, 2014 5:51 pm If we lived in a world where castration & nullification were safe, inexpensive, hassle free and relatively painless I think there'd be much less interest in it on this message board. I think that for some of us the allure of castration-if you can call it that-is the fact that it's so hard to have done.

If that world ever happens, I think EA would grow.More people would have a better understanding what BIID is. With the ability to easily receive corrective surgery for BIID more people would seeking information. The topics on the board would change,gone would be the post about how to do it yourself castration,thank God! Once the general public accepts that there is a gender variant population out there and quits discriminating them, more people will come forth wanting treatment.

Like many here if I were living in that world today,I would have had the surgeries to correct my BIID and be living in a body that I'm happy with.

If there were a simple truth in the realm of biology, methinks it would be, "Life is variety."

In 1986, to reduce my risk of dying, far younger than I now am, from cancer, I was able to consult a psychiatrist and a urologist, none of whom were willing to do the cancer risk minimizing surgeries I sought. However, the psychiatrist helped me be sure that my surgical purpose was improving my chances for a decently long and worthwhile life, and the urologist told me how he thought I might get my orchiectomy safely, reasonably inexpensively, and almost painlessly.

Checking physician registration, I find that the urologist died a while ago from old age.

That it was difficult to find a doctor to do the orchiectomy did not inspire me toward fantasy, it led me to explain my cancer risk concern until I found a doctor who understood my cancer risk accurately enough to do something about it.

Getting my colon snatched out was far more difficult; it took my brother being found to be dying with terminal cancer genome risk of the sort I thought he and I might have before anyone was willing to snatch out my colon; that surgery was not all that safe, was not at at all inexpensive, and was flooded with forms of hassles...

It took a few years after my surgeries for the condition I have to be reasonably well recognized and named, "attenuated familial adenomatous polyposis."

I got my surgeries, not to reduce my sexuality, but to increase it. My brother's sexuality stopped when he was 50 years of age; I have been sexual, though not at risk of initiating a pregnancy, for more than a quarter century longer than my brother was.

Not everyone learns enough about biology to be capable of making the choices I made; at the time, those choices were the best guesses I was able to make. In retrospect, I am sometimes astonished at how accurate my guesses turned out to be.

Being alive now, and understanding even better the aspects of theoretical biology that my guesses were based on, I continue to prod the boundary of theoretical biology.

My present work is finding a way to model human biology so accurately that the causation of human violence, such as war, can be understood well enough that human wars and other forms of human destructive violence cease and desist their plaguing humanity.