I’ve been thinking about eunuchs for a few months. I briefly dated a transgender person who was Italian-American, a witch, and had undergone bottom surgery to remove their dick and get a vulva. They related to the eunuchs in Rome long ago, some witch eunuchs.
content warning: violence
Well, honestly I’ve been thinking of eunuchs off and on since I first heard of them when I was a kid. Always they’ve fascinated me, and they have kind of grossed me out. It’s always bothered me how I learned eunuchs are formed in an act of violence related to power.
If a person is a man but has his balls cut off, or damaged to be non-functional, so he cannot fuck a woman usually, or can’t procreate for sure… Something about trust. You can’t trust any man with balls–yeah, pretty much. Sex, testosterone, dicks? make people do terrible things.
Yes, that matched the experience of my childhood.
questions
As a kid thinking about eunuchs, I wondered…
- Did he choose that?
- How much does that hurt?
- What role does someone have, if their gender is somehow changed due to another’s will?
- Can he pee ok?
- What happens to his soul?
I had heard of castrati, and it made me shiver.
- Were they forever stuck as children?
- How could singing be that important, that someone should lose part of their body?
It was hard to imagine kids giving consent. So again there was something scary about power.
But the adults mentioning this didn’t seem too concerned. They treated it as something strange that happened a long time ago. Sort of like the Trail of Tears, slavery in US, and other wretched acts of violence. Sure it’s disturbing, but we can’t do anything about it now.
lost
The person I briefly dated is lost to me. We never went to bed together, and they are the one who ended things. I was going to write “they are the one who cut things off” which could be accurate also.
Questions I have today are more like…
- Do eunuchs have a place in queer community these days?
- Are there still eunuchs, in some parts of the world?
- How did my childhood thoughts about eunuchs affect my childhood thoughts about transgenderness, queerness, and my own sexuality?
movie
There was a movie I saw as a child that referenced gay sex and made me uncomfortable.
“Why is he doing that?” I asked my dad.
“Because he’s a sicko,” my dad said.
My dad seemed uncomfortable and maybe angry. The movie was Papillon, something about men at sea, prisoners being taken to a remote island…? Maybe I should read a synopsis.
As a child, when my dad said that to me, I wondered what a sicko is. I still don’t know if my dad would have said that about any gay or queer sex. Or if the sex in this movie in particular was wrong. I guess the sex was for money. Maybe he saw all sex work as sick?
Wow–I just read the synopsis. That is not a movie for kids. My dad’s parenting was not the best! That’s the damn truth!
book
Some years ago I loved a man who read some Ursala K LeGuin out loud to me. It was the best thing about our relationship–maybe the only good thing. I cried and cried during The Tombs of Atuan.
Now I’m in the middle of reading the same book with a dear friend and chosen family member. But they started school and lost their free time, so maybe the book isn’t being read any longer. That book features a eunuch who is treated poorly by the main character.
Fat, dough-faced, awkward, potato head. I think of how being a eunuch made that character disabled.
Did the main character hate the eunuch because he had less power than her, and he was easy to take out her frustrations on? He was close to a mom as she got, and it’s easy to hate the people who are most there for us. Mother as villain, mother as punching bag. Can any parent get it right?
altar
Then one night I was hurting about some sexual desire I felt unwantedly. It was 3am; I was crying at my altar and prayed to Mother God to take my sexual desire away because I was getting hurt in a stuck situation.
I begged God to destroy my sex drive, and it made me think of saints and eunuchs. Wow, I don’t have a dick, but I imagined cutting my dick off. Something about that felt wrong. It was a weird moment of pivot as I realized I was praying for the wrong thing.
No, I don’t want my desire or dick removed from me. Just like my senses, desire is there to tell me something. I wouldn’t ask God to take away my sense of hearing, sight, touch, taste, or smell. I need those senses to know what’s going on and to stay safe.
Today I walked into an unfamiliar bathroom that had a strong air freshener by the sink, and I felt ill. Not only might the synthetic fragrance irritate my airways or give me cancer eventually. But it was removing my ability to smell what the room actually smells like. Was it masking the smell of mold, pee, or something else?
truth
I need to feel how I actually feel. I’ll always be grateful to Audre Lorde for how she taught me that our feelings are our paths to truth. Likewise, my sexual desires are there for a reason. I will ride the wave until I wash up on shore, a changed person.
