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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 7, 2022

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Hi guys! Have you heard about the Eunuch Archive?

The Eunuch Archive is a friendly support site for the Eunuch Community. Originally a part of the Body Modification E-Zine (with the tagline "the fetish is reality"), since the late 90's they've been hosting erotic fiction by and for people with a kink for being castrated.

Can't say I read a lot of these stories, but going through the titles there seems to be a some amount of "wife gets back at husband", or "help, I've been sold into sex slavery". One theme that stood out was the idea of castration being normalized in the future. For example the user "Jesus" wrote a story "Orchiectomy: Is It Right for You?", describing the procedure, and praising it's health benefits. The punchline comes at the end (keep in mind the story was written in 2002):

CONCLUSION

The answer to the title "orchiectomy: is it right for you?" is obviously "yes." Most males would benefit dramatically from this minor surgical procedure, adding years to their life expectance and producing a much higher quality of life. Loving parents should seriously consider giving the gift of a bilateral orchiectomy to their sons. They will be grateful that you care enough to do so.

READER'S DIGEST, August 2017, pages 37 - 43.

There also many stories that are far more disturbing, or as they put it themselves:

PLEASE NOTICE! The behaviors depicted in these stories, but not the stories themselves, are likely in real life to be illegal. The stories describe activities that may be considered by society to be abusive, harmful, unacceptable or undesirable. The authors neither advocate, condone nor engage in any such real life illegal behavior. These stories, as is all fiction, are fantasy and not reality. The collectors and authors do recognize the difference between the two. If YOU do not, please seek professional psychiatric care at once.

The summary for one states:

The boys finally meet Eric. The castration laws become more strict, and more boys are castrated.

Although fantasy taking place in an alternative Universe, this story is about minors that are sexually mutilated and contains descriptions of said minors having sex with an adult. If it's not something you want to read, please leave.

Yikes... you can't say they didn't warn you.

Well, I suppose it's better that people get their rocks off on some seedy website. After all it's just fantasy, and the people running the site make it clear they don't condone anyone actually trying to do this sort of stuff.


Hey guys! Have you heard about the WPATH?

WPATH is the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a non-profit, interdisciplinary professional and educational organization devoted to transgender health. It is often cited in academic literature, and invites the world's top experts in the field to write the standards of care for transgender people.

Among these experts are people like Thomas W. Johnson, Richard Wassersug, and Krister H. Willette, who attended several WPATH conferences, and all have accounts on the Eunuch Archive ("Jesus", "Eunuchunique", and "Kristoff" respectively) that were active for over 20 years. Johnson and Wassersug have even published research based on a survey of EA's users, and the stories posted there.

Well, I suppose I can't criticize what people do off the clock. Ok, so maybe their academic research was actually still on the clock, but isn't the whole point of academia to explore and document all, even the weirdest corners of society? If they can combine their work with their hobby, all I can say is: good for them!

As for their work in WPATH, I'm sure they are proffesional and wouldn't dream of letting their fetish affect their work.


Hey guys! Have you heard about the WPATH's latest Standard of Care?

As mentioned above the SOC is a set of guidelines developed by the WPATH with the goal to "provide clinical guidance for health professionals to assist transgender and gender diverse people with safe and effective pathways to achieve lasting personal comfort with their gendered selves, and to maximize their overall health, psychological well-being, and self-fulfillment".

This latest version has been the subject of some controversy. For example, the previous version contained "suggested minimum ages" for a number of procedures, like:

  • 14+ years old for cross-sex hormones

  • 15+ years old for double mastectomies

  • 16+ years old for breast implants, facial feminisation surgery

  • 17+ years old for metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, vaginoplasty, hysterectomy, fronto-orbital remodelling

  • 18+ years old for phalloplasty.

In the latest version the only one that remains is the limit on phalloplasty. In another controversial decision, they decided that children can move straight to cross-sex hormones – they will no longer be requested to start with a suppression of puberty. Perhaps most controversially, the latest Standards of Care now includes an entire chapter on eunuchs, and proposes a new "eunuch-identity":

In this chapter we describe the relationship between eunuch-identified people and other transgender and gender-diverse people and present best practices specific to serving the needs of people who embrace a eunuch identity.

...

For the purpose of the Standards of Care, we define eunuch as an individual assigned male at birth whose testicles have been surgically removed or rendered non-functional, and who identifies as a eunuch.

Well, I suppose it could be a coincidence. I mean just because they suddenly came up with a eunuch-identity, doesn't mean they got it from the regulars of the fetish webs-...

