Heabani the Eunuch: A Tale of Revenge in Old Sumer

There lived in the mighty pyramidal temple of the goddess Inanna, the Queen of Heaven, a chief
among the eunuch-priests. His name was Heabani. The folk of Sumer called the eunuchs
Neither-men-nor-women; and the gods had ordained the existence of their caste in primordial
times. Heabani, as was natural and fitting for a eunuch-priest, was very humble. For this reason,
his prayers to the goddess on behalf of her supplicants were always efficacious. Newlyweds and
pregnant women sought him out because they knew that his prayers would ensure that their
offspring were viable. Heabanis fame as a petitioner of the goddess was such that even as
exalted a person as Naram-Sin, the king of the city of Uruk, relied on his prayers to obtain divine
assurance of the fertility of his demesnes fields.
It so happened that Heabani had two small boys in his charge. He was raising them to be
eunuch-priests like himself. At the age of ten they would undergo castration: this was the
initiation into the caste of the Neither-men-nor-women. Thereafter they would experience no
blossoming of desire as other young men do. They would become devotees of the goddess.
Such was the way of the eunuchs. Heabani loved the two children above all other things. Their
whimsy and innocence gave him great joy; he doted on them, indulging them as any parent
would. This would prove to be a grave mistake.
At that time Naram-Sin, who was, as we have mentioned, also devoted to the goddess,
maintained private chambers within the confines of the temple. It was his habit to seek a refuge
there whenever his royal duties became tedious. In his chambers Naram-Sin had two large
drums which he was fond of beating. His royal artisans had fashioned the heads of the drums
from the skin of the king of the Mound-dwellers. The Mound-dwellers was the name which the
folk of Sumer used to refer to the original inhabitants of their land. Naram-Sin had slain the king
with his own hand, before driving the remainder of the Mound-dwellers into the southern
marshes. The king of the Mound-dwellers had been not only a lord of his people but a mighty
sorcerer as well. For this reason, even after his death his magical virtue continued to inhabit the
skin used to make the drum heads.
The sound of the king beating his drums was such that the men who tended the fields near the
temple could hear it clearly; the sheep which the shepherds tended in the hills pricked up their
ears when the sound of the drums reached them; and the ruckus even affrighted the fish in the
canals, so that they scattered when the reverberations of the drums touched the surface of the
waters. But what was most wondrous was that Naram-Sins skill in beating the drums was such
that he could even reveal his thoughts with them to the temple priests who waited on him.
One day, after Naram-Sin had reluctantly returned to his palace in Uruk to attend to affairs of
state, Heabanis two charges decided to enter the kings chambers within the temple. They had
often heard Naram-Sin playing the drums; the music he made entranced them. They wished to

play the drums themselves, and to make the mighty sounds that they had heard the king making.
They reasoned that since Heabani never punished them for any reason, they would incur no
wrath if they entered the kings chambers unlawfully and did that which was forbidden to do
with his drums. Nevertheless, they carefully chose a time to enter the kings apartments. This
was when Heabani had gone to the royal palace in Ur to attend the wedding ceremony of the
viziers eldest daughter. After the two boys had surreptitiously entered the kings chambers, they
commenced to beat the drums as they desired so strongly to do. But when they beat the drums,
they could not produce the magnificent sound that Naram-Sin was capable of producing. This
was because the virtue of the king of the Mound-dwellers, which still resided in the skin of the
drum heads, was sensitive to the fact that those beating the drums were doing so unlawfully.
Thus the drum heads could not respond to the blows that the two boys made. Only a discordant
din came forth. The two boys beat the drums harder and harder in an attempt to imitate NaramSin. But it was no use. At last, they beat the drums so hard that the drum heads cracked.
Discouraged, they returned to their own chambers.
The other priests of the temple were horrified to hear the sound of the drums. They knew that
Naram-Sin was not within his chambers on that day. They could tell by the strange sound that it
was not Naram-Sin who was beating the drums. The eunuchs sent a messenger to the king to
inform him of what had happened. Upon receiving the news, Naram-Sin came immediately to
the temple with his retinue. When he saw the two broken drums, he roared like a lion as it goes
out in search of its prey. Naram-Sin seized the two young miscreants and dragged them to the
altar of the goddess. He slit their throats, allowing the blood to spill all over the altar. In this
way there was an expiation of their crime.
That evening, Heabani returned. The other eunuchs apprised him of what had taken place that
day. When Heabani heard how Naram-Sin had slain his two charges, his grief was greater than
that of any parent who has lost a child. In the bitterness of his heart he vowed revenge. Thus,
the simple and gentle eunuch-priest, accustomed only to prayer and the contemplation of the
empyreal intelligences, became for the first time in his life preoccupied with an act of violence.
But, he said to himself, how am I, a simple eunuch, one who is of no account, to prevail against a
foe as mighty as the king of Uruk? Heabani knew that if he went before Naram-Sin to request
compensation for his loss, the rage of the king would be such that he would strip the poor eunuch
of his office. He would order his soldiers to remove the lowly querents saffron robe the
garment which marked Heabani and all of the eunuchs as the Neither-men-nor-women and
cast him out into the city streets. Once this had happened, Heabani well knew, it would not be
long before the folk of Uruk had gathered together to stone him to death. For Father An, the
King of Heaven, when he had fashioned the ordinances of the world, decreed that as long as the
eunuchs dwelt among the holy fanes of the gods, they could expect to receive divine protection.
But woe unto those who sought to do otherwise: for then both gods and men would reckon them

as unnatural prodigies, lower than the offal that gathered in the fishmongers district, fit only to
be put to death.
Heabani went one-by-one to all of the prophets who lived in the precincts of the Temple of
Inanna. He asked them to call upon the gods to assist him in obtaining justice against the king.
Why do you not seek the help of Mother Inanna? they asked. You are her especial favorite.
Heabani replied, Inanna is a gentle goddess, and the nurse of all mankind. She will not hearken
to prayers for revenge and requital. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, life for a life that is not
her law. That is why I ask your help. Can you not pray to Ninurta or Father Enlil, gods who are
accustomed to warfare, whose wont it is to assist the soldier in times of battle? Or can you not
offer oblations to Father An, he who fashioned the decrees which cannot be altered, he who
weighs the scales of justice?
We shall try to help you, said all of those prophets, priests and prognosticators whom Heabani
approached. But none of their prayers, offerings or oblations had the slightest effect. Naram-Sin
continued to live, and Heabani continued to lack a means of destroying him. Having found no
prophet or priest who could assist him, Heabani despaired and wept. He no longer cared if he
lived. He walked among the canals: when the keepers of the sluices opened the gates and let the
waters flood into the canal-beds, Heabani thought to throw himself into the waters to drown.
He was on the verge of doing so when he saw a barge coming down the main waterway which
fed into the temple precincts. By its large size he could see that it was no ordinary barge such as
the rangers who tended the canals used. It shone, moreover, like gold in the setting sun: for it
was, as Heabani perceived as it drew near, plated with that most precious of metals. In the barge
stood a woman of regal posture and bearing. She was quite evidently an important personage of
some sort, to judge by her jeweled tiara and robe of peacock and ostrich feathers. No retinue was
with her, but the barge was being rowed by six Ethiopian slaves.
The woman spoke to Heabani. Heabani, why have you not sought me out directly? Why do
you seek help from others, when you know that I am always with you?
And by these words Heabani knew that the lady before him was the goddess Inanna. Looking
up, he gazed upon her. He was awestruck. The gods did not often descend to converse directly
with men, as they had been accustomed to do in primordial times. The humble eunuch fell on his
face and worshipped the goddess.
Inanna spoke again: Gentle Heabani, most devoted of my servants, you have divined correctly.
I am a merciful mistress, from whom the virtue of retribution does not issue forth directly.
Therefore you must heed what I am about to tell you. If you wish to obtain justice against one as

powerful as Naram-Sin the king of Uruk, you must seek the assistance of Apsu, the Dark Lord,
the one who dwells in the waters beneath the Earth.
Heabani quailed at the sound of the name of Apsu. The gods of heaven had subdued Apsu at the
beginning of time, and the folk of Sumer regarded him as a fearsome Lord of the Dead, whom
they mentioned only obliquely in their prayers.
Inanna continued. You shall seek Lord Apsu, the great serpent of the depths, in his temple.
This lies by the Sea of Dilmun to the south, where a remnant of the Mound-dwellers still lives.
Take with you a swine to sacrifice to him. It must be one of the unclean kind that bears a crest of
black bristles. It must be offered to him while it is still alive. That is the favorite offering of the
Lord Apsu: but whether he accepts you as a suppliant I can make no guarantee. Nevertheless, his
assistance is your only hope in this matter.
Heabani heard these words and took them to heart. He fell to the ground once more and
worshipped her. When he ceased to pray he looked up again: but she was now gone, or was her
barge in sight any longer.
Heabani commanded a slave to go into the wilderness and capture a swine of the kind that bears
a crest of black bristles. After the slave had done this, the two journeyed by oxen-cart to the
marshes which lay to the south of the demesne of Uruk. After they came to the border of the
marshes, the slave returned with the oxen-cart. Heabani carried the swine on his shoulders to the
gates of the city of the Mound-dwellers. It was no mighty city like Uruk. There were no
ramparts on which the soldiers could stand guard like proud birds keeping watch over their
nestlings; there were no palaces in which the lords of the people could live in splendor, like the
very children of the gods that they were. There were only earthen hovels, filthy and low-lying,
in which the people made their habitations, like dogs. There were no temples like the one in
which Heabani rendered his services to the lady Inanna, whose high towers acted as guides to the
pilgrims who came from afar. There was only a mound of raised earth, upon which stood a
blood-stained altar of stone.
When the Mound-dwellers saw the eunuch coming with a swine slung over his shoulders, they
came out of their hovels and mocked him.
What is the eunuch doing away from his sanctuary? they cried. Has the mother bird cast the
sickly chick from the nest, lest he infect his fellow offspring?
Heabani paid them no heed. He brought the swine to the altar and prepared to sacrifice it. The
king of the Mound-dwellers then came forth.

Your sacrifice is useless here, he said. Go down to the caves by the waters. It is there that the
Lord Apsu will sometimes appear. It is there that you can offer your sacrifice directly to him.
Heabani did as the king commanded. He took the swine to the caves which were by the waters
of the Sea of Dilmun. He entered the caves by way of the cliffs. The caves extended all the way
to the edge of the sea. Standing before the mouths of the caves which looked out upon the sea,
were the sentinels of the god: two great dragons or reptiles, such as can be found in other fables
of old Sumer. These dragons acted as mighty warriors in defense of their lord. They were the
caretakers of his grottos in his absence.
Heabani laid down the swine and said: May this be a sacrifice to your lord Apsu.
The reptiles hissed: That cannot be, human one. The Lord of the Abyss does not care for the
sacrifices of the folk of Sumer. Because they oppress his favorite ones, the Mound-dwellers, he
despises them. Only death awaits you here. If the Lord Apsu finds you here, he will surely eat
you along with your sacrifice.
With tears in his eyes, Heabani replied: Death it may be, or it may be life. I only want revenge
for my little ones. I no longer have any care for myself.
The eunuch then related to them the entire tale of the travails which had resulted in his coming to
that place. The two dragons, who were as old as the Earth itself, and accordingly very wise, took
pity on Heabani.
They said: Hide yourself and the swine beneath the pile of date-palm husks from which we have
been eating. When the Lord Apsu comes forth from the Sea of Dilmun, his aspect will be
terrifying: but presently he will assume a human guise. When he does so, emerge from your
hiding place and address him using flattering words. Perhaps he will then feel compassion for
you and be willing to be champion for your cause.
The two sentinels told Heabani to watch for the coming of eight great waves as they rolled in
from the sea. The god would come in with the eighth and final wave.
Presently the surf began to roll in and break against the cliffs. Heabani, who had hidden himself
beneath the date-palm husks, counted the waves. When the eighth wave, which was the biggest,
rolled in, the Lord of the Abyss appeared at last. His aspect was truly terrifying, just as the
sentinels had promised. Like a coiling monster of the depths did he appear. His scales rattled
like the armor of the warriors of Uruk marching into battle, and the sound that issued from his
throat was like the hissing of the serpent as it prepares to strike.
Like a huge bull he lifted his horns, like a raging serpent he slithered his head from side to
side!

So speak the poets concerning the Lord of the Abyss.

Heabani wanted to close his eyes from terror. But when he saw the Lord Apsu exchange his seagoing form for that of a comely and well-proportioned man, albeit one of gigantic stature, the
eunuchs terror abated. But before he could come forth from his hiding place, as was the plan, he
heard the god exclaim in anger:
I smell a human one in the cave with us.
The sentinels replied: Not so: for no one has entered while we stood guard.
No, you are wrong, countered the god. I truly smell a human one.
The Lord Apsu brushed away the pile of date-palm husks with one sweep of his mighty hand.
He picked Heabani up and placed him in his mouth. The little eunuchs shoulders were already
inside the gods cavernous maw when he spoke up:
Mighty Apsu, Lord of the Abyss: first hear my tale. Then you can eat me.
Apsu said, It is well that you spoke quickly. Otherwise I would have eaten you.
So Heabani told him of the crime that Naram-Sin had perpetrated on him and his little ones, and
how it had driven him to seek the aid of the god who rules the waters beneath the Earth. Upon
hearing such a sorrowful narrative, tears of pity well up in the eyes of him whose eyes were
unused to tears, and compassion filled the heart which was unaccustomed to share the emotions
of men.
Having been moved to mercy, Apsu accepted the offering of the swine, which he swallowed in a
single gulp. He said:
Little eunuch, your purpose in coming here is a holy one. I shall become your protector and
guardian: I shall vindicate you by sorely punishing the proud Naram-Sin, king of Uruk.
Then the god told Heabani what he was to do. He was to return to the demesne of Uruk. He
would live in the wilderness outside of the city in complete solitude. An earthen mound would
he build, away from the eyes of others; and around the mound he would erect a wall of clay. At
each of the cardinal points in the wall he was to inscribe the cruciform sign of the Lord Apsu.
By this, should any other human one come upon Heabanis structure, he would know that the
ground was consecrated and entry forbidden. Then Heabani was to collect four hundred swine of
the kind that bears a crest of black bristles; four hundred dogs of the sort that the folk of Sumer
regard as unclean; and four hundred of the geese that bear the three red stripes on their breasts.
These are the animals that are sacred to the god Apsu.

