Castration anxiety is rife. (Game of Thrones/HBO)
Little is known about the ecstatic rites of Cybele, a pre-Hellenic goddess associated with nature and wildness. Shrines have been found throughout Europe, though she was originally from Mesopotamia. And numerous sources describe her mendicant priesthood: castrated men who bleached their hair, and wore heavy makeup and elaborate feminine costumes. They were said to mimic the mythic figure of Attis, a mortal who — the legend goes — was driven to a frenzy by a jealous Cybele, and castrated himself before becoming her deathless consort.
Cybele’s sidekick and her priests are just one example of the castrated divinities, and mortal men, who appear throughout history and culture, from the sun-god Osiris in ancient Egypt to Freud’s more metaphorical “castration anxiety”. And this figure — and fear — lurks even in the modern world.
A rash of “trend” pieces has sought to encourage men to sterilise themselves — even, in one case, filming the actual surgery. Along with stories about chemicals destroying sperm counts and laboratories creating embryos without sperm, it’s no wonder some men might feel a little paranoid — all the more so since the vasectomy “trend” is clearly manufactured by a PR agency. It’s not strictly castration, but the two are routinely conflated in the popular mind. And this perception is expressed in increasingly colourful terms: for example, Tucker Carlson’s recent documentary, The End of Men, featured plenty of chaps who seem certain that something like a campaign to persuade men to self-castrate is at least metaphorically under way.
These same men often rail against a perceived feminine culture that stifles masculine vigour via mechanisms such as safetyism, victim culture and hatred of hierarchy. And with women now a majority in sectors such college admissions, journalism, teaching and HR, and even scaling the heights of the US military-industrial complex, it could indeed be that this increasingly palpable presence is changing public life in ways that are less than congenial to at least some men.
But the meanings of the castration complex are, well, complex. This most brutal un-manning has carried many meanings in different times and places. Xenophon writes about eunuchs as guards in ancient Persian harems, while the theme of (forcible) sexual continence was echoed in the early Christian era by Justin Martyr, who approvingly recounts a young man’s petition to a Roman prefect for permission to be castrated, so as to prove that Christians were as sexually chaste as they claimed to be. The Byzantine empire prized them as generals, because their lack of progeny meant they had no complicated ties to rival aristocratic families.
And if castration anxiety is rearing its head again, the underlying driver today may be more technology than ideology. When Freud described the “castration complex”, he was living through an age that saw perhaps the most drastic ever displacement of brute physical strength: an overwhelmingly male attribute. Thanks to technology, as Marx observes in Das Kapital, a male labour force could increasingly be replaced in factories with a less physically strong one comprising cheaper women and children.
Perhaps the fear Freud describes as universal was more historically specific than he thought. Strikingly, the first wave of industrialisation in Russia, from the 18th century onward, also saw the emergence of the first castration cult since antiquity. Calling themselves the Skoptsy — the “Castrated Ones” — this heretical Christian sect conducted religious services reminiscent of the rites of Cybele, while adherents of both sexes amputated all visible primary sex characteristics.
Since the Skoptsy were stamped out by Stalin in the early 20th century, the digital age has replaced the industrial one. In turn, this has arguably accelerated the obsolescence not just of men, but of biological sex, as an ever-growing swathe of work is now knowledge-based and thus equally open to both sexes, while more and more of us socialise in a disembodied way online. And in this context, the interactions of both sexes are long on talking and short on physical violence. Online, that is, both men and women are forced to socialise in a feminine key.
More than two millennia ago, the castrated figure of Attis was used by poets to convey ambivalence about masculine sexuality. For Catullus, Attis is driven to self-castration by Veneris nimio odio, “an excessive loathing of sex”. Ovid, meanwhile, characterises Attis along similar lines — except in this account, Attis is punished for seeking full adult sexuality. In his Metamorphoses, Attis promises Cybele that he’ll remain a boy — but when he breaks this by making love to a nymph, she drives him mad and he self-castrates.
So as the digital transition forces ever more social interaction into a disembodied, “post-gender” mode, perhaps it makes sense that we’re dusting off Attis and Cybele again. When all our social lives are virtual-only, how is any of us to make sense of our relationship to normal human sexuality?
