On an episode of Night Court I recently watched, Dan is threatened with “soprano city” - i.e., castration - if he’s been fooling around with a rich man’s daughter. (and immediately thereafter, the man’s bodyguard squeaks, “He means it!”) I’ve heard the threat in other contexts as well.
Would castration actually have such an effect on an adult male? Isn’t the lowness a man’s voice a result of the growth of his larynx during puberty? Will the larynx constrict if the flow of testosterone in the body disappears? Or is the threat merely poetic license?
I’m not a doctor, nor an endocrinologist. In my opinion, adult removal of the testicles would not cause the voice to go soprano.
On the technical side, testosterone is also made by the adrenal glands, and another place or two that I can’t remember. That’s how women have some testosterone.
Anecdotally, listen to Lance Armstrong. He had testicular cancer, so it’s safe to assume his are gone. I met a Viet Vet who lost his testes to a mine, and his voice is not high-pitched.
By the way, the loss of one testicle does not have a significant effect on masculinity. I know a man who had an undescended testicle surgically removed when he was a boy. His voice is deep, and he has two children that look like him.
Post-op male to female transexuals do not find their voices changing, despite the lack of testicles and the female hormones that they take. Instead, they train their voices and there are surgeries to alter the voice further.
If removing the testicles changed the voice, then having sex reassignment surgery would take care of that issue. It doesn’t. Whatever changes have been made to the larynx to cause a masculine voice took place during puberty and aren’t ongoing.
Dang. Missed the edit window while looking for links.
This is a first person account of the effects of castration in an adult.
This is a FAQ on what female hormones do to an XY individual:
So not even castration and female hormones will change the voice. Once it’s been altered by puberty, that’s it. Only through vocal training (and surgeries on the larynx which are still somewhat questionable) will it be “soprano.”
In Lance Armstrong’s case, this may be true, since his cancer had spread before treatment. But if it’s found early, you can usually get away with just removing one, leaving you to run on your spare. So far as I know, it’s the only human organ that’s completely redundant: A single testicle can do everything that two can, and just as well.
Don’t people get by fine with just one kidney, or are there some issues with it that I haven’t heard about? It seems like they make it sound like it’s not such a big deal to give one up when someone needs a donor.