But Lord, said Heabani, how am I to assemble such a number of these animals? The fortress
which I am to build must necessarily be enormous to accommodate all of them. And besides, the
disposition of each of these animals is very fierce. How can I, a temple eunuch, a Neither-mannor-woman, one who has no knowledge of warfare or of the hunt as to ordinary men, hope to
capture such large populations of such baleful creatures without assistance?
The god replied, Assistance you will not require. When the animals see you, they will
recognize you as one who has come from me. Then they will follow wherever you lead. As for
the fortress which you are to build, if you ensure that its dimensions are sixty by sixty rods, it
will be of sufficient size to accommodate all of the animals that enter it. As soon as you have
gathered all of the animals together into one place, you will collect bristles from the swine, hair
from the dogs, and feathers from the birds. Of the bristles you will weave a royal torque, which
you shall place around your neck; of the hairs you shall weave a net such as kings wear which
you shall put on your head to contain your hair; and from the feathers you shall fashion a royal
crown, which you shall place on your head. Then you shall remove all of these objects and
throw them in the fire, saying:
As the signs of the royal house are plucked away and thrown into the fire
So may retaliation, the pain of my hardship, the sickness in my body
Be entirely consumed!
Once you have completed this incantation, you are to await my manifestation with patience and
hope: I shall not be long. And it will be a strange coming indeed: but the signs of it shall be
clear to you.
Remember: you the most blessed among mortals, inasmuch as you are the only one of the folk
of Sumer who has ever stood before the countenance of the Lord Apsu and lived.
And with a great hissing, the god resumed his former shape and slid back into the depths whence
he had come.
As Heabani went back past the city of the Mound-dwellers, the folk stood by silently. They did
not mock him as before.
The eunuch-priest called out, Where are your taunts and insults now, dog-faces? Whom did
your god prefer?
Upon returning to the demesne of Uruk, Heabani began to dwell in the wilderness, away from
the eyes of men. He raised a mound of earth and surrounded it with a wall of clay. At the four
cardinal points on the wall he inscribed the cruciform insignia of the god, thereby consecrating

all that was within. He then went out into the forest: when the swine saw him, they followed him
back into the redoubt, until there were four hundred of them. Heabani then went out to the
rubbish mounds outside the city, where the dogs dwelt: and the dogs followed him back into the
redoubt, until there were four hundred of them. He then went out into the marshes, where the
geese lived among the reeds: and the birds left their nests to follow him into the redoubt, until
there were four hundred of them all in all.
Heabani gathered the bristles from the swine and wove a royal torque. From the dogs he
gathered their hairs, which he wove into a net. He plucked the feathers from the geese, from
which he wove a royal crown. He placed the torque around his neck, he gathered his long and
unruly hair into the net, and he placed the crown on his head. Then he cast them into the fire
which he used to cook his food, saying:
As the signs of the royal house are plucked away and thrown into the fire
So may retaliation, the pain of my hardship, the sickness in my body
Be entirely consumed!
Thereafter Heabani sat down. Patiently he waited, living only on onions and water. It would be
many weeks, even months, before the god at last came.
One day, Naram-Sin was making his way from the city of Uruk to the temple of Inanna. His
countenance was sorrowful, as it had been ever since he had discovered that the two little boys
had destroyed his drums. A great retinue of soldiers accompanied him: they intended to spend
three days at the temple making sacrifices. At that time, a black cloud appeared in the heavens.
Lord Naram-Sin, said one of the soldiers. I believe that the cloud appearing above is an evil
omen. We should return to Uruk now. At a more propitious time in the future we should make
our sacrifices.
But Naram-Sin scoffed at this. It is only an ordinary storm-cloud, bringing rain to fertilize the
ground.
From his vantage point in the wilderness, Heabani also saw the black cloud gathering in the
heavens. He watched it spread over the entire land, until it had cast its shadow over the entire
realm of Uruk. By this Heabani knew that the manifestation of the god was at hand.
A storm then broke out. It was of a ferocity that the folk of Sumer had never before known. The
winds howled in a furious gale; bolts of lightning came down like the javelins of warring armies.
The rain fell in scalding torrents; the waters rose from the Earth.

The soldiers of the king cried out, Lord Naram-Sin, we must turn back before it is too late! The
gods will never accept our sacrifices!
But Naram-Sin was resolute. Even in the face of the storm, he continued to scoff. He
commanded his retinue to continue with him to the temple of Inanna.
Presently the canals overflowed, breaking the dikes and flooding the roads. Naram-Sin and his
retinue could neither continue on, nor turn back to Uruk. The rushing torrents had risen all the
way up to their thighs.
It was then that Naram-Sin cried out, Am I, the darling of the gods, the king of the realm of
Uruk, mightiest in all of Sumer, now accursed? Never before has any in heaven or on earth
gainsaid me, never before have gods or men checked my course! What new and unforeseen
circumstance has turned the favor of the heavens away from me?
Then the hosts of the Lord Apsu came up from the depths, the ahhazu demons, the seven terrible
spirits of serpent-form, of whom the poets have said:
Raging storms, evil gods are they
Compassion and mercy they do not know.
Prayer and supplication they do not hear.
The seven spirits assailed Naram-Sin and his host. They could not flee, for the raging flood
waters impeded them. When the valiant king raised his sword against the serpents, his blade
merely glanced off of the scales that covered the dreadful beasts. One by one the men felt the
serpents coils pulling them beneath the waters. They cried out to the gods for aid, but no aid
was forthcoming: there could be no alteration to the doom of the Lord Apsu. The crashing of the
lightning and thunder of the unrelenting storm covered all of their cries.
At last, they ceased to struggle. The waters closed over Naram-Sins proud head. His mighty
form became food for the seven divine serpents.
Once the slaughter was concluded, the storm subsided. The waters receded to the canals. The
roads once more lay open. Peasant and city-dweller alike emerged from their hiding places like
frightened gazelles who, having sought refuge from the hunter, now believe that the way is clear.
Heabani remained in his redoubt. By the miraculous power of the god, the storm had touched
neither him nor the animals that he kept with him. Weeping tears of gratitude, for knew that the
destruction of Naram-Sin had occurred, he said his prayers of thanks to the Lord of the Abyss.

He released the animals to return whence they had come, so that they could propagate their kind
once more. To this day, whenever any of the folk of Sumer see one of these creatures, they make
a short prayer to avert the wrath of the god who dwells in the waters beneath the earth.
Heabani returned to the temple of Inanna. But it was not his destiny to live much longer.
However much the destruction of Naram-Sin had appeased him, the pain in his heart was such
that it refused to heal from the wound that the death of his little ones had inflicted. No longer did
he visit the fanes of his heavenly mother Inanna; the people of the land ceased to be able to find
him, that he might offer prayers to the goddess on their behalf. Thus broken-hearted, Heabani
the little eunuch-priest died.
[Darius M. Klein is counselor and translator living in Seattle, Washington. He has translated
The Incantations of Circe by Giordano Bruno and Jocus Severus (The Serious Joke) by
Michael Maier from Latin into English for Ouroboros Press, a Seattle-area publisher of
Hermetic and esoteric texts. Additionally, he maintains a website of his own translations of
obscure and otherwise untranslated Latin texts. He has a background in Classical
languages and is currently in the process of obtaining an M.A. in Arabic Language and
Literature at the University of Washington.]

The Female Eunuch

The Female Eunuch is a 1970 book by Germaine Greer that became an international bestseller
and an important text in the feminist movement. Greer's thesis is that the "traditional" suburban,
consumerist, nuclear family represses women sexually, and that this devitalises them, rendering
them eunuchs. The book was published in London in October 1970. By March 1971, it had
nearly sold out its second printing. It has been translated into eleven languages.[1]
A sequel to The Female Eunuch, entitled The Whole Woman, was published in 1999.[2]

Synopsis and themes

The book is a feminist analysis, written with a mixture of polemic and scholarly research. It was
a key text of the feminist movement in the 1970s, broadly discussed and criticised by other
feminists and the wider community, particularly through the author's high profile in the broadcast
media. In sections titled "Body", "Soul", "Love" and "Hate" Greer examines historical
definitions of women's perception of self and uses a premise of imposed limitations to critique
modern consumer societies, female "normality", and masculine shaping of stereotypes quoting,
"The World has lost its soul, and I my sex."[3] In contrast to earlier feminist works, Greer uses
humour, boldness, and coarse language to present a direct and candid description of female
sexuality; much of this subject having remained undiscussed in English-speaking societies.
Greer's irreverence towards Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis was inspired by Simone de
Beauvoir's The Second Sex.[4] The work bridged academia and the contemporary arts in
presenting the targets of the final section of the book, Revolution; it is in accord, and often
associated with, a creative and revolutionary movement of the period.
Greer argues that men hate women, though the latter do not realise this and are taught to hate
themselves.[5]
"The title is an indication of the problem," Greer told The New York Times. "Women have
somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality.
They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in
order to serve their master's ulterior motivesto be fattened or made docilewomen have been
cut off from their capacity for action. It's a process that sacrifices vigor for delicacy and
succulence, and one that's got to be changed."[6]
Greer argues that change had to come about via revolution, not evolution. Women should get to
know and come to accept their own bodies, taste their own menstrual blood, and give up celibacy
and monogamy. Yet they should not burn their bras. "Bras are a ludicrous invention," she wrote,
"but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression."[7]
In a foreword added to the 21st anniversary edition, Greer references the loss of women's
freedom with the "sudden death of communism" (1989) as catapult for women the world over for

a sudden transition into consumer Western society wherein there is little to no protection for
mothers and the disabled; here, there is no freedom to speak:
The freedom I pleaded for twenty years ago was freedom to be a person, with dignity, integrity,
nobility, passion, pride that constitute personhood. Freedom to run, shout, talk loudly and sit with
your knees apart. Freedom to know and love the earth and all that swims, lies, and crawls upon
it...most of the women in the world are still afraid, still hungry, still mute and loaded by religion
with all kinds of fetters, masked, muzzled, mutilated and beaten.[8]

Critical reception
In January 1972 The Age's reviewer Thelma Forshaw described The Female Eunuch as "the
orchestrated over-the-back-fence grizzle ... based on the curious fancy ... we were all men, and
then some fiend castrated half of us and gave us a ghastly internal bookie's bag called a womb".[9]
The newspaper declared that the review "has stirred up a considerable controversy".[10] According
to Keith Dunstan in the book, The Best Australian Profiles (2004), "[t]he reviews of [the book]
were extremely mixed. The most famous was by [Forshaw] of The Age".[9] Dunstan contrasted
this with a positive review by Sylvia Lawson of The Australian, "[it has] been greeted in
Australia with some fantastically myopic, complacent and resentful printed comment ... [the
book] is neither dogmatic nor complacent, neither strident nor paranoic ... [it is] ranging,
exploratory and questioning".[9]
Laura Miller described the book as a "fitful, passionate, scattered text, not cohesive enough to
qualify as a manifesto. It's all over the place, impulsive, and fatally naivewhich is to say it is
the quintessential product of its time."[11] Neuroscientist Simon LeVay writes that subsequent
scientific research contradicts Greer's claim that there are no differences between the brains of
men and women.[12]

The Modern Female Eunuch

Historically, low levels of testosterone seemed to make eunuchs ideal negotiators. Their highly
specialized and respected roles are now being filled by women.

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Kristen Kukula and Richard Wassersug

Apr 1, 2013

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Qing Dynasty Imperial Dowager Empress of China with palace eunuchs [Wikimedia Commons]

Germaine Greer's 1970 The Female Eunuch gave eunuchs a bad name. Applying the term for
castrated males to women's political and social disempowerment, Greer overlooked the fact that
actual eunuchs -- and other men with low testosterone -- have occupied some of the most
powerful positions in government and the military throughout history.

Only a few countries, and a handful of U.S. states, continue the practice -- long considered
barbaric -- of actually castrating males. Even then it is voluntary. Today the term "emasculate" is
typically used to imply political impotence rather than literally severed or nonfunctional testicles.
Since eunuchs are without functional testicles, they are both sterile and deprived of the
testosterone that promotes male characteristics.
Today the term "emasculate" is typically used to imply political impotence rather
than literally severed or nonfunctional testicles.

Although Greer negatively equated women's disenfranchisement with castration, it is ironic that
women, more than ever, fill roles historically and exclusively held by eunuchs. In fact, eunuchs
ran the show in many settings and for a long a time. Historically, males were castrated before
puberty to prepare them for governmental service. Classicists mostly agree that eunuchs served
dynastic governments so well, and were not a threat to the dynasty, because they had no
descendants of their own to favor. But they were also recognized for being more competent and
accomplished in certain administrative areas than non-castrated males.
Eunuchs were not just bureaucrats and functionaries. They were the generals, diplomats, and
negotiators in some of the most preeminent and enduring governments that ever existed.
Castrated males were key to the functioning of some of the largest and longest-lasting dynastic
governments across Asia from biblical times to the collapse, roughly 150 years ago, of the
Ottoman and Chinese empires. They filled nearly all senior government posts. Many were
warriors and military leaders. Indeed, Narses, the senior general under the Byzantine emperor
Justinian I, was a eunuch. The world would be very different today if, 1,500 years ago, Narses
hadn't destroyed the Ostrogoths and saved the Roman Empire.
Clearly, eunuchs were far from being "wimps" because they lacked "balls." Take, for example,
one of the most brutal power-brokers known to history, the eunuch Mohammad Khan Qajar.
Khan unified Persia in 1795 and set up a dynasty that ran the country for 130 years. Sir John
Malcolm, a contemporary British historian, describes Khan as methodical and calculating, yet he
also pointed out how insightful and knowledgeable Khan was about the character and feelings of
others.
***
Both historical accounts and contemporary research on how testosterone affects personality
reveal that eunuchs had traits that made them different from intact males, and in some ways more
like females. Their astuteness and objectivity in assessing others' strengths and weaknesses made
them particularly effective as bureaucrats, diplomats and tacticians -- quite the opposite of what
most people now think of when they hear the word "eunuch."

