In various ancient cultures Eunuchs were respected members of society, usually high ranking civil servants and it wasn’t unheard of for people to even volunteer to be castrated as adults in order to advance their position.
Lets imagine an alternate society much like todays world except the power in government is entirely held by a Eunuch Civil servant class. You are 18 and have just passed the rigorous civil service entrance exams (only 1 in a thousand pass). You now have a choice:
sign up for the Eunuch Corps and you get full tuition at one of the most prestigious universities and a guaranteed job for life. You come from a lower middle class family and cannot afford to go to university if you don’t take this offer. In this society, there is no military option to pay for university or other option, if you don’t take the Eunuch Corps, you are pretty much certain of a life of low paid menial jobs of minimum wage, or unemployment.
If you do decide to join up, you have two choices, you can sign up right now at 18 and get a substantial signing bonus, and a month off to go and blow your load before you report for the surgery. Surgery is carried out under general anesthetic and is painless. This is castration we’re talking about, removal of testicles, not a penectemy.
Otherwise you can defer and sign up at any time before age 25, but if you have any children you are disqualified for life.
The other advantage of signing up now at 18 is that you have longer to advance your career and get to a higher position before mandatory retirement at 55. All the highest ranks are filled with people that signed up at 18.
(BTW, sorry women can’t join the civil service in this society, its an unashamedly sexist society run by a heriditrary patriarchal nobility and the eunuch civil service)
Because you think that such a society is unlikely or because some people are voting to be castrated?
I’d like to point out that being castrated does not mean no sex life. You still have a prostrate, and Castratos can still get erections and even have orgasm, they just shoot blanks. The famous Castrato Farellini was renowned for his conquests of many married women. Part of the appeal of course was that he couldn’t get them pregnant.
While I have figuratively castrated myself to keep a job, I’ve never taken it to any literal extreme. I guess never found a position worth that much…effort.
Not a chance. What you’re really asking is whether I’d allow myself to be mutilated to appease the lunatics standing between myself and the advancement of my career, and I’d sooner see the destruction of these bigots and psychos than join them.
Well yes but if you grew up in this society you wouldn’t see it that way. Eunuchs would be respected pillars of society , the diplomatic elite of the world. You can join them, the price is only your sack.
I’d also like to point out that far from being bigots and maniacs the rationale for the eunuchs civil service is entirely rational and scientific from the point of view of the ruling patriarchy. Eunuchs can’t found competing dynasties, they are not driven by loyalty to family but only by devotion to the state. Well that’s the theory of course in practise it’s considerably messier than that. But anyway in this society the current state of affairs has existed for 400 years, your attempts to go against it are futile and doomed to failure, so you only have the choices as layed out in the poll. Overthrowing the ruling order, you may as well spit on the surface of the sun.
You’re missing the point, such societies have genuinely existed in the past. I am trying to “sell” an obviously very repellant idea for most males and interested in what responses I get both positive and negative.
Attempt to pass a test and lose their nads for a high status government job.
Go to college, which only the upper-middle class and above can afford.
Be stuck in a menial, minimum wage job.
Are there no plumbers, machinists, or crane operators? Who builds the expensive cars the senior level eunuchs park in their reserved spaces? Who owns the restaurants and nightclubs that the swinging, well-heeled eunuchs patronize? Do those jobs require a college degree in this world?
It sounds like there’s a middle being excluded, along with all the balls.
Sure you can be a tradesman but in this society they are not paid much above minimum wage and are looked down upon by upper classes. If you want to make a case for that as your decision go for it.
Business ownership however is restricted to the nobility which you unfortunately weren’t born into.
It’s a POLL, people. All everybody is doing here is fighting the hypothetical.
Such societies did exist, and not only anciently. This was a practice in imperial China, was it not? right up until the communist revolution.
I read an article some years ago, about the demise of the practice in China. There were still a lot of eunuchs living. The Communist government basically put them out of business, but gave them a reasonably decent and respected retirement.
It’s not at all uncommon for people to measure success by the family they are able to raise, friend. Pretty hard for a fellow to father children without testes.
Thats a fair point, and my goal in posting this is to challenge ideas of masculinity and success and see what answers I get. I have my own suspicions about what the final percentage of yes / no will be and I am very interested to see if they turn out to be true or not.