Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis (20 page)

They all flocked to the feast and Melampus asked each one about the secret cure for Iphiclus’ ailment. The birds did not know, but when they noticed the vulture was not yet in their midst, they went and fetched him. The old vulture arrived and told his story:

One day Phulakos was with the herd, castrating new-born bull-calves with a knife. Iphiclus, then still a child, was with him and had been misbehaving, causing his father to fly into a rage and push the knife against his son’s genitalia. To frighten the boy still further he had thrown the knife up into a tree. It had lodged in the tree and the bark had grown over it. This gave Iphiclus such a terrible shock that ever since he had been impotent and unable to sire children.

The old vulture said that the king’s son could be cured; the knife must be recovered from beneath the bark of the oak, rust must be scraped off it and Iphiclus must drink a glass of wine containing the rust scrapings for a period of ten days.

Melampus found the knife and the magic potion proved effective.

Nine months later Iphiclus’ son was born. He was named Podarkes,

‘swift-foot’, because his father had excelled as a sportsman since childhood. The joyful Melampus took the herd and Bias to meet the bride his brother had longed for so passionately . . .

Freud and castration anxiety

The story of Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and equally unwittingly married his mother, is widely known. This led Sigmund Freud to use Oedipus’ name for a discovery he made in his consulting room concerning the human subconscious. Freud sees the Oedipal phase as commencing when the child is between three and five. He also calls this the phallic phase, a time in which the external sex organs are central to the child’s mental map. At the same time this phase sees the emergence of the superego, the conscience, beginning with the internal-izing of parental authority – for boys mainly the father’s – and is hence also the point at which guilt feelings may arise.

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Two central concepts in Freud’s theory are castration anxiety in boys and girls and penis envy in girls. Castration anxiety leads the boy to defer to his father, while penis envy causes the girl to focus on her father. After a period in which children’s principal attachment is to the mother, the father figure comes more into the picture. In boys this results in an ambivalent feeling towards the father: rivalry and anxiety on the one hand, admiration and protectiveness on the other. The boy would love to give his mother a baby, and resolves this ambivalence by identifying with his father and emulating him, which is how he becomes a man. For a girl it means an intense focus on the father; she would like a penis too and would love to have his baby or give her mother a baby. The young girl experiences these as the same thing. She becomes ambivalent towards the mother: she distances herself somewhat, but is also frightened of losing her mother. The girl resolves this ambiguity by identifying with the mother and emulating her. In Freud’s view this is how the girl becomes a woman.

Castration in China

An ancient Chinese term for eunuch was
huan kuan
: a castrated man employed in the palace. In imperial China there was widespread castration of young boys. The local and provincial nobility imitated the emperor and also kept eunuchs. Many parents sent their sons to the courts in the hope of later benefits. This resulted in the creation of a very special occupation: that of castrator. He removed the whole penis and scrotum, after which the boy’s urine was channelled through a straw.

Following the operation, performed without anaesthetic (!), some boys became incontinent. The castrator kept the penis and testicles, which the eunuch could later redeem at a high price; many eunuchs wished to be buried ‘whole’.

In the late Ming and Qing periods these castrati were notorious for their corruption. Since eunuchs were the only men allowed in the emperor’s private quarters, a young emperor would frequently develop a strong bond of trust with them. In practice they were closely involved with the upbringing of the children at the imperial court. The eunuchs reached the apogee of their power during the Ming dynasty, when they controlled virtually all administrative posts. They not only promulgated laws, but also chose the concubines and even the wife of the emperor.

Palace eunuchs became so rich that they had luxurious palaces built in their native regions. Most of them were from the Beijing area or the Hebei peninsula and a few came from Shandong province or Mongolia.

The conflict between the corrupt eunuch and the virtuous Con-fucian official who resists his tyranny became a commonplace in 100

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Chinese historiography. In his
History of Government
Samuel Finer observes perceptively that the reality was often less black and white.