It benefits senior strategists in both military and non-military situations to have low,
or even castrate levels, of testosterone.

When researchers examine how males and females differ in personality, one of the most
consistently documented differences has been in agreeableness.
Women in the maternal role, who have multiple offspring, need to be good negotiators in order to
resolve conflict among their children in a way that maximizes their number of surviving
descendants. It is thus not surprising that many studies show that agreeability is higher in women
than men. That alone could lead natural selection to favor females to be low in testosterone.
Indeed recent data from our own and our colleagues' labs on the effect of testosterone
deprivation on adult males indicates that castration increases agreeableness and tends to push
male behavior towards that of the female end of the spectrum.
High testosterone males are more disagreeable -- rather than only being more aggressive -- than
females or low-testosterone males. In his book about testosterone and behavior, Heros, Rogues,
and Lovers, James McBride Dabbs said that if there was one word that characterized an
excessively high testosteronic individual, it was "obnoxious."
There is little doubt that testosterone makes many men more abrasive, insensitive, less
contemplative, less empathetic, and less tactful than most women. These are not beneficial traits
for someone in a position of power with the mission of solving problems by avoiding, rather than
entering into, conflict.
Dabbs studied testosterone levels in men and women in a wide variety of professions. In his
investigation of the military, he found that generals had the lowest testosterone levels and combat
soldiers the highest. In the heat of a battle, in a life or death situation, acting fast is often more
important than thinking about options; one needs to shoot first and (perhaps) think later.
But to win wars on a larger scale -- or better still, to avoid them in the first place -- one needs to
be a strategist able to envision both sides when conflicts are looming and to avoid letting
situations escalate out of hand. Being low in testosterone helps one to think before reacting, to
consider options and to envision outcomes. These skills are impeded by high testosterone and it
thus benefits senior strategists in both military and non-military situations to have low, or even
castrate levels, of testosterone.
To do their tasks well and to maintain government stability, the eunuchs needed to be both
agreeable and conscientious. Although the data are not as statistically significant as on
agreeableness, studies on the personality of testosterone-deprived adult males also suggest that
lowering testosterone may, in fact, enhance conscientiousness.

As diplomats, eunuchs had to negotiate peace with neighbors to avoid dangerous conflicts. That
is what is meant by good diplomacy, which is a product of agreeability and to some extent, a byproduct of low testosterone. Diplomatic solutions are hard to achieve when one is high on
testosterone and roaring for a fight.
***
In the modern world the most empowered negotiator on the planet is the U.S. Secretary of State.
It may be more than a coincidence that three of the four most recent individuals to occupy that
role have been women: Madeleine Albright; Condoleeza Rice; and Hillary Clinton. These
women have filled a post that would have commonly been held by eunuchs in the Byzantine,
Ottoman, and Chinese empires.
As secretaries of state, women are now key players in keeping peace on earth at a time when
confrontations between Christians and Muslims have been intensifying. Women have thus filled
the diplomatic roles that eunuchs filled when the Christian and Islamic worlds -- the Byzantine
and Ottoman empires -- first came into conflict centuries ago in what is now the Middle East.
Back then, many of the military leaders on both sides were eunuchs.
Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice, and Hillary Clinton have filled a post that
would have commonly been held by eunuchs in the Byzantine, Ottoman, and
Chinese empires.

The similarity between modern women and eunuchs also shows up in data on life expectancy.
Men don't live as long as women and the difference in longevity has been linked to testosterone.
Recently historians studying court records from Korea have confirmed that eunuchs of the past
also lived longer than their male contemporaries of similar socioeconomic status.
Still another way that empowered women appear to be converging on the eunuchs of history
relates to reproduction. Before the development of the contraceptive pill, the fertility of women
often trapped them in traditional patriarchal families. Empowered women today have far fewer
pregnancies than they would have had in the past. The most powerful women in the world -- the
top 20 percent on the Forbes' list -- have on average 1.65 children. The collective fertility of
Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, and Madeleine Albright is four children between the three of
them; 1.33 kids per person. This is admittedly more children than a eunuch in Constantinople
would have had, but it is still below the replacement level of two children per generation.
The cry for reproductive freedom that was so central to the feminist movement when Greer
wrote her book sees its fruition in a social class of females with low or no reproduction. The
modern feminists, who limit their reproductive prolificacy, and thus ascend politically, arguably
emulate eunuchs more than they imitate modern intact males.

RECOMMENDED

The Sex Lives of Conjoined Twins

Ultimately, of course, true empowerment and liberty for women will come when they can have a
full reproductive life and political power. Thanks to feminist activists like Germaine Greer -- and
thanks to the legalization of safe and effective contraceptives -- women in the western world now
have the freedom to be the top public servants in contemporary society. These are honorable
positions best managed by individuals with lower testosterone than the males elected to be their
superiors.
The modern female eunuch, like the eunuch of the past, is far from the metaphoric
disempowered individual depicted in Greer's book.

Were there ever any female eunuchs?

Thank you so much for asking! Most people continue to suffer under the false impression
female eunuch was some sort of crude metaphor on the part of Germaine Greer for the crushed
spirits of cosseted American women. This is of course not true, she was drawing on a rich and
nuanced use of female eunuchs in many societies when she wrote that book.
Female eunuchs show up in many of the great maternalist societies covered previously on this
subreddit, such as the Amazons, the Laputa people of greater North America, and of course the
isle of Lesbos. Anywhere where there was a male harem situation or a need to control male
sexuality, female eunuchs tend to show up. Well explore the Laputa people because they provide
the clearest example of the context needed for female eunuchs to be invented.
The Laputa people were tightly constrained by space, being on an island, and as such
reproduction had to be tightly controlled. Rich powerful women were the only ones able to
reproduce in large amounts, and as it is evolutionarily logical to have your offspring be as
genetically diverse as possible, these rich powerful women would amass large harems of
genetically diverse, strong, virile males with which they would have sex and reproduce. This
biological truth of several males servicing a single powerful female is replicated in many species,
such as honeybees.
At first they tried using males deemed unfit for reproduction as guards for these male harems,
but it was found that men made poor guards because theyd get bored and wander off, also it was
thought men werent very trustworthy because you know how men like to get together and
gossip, so women were preferred for this important task. However, a reproductive woman guard
would naturally want to steal the valuable genetic material of the men in her care, so female
eunuchs were needed. The female eunuchs were considered by outsiders to be very motherly
towards the men in their guard, which was an imagery widely adopted by Western orientalist
painters. Harem life was very boring. Childish games like tag, playing house, playing house,
and hide-and-seek were the main entertainment.

In this orientalist harem painting a female eunuch and her male charge are playing hideand-seek. The artist is trying to convey the female eunuch guards affection for the man,
as she can clearly see his feet but is pretending she cannot find him to entertain him a bit
longer.

Here we see the game reversed in another painting. The woman is feebly pretending to
hide by covering her eyes, and her male charge is delighted that he has found her and
won the game so easily. The box of dress-up-clothes is spilled all over the floor from their
earlier play.

Now we all know about the famous Italian castrati, kings of the opera stage and the highest
voices in male-only church choirs. However, In places where only female voices would be in
use, such as nunneries, and secret underground all-women burlesque operas in Rome, you would
logically need females who could sing lower to balance out your choir or play men in your opera.
This lead to the institution of the tenora or women who had been operated on so as to not go
through menses and keep their childlike husky voices. As weve begun re-examining the opera
canon in the last 20 years as interest in baroque music has grown, clear examples of tenora

composition pop out. Take for instance the Hasse serenata MarcAntonio e Cleopatra. The
official premiere in Napoli starred Farinelli as Cleopatra and Vittoria Tesi as Marc Antony.
Having a guy sing the lady part and a lady sing the guy part is just so patently silly that its quite
clear that Hasse had previously composed this for an underground burlesque opera starring two
women, and then quickly adapted it for public performance with the popular singers he had
available in hopes of making a little extra cash off of it. Likely not having any tenors available,
the tenora part (Marc Antony) has been transposed up into contralto. Unfortunately the original
original manuscript for this serenata has been lost, and we have only the one for its public
premiere.
Very sadly for history, as tenore were never allowed on public opera stages and thus didnt get in
any programs, none of their names have survived until the present day. Theres also a bit of
grammatical confusion here, because the Italian word for tenor is tenore, but if you pluralize a
feminine noun it takes an -e, so the plural of tenora is tenore, same as the masculine singular
tenore. This has lead to a lot of misidentification over the years, for instance sometimes one male
character in an opera would be played by several women singing together in unison (to get the
required volume), so the part would be listed simply as tenore.
Some famous tenors of the baroque and classical era were rumored to be actually women, harsh
whispers followed the backs of talented tenors like Francesco Borosini and Giambattista Rubini.
Tenors often had to be examined before performing publicly in Rome. Casanova himself once
feverishly courted what he had convinced himself was a tenora (despite the object of his
affections protesting strongly that he was a man) but Casanova eventually decided he was not
lying and moved on. This has been edited in all print versions of his books to be him falling in
love with a woman posing as a castrato to make it more palatable to readers, for the truth you
have to go to the unedited manuscript pages which are in French.
Now how did one make a female eunuch? As of course the main value of a female eunuch is her
sterility and not her sexuality (in fact her sexuality was very coveted by Casanova and others),
other FGM methods in use in societies today do not apply. There were two basic types of female
eunuchs: the complete type in which the uterus and ovaries were removed, and the type where
only the ovaries were removed. The female eunuch tenore in Italy would have only had their
ovaries removed, as medicine at the time believed that the uterus traveled around the body, and
while it was travelling the body it must have been up to something medically useful, so it was
best to just leave it in. Much like our modern thinking on the appendix. At the time it was
considered a minor surgery.
For further reading on the tenora I recommend Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, Tenora, and
the Second Woman in Early-Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera by Dr. Naomi Adele Andre, 2006,
or Tenora: History of a Voice by John Potter, 2009. For a complete description of the methods of
making female eunuchs read Gynecology by William Phillips Graves, from 1916, who was
working off of documents now lost.
PS: PART OF APRIL FOOLS 2014. There were, if you didnt guess, no female eunuchs or
tenore. Abdominal surgery to remove ovaries would have been pretty much impossible before
modern medicine, and it theoretically would have had a very modest effect on the female voice

anyway, since puberty lowers womens voices slightly from a childhood treble. The Laputa are a
people from Gullivers Travels who live on an island in the sky. Props to the 4 people who
assisted in telling the history of female eunuchs: /u/erus, /u/farquier, /u/BonSequitur, and
/u/MI13! And major props to /u/TectonicWafer for actually reading a large chunk of that 1916
gynecology text and telling me I was full of shit!
That funny little boy-is-girl and girl-is-boy 2-person serenata is real though, 18th century opera
simply DNGAF about your modern gender conventions, and its very pretty so you should listen
to it!

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[]Dynamaxion 40 points 2 years ago

It's amazing that they could perform such a procedure without exceptional risk of infection or
some other disease. Let alone consider the surgery "minor". Oophorectomy is a fairly serious
procedure with risks even in modern times.

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 5 points 2 years ago

It is amazing, astonishing, unbelievable even... because it didn't happen, it would have been
useless vocally and almost always fatal! If you are very much interested in the vagaries of
historical medicine, during my preparation of this post I discovered vaginal hysterectomies (not
abdominal) have been around quite a while. You can google it if you'd like but I do not
wholeheartedly recommend the reading! D:

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[]CelebrethModerator | Roman Republic 20 points 2 years ago

So did these female eunuchs have sex too? You've gotten me terribly curious now!

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 33 points 2 years ago*

Of course! It can be a little hard to relate to the views of sexuality in the 18th century, as to us
women who are essentially permanently post-menopausal don't on the surface seem more
attractive than fertile women, but at the time their understanding of sexuality simply wasn't as
biological as ours. Female eunuchs were stereotyped in 18th century Italian society as being
beautiful, lusty and sexually aggressive, as they were more masculine. Some men found this idea
of strong female sexuality threatening, but most men seem to have found it desirable. Casanova
obviously did, that's why he was so desperate to find one that he pestered some poor guy for
months. The value of neither party having any concern for pregnancy really shouldn't be
underestimated either.

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[]VladithInteresting Inquirer 32 points 2 years ago

Where is your source for the subject matter of those paintings? They appear much less playful
than what you describe.

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[][deleted] 43 points 2 years ago*

This post is part of the 2014 AskHistorians April Fools' prank, and should not be taken
seriously.
It's important to remember that until the early 20th century, representation of facial expressions
in Western painting was beholden to Academic ideas that are very contrived to modern viewers.
This has led to widespread misinterpretation of early modern European art by naive viewers who
aren't art historians; for example, it's a well-documented fact that Rembrandt's The Syndics of
the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild is in fact intended as a satirical work about the rising urban
bourgeoisie of the time, and everyone in it is supposed to be read by the viewer as being
completely plastered; the sedate expressions indicate drunkeness, not gravitas like a modern

viewer would tend to interpret it. Those subtle distinctions have been attested by art historians as
far back as Heinrich Wfflin and other formalists, though post-structuralist historiography of art
has de-emphasised those issues.
I'm sure other art historians have their own favourite paintings that mean totally different things
to modern viewers, compared to how they were understood by their original audiences.

