Manhood

by Driel, Mels van.

  t e s to s t e ro n e a n d s p e r m doctors, lawyers or managers. The more testosterone, the greater the competitive urge? Who can say? In De Pikorde (The Pecking Order, 2006) Marleen Finoulst and Dirk Vanderschueren report that years ago a British gynaecologist had prescribed testosterone to five of the then 118 female mps, in the hope that this would help them compete better with their male colleagues on committees and in parliamentary debates.

  The female politicians gave this idea short shrift and protested that they had no need of testosterone!

  In the menopause, when activity in the ovaries slowly fades, the production of testosterone also declines. Yet after the change women often have to deal with unwanted hair growth, for example on the upper lip and around the chin, while the hair on their head tends to thin. That is mainly because the liver produces less transport proteins, so releasing more free testosterone. The free form is the ‘active’ one, so that despite the falling hormone production the relative quantity of active testosterone in creases. This is why unwanted masculinizing features occur.

  In the United States menopausal women are regularly prescribed testosterone. Over 30 per cent of older American women take hormone pills and in half of these cases the pills contain testosterone. In many other countries that is still highly unusual. A drop in normal testosterone levels may, as has been said, be the result of the menopause, but also, for instance, of the removal of both ovaries and chemotherapy. In such cases women may suffer acute listlessness, a reduction in muscle power, loss of pubic hair, loss of sexual appetite and may find it difficult or impossible to achieve orgasm. Giving testosterone supplements only makes sense if there really is a deficiency. Similarly, menopausal problems like vaginal dryness and hot flushes are not treated with testosterone; oestrogens are used for this purpose. The same phenomenon is found in those taking the contraceptive pill: taking extra female hormones leads to a decrease in testosterone production.

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  chapter five

  Castration

  Today, when most people hear the word ‘eunuch’, their first associations are with weakness, sexual impotence, inadequacy as a man, etc.

  That has definitely not been the case throughout history. To judge by the alarmed reaction to the very word, you’d never think that castration was once a popular practice. But it was: for centuries men had themselves voluntarily castrated, for a whole variety of motives. The eunuch, originally imported as a slave, gradually transcended his image of bondage. Eunuchs were considered to be very loyal: after all, they had had no other family than their master, they had been abducted from parents and homeland and could not father any descendants of their own. In general eunuchs proved extremely faithful and devoted, but there were many potential rewards for their servitude. Eunuchs worked as opera singers, choristers, generals, theologians, philosophers, chamberlains, prophets, harem guards, tutors to imperial children, tax inspectors – the list is endless. In this way they served imperial families, the aristocracy and religious institutions and were certainly neither puny nor pathetic.

  Archaeologists believe that the castration of animals began in around 4500–4000 bc. Animal husbandry, which had begun with sheep, pigs and goats, was extended to cattle. Bulls were not only an important source of meat, but also provided muscle power for pulling ploughs and carts. The only problem was that bulls could not be kept together. The magic solution turned out to be castration, and the ox was born. Increased manageability was a motive for the castration of many domesticated animals. Castration of tomcats prevented them from spraying urine all over the house and also had a calming effect on their behaviour.

  No so long ago, in order to help dogs deal better with the psychological effects of their castration, an American company (cti Corpo-96

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  ration, Bruckner, Missouri), brought out a product called Neuticles: testes prosthetics for dogs. The manufacturer stressed that with this product a dog would look just the same after the operation as before, while the animal would feel the same and wouldn’t really know that it had been castrated. Bumper stickers carrying the slogan ‘I love Neuticles’ were printed for the cars of proud dog-owners! In the case of a number of domesticated species of animal special names were devised for castrated individuals: a stallion or a male donkey became a gelding, a boar (male pig) a barrow, a ram a wether and a cock a capon. As has been said, primitive man soon realized that castration of his animals could prove beneficial. It made animals easier to fatten and easier to handle. Castrated animals usually abandoned their normal behaviour: geldings proved more suitable for riding and driving, capon meat was more plentiful and juicier, and schnitzels made from barrows were tastier. Over the centuries oxen were used less and less as draught animals, but because oxen store more fat in their muscle tissue, castration remained in vogue, since once slaughtered they provided better beef.