There were very competent eunuchs, who proved valuable advisors to their emperor, while the resistance of the ‘virtuous’ official was not infrequently the blind resistance of a member of a privileged caste, opposed to all radical change, regardless of whether it was harmful or salutary for the country. But then, in China history books were generally written by officials.

The Ottoman Empire

Like the Chinese emperor the Ottoman sultans kept eunuchs, though these were imported slaves. Since Sharia law forbade mutilation of the human body, they were castrated by non-Muslim traders outside Islamic territory. Recent research by M. W. Aucoin and R. J. Wasserzug has shown that in early-medieval Islamic territory eunuchs were active heterosexually and homosexually, in the latter case in both passive and active roles.

At the end of the sixteenth century the Turks chose eunuchs principally from among white slaves of Slav, German or Hungarian origin.

Later they were supplied mainly by the monastery of Abou Gerbè in Upper Egypt, where Coptic priests castrated dark-skinned Nubian or Abyssinian boys, usually at the age of eight. The operation was a radical one, in which the whole scrotum, the testicles and the penis were removed, and the death rate was high. In his lavishly illustrated book
From Seduction to Mutilation
, my fellow urologist Johan Mattelaer reveals how lucrative the trade in eunuchs was: traders negotiated with African tribal chiefs, who regarded their boys as nothing but merch -

andise. These young slaves were transported via the Nile or the Red Sea, and castration was usually carried out at a staging post, never by Muslims, as was said, but usually by Jews or Christians. The surgery was performed without any precautionary measures. Hot desert sand was the only remedy in the case of bleeding. This valuable merchandise virtually never reached the slave markets, but was sold en route and set to work in the Topkapi palace in Constantinople. There was a distinction between black and white: dark-skinned eunuchs had more successful careers. The young white boys of Christian origin carried out mainly domestic tasks and were not allowed to guard the harems, a task reserved for black eunuchs, preferably with ugly, scarred faces, so that any trace of sexual interest from the residents of the harem would be nipped in the bud. They had to check who entered, accompany the women on their rare outings, and act as intermediaries in contacts with the outside world. The head of the black eunuchs was an important 101

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man, the right hand and confidant of the sultan-mother, and in addition he was allowed to approach the sultan without an intermediary, a privilege granted to only a few. He had to supply new concubines for the harem, pronounced the death sentence and officiated personally at executions.

The political power of the eunuchs was greatest at the end of the sixteenth century, after which their influence declined, and after the political reforms at the end of the nineteenth century their duties were limited to receiving ladies wishing to visit the harem and escorting their mistresses on their visits to the bazaar. In 1909 the harem was closed and the sultan was compelled to release his eunuchs.

India

In the ancient Hindu tradition patients with metastasized prostate cancer were treated by the same method used by many of today’s uro -

logists, namely chemical castration. Nowadays this is done with expensive pills or depot injections, while in the past a cheap, vegetarian diet was used. This was very low in cholesterol, by far the most important raw material used by our bodies for the production of testosterone. Once castrated the patient found it easier to observe complete sexual abstinence, freeing more energy for spiritual ends. Think of the time we would save if we were castrated. In fact research has confirmed that a low-fat diet causes the testosterone level in the blood to drop by approximately 10 per cent, though certainly not to what urologists call

‘castration level’.

India has an estimated million-plus eunuchs. Many have been castrated before puberty, but in many cases they are children born with ambiguous external sexual characteristics, or men whose testicles have not descended. For convenience, transsexuals and transvestites are also lumped together with them. They live partly from alms that they receive for dancing at parties. In 2006 the Indian authorities deliberately employed a group of eunuchs to sing outside the houses of tax-evaders, with the object of embarrassing the offenders so acutely with their singing that they would finally pay up. According to the Indian press the campaign was very successful in the city of Patna in the eastern state of Bihar, where singing eunuchs collected over 7,000 euros.