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[]farquierModerator | Medieval and Renaissance Painting and Manuscripts 20 points 2 years

ago*
EDIT: APRIL FOOLS! This is not a real book, for the record, and there is no hagiographic text
Floris Santi Jesi, nor does the Last Supper of Leonardo depict an argument over splitting the
check.
This is of course true; I would especially recommend Payton Alexander's The Semiotics of
Humor in Dutch Golden Age Art for a broader overview of the neglected satirical aspects of the
painting of the Dutch Golden Age. Leonardo's Last Supper for instance, often misunderstood as a
depiction of the moment of betrayal, was in fact a warning to the monks of Santa Maria Delle
Grazie of the dangers of strife at the table, illustrating a little-known episode from the
hagiographic text Floris Santi Jesi wherein Judas's decision to invite in the Roman authorities
was undertaken in haste when he felt he had been stiffed in the argument over dividing the cost
of the meal.

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[]pulpified 2 points 2 years ago

Payton Alexander's The Semiotics of Humor in Dutch Golden Age Art
I can't seem to find this! Can you help me out? Sounds very interesting.

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[]TacheErrante 4 points 2 years ago

The painting is by Rembrandt, not Vermeer.

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[][deleted] 4 points 2 years ago

Whoops, brain fart. I must have been thinking about how The Girl With the Pearl Earring is in
fact displayed as in mourning, and then gone with a starker example instead. Sorry about that.

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[]RespectfullyyoursCanadian History l Portraiture & Photography in Canada 1880-1940 16

points 2 years ago*
In a addition to caffarelli's source which talks about it in detail, I'd recommend checking out
"Disorienting Vision: Rereading Stereotypes in French Orientalist Texts and Images" by Inge E.
Boer from 2004.
On page 4 it quotes Linda Nochlin as she says,
it might be said that one of the defining features of Orientalist painting is its dependence for its
very existence on a presence that is always an absence: the Western colonial or touristic
presence. The white man, the Westerner, is of course always implicitly present in Orientalist
paintings ... his is necessarily the controlling gaze which brings the Oriental world into being, the
gaze for which it is ultimately intended. (1989:36-37)
This idea of the colonial gaze plays out these acts of hide and seek in a number of ways. It can be
seen most prominently in between viewer and the typical odalisque figure as a type of
voyeurism, where the subject is unaware that she is being watched, but it really takes on this
absence/presence model in terms of the examples cafferelli showed as,
What is underscored here is the importance of the interconnection between gender and vision in
Orientalist representations: the hide and seek between the viewer and the odalisque is but a

replay of the prolonged efforts of Western men and women to penetrate the spaces inhabited by
women in the Orient (see Yeazell 2000:27).
So in a sense the colonial viewer takes on an implicit active role in this game as well, as through
the use of the Western male gaze he is able to seek out and locate both players in this game.
Edit: So yes I was just corroborating the April Fools joke. Those paintings had a much more
serious context, and were not hide and seek games. The quotes I used above are true but just
taken slightly out of context. If anyone is interested in this genre of paintings, I suggest taking a
look at Edward Said's book "Orientalism".

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 16 points 2 years ago

The art might look a little different when you don't know the proper context of how male harem
life was interpreted in Europe, but check out Gendering Orientalism: race, femininity, and
representation by Reina Lewis, 1996. There's 500 copies in Worldcat, your library should have
no trouble getting it for you via ILL in a week or two.

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[][deleted] 8 points 2 years ago

The painting you said is about a game of hide and seek, with the ostensible female eunuch, looks
much more like the male black eunuch (black eunuchs were usually used in the "Orient") who is
guarding his female charge. He even looks to be heavily armed and the caption on the painting is
"Guard of the Harem". Why is this?

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 6 points 2 years ago

This is because you are very right. :)

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[][deleted] 5 points 2 years ago

Ah! You got me! I was about to reply to your top level comment with "Is this a joke?" (I didn't
realize it was an April Fool's joke though, I thought you were a historian who had had a mental
breakdown and was now misleading people on purpose). I guess I learned I should be bold in
criticism (I was afraid that my reply would have gotten deleted. Goddamn peer pressure!).
Thank you for the laugh!

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 2 points 2 years ago

I guess I learned I should be bold in criticism
Darn tooting you should be around here! Buncha know-it-alls on the Internet need a good poking
every once in a while. Thanks for being a good sport though! :)

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[]VladithInteresting Inquirer 5 points 2 years ago

Yes, and the second painting appears to be a scene of violence, with the turned over chest and the
cowering woman.

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[]legfeg 15 points 2 years ago

This is the sort of question and response which make one proud to be a part of the AH
community.

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[]axaxaxas 14 points 2 years ago

the Laputa people of greater North America
Did the Nacirema society also include female eunuchs?

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 13 points 2 years ago

Great question! Essentially no, basically as the Naciremaian empire was patriarchal. They also
participated in many wars unlike the Laputa who were largely peaceful, so while they did have
large, rigidly structured, mostly homosocial environments for males much like a traditional
harem, the locus for these was a warrior-culture and not a "queen bee" powerful female. But I
really don't know much about the Naciremaians other than the basic contours of their culture,
you'll have to wait for one of the Native American historians on that one.

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[]retarredroofNorthwest US 7 points 2 years ago

The Nacirema were not a single monolithic culture. They varied in cultural practices by region.
Some are more easily characterized as a warrior culture than others but their same sex
relationships and attendant sexual-social hierarchies are well documented.

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[]OneRule 2 points 2 years ago

Honest question: do you think that any Empire was a single monolithic culture?

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[]bitt3n 4 points 2 years ago

Do you have any recommendations for further reading regarding social structures on Laputa?
The only source I have is J.S. Gulliver's rather dated, if exhaustive, ethnographic study.

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[]TectonicWafer 4 points 2 years ago

I just looked through that book by William Phillips Graves, and I can't find any references to
historical episodes of oopheretomy -- only operations in the late 19th and early 20th century,
done only for the treatment of other health problems -- usually cancer or the like.

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[]ciaphascain22 2 points 2 years ago

In the first painting, why is the man playing hide and seek with a sword?

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[]MI13Late Medieval English Armies 3 points 2 years ago*

The sword is intended by the painter to be a symbol of the man's immaturity. He is playing a
childish game like hide and seek, and carries a toy sword in the manner that a young boy might.
You can see that he's gripping the "weapon" by its blade with his bare hand, which would be
extremely painful if it was actually a real sword. These children's play-swords were made out of
metal of insufficient quality to make real blades and were never sharpened. Nickel briefly
examines some of the archaeological examples of Lesbos-influenced toy weapons in his article
"The Mutual Influence of Europe and Asia in the Field of Arms and Armor," published in A
Companion to Medieval Arms and Armor.
EDIT: April Fool's, this is a bullshit answer. Please do not edit wikipedia to discuss the toy
weapons of Lesbos harem men.

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[]ciaphascain22 1 point 2 years ago

Thanks I was really curious about that

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 1 point 2 years ago

Alas and alack, turns out they are not playing a game after all and he is guarding the harem!
Happy April 1st. :)
Though why the artists has him gripping it in that way and not leaving it in his scabbard I do not
know. I picked that painting for my joke post because I thought it looked really like he was going
to jump out and stab her which is crazy! This is bad art.

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[]ChristheGreek 1 point 2 years ago

The female eunuch tenore in Italy would have only had their ovaries removed, as medicine at the
time believed that the uterus traveled around the body, and while it was travelling the body it
must have been up to something medically useful, so it was best to just leave it in. Much like our
modern thinking on the appendix. At the time it was considered a minor surgery.
Do you know what techniques they used to perform a hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy?

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 2 points 2 years ago

None, your skepticism is well-placed, happy April 1st. :)
I did spend much longer than I thought I would reading about historical vaginal hysterectomies
which were around though. You can google it if you'd like but I do not wholeheartedly
recommend the reading!

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[]KnightOfCamelot 1 point 2 years ago

have you seen any instances of female eunuchs in brothels?

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 1 point 2 years ago

I am happy to say I have not, as I hate to think of anyone in a brothel, but female eunuchs were
not real. Happy April 1st. :)
However, since your question is (flipped back to reality) such a good one, sex work or a "kept
man" status of some kind was (and is, considering the hijra) very much a reality for many reallife historical eunuchs though I'm sad to say. For the Italian castrati, Ferdinando de' Medici,
Grand Prince of Tuscany had at least 2 known "kept men" castrati. Roger Freitas who writes on
the sexuality of the castrati argues that the patronage system (this is where musicians at the time
would be financially supported by rich nobles and usually live with them) the castrati were
working under was very much understood to provide sexual access as well.

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[]AjaxAstynax 1 point 2 years ago

Just out of curiosity, how do you know that the woman is an eunuch in the first painting and not
the man? Just doing a lazy search for the title of the artwork and artist brought up some
descriptions suggesting just that.

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 2 points 2 years ago

Turns out I am bad at art. You are right. he is the eunuch, she is the harem-lady. Happy April
1st. :)
He doesn't look much like a eunuch himself though with his big oiled pecs! Eunuchs were
usually on the fat side and had gynecomastia. Plus they got a full set of clothes. Orientalist art
was really not big on getting details right.

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[]AjaxAstynax 2 points 2 years ago

I don't know what to believe anymore! Everything I know is a lie!!

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[]wkuechen 1 point 2 years ago

Off-topic, but can someone tell me what you'd call the sword that the man is holding in the first
picture? It's beautiful and I'd like to know what kind of sword it is.
EDIT: Also, I'd appreciate any information on the Laputa people. A quick Google search only
yields the fictional people of the floating island.

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 3 points 2 years ago

I hope someone can tell you what his sword is! Unfortunately I cannot tell you about the people
of Laputa because you found my April Fool's tell. :)

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[]wkuechen 2 points 2 years ago

Ah HA! I knew it! I just didn't want to sound like an accusatory jerk. Seriously though, good
one-- you really had everyone going. I got all the way through that before I remembered
Gulliver.

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 2 points 2 years ago

It sounds like such a real name!
I've been looking at middle eastern swords for a while now, out of curiosity, and I'm pretty sure
his sword isn't real. I can't find any Middle eastern swords that are straight and without
crossguards. Looks like some sort of variation on a scimitar. Orientalist art wasn't really fussed
with the details though, so the European painter may have just made it up! His eunuch guard also
doesn't look anything like a eunuch, so there's also that...

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[]MI13Late Medieval English Armies 2 points 2 years ago

It is real, it's just drawn atypically! Yataghans are pretty strange-looking weapons.

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[]caffarelliEunuchs and Castrati | Opera 2 points 2 years ago

AW FUDGE. That's what I get for trying to look at things I don't know about.

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[]MI13Late Medieval English Armies 1 point 2 years ago

I suspect the artist deliberately made the thing bigger than they usually look to emphasize the
curvature of the blade and make room for that gilt detailing he drew in.

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[]MI13Late Medieval English Armies 3 points 2 years ago*

The blade looks like a (not very accurate) version of an Ottoman yataghan. The artist depicted it
with a much broader blade than is typical of yataghans. Then again, weaponry always defies
categorization, so maybe there were broader yataghans in some parts of the empire. But the hilt
and the general shape (if not the size) of the blade clearly indicate that it's at least supposed to be
a yataghan.

Does the Female Ennuch still have balls?

It turned society upside down in 1970 and kick-started the women’s
movement. But can The Female Eunuch deliver any important life lessons today?
First-time reader Alice Jones gives her verdict

Wednesday 3 March 2010

0 comments

Does the Female Ennuch still have balls?

6 show all

A few years ago, someone had the bright idea of designing a T-shirt with the slogan "This is
What a Feminist Looks Like" running proudly across the chest. The Feminist Majority
Foundation, selling them online, reported a run of orders from college campuses across America.
In the UK, equality champions the Fawcett Society plugged the T-shirt on their website, asked
prominent faces from Tracey Emin to Ken Livingstone to wear it in public, and it became a
bestseller. Then, last year, Ms, the American feminist magazine, put Barack Obama on its
January cover. There he was, a shiny illustration of a President, chin uplifted, staring heroically
into the middle distance, ripping his white shirt open, Superman-style, to reveal that T-shirt.
The point? Feminists come in all shapes, sizes and sexes. The Undomestic Goddess blog has set
up a website, Thisiswhatafeministlookslike.tumblr.com, where people can post snapshots of
themselves, sitting at their desks, walking their dogs, wearing their wedding dresses, living their
lives feminists one and all. It's a superficial point they're making but if, like me, you grew up in
the Eighties, it's an important one. We children of Thatcher have a fairly confused idea of what a
feminist looks like. For the first nine years of my life, we had a female, but not feminist, prime
minister. ("I owe nothing to women's lib," said Maggie. Thanks sister!) If there was a woman at

No 10, the war was over wasn't it? As I was growing up, women were battling their way into
every male-dominated walk of life, from the armed forces to the boardroom and even the church,
but the only feminist I remember seeing on television was Jo Brand, and she never looked
terribly happy about it. I was too young to know anything about the riot grrrl punk movement in
America, other than the story of one of them (Donita Sparks from L7) tossing her used tampon
into the mosh pit at the Reading Festival, which made feminism seem a bit gross. As I was taking
my GCSEs, the Spice Girls took up the feminist mantle, though they called it "Girl Power" to
make it sound a bit more fun. And as I was studying for my degree the Sex and the City girls and
Jordan stripped off, had plastic surgery, boasted about their bedroom exploits and decided they
were feminists too.
Confusing and none of it very convincing. Perhaps Germaine Greer could help? When I was 19
years old, she came to speak at my university. I went, a little sceptically, to see this curious much
impersonated, wild-haired Antipodean rent-a-quote in a grey kaftan. Knocking the Union
committee off their self-important perches, swatting away impertinent questions from posh
public school boys who thought they were funny, swearing indiscriminately and using the Cword, liberally, in a way I'd never heard before, she was heroic. I resolved to read The Female
Eunuch immediately. Being a student with Crime and Punishment to read by Thursday, I did no
such thing. Still, it was a thrilling glimpse of a real-live feminist firebrand.
But then she went and confused matters again. Her appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2005
wading through manure with a colander on her head, riding a roundabout until she vomited and
trying vainly to rouse her housemates to a naked sit-down protest before leaving in a blaze of
righteous anger blasting the show for being a bullying, immature bear pit for publicity-hungry
has-beens (like, dur...Germaine) felt very wrong. Since then there have been controversial rants
about everything from female circumcision to Steve Irwin, cameos on Extras and a slightly odd
book about the allure of adolescent boys. Somewhere along the line, her clarion call for female
emancipation got lost.
Now is the moment to find it again. This year marks the 40th anniversary of The Female Eunuch.
When it was first published in 1970, the passionate polemic calling for the end of the oppression
of women caused a sensation. Edward Candy, in The Times, called it a "frightening book" which
was "likely to set fastidious teeth on edge". Sally Kempton, reviewing it for The New York
Times, approached it "with suspicion" after no fewer than four men recommended it to her, but
was relieved to find it "brilliantly written, quirky and sensible, full of bile and insight". Norman
Mailer, in the infamous New York City Hall debate on feminism, dismissed Greer as a "lady
writer" and her views as "diaper Marxism" whatever that means. The sales racked up. The book
hit the bookshelves in October of 1970. By the following March it had nearly sold out its second
print run and had been translated into 11 languages. It made Greer rich $29,000 for theUS
rights and a further $135,000 for the paperback edition from Bantam and a household name.