While there is a 4000-year history of eunuchs in society, the greatest wealth of information about contemporary eunuch-identified people is found within the large on-line peer-support community that congregates on sites such as the Eunuch Archive (www.eunuch.org) which was established in 1998.

...

Well, I̵ ̴s̷u̸p̴p̸o̴s̶e̷ t̴̮͒ĥ̷͙a̴̦̒t̶̥́ ̴̞̓I̵̟̍ ̷̢͝c̷͜͠a̶̱͗n̷̫̽'̷͖̇ẗ̸̪.̷̢̫̂̍.̷͔̱̏̈.̴̦̳͐ ̸̡̥̪̄o̸̝̅̋́h̸̛̖̗̰̓͗ ̷̤͔̲͑͗G̵̼͒̎͝o̶̯͇͓̓ḋ̵͈̻͈͛̈́, ṋ̴̞̹͉̊̐̀ͅở̴̱̀̎̂͛!̴̖͓̟̬̊̇̓̾ P̴͕̗͚͙̘̏̿̀l̸̥͚͕̺̤̺̙͇̉̉͆̈́͗̃͘̚ë̸̟̘̟́̑̾a̸͈̗̦̟̘̱͓͊̇͋ș̷̱͚͔̤̀̇́͑͜e̶̘̿́͂̋ ̶̬̈́̒m̷͇̓͗͐̔̿̿̚͝ắ̶̲̫͖̪̺́̈͒̂́͜͠k̸͍͔̙̣̰̖̻̩͆e̴̱̤̤͎̟̐̀ ̴̹̪͇͈͚̉̾̈̚i̷̡̖̹͇̤̝͛̽̎̍t̴̻̓̾͠ ̵̭̿ş̶̧͔͖̹̣̃̂̈́͐̚̕ṱ̴̡̜̀͋̉̃̉̃͜o̶̬̹̒͌p̷͍͖̼͔̓̌͜͝!̷̛͉̎́͐̕͘̚

Among these experts are people like Thomas W. Johnson, Richard Wassersug, and Krister H. Willette, who attended several WPATH conferences, and all have accounts on the Eunuch Archive ("Jesus", "Eunuchunique", and "Kristoff" respectively) that were active for over 20 years. Johnson and Wassersug have even published research based on a survey of EA's users, and the stories posted there.

Were those accounts on the Eunuch Archive used to post erotic fanfic, or were they used to study the content/users and post surveys and whatnot? You allege that they themselves are fetishists:

As for their work in WPATH, I'm sure they are proffesional and wouldn't dream of letting their fetish affect their work.

and elsewhere complain about people being unwilling to engage with the evidence, but as far as I can tell, you haven't provided any that this is the case. This sounds more like the Freakonomics story of the professor inserting himself into the Chicago drug-dealing scene or the anthro professors visiting tribes of Pacific Islanders than a trio of academics spearheading a conspiracy to depopulate the plebs with fantasies of castration. The article you linked describes it as (bolding mine):

Reduxx reached out to the Anthropology Department at CSUC for comment on Johnson’s association with a forum hosting child sexual abuse fantasies

which again makes it sound like those usernames weren't actively posting erotica. I assume if they were, the news article would be pasting that front and center. I'm not personally going to make an account on that website myself to investigate (look at what happens to people who 'associate' with such websites 20 years later) but I'm curious to see the results if someone else does.

Did you read the post? The article with the reader's digest punchline is noted as written by Jesus, the purported username of one of the doctors.

I was confused by that. He said it was written in 2002, but it's cited as Reader's digest 2017. Is that like...The reader's digest? Or is it some kind of internal Eunuch Archive reader's digest? That excerpt wasn't from the other article he mentioned, so is he citing it directly using his own account on the site?

What's the rest of the story? Also, what about the other two accounts?

See, what happened there is that this was a story, a work of fiction, set in the future. So, while the story itself was published in 2002, the internal elements included things like "this is a Readers' Digest article from 2017". You know the way George Orwell published a novel in 1948 that was set in the year 1984?

I agree, it's very odd to think Readers' Digest would still be a thing in 2017, maybe that is what confused you?

You know the way George Orwell published a novel in 1948 that was set in the year 1984?

Wait, but how did he know what would happen in 1984 if (as you claim) he was writing the book in 1948? How did he avoid getting in trouble for misinformation by, like, the 1948 version of facebook mods?

Shocking, I know, but they didn't even have mods back in 1948! Can you imagine?

It's official, Hitler happened because they didn't have mods.

Fortunately though we got mods in the fifties, eventually culminating in the greatest mod of all time, Mick Jagger.

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