  Nowadays male piglets are castrated when they are two weeks old.

  Before then the piglets are too young to survive the procedure, and if one waits too long, only a vet can carry out the castration. The set of forceps used for the castration is called an emasculator. With calves and lambs the seminal cords may be severed using a so-called burdizzo up to the age of two months – all without anaesthetic.

  The term castration is probably derived from the Latin castor, beaver, since the latter is said to bite off its own testicles when in danger.

  It was as if beavers were surrendering their castoreum, and so saving their lives. By the middle of the nineteenth century the beaver had been all but wiped out in Europe because of the castoreum secreted by their anal glands, which commanded extraordinarily high prices. It was used to treat not only impotence, but toothache and heart problems, and it was also smeared on beehives to increase the honey yield.

  Gary Taylor has written an amusing history of castration ( Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood), based on religion, biology, anthropology, etc. One can forgive Taylor for becoming slightly ponderous when he tries to situate castration theoretically, but having read his book, one thinks: all things considered, the balls on the Christmas tree are the ultimate symbol of the international annexation of pagan ideas by Christians.

  The human fear of castration is very deep-seated, more so than most people think. In Greek mythology it is referred to a number of times, for example in the story of Uranus and Melampus. The noble parts of Uranus, having been thrown into the sea, brought forth Venus, and 97

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  Melampus was later involved in curing a prince (Iphiclus) who suffered from impotence and was unable to father children – an affliction also caused by castration anxiety.

  The myth of Melampus and Iphiclus

  Melampus means ‘black-foot’. His feet were black because although his mother had placed him in the shade shortly after his birth, she had carelessly left his feet exposed to the sunlight. From an early age Melampus was fond of all animals. In front of his father’s house was a large oak and a hollow at its base was home to two snakes. The creatures were quite harmless and Melampus was fascinated by them, espe cially when he noticed that there were young on the way. These had no sooner been born than his father’s servant beat the two adult snakes to death. The grief-stricken Melampus burned the dead snakes and carefully reared their orphaned brood. One day, when they were fully grown, the snakes slid to his bedside and licked his ears with their tongues. The startled Melampus sat bolt upright . . . and immediately could hear what birds flying overhead were saying to each other. From then on he could foretell the future, since the birds told him everything that was about to happen. On the banks of the River Alpheus he met the god Apollo and became an accomplished seer.

  As luck would have it, Melampus’ brother Bias had set his sights on the delectable Pero, but her father refused to give her in marriage to anyone but the man who could bring him Phulakos’ herd of cattle. The problem was that the herd was guarded by a dog too fierce to be approached by man or beast. At his wit�
�s end, Bias asked his omniscient brother for help. Melampus agreed to try. He foresaw that he would be caught in the act and put in prison, but would return with the herd.

  Things turned out just as he had predicted, and a married couple were appointed as his jailers. The husband treated him with great kind-ness, while the wife behaved viciously towards the shackled prisoner.

  Then something very odd happened! Up in the wooden roof Melampus heard woodworm talking to each other. From their conversation he gathered that they had very nearly eaten their way through the main roof beam. Melampus hurriedly called his guards, claiming that he felt ill and preferred not to remain in the low-ceilinged room. They lifted his bed, with the husband at the head and the wife at the foot. As they were carrying him outside the woman was struck a fatal blow by the falling beam.

  Of course the husband reported the incident to Phulakos, the owner of the herd. Phulakos went to see the prisoner with his son Iphiclus and asked Melampus who he really was. When Melampus 98

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  replied that he was a seer, he was immediately released from his shackles and invited to the royal citadel. The king asked Melampus to cure his son, who was unable to sire children. Melampus agreed, on condition that if he proved successful he would be rewarded with the herd.

  The seer then sacrificed a bull, cut the meat into small pieces and invited all the birds except for the reclusive vulture to come and eat.

  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