And all the while, women were reading it, passing it around the university common rooms, for
sure, but also devouring it at home. Some wrapped its surreal, bracing cover (the limp skin of a
bare-breasted torso hanging from a rail) in brown paper and hid their copy among the shoes in
the bottom of the wardrobe like furtive Libo-holics. Others, emboldened by its message, hurled
copies at their husbands' heads over dinner. Needless to say, more women read it than men. My
mother remembers distinctly going out to buy it as a newly married woman in 1970, and the stir
it created. Does my father remember anything similar? "No, not much", he says. "Why would I?"
Good point.
That was then. But how does The Female Eunuch stand up in 2010? Does it still have the power
to shock, thrill and mobilise that it had in 1970? Is Greer still germane? I decided to find out. I
was vaguely ashamed that I had reached the age of 28 without reading it. I asked around my
friends; most of them hadn't read it either. "I don't need to", said one. The few that had
including a solitary, enthusiastic, male (his wife made him read it) lit up when I mentioned it,
delighted to welcome a newcomer to their cult. The book's mystique that title! What does it
mean? is part of its power of course. Though I hadn't read The Female Eunuch, I'd heard lots
about it mainly icky rumours of exhortations for women to squat over mirrors and feast on
their menstrual blood. As Germaine puts it: "If you think you are emancipated, then you might
consider tasting your menstrual blood if it makes you sick, you've got a long way to go, baby."
Well, I may still have a long way to go, baby, but I'm now sure of one thing: The Female Eunuch
has just as much to say to a 28-year old in 2010 as it did to my Seventies sisters.
Less than 250 pages long, it's a short, sharp shock of a book even in my 2006 bumper edition
with its girly, cerise-pink makeover. (What would Germaine make of that, I wonder? This
happens a lot, by the way, when you're reading The Female Eunuch. You find yourself asking
WWGD, or What Would Germaine Do?, at odd moments. The answer is usually: snort
derisively.) She likes to begin and end the brusque chapters with a bang: "Women's sexual organs
are shrouded in mystery", "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them" that sort
of thing. There's plenty to be shocked by (the "penis weapon" and "cunt hatred" make frequent
appearances), and plenty to be depressed by. According to Germaine, our enemies are
everywhere "doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, marriage counsellors, priests, health visitors
and popular moralists" and the traditional route of marriage and children amounts to little more
than a living death. "Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father's earnings on
consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps and watches television."
There's also, though, plenty to be joyous about, not least its celebration of the female body and
sex. After all, "the struggle which is not joyous is the wrong struggle". It's unexpectedly, very
witty, too. Her deconstruction of a swooning Barbara Cartland love scene had me sniggering on
the Tube. At university, I had grappled with feminist literary theory for a term, reading endless
po-faced papers by French feminists with alarming titles such as "Castration or Decapitation"
and "Speculum of the Other Woman". Here, though, was something so much more practical and

humorous, so much more rousing and joyful, to help me negotiate my position as a woman in the
world. Feminism could be funny!
Some of Greer's ideas are brilliant her writing on the body and female stereotypes in media, art
and literature is, I think, definitive and, in our airbrushed, silicon-enhanced world, more urgent
than ever. If you read only one chapter, make it "The Stereotype": "I'm sick of pretending eternal
youth. I'm sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I'm sick of peering at
the world through false eyelashes, so that everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought
hairs..."
Some of her ideas are wrong-headed her suggestion that women bring violence on themselves
is particularly repellent, couched as it is in superior tones: "I have lived with men of known
violence, two of whom had convictions for Grievous Bodily Harm, and in no case was I ever
offered any physical aggression, because it was abundantly clear from my attitude that I was not
impressed by it." I find it hard to sympathise fully either with her most pessimistic views on
womankind and the stifling straitjacket of the family, or her rose-tinted utopian views of how an
ideal society might function (a commune overrun with shared children and shared consumer
goods in Calabria seems to be goal). But what a pleasure to be whipped along in her argument.
Everything is looked at afresh, with a sniper's eye for detail. Even ballroom dancing gets it in the
neck. ("An extraordinary capitulation on the part of society to the myth of female
submissiveness: the women travel backwards, swept along in a chaste embrace", apparently)
It's a polemic, and a dazzlingly argued one at that. It's designed to raise objections whatever age
you read it in. But is it relevant? This week, the Australian writer Louis Nowra stuck his oar in
(Germaine would have plenty to say about that phrase, but that's by-the-by), saying that reading
the book was "like opening a time capsule". To the 21st-century reader, some details feel like
anachronisms. Her examples of working women are confined to typists, shop-girls and nurses;
female students at university are put under the microscope as a strange species; and her hostility
to the contraceptive pill and cervical smear tests comes across as hopelessly old-fashioned, if not
downright dangerous. Society has moved away (though not entirely) from the model nuclear
family she concentrates so much of her energy on attacking.
A product of its time, it's hard to imagine today just how shocking it must have seemed when it
first landed. To contrast, my mother, one of the few girls at her school to go to university, showed
me a copy of The Girl Book of Careers my grandparents gave her when she was growing up.
Published just a decade before The Female Eunuch, it offered insights into life as a secretary, a
window dresser, a florist, a shop assistant, an actress and a cook, among other ladylike
professions. Greer's book built on a growing feeling that once women gained access to university
education, it was time to aim higher. "It was ground-breaking to put that into print," my mother
recalls. "Women of my set were all reading it. I'm quite sure an awful lot of women weren't
reading it. I don't think we were particularly militant, but I felt it was very important to use the

education I'd worked hard to get. I did not feel it was right for women to sit at home being
second-class citizens." Greer gave that feeling a voice. When she stood up opposite Mailer in
New York City Hall in 1971 and yelled, "We broke our hearts trying to keep our aprons clean!"
she was greeted by rapturous whoops and stamping feet.
That parts of the book now feel like a "time capsule" is proof of its success, isn't it? In a
foreword written to celebrate The Female Eunuch's 21st birthday, Greer herself admits that she
thought "the book should quickly date, and disappear" on publication. The fact that it has done
neither shows that we still need to read it, to see how far we've come and how far we still have
to go. Appearing on The Review Show this month, Greer was in no doubt that her original
message was still pertinent, still needed hammering home. "You didn't get emancipation!" she
said. "You didn't get it for goodness' sake! The feminist revolution hasn't started."
So the fight continues. And there does seem to be something in the air at the moment. Martin
Amis has told anybody who will listen that his new novel, The Pregnant Widow, is about
feminism. Set in the year The Female Eunuch was published, it details the cataclysmic effects of
the sexual revolution on a group of young Seventies friends. "Every hard and demanding
adaptation would be falling to the girls," he writes. "The boys could just go on being boys. It was
the girls who had to choose." Natasha Walter's Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism sees her
regret the sexual emancipation she once championed and lament the rise and rise of "raunch
culture" and the "pinkification" of young girls. Kat Banyard of the Fawcett Society is about to
publish The Equality Illusion. Elsewhere, the biggest hit of the Edinburgh Fringe was Trilogy, a
joyful celebration of women and their bodies. The wonderful Mad Men is praised for its subtle
evocation of the changing sexual mores of the Sixties, through the tales more or less
empowering of ambitious Peggy and Betty the bored housewife. The prospect that Kathryn
Bigelow might be about to be the first woman director (ever!) to win the coveted Oscar this
weekend has the film world buzzing with feminist debate. And online, from web giants like
Jezebel to blogs like XXrayspecs, women are subverting mass media images of airbrushed,
oppressed womanhood from within, pointing them out, poking fun at them and getting millions
of hits in the process.
All of which seems to point to the fact that, 40 years on, feminism is back. We've still got a long
way to go, baby starting with the word itself. Since The Female Eunuch was published the Fword has become first a dirty word, then an irrelevant word and finally a confused one. "I used to
say that I avoided the word because of its negative connotations," says Lionel Shriver who has
written an introduction to Betty Friedan's 1963 tract, The Feminine Mystique, republished this
month.
"It seems to convey that, if nothing else, you have no sense of humour. But it's important to
reclaim that word. An awful lot of young women really avoid the word and think they don't need
it, that they don't need the movement and they don't need the politics."

The prevailing idea seems to be that feminism has gone too far: having demanded it all, got it all,
women now can't cope with it all. An article in The Times last month declared that 40 years of
feminism had "made women less happy". Amis and Walter share a certain wistfulness for the
pre-sexual revolution days, while Amis has said that the feminism is still in its "second
trimester", thanks to women buckling under the new restrictions of having to hold down both a
job and the household. "Most families now can't afford to live without a second income. It made
work seem less of a privilege it's now a necessity", says Shriver. "There's a live movement that
romanticises the 1950s model. The Feminine Mystique and The Female Eunuch are good
correctives on that romanticism, because the truth is that when women were expected to do that,
they got depressed and bored to death."
In other words, we still need these books to remind us never to go back. The Female Eunuch
changed many things, but not everything. To borrow a phrase from the distinguished lady writer
herself, "it's time to get angry again". And I need to go out and buy a T-shirt.
Germaine Greer: Life and times of a feminist
1939 Germaine Greer is born on 29 January in Melbourne, Australia. She is the first child of
Margaret Mary "Peggy" and Eric Reginald "Reg" Greer.
1942 Greer's father joins the Australian Imperial Forces and leaves for war. It is two years before
she sees him again, during which time she becomes the centre of her mother's attention. Her
1989 autobiography, 'Daddy, We Hardly Knew You', tells part of that story. And while one of her
books characterises the love of mother and daughter as the most beautiful of all, she is later
estranged from her mother.
1956 Wins a teaching scholarship after attending a private all-girls' convent school, Star of the
Sea College. Graduates from Melbourne University with a degree in English and French. Moves
to Sydney in 1960 and becomes involved with the left-wing sub-culture group Sydney Push and
the anarchist Sydney Libertarians.
1964 Moves to the UK to study at Newnham College, Cambridge. By 1967 she has a doctorate,
and is a member of Cambridge Footlights. Using the pen name Rose Blight, she writes a
gardening column for 'Private Eye' and contributes to underground magazine 'Oz' under the name
Dr G.
1968 She marries Paul de Feu; it lasts three weeks, during which Greer later admits she is
unfaithful several times.
1970 Publication of 'The Female Eunuch' turns her into a household name. She poses nude for
'Oz' magazine and also the Amsterdam underground magazine 'Suck', of which she is editor.

1990 Greer makes the first of nine appearances on the panel game 'Have I Got News For You',
setting the current record for a female guest.
1996 Resigns her role as special lecturer and fellow at women-only Newnham College after
opposing the election to a fellowship of a transsexual colleague, Dr Rachel Padman, on the
grounds that Padman was genetically male.
1999 'The Whole Woman', intended as the sequel to the 'Female Eunuch', is published. The
following year she poses nude for the Australian photographer Polly Borland.
2000 Greer is assaulted in her home by a 19-year-old female student from Bath University. The
infatuated student screams at Greer, calling her 'mummy', ties her up in the kitchen and smashes
her belongings. Friends whom Greer was meant to have met for dinner that night later find the
author lying distressed on the floor, with the student hanging onto her legs.
2003 Publishes an art book about male teenage beauty, claiming "society is not accustomed to
seeing beauty in young males".
2005 Appears on 'Celebrity Big Brother' but walks out of the house after five days.
2006 Presents a Radio 4 documentary on the life of her friend, Frank Zappa. (She has said she
wants Zappa's 'G-Spot Tornado' to be played at her funeral.)

That Fabulous Eunuch

Transcript

The story does not begin with Philip. It does not begin with the Ethiopian eunuch. It does not
begin with Isaiah or baptism. It begins with God. It begins with these words: An angel of the
Lord said to Philip: Get up and go ...
God is the storys protagonist, initiator and hero. It begins with God whose messenger instructs
Philip: Get up and go ... go toward the south ... to the road that goes from Jerusalem to Gaza.
There is no reason given. It is no polite invitation: Philip, the Lord and I wonder if we might
trouble you to get up and go ... No, this a divine command, an order from God. Philip, God
bless him, gets up and goes.
No sooner does Philip get up and go then he chances upon an Ethiopian eunuch. Say what? An
Ethiopian eunuch! What are the chances? How often do you come across one of those?
Whats more: this isnt just any Ethiopian eunuch. This Ethiopian eunuch is a dignitary, a highly
placed court official, in charge of the Queens entire treasury.
Here is what else we can surmise about this exotic personage whose name, by the way, we will
never know. As an Ethiopian he speaks both Cushitic and Aramaic. As a highly placed official
concerned with finances, with trade and politics, it is all but certain he speaks Greek and Latin.
We are told he is reading the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, so we know, 1) he can read, and 2), he
can read Hebrew. If he can read Hebrew, it is a safe bet he reads Cushitic, Aramaic, Greek and
Latin as well.
No, this is not your every day, run-of-the-mill Ethiopian eunuch.
This educated and exotic personage, this man of wealth and reputation undertook a dangerous,
laborious, inconvenient journey of monthsfrom Ethiopia to Jerusalem. Why? The text is clear.
The Ethiopian eunuch is not on business. This is a personal undertaking, a pilgrimage. He has
undertaken this journey and this expense to worship in Jerusalem.
He has traveled some 2000 miles to Jerusalem. If his entourage travels 30 miles a day, it is more
than a two month undertaking, one way. Four months round trip, minimum.
Two months ago, he and his entourage started out. Heading north they following the White Nile,
then the Blue Nile. They passed through the trade city of Khartoum and bore the winds and the
sands of the Nubian Desert. Picking up the Great Nile they followed it to its source. Then, last
but by no means least, they negotiated the great wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula before finally
arriving, sun-burnt, dusty and weary, at their destination: Jerusalem.