As long ago as 1887 the British Governor-General promulgated a law forbidding castration, but the eunuchs are still there, not only in India, but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most probably they are of Muslim origin, as indicated, for example, by the fact that they bury rather than cremate their dead. Most eunuchs live communally as
hijra
(meaning ‘the third gender’), sharing their lot with transsexuals and 102

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transvestites. They play a part in certain rituals, or work as artists or healers, besides acting as singers or dancers at festivals marking births and marriages. The words of their songs are usually humorous and with a sexual tinge.

From time immemorial eunuchs have made a pilgrimage to the temple of Bechraji, about 100 km west of Ahmedabad, which houses the goddess Bahuchara-Mata. This goddess is associated with sexual abstinence and genital mutilation. According to legend a king once prayed to the goddess for a son. The son arrived, but when he became a man proved to be impotent. Bahuchara appeared to the man in a dream and asked him to serve her by cutting off his genitalia and donning women’s clothes. The man did as the goddess asked and since then
hijras
have been supposed to hear a call from the gods in their sleep to divest themselves of their external sex organs. Even today there are always eunuchs to be found at a certain spot in the back garden of the temple in Bechraji, but they are not allowed inside. It is still said that when a baby boy is born with underdeveloped genitals he is taken to the temple by his family. The eunuchs receive the child and perform a simple ritual operation, followed by six weeks’ seclusion, after which the child can become an apprentice
hijra
.

Ancient Rome

In Ancient Rome castration was a well-known phenomenon. At a later period, though the Church of Rome was not well disposed towards genitalia, a practice survived until 1913 of feeling between the legs of the candidate elected pope by the conclave of cardinals before he was allowed to mount the throne of St Peter – to make sure he was really a man. Any Catholic also knows that there is a hole in the seat of the Holy Chair. After all, in the past the cardinals had slipped up. In 855

they elected a certain Johanna, and that must not be allowed to happen a second time. Once one of the cardinals had confirmed the candidate’s masculinity
de visu et tacto
(by sight and touch) through the hole in the chair, he pronounced the customary words ‘Testiculos habet et bene pendentes’ (He has testicles and they hang well). The cardinals then sang: ‘Habet ova noster papa!’ (Our pope has balls). Like the pope, candidate monks were closely examined for any abnormalities in those bodily parts, which they would subsequently be forbidden to use . . .

The Ancient Romans distinguished four different types: the true castrati, where both testicles and the penis had been removed, the
spadones
, who had lost only their testicles, the
thlibiae
, whose testicles had been destroyed by crushing and the
thlasiae
in whom only the seminal cords had been severed. Eventually castration took place on 103

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such a large scale that the emperor felt compelled to ban it. It was not doctors, but barbers or bath house attendants who carried out the procedure, and they were paid by slave traders and brothel-keepers, who initially had a monopoly. After the ban certain priests (of Cybele) continued to mutilate themselves – and not only themselves, but also any unfortunate youths who fell into their hands. They were called
galli
, or capons, and were destined to work as prostitutes.

In the Byzantine Empire it was also known that castrated men were less competitive and aggressive than men with testicles, which is why they were appointed as civil servants. One could take them at their word and they did what they were instructed to do, they knew they place and did not constitute a threat to the emperor and his followers.

Daniel and Potiphar

In several places in the Bible there is mention, sometimes in veiled terms, sometimes explicit, of castration and eunuchs. The Talmud is much clearer, for example about Daniel and his friends. In the Christian tradition Daniel is one of the great four: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel and Daniel. In the book of Daniel the story is told of how the king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) conquers Jerusalem and deports the Jews.

In Babel Nebuchadnezzar orders his steward to select a number of strong young men for a three-year period of training as counsellors. In the Bible the head of the household is also called the head of the eunuchs, and in the Talmud it is stated that Daniel and his friends themselves became eunuchs. There is a great divergence of opinion among rabbis on the how and why. There is a story that Daniel and his friends were accused of immoral conduct before Nebuchadnezzar and, in order to defend themselves against this charge, they mutilated ‘certain parts of their bodies’ (meaning their sex organs) in order to prove that the accusations were groundless, so becoming eunuchs at their own instiga -