Here is the terrible and painful, shameful truth at the finale of this arduous pilgrimage. When
they arrive in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian eunuchhe who has undertaken this great journey for the
express purpose of worshipping at the Templewill be barred from entrance. They will not let
him in.
His charioteer and livery: they are allowed to enter. His scribe and valet: they may enter to
worship. But not this highly situated, wealthy, erudite, cosmopolitan, God-fearing court official.
He is prevented from entering the Temple because he is a eunuch.
The Bible instructs that eunuchs are barred from the Temple, prohibited from entering the holy
place ... excluded from the presence of the living God, because they are marred, damaged.
Nevertheless, from the outside, the Ethiopian eunuch takes it all in. He takes in the marble and
the statues, the musicians and the priests, the pilgrims and the merchants, the aromas and the
colors. He drinks it in. It is as close as he will ever come to the presence of the living God.
While in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian eunuch purchases a pearl of great price, a true treasure: a
scroll of the prophet Isaiah. This is no small purchase; perhaps todays equivalent of traveling to
London to purchase a Jaguar. Such a scroll is the painstaking handiwork of a scholar-artist.
When we meet him, when Philip happens upon him, the Ethiopian eunuch is headed south, en
route back to Ethiopia. He is embarked upon the long journey home. He is bouncing along in the
back of a canopied chariot, surrounded by his entourage and he is reading aloud from his
luxurious new purchase. He is reading aloud from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Philip approaches. Without so much as a word of greeting or introduction Philip asks: Sir: do
you understand what you are reading? The Ethiopian Eunuch understands this: he understands
that Isaiah is talking about someone not unlike himself: a person who has been harmed and
humiliated.
Hungrily he turns to Philip, asking: Who is this person about whom Isaiah is speaking?
Then and there Philip pours out the story of Jesus. He tells this man who is prevented from
entering the Temple that all are welcome at Christs table. Whats more, says Philip, the waters of
baptism are a healing and an equalizing agent.
The story of Jesus pours out of Philip. It fills the hole in the Eunuchs aching heart.

The eunuch sees some water. Look! he cries, there is some water. And then, challenging
Philip, putting Philips Jesus to the test, the eunuch asks: What is to prevent me from being
baptized?
Nothing. Not one thing.
Philip tells him that in the waters of baptism there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free,
royalty nor commoner, male nor female, eunuch nor non-eunuch. Philip explains to the Ethiopian
that the waters of Christian baptism are thicker than blood ... and that they wash away the
wounds and the damage; they make us whole, render us clean, and make us one.
Do you remember who devised this story? Do you remember the one who initiated these unlikely
encounters? Do you remember who it was who carefully orchestrated the meeting of Philip and
the Ethiopian, who supplied the water at just the right moment? God.
God is the protagonist and hero. God is the author of this great project in diversity and
hospitality, in welcome and in kindness, in equality and unity, that lies at the heart and center of
Christianity.
It wasnt that the early Christians stumbled on their own upon the idea of evangelizing Gentiles.
The first century male followers of Jesus didnt reason their way to respecting, loving and caring
for women and children, orphans and widows. It was God. It wasnt Philips idea to evangelize
eunuchs. Not any more than it was Moses idea to free slaves. This is Gods doing. God is the
hero of this Christian story.
Centuries later, others from Africa were led like sheep to the slaughter of slavery. They, too,
experienced humiliation and were denied justice.
But like the Ethiopian eunuch, they too got hold of the scriptures. There they read stories of
freedom. Like the Ethiopian eunuch, they too, asked for baptism. Indeed, they demanded
baptism: the healing and equalizing waters of Christian baptism.
On Sunday, August 8, 1736 an enslaved black man named Scipio owned the baptismal
covenant and was baptized, right here, in this house. Four years later he was admitted as a full
member, with all the rights, responsibilities and privileges pertaining thereto.
Like sheep he too had been led to the slaughter of slavery, to the unrequited toil. In his
humiliation justice was denied him. But by the waters of baptism, measures of dignity and
equality were restored to him. These were restored to him not, lets be clear, by the agency of his
white Protestant sisters and brothers, but by the agency of God ... by the authority of the Bible ...
by the authority of the waters of baptism.

On a Sunday in August of 1771, a young woman, a poetess, also stolen from Africa, also
enslaved, came here for Christian baptism. It is no coincidence that in her poetry, this astute
young woman described herself, not as black or African, but as Ethiopian. She knew her Bible!
Phillis Wheatleys owners, John and Susanna Wheatley, were members of a different church. Yet,
the eighteen-year-old poetess chose to be united with this church.
Why this church? Possibly because Old South baptized and welcomed into membership more
people who had been stolen from Africathey and their childrenthan any other church in
Boston in the 18th century.
Why? How? They pointed to God: the protagonists and hero of this story. They said to the
deniers and critics: dont look at us. Its right here in the Bible!
Amen?

The Eunuch of Stamboul (1935)

This is what you call starting with a swagger:

.
If the postman who served the southern side of Belgrave Square that summer had not been
a 'lewd fellow of the baser sort', many things might have panned out differently.
It is doubtful if Diana Duncannon would have met a certain distinguished foreigner who was
then visiting London. Swithin Destime might have terminated his career, unusually brilliant
to that date, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The life of an elderly Russian lady, then
living in Constantinople as a refugee, might have been considerably prolonged, and a
number of other people might not have had the misfortune to lose theirs in the flower of
their youth. The Turkish Government would have found itself - but there, the postman was a
'lewd fellow of the baser sort' and, strange as it may seem, it is just upon such delicate
matters as the glandular secretions of postmen and their moral reactions to the same that
the destinies of human beings and the fate of nations hang.

.
So, just how do you follow The Devil Rides Out?
Do you attempt some bold new change of direction? Do you labour over a sequel
that you hope will be twice as good but which will probably just be twice as long? Do
you retreat into two years of indecision before daring to write again, only to have
the new work tepidly received? Or do you get straight back in the saddle and come
out blazing with a back to basics, business as usual barnstormer?
Wheatley, no surprise, chose the latter course, and re-entered the fray with a tale of
political intrigue, exotic locales and dire peril: The Eunuch of Stamboul. It is a novel
in the grand Wheatley tradition, a return to the meat and potatoes espionage
thriller that he had not attempted since Forbidden Territory, and yet another
unqualified success.
.
It also makes for fascinating reading just now, since its central question - whether

Turkey will embrace Western modernity or retreat into Islamist medievalism - is as

relevant as ever, especially in the light of current debates over the country's fitness
or otherwise for EU membership.
The action is set against the background of Kemal Ataturk's modernisation drive,
which enforces religious freedom through political coercion, and concerns the
planned insurrection of a group of starry-eyed jihadists who yearn for the liberty of
theocratic enslavement.
This is the very paradox consuming the Middle East today, and Wheatley's
commentary on it, as surprisingly even-handed as it is characteristically robust,
makes for a genuinely timely read. The pleasures of a Wheatley novel are usually to
be found in the remoteness of their mores and concerns from modern life, and the
insight they offer into the everyday concerns of generations past. The excitement
here, by contrast, is to be found in how bizarrely contemporary so much of its
backdrop seems.
At first he seems foursquare on the side of the Islamists, his Dumas-loving side
identifying with their renegade romanticism and oppressed-status, and finding much
humour in the vulgarity of Kemal's faux-Western innovations. In one scene he
contrasts the authentic Turkish musical entertainment at a secret jihadi meeting
with the "revolting crooning of some western barbarian" on a transistor radio in an
adjacent building, and allows a Turkish woman over two pages to convince Swithin
Destime, our hero, of the rightness of polygamy: "Monogamy might suit the West
perhaps although even that was doubtful, and she produced statistics to hammer
home her point."
.
It was a long speech and so admirably built up that Swithin had to admit the logic of the
speaker's views - at least as far as the people she represented were concerned. If these
Eastern women were content to share a man, as they had done for centuries, why should
they not be allowed to continue to do so and, now that many of them were taking up careers
there seemed a better reason than ever for two or more to divide the labours entailed by
children and a home between them. Of course, few Western women, he realised, would be
content to accept so short a sex life, that was the big snag, but apart from it and the
question of Christian morality, the system, if adhered to, appeared wholesome when
compared with the scandalous fraud and collusion which arise from the English divorce
laws...

.
Destime is almost swayed by the rhetoric of heroic idealist Reouf:
.

"Kemal did much for Turkey in the War and after, but he has sacrificed the soul of our nation
for the material trappings of the West. We are not a European people and we never shall be.
No wearing of bowler hats, jazz music and the co-education will ever make us so. We are
Asiatics and the ways of our fathers which endured for centuries are those best-suited to our
needs."
"Yet, you admit that sweeping reforms were long overdue."
"Truly - and they have now been carried out - but that could have been done without laws
which force us to sin fifty times a day in the sight of Allah, or treaties which tie us down to
the permanent acceptance of territorial limitations making us into a Third-Class State."

.
Largely because of the potential threat to British interests, however, Wheatley
gradually navigates the reader into opposition, precisely at the point when political
activism gives way to religious fundamentalism:
.
For one awful moment Swithin held his breath. The word 'Jehad' flamed through his brain
with all its terrible possibilities. Of the patriotic ravings of young Reouf he had taken little
stock but this was a very different business. It even far exceeded the scope of the
determined internal revolution of which he had learned in the last ten minutes, for a Jehad
meant the preaching of a Holy War. These people were not out only to destroy Kemal and
reinstate the old law of the Koran but, with all the bitter zeal of blind fanaticism, they meant
to carry their full programme into actual practice. It meant the certainty of another flare-up
in the Balkans, their co-religionists would probably rise in sympathy and begin massacres of
Europeans in India, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria and, taking into consideration the
unstable state of things in Europe, perhaps even be the kindling spark leading to the
supreme horror of a war to the death between fresh combinations of the Great Powers .

.
How chilling is that line: "... their co-religionists would probably rise in sympathy and
begin massacres of Europeans in India..."? As Wheatley has one character note in
typical style: "there's no reasoning with these birds..."
Here, though, Britishness is still a force to be measured:
.
The Daimler's engine purred and, with a superior glance at Malik, the cockney chauffeur let
in the clutch. The Turk stood watching with impotent fury blazing in his eyes. He would
cheerfully have given five years of his life to be able to draw his gun and haul Swithin out of
the car at the point of it - but he dared not. A small silk Union Jack fluttered gaily from a slim
staff on the Daimler's bonnet. No policeman - be he black, white, yellow, or brown, lays
hands with impunity upon the property of His Britannic Majesty's accredited representatives
the wide world over - and Malik knew it. Stirred by profound emotion he spat, while Swithin,
no less stirred by the portentous meaning of that little flag, looked away quickly and lit a
cigarette.

.
As noted, our hero is one Swithin Destime, Wheatley's most delicious name for a
hero since Black August's Kenyon Wensleydale. He's kicked out of the Guards when
he comes to the aid of dishy Diana Duncannon at a dinner party, by punching a
"garlic-eating bounder" pestering her on the lawn. When the bounder turns out to
be Prince Ali of Turkey, a sensitive political situation can only be avoided by having
Destime, and his fellow pugilist Peter Carew, resign their commissions. Later,
however, Diana's father offers Destime a job at the Turkish depot of his tobacco
company, so as to snoop undercover among the locals and discern if there is any
truth to the rumour that some form of uprising in the offing, and if there is, what
that might mean for Blighty.
Diana ("cool and lovely in an outrageously fashionable hat") is a slightly new kind of
Wheatley heroine: not merely feisty and resourceful (as was customary in his books)
but the controlling force, and coquettish to boot. She repeatedly makes a fool of
Destime, who is still underestimating her to the very end. He, by contrast, is a
pretty hopeless amateur, relying chiefly on luck, guesswork and fisticuffs: exactly
like the literary heroes with whom Diana mockingly compares him.
And Wheatley being Wheatley, he can't resist making the comparisons explicit:
.
In his mind, he sought desperately for a way of escape, but he could think of nothing. Again
Diana's taunt came back to him and he wondered miserably just what those gifted amateurs
of fiction did when they had walked blithely into the arms of their enemies. Bulldog
Drummond, he supposed, would have tackled the present situation with fantastic ease...
Bulldog might not be exactly subtle, but at times he certainly possessed the advantage of
being devastatingly heavy handed. Then there was that other fellow, an infinitely more
dangerous gentleman adventurer, 'The Saint'. Swithin had followed his amazing prowess in
many countries, through fifteen novels, and admired him greatly. The remarkable flow of
cheerful badinage which he managed to sustain even in the most desperate situations was a
joy to read, and his methods a perfect example of how matters should be handled in the
present instance.

.
But Swithin is no Saint, and virtually every major suspense episode is motivated by

him behaving foolishly:

.
He had failed - failed utterly from the very beginning. By not foreseeing that Tania's was
such a likely post for the police to plant a spy he had given himself away to Kazdim through
entrusting her with that letter. By failing to catch and warn Reouf of Kazdim's identity that
night when they left the cafe together he felt that he had been largely responsible for the
poor boy's death. By not troubling to take the most elementary precautions at his flat he had
walked blindly into the arms of the enemy, then, when almost miraculously his life had been
spared, he had been crazy enough to place himself in Ali's clutches, where the veriest tyro
would at least have taken care to find out the name of the Military Governor of
Constantinople before risking a visit to him - and now, by his supreme folly in asking Diana
to meet him at the Tobacco Depot, he had given her away to Kazdim too.
He had failed, not only in carrying out his mission, which he realised now was a thing of
comparatively small account, since it only concerned investing certain sums of money but,
through his incompetence, new wars were to be sprung on an unsuspecting world and ,
above all - a thing far nearer home - that woman whom he had considered hard and selfish
but who was brave and proud, and whom he now knew that he loved so that he would go
down to hell itself to help her, was to be humiliated, befouled, broken and tortured, in body
and spirit. His cup of bitterness brimmed and spilled over when he recalled his refusal to
take her warning - that he had not the brain or nerve for the job he had taken on so
arrogantly - and knew it to be true.

.
He does redeem himself, for sure, but thanks to a lot of luck.

.
As for Kazdim, the Eunuch himself, he's the head of the secret police, and a
clandestine Islamist, much given to tying his enemies' limbs together and dumping
them in deep water.
I suppose Wheatley must have realised that after Mocata his readers would no
longer accept a mere ruffian for a villain. Kazdim, therefore, is a real showstopper:
.
He was a tall man with immensely powerful shoulders but the effect of his height was
minimized by his gigantic girth. He had the stomach of an elephant and would easily have
turned the scale at twenty stone. His face was even more unusual than his body for
apparently no neck supported it and it rose straight out of his shoulders like a vast inverted
U. The eyes were tiny beads in that vast expanse of flesh and almost buried in folds of fat,

the cheeks puffed out, yet withered like the skin of a last year's apple, and the mouth was
an absurd pink rosebud set above a seemingly endless cascade of chins.

.
The book offers the best example yet of Wheatley's climax-upon-climax formula:
knowing, perhaps, that he wasn't going to top Devil Rides Out conceptually (though
the astral bodies put in a reappearance), he has gone all out to top each action
climax with another. The book just doesn't want to stop, and there are times when
you wonder if it ever will. But it works: the effect is neither counterproductively
exhausting, nor ridiculous.
Especially notable here is how the secondary character of Peter is used to achieve
this effect, since it shows a genuinely clever awareness of narrative structure. The
character is present at the beginning, cleverly reintroduced halfway through, and
then held in reserve for Wheatley's cleverest 'last dash' yet, stepping in to foul up
the works after Destime's efforts, finally, appear to have succeeded.
Our heroes are saved, ultimately, by the timely intervention of Tania, ("attractive
enough to have caught the eye of the most hardened misogynist"), Kazdim's
gorgeous paid agent. Swithin gets the measure of her halfway through, but Peter
falls hard and naive for her, and as soon as he is entrusted with the important
government commission to which all Destime's efforts have been directed, he
promptly makes an ass of himself and allows her to betray him as ordered.
But now, tormented by conscience, and driven mad with guilt and hatred after the
death of her mother at Kazdim's hands, her (literally) insane bravery saves the day
at the cost of her own life.
This is also something new for Wheatley: his first tragic heroine, inspired perhaps by
Devil's Tanith, whom he had shockingly killed halfway through, only to wimp out and
bring back to life a few chapters later. Tania, who resembles Tanith in more than just
name (the unwilling servant of the principal villain, loved by a secondary male hero
who wants to 'take her away from all of this', a refugee) gets no second chance, and
her death is powerfully woven by Wheatley into the breakneck action climax.
Ultimately, Swithin, Diana and Peter foil the revolution, avert catastrophe, earn the
undying loyalty of Kemal (the first example in Wheatley of a real-life figure with a
speaking role) and save the British Empire - temporarily at least.
The book ends with an official proclamation from Kemal to his people, to which one
can only add 'Amen':
.

Section 3: Eunuchs are Sexually Active with Men

The final piece in the puzzle is to prove that eunuchs enjoyed sex with men, and so were not
entirely unacquainted with lust as Jerome implied or unwilling to perform sexual intercourse as
Clement put it.

The Kamasutra has an entire chapter on klibas seducing men to allow them to
perform oral sex on them. In fact, "klibas get particular enjoyment from oral sex, as well
as their livelihood."71
A Sumerian list of dream omens from the seventh century BCE states that "if a man
submits himself sexually to males [in a dream], like an assinnu he will develop a strong
yearning to be a sex object for other males [in waking life]."72 This association between
eunuchs and passive homosexuality may be why the Middle Assyrian Laws make being
rendered a saris the punishment for male passive homosexuality.73 Another of the
omens predicts that "if a man has sexual intercourse with an assinnu, for a whole year
the deprivations which beset him will disappear." The next omen repeats the prediction
for when a man has intercourse with a girsequ,74 the term for eunuch mentioned in the
Code of Hammurabi.75
An astrological prediction confirmed that men took kurgarrus into their homes and
the latter "made babies" for them, a phrase which is surely meant figuratively.76
Aristotle warns that boys allowed to indulge in anal intercourse will grow to like it,77
"and some will become 'impubescent' [anboi] from birth and 'nonreproducing' [agonoi]
due to an imperfection of the reproductive organs; in the same way, women can also
become 'impubescent' from birth."78 Here Aristotle provides an early, if ambiguous,
example of the denial that some people are born with a gay identity. It is a denial of the
innateness because he relates the impotence to having been allowed as children to
indulge in homosexual sex, but it is an ambiguous denial because he nonetheless uses
the phrase "from birth."
Quintus Curtius reports that "365 concubines, the same number as Darius had had,
filled [Alexander the Great's] palace, attended by herds of eunuchs, also accustomed to
being used like women."79
Without calling Alexander a eunuch, his Roman biographer of the fourth-century CE
said he "scorned sensual pleasures to such an extent that his mother was anxious lest
he might be unable to beget offspring,"80 and there seems to have been some doubt
expressed as to his eligibility for the Macedonian throne.81 In other words, Alexander
may have been a natural eunuch. He had two passionate love affairs in his short life,
both with men. The first was with his childhood friend and later general, Hephaiston, to

whom he felt so close that he told the Persian queen: "This man too is Alexander."82
The second was the defeated Persian king's lover Bagoas, "a eunuch of remarkable
beauty and in the very flower of boyhood, who had been loved by Darius and was
afterward to be loved by Alexander."83 Bagoas, "who won the regard of Alexander by
submitting his body"84 for sex, convinced Alexander to execute a certain Persian
chieftain who had insulted Bagoas by calling him a harlot. This chieftain had asserted
that it was "not the Persian custom to marry males who were feminized by being
screwed."85
In spite of the chieftain's protestation, there is some doubt that the custom was
entirely alien to Persia.86 It is certainly clear that Darius, Bagoas's lover before
Alexander, was a Persian! In fact, Zarathustra himself, the Persian prophet, seems to
have been aware of the "rapture which a friend induces in a friend."87 Moreover, using
eunuchs for passive sex partners was a widespread custom across the Mediterranean
region.
A character in Terence's play about the eunuch impostor, when he sees the fake
eunuch who is really a handsome male teenager, says: "That eunuch ... if I were in lust,
even if I were sober, I'd ..."88 Unfortunately, he stopped short of saying exactly what he
would do, but I think it is clear.
The Jewish historian Josephus told of the problems King Herod had with his closest
eunuch companions, of whom he was "very fond on account of their beauty."89 The
king's son Alexander was continually plotting against him, and Josephus reported that
"someone told the king that these eunuchs had been corrupted by Alexander ... with a
great deal of money. And when they were asked about it, they admitted the association
[with Alexander] and [that] sex [was involved], but they were not aware of any mischief
aimed at the father."90
Suetonius said of the emperor Titus that "he was suspected of excess; and likewise
of lust because of his crowds of catamites and eunuchs."91
Apuleius, in the picaresque novel The Golden Ass, tells of a band of "half-men"
[semiviri],92 who call each other "girls" [puellae] and have sex with young men, both as
active and as passive partners.93 They also act as cultic priests of the Mother
Goddess, a traditional role for eunuchs.94
The next piece of evidence is a bit complicated. It consists of some comments by
Clement of Alexandria about the followers of Basilides, a Christian Gnostic. Clement
said they lived "lewder lives than the most uncontrolled heathen." They did not live
purely, imagining "they had the power even to commit sin because of their perfection."

He said "the original teachers of their doctrine did not allow one to do the same as they
are now doing."95 What I would like to consider is that some of these Basilidians were
born eunuchs who were indulging in homosexual sex.
The Basilidians quoted Jesus as having said some people were eunuchs from birth,
and others were eunuchs by necessity.96 Then they said the born eunuchs were those
with a natural aversion to the female (which would be gay men). They said the eunuchs
by necessity were those who made a show of abstaining from sex because they wanted
other people to admire their spirituality (Catholic celibates?). They also said people who
were accidentally emasculated were eunuchs of necessity.97 Finally, they said the
eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven were spiritual people who refrained from marriage in
order to avoid the distractions of making a living.98 This last category could of course
be made up of both gays and single nongays. In general, the Basilidians' sensitivity to
gay sexual orientation, religious hypocrisy, and the spiritual advantages of single life,
speaks to me of a gay perspective. But that's not all.
Clement's charge that the Basilidians were lewd and outside the bounds of their own
doctrine was prefaced by a quote from one of the Basilidian teachers, Isidore, advising
marriage as a way of dealing with chronic lust. But for for those who could not marry for
whatever reason, Isidore had apparently said:
if someone is a youth, or poor, or 'sunken' [katopheres], and he does not
wish to marry according to the saying, then let him not be separated from
his brother. He should tell himself: I have entered the sanctuary, I cannot
submit to anything. But if he has any hidden thoughts, he should say:
Brother, lay your hand on me so that I do not sin; and he will receive help,
both in the mind and in the senses. Let him only wish to accomplish what
is right and he will succeed. Sometimes, however, we say with our mouth,
"I wish not to sin," while our mind is really inclined towards sin. Such a
man does not do what he wishes for fear lest any punishment be in store
for him. Human nature has some wants which are necessary and natural,
and others which are only natural; sexual pleasure [to tn aphrodisin] is
natural, but not necessary.99
This "sunken" man, for whom the saying "it is better to marry" does not apply, could be
the born eunuch who has a repulsion from women. When he feels lust and is afraid he
may fall, Isidore suggests he have a brother lay his hands on him, which is supposed to
make him feel a power in his mind and body. This suggests a homoerotic touch. But my
idea is that in Clement's day, the Basilidians who could not marry were not settling for a
warm brotherly hug, and instead were indulging themselves further with each other or
with other men. This then would be why Clement calls them "lewder than the most

uncontrolled heathen." On the other hand, the "sunken" man could be an ordinary
nongay man who has led such a dissolute sexual life, possibly including passive
homosexual activity, that he is not considered eligible for marriage.
I will now move on to more straightforward evidence.
Aelian, a third-century Greek rhetorician, recounts the beautiful story of the sorrow of
a Persian king for a beloved eunuch who died: "He had been the most handsome and
attractive man in Asia. He ended his days still a youth, emerging from childhood, and
the king was said to be greatly in love with him. As a result, he lamented bitterly and
was in great distress; there was a public mourning throughout Asia as a gesture to the
king from all his subjects."100 Aelian's description recalled a similar mourning by the
Roman empreror Hadrian, who had erected statues of his beautiful lover Antinous
throughout the empire after his death. Some of these statues still exist.101
The fourth-century Sicilian astrologer Firmicus Maternus consistently listed eunuchs
next to other homosexual and third-gender types. He said that Mercury and Saturn
together ascendant in a feminine sign "make eunuchs, that is males without semen and
who cannot have sex [coire], obscene, disreputable, impure, lewd, passive
homosexuals [cinaedos]."102 (Notice that, in the fourth century, Firmicus applies the
word "males" to eunuchs.) A waning Moon from Venus to Saturn in nocturnal makes
"either sterile men, or eunuchs, or high priests of Cybele, or hermaphrodites, or in any
case such which are compelled by the heat of miserable lust to play the passive role of
women."103 An ascendant in terms of Saturn in nocturnal "makes impure, lewd, sordid
men and those involved into sinful acts by miserable lust and those [i.e. eunuchs] who
cannot approach natural sex but who are taken by the inverted fury of lust against
nature."104
A passage from chapter eight of the Mathesis describes a certain stereotype of gay
men so well, that I wish to quote it in full:

1. The Pleiades are found in the sixth degree of Taurus. Those who are
born when these are rising are always involved in luxury and lust. They
are always drenched in perfumes, given to too much wine drinking, impudent
in speech, so that in banquets and love-making they attack their companions
with a sarcastic wit. They are addicted to all crimes of passion and are the
kind who raise laughter by their biting tongues. 2. They will always be
well-groomed and well dressed. They twist their hair in ringlets and often
present a fictitious appearance by using another's hair. They soften their
whole body with various cosmetics; pull out their body hair and wear clothes

in the likeness of women; they walk softly on their tip-toes. 3. But the desire
for flattery torments them; they seek it so constantly that they think that from
flattery they attain virtue and good fortune. They will always be in love, or
pretend that they are, and it pains them that they were born men.105

Unfortunately, under the influence of the Christian church and Germanic invaders,
the born eunuch category disappeared in Europe, and the category of eunuchs was
increasingly defined in the Christian world not by a lack of lust for women, which the
Christians felt was a proper goal for all men to strive for, or even by "unnatural" lusts,
but by castration or sterility.
Not so, however, in the growing Islamic world, where eunuchs have continued to
serve as passive sex partners for men to this day.106 In the East, homosexual activity
continued to be recognized as a natural, albeit disallowed, outlet for male lust. A hadith
(traditional story about Muhammad) narrated by ibn Mas'ud says: "We used to fight [in
battle] together with the Prophet, peace be upon him. There were no women with us.
We said: O Messenger, may we treat some as eunuchs? He forbade us to do so."107
The Qur'an generally scorns "approaching males in lust to the exclusion of women", as
well as the castration of males, as the sin of the people of Lot.108
But the Qur'an does not prohibit using natural eunuchs (who were not considered
"male") as passive sex partners. Although the Qur'an never uses the word khasy, it
recognizes that not all persons are male or female and that there are some people who
are aqim, or "ineffectual,"109 and some men who "lack the primary skills of males."110
As for the issue of whether Muhammad (peace be upon him) expressly approved of
eunuchs -- and far be it from him not to have approved of Allah's creation -- there is a
tradition in which Muhammad forbids 'Uthman bin Maz'un from adopting a eunuch
lifestyle, i.e. abstaining from marriage. But it is related also that Abu Huraira went to the
Prophet, saying that he was a "young male" who was afraid that his ego would lead him
into illegal sexual intercourse but that he did not "find [or feel] that with which to marry a
woman," and the Prophet remained silent, even after Abu Huraira repeated his
statement three times. Finally after the fourth time, Muhammad said: "O Abu Huraira,
the pen is dried as to what is befitting for you. So be a eunuch or leave it alone."
(Bukhari, Book 62 "Nikah", Ch. 8).
The Qur'an also says repeatedly that no burdened soul shall bear the burdens of
another.111 In the case at hand, I take that to mean that eunuchs should not take on the
burdens of males, and vice-versa, but rather people should try to live their lives in the
manner which is most becoming for them.

Go on to Ramifications of Eunuchs Being Gay Men --- Table of Contents --- Home

Footnotes

71 Kamasutra, II 9. English: "Eunuchs get particular pleasure from oral sex, as well as
their livelihood." German: "Die Eunuchen finden an dem Mundkoitus ein eingebildetes
Vergngen wie ihren Lebensunterhalt." See note 33.
72 J. Bottero and H. Petschow, "Homosexualitt," in Erich Ebeling and Bruno Meissner,
eds., Reallexikon der Assyriologie und vorderasiatischen Archologie, Vol. 4. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 1975, pp. 464, 13.
73 "If a man sexually penetrates his neighbor, a charge shall have been brought against
him, proof shall have been brought against him, he shall have been sexually penetrated,
he shall be rendered a saris." Akkadian: "sum-ma L tap-pa-a-su i-ni-ik, ub-ta-e-ru--us,
uk-ta-i-nu--us, i-ni-ik-ku--us, a-na sa ri-se-en -tar-ru-us." Middle Assyrian Laws 20
(Tablet A, col. ii, lines 93-97), in G.R. Driver and John C. Miles, eds., The Assyrian
Laws, with translation and commentary, Oxford: Clarendon, 1935, pp. 390-391. Driver
and Miles interpret line 96 ("he shall have been sexually penetrated") as part of a
punishment for the active partner, while D.D. Luckenbill interprets it as a restating of the
crime, with "he" being the passive partner. Both translators, however, consider the
punishment in line 97 ("he shall be rendered a saris") as being applied to the active
partner. But one might better conclude that the passive partner is actually the criminal
who is made a saris, especially in view of the previous provision 19 against slander, in
which a man can be beaten for calling his neighbor a sexual passive without bringing a
formal charge. Obviously, if one can be formally charged with sexual passivity, then it
must be a crime. If male passivity is the crime here, that would be in line with the values
of other Indo-European cultures such as the Greeks, Romans, and the Germanic
cultures. See next section, on castration.
74 The Assyrian Dictionary, Vol. A, under the word assinnu (b), p. 341; Vol. G, under the

word girsequ (c), p. 95. These omens, part of the Summa Alu, are located in Cuneiform
Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Vol. 39, London: The Trustees,
1896-1990, Tablet 45(55), lines 32-33. Akkadian: "summa amlu ana as-sin-ni ithi" and
"summa amlu ana GR.S.GA TE kala MU.1.KAM tamtatu sa GAR.MES-s ipparrasa."
I could not find a translation or transliteration of the entire list of omens.
75 See note 26 (Section 1).
76 Bottero 16, p. 465-466, who cites L'astrologie chaldeene No. 12, line 12 and
following.
77 Aristotle, History of Animals, VII 1.5. Literally, "the memory of the shared pleasure
creates a desire to make the intercourse occur again." Greek: "h tote mnm ts
sumbainouss hdons epithumian poiei ts tote ginomens homilias ..."
78 Aristotle, History of Animals, VII 1.6. Greek [continued from previous note]: "...
ginontai de tines anboi ek genets kai agonoi dia to prthnai peri ton topon ton
gonimon. homois de kai gunaikes ginontai anboi ek genets."
79 Quintus Curtius VI 6.8. Latin: "Pelices CCC et LXV, totidem quot Darei fuerant,
regiam implebant, quas spadonum greges, et ipsi muliebra pati assueti, sequebantur." If
Alexander did keep that many concubines, it still does not mean he was not a secret
eunuch. The text does not say he slept with them. It does say Alexander took a liking to
a young man Euxenippus, whose virility is in doubt: "He was still very young and a
favorite of the king because of his blossoming youth, but although he was equal to
Hephaiston in the beauty of his body, [Euxenippus's] less than virile charm was not on a
par with his." Latin: "... adhuc admodum iuvenem, aetatis flore conciliatum sibi, qui cum
specie corporis aequaret Hephaestionem, ei lepore haud sane virili par non erat."
(Curtius VI 9.19). And in any case, Alexander's relationship with the eunuch Bagoas has
already been mentioned above.
80 Quintus Curtius, History of Alexander, tr. by John C. Rolfe, Vol. I, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1946, p.11. Books I and II are lost, but a summary is provided
in the first volume of this two-volume edition.
81 Quintus Curtius, ibid., p. 16-17. The biographer Quintus Curtius related that when
the youthful Alexander's father took another wife, the new bride's uncle Attalus, having
drunk too much at the wedding banquet, made the following toast: "The Macedonians
ought to pray the gods that from the new marriage Philip might rear a legitimate
successor." Curtius says that "Alexander, enraged by the insult, threw his cup at
Attalus's head, and Attalus threw his cup at Alexander."

82 Quintus Curtius III 12.15ff. Hephaiston compared his relationship to Alexander with
that of Patroclus to Achilles in Book II (see ibid., vol. I, p. 38).
83 Quintus Curtius VI 5.23. Latin: "Inter quae Bagoas erat, specie singulari spado atque
in ipso flore pueritiae, cui et Dareus assuerat et mox Alexander assuevit ..."
84 Quintus Curtius X 1.25-26. Latin: "Bagoae spadoni, qui Alexandrum obsequio
corporis devixerat sibi, nullum honorem habuit, adminitusque a quibusdam Bagoam
Alexandro cordi esse, respondit amicos regis, non scorta se colere, nec moris esse
Persis mares ducere qui stupro effeminarentur."
85 Quintus Curtius X 1.26. The entire story is recounted in X 1.22-38.
86 See note 100, below.
87 Zarathustra, Gathas XLVI 2.4. Transcribed original: "Rafedhrem chagvo hyat fryo
fryi daidit." The transcription and translation is from T.R. Sethna, The Teachings of
Zarathustra: The Prophet of Iran on How to Think and Succeed in Life, Karachi: T.R.
Sethna, 1975, pp. 76-77.
88 Terence, Eunuchus, line 479. Latin: "Ego illum eunuchum, si opus siet, vel
sobrius ..."
89 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XVI 8.1.230. Greek: "san eunouchoi t basilei dia
kallos ou metris espoudasmenoi."
90 Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XVI 8.1.231. Greek: "kai tis anaggellei t basilei
diaphtharnai toutous hup' Alexandrou tou paidos epi pollois chrmasin. anakrinonti de
peri men ts gegenmens pros auton koinnias kai mixes hmologoun, allo d' ouden
duscheres eis ton patera s uneidenai."
91 Suetonius, Titus, 7. Latin: "suspecta in eo ... luxuria erat ...; nec minus libido propter
exoletorum et spadonum greges."
92 Apuleios, The Golden Ass, VIII 28. The entire episode runs from VIII 24 to IX 10. A
1951 translation has recently been brought out in a new edition: The Transformations of
Lucius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass, a new translation by Robert Graves, New
York: Noonday Press, 1951, 31st printing 1996. See "Chapter 12: With the Eunuch
Priests."
93 Apuleios, The Golden Ass, VIII 26.

94 Apuleios, The Golden Ass, VIII 27-28.

95 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III 1.3. Greek text from J.P. Migne, Patrologia
Graeca, vol. 8, col. 1104: "... tn en ethnesin akratestatn akolastoteron biountes ...," "...
tn m biountn orths Basileidiann, hs htoi exontn exousian kai tou hamartein dia
tn teleiotta ... epei mde tauta autois prattein sugchrousin hoi propatores tn
dogmatn." The translation is based on that of John Ernest Leonard Oulton and Henry
Chadwick as "On Marriage. Miscellanies Book III" in Alexandrian Christianity: Selected
Translations of Clement and Origen, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954, p. 41. I
have corrected their translation where I felt it was necessary in order to render the
original more literally.
96 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III 1.1. Greek: "Ou pantes chrousi ton logon
touton. eisi gar eunouchoi hoi men ek genets, hoi de ex anagks."
97 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III 1.1. Greek: "Phusikn tines echousi pros
gunaika apostrophn ek genets, hoitines, t phusik taut sugkrasei chrmenoi, kals
poiousi m gamountes. Houtoi, phasin, eisin hoi ek genets eunouchoi. Hoi de ex
anagks, ekeinoi hoi theatrikoi asktai, hoitines dia tn antholkn ts eudoxias
kratousin heautn. Hoi de ek tetmmenoi kata sumphoran eunouchoi gegonasi kata
anagkn."
98 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III 1.1. Greek: "Hoi de eneka ts ainiou basileias
eunouchisantes heautous, dia ta ek tou gamou, phasi, sumbainonta, ton epilogismon
touton lambanousin, tn peri ton porismon tn epitdein ascholian dediotes."
99 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, III 1.2-3. Greek: "Alla neos tis estin, pens,
katphers, kai ou thelei gmai kata ton logon, houtos tou adelphou m chrizesth.
leget, hoti Eisellutha eg eis ta agia, ouden dunamai pathein. Ean de huponoian
ech, eipat, 'Adelphe, epithes moi tn cheira, ina m hamarts. kai lpsetai
botheian, kai notn kai aisthtn. thelsat monon apartsai to kalon, kai epiteuxetai.
Eniote de t men stomati legomen, Ou thelomen hamartsai, h de dianoia egkeitai epi
ton hamartanein. Ho toioutous dia phobon ou poiei ho thelei, ina m h kolasis aut
ellogisth. H de anthrpots echei tina anagkaia kai phusika mona. phusikon de to tn
aphrodisin, ouk anagkaion de." John Ferguson says Isidore was the son of Basilides.
Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis I-III, tr. John Ferguson, Washington DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1991, p. 257, note 4.
100 Aelian, Various Histories, XII 1. Greek: "Chron de husteron Tridats ho
eunouchos apothnskei, kallistos tn en t Asia kai hraiotatos genomenos.
katestrepse de ara houtos ton bion meirakioumenos kai ek ts paidiks hlikias

anatrechn, elegeto de autou eran ho basileus andreiotata. ek d toutn epenthei

barutata kai drimutata lgei kai dmosia kata pasan tn Asian penthos n,
charisomenn apantn basilei touto."
101 John Boswell provided a photograph of a statue of Antinous in Christianity, Social
Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of
the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980, plate 3.
102 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, III 9.1. Latin: "... facient eunuchos vel viros sine
semine et qui coire non possint, turpes, infames, impuros, impudicos, cinaedos."
103 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, III 6.22. Latin: "... faciet eunuchos aut abscisos
archigallos aut hermafroditos, et qui semper haec agunt et patiuntur quae mulieres pati
consueverunt praeposteris libidinem ardoribus excitati." Translation based on that of
Jean Rhys Bram (see note 43).
104 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, V 2.11. Latin: "... faciet impuros, impudicos, sordidos,
et miserae libidinis vitiis implicatos, et qui ad naturales coitus venire non possint, sed
qui contra naturam praepostero libidinis furore rapiantur."
105 Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis, VIII 7.1-3. Translation in Bram, p. 274.
106 See Stephen O. Murray, "Chapter 13: Some Nineteenth Century Reports of Islamic
Homosexualities," and "Chapter 16: The Sohari Khanith" in Stephen O. Murray and Will
Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, Literature, New York: New York
University Press, 1997. Chapter 16 is more specifically about a homosexual role based
on identity, as opposed to just the activity of homosexuality.
107 Sahih al-Bukhari LXII 6:9 and 8:13.
108 Qur'an 7:81, 26:165-166, 27:55. For more discussion of Islam, homosexuality and
eunuchs, see my article on Queer Sexual Identity in the Qur'an and Hadith.
109 Qur'an 42:49-50. English: "To Allah belongs the dominion over the heavens and the
earth. He creates what He wills. He prepares for whom He wills females, and He
prepares for whom He wills males. Or He marries together the males and the females,
and He makes those whom He wills to be ineffectual. Indeed He is the Knowing, the
Powerful." These two verses 49 and 50 have usually been interpreted in English
translations to mean that God bestows daughters or sons on whom He wills and gives
some people both sons and daughters, while leaving others barren. But there is a

problem with this interpretation in that the word for marriage or pairing up is used in the
second verse. When familes have boys and girls, the boys and girls do not usually
arrive in pairs! I believe this verse is describing the varieties of sexual orientation and
gender, which Allah, the All-Powerful, creates as Allah wishes. Or it could be referring to
the male and female companions who will attend on the believers in Paradise, which
implies in itself an admission of homoerotic desire.
110 Qur'an 24:31. Arabic: "... tabi'ina ghair ula il-irbati min ar-rijali ..."
111 Qur'an 6:164, 17:15, 35:18, 39:7, 53:38.