As our technology lurches into the new and unsettling terrain of AI and biotechnology, echoes of the Skoptsy and the rites of Cybele are once again being heard — along with an increasingly tormented relation to normal human desire and procreation. The “nullo” subculture, for example, seek to “nullify” all visible sex characteristics: icons include the Japanese artist Mao Sugiyama, who cooked and served his penis and testicles for a paying private banquet in 2012, garnished with (what else?) button mushrooms.
Clinics now offer “Nullification” cosmetic surgeries as a “gender-expansive” option. And if you don’t want to pay for bespoke junk, the internet will provide: earlier this year, a basement flat in Finsbury Park was raided and several men arrested, following discovery that a man known as “The Eunuch Maker” was livestreaming consensual male castrations for a paying audience and promoting the events via Twitter.
According to some corners of the weird internet, this isn’t a disaster but our post-human future coming into view. The notorious, pseudonymous 2018 Gender Acceleration: A Blackpaper argues that “technocapital” is an accelerating, self-replicating, and increasingly autonomous process to bring about an ultimate victory of the feminine over the masculine principle, with “a return back to the ocean, back to a sexless, genderless slime swarmachine”.
And while this is unlikely to be literally true, the more respectable WEF-funded futurists are also now wondering now whether runaway technology could bring about the end of humanity (at least, of most of it). Yuval Noah Harari recently warned that because “the future is about developing more and more sophisticated technology” such as bioengineering and AI, we may end up with a situation where “we just don’t need the vast majority of the population”. While this future is less luridly rendered than Gender Acceleration’s “sexless, genderless slime swarmachine”, a scenario in which the human majority is dismissed as functionally irrelevant biomass is every bit as dystopian.
But even if escalating uncertainty about runaway technology were driving a few men to film their own neutering, whether on TikTok or the dark web, we probably shouldn’t jump from this to predicting the abolition of sex. We should take seriously the pathological symptoms accompanying our turbulent times — but only as pathological symptoms. Reports of men’s demise are as greatly exaggerated as progressive claims that we can somehow do without sex dimorphism.
And this is because conditions for a dreaded (or heralded) triumph of the technofeminine are very unevenly distributed. For one thing, most women have beloved male partners, relatives, friends and children, and most well-adjusted people of either sexes are revolted by the idea of one sex achieving total victory over the other.
And even those so online they’re immune to ordinary reality-checks may, in due course, be confronted by a more visceral one, should the world grow more unsettled. Throughout history, it’s usually been men who have defended order (and their loved ones), sometimes at great risk to their own safety. And the decades since the turn of the millennium have seen two international financial crises, terrorist attacks, a return of great-power politics, a global pandemic and rocketing inflation. This rolling crisis shows no signs of abating. And only peaceful and prosperous societies have the luxury of pretending we can do without brute force as a guarantor of peace and order.
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SubscribeAll civilisations share some similarities the most notable being that they all end .
We live in a time of drunken decadence. We think our technology is clever but even a short glimpses into the biology that surround us and is us makes it obvious that our technology is not anywhere near clever .
In fact it is arguable that we are the least capable homo sapien ever as we live in conditions vastly removed from the natural environment which is the real constant that we need to be adaptive to not our extremely fragile artificial charade that like all civilisations before it will implode. Just turn the electricity off and watch what happens !
Gender roles come back overnight , we are so decadent that we have lost all sense of the fact that life for our ancestors was physically hard work with little division of labour . Decadence that is so stupid that it actually fails to notice that it is nature that is the oppressor not men , as Karl Marx noted you are determined by your relationship with the means of production and in a world of scarcity our ancestors did not create roles out of moral decisions they rather fell in to roles determined by the need to survive .
Our failure to grasp this now sets us up in groups against each other which will tear our fragile civilisation down like all others before it . Feminist call it intersectionality , Mussolini called it the fasci and Oxford University recieved a paper on intersectionality which was really Mein Kampf but the author had changed the words Aryan to women and girls and Jew to men and boys .Oxford duly peer reviewed and published the paper ! That’s how much we have learnt from history
.Most businesses do not have HR it is an unnecessary luxury of the corporation and public sector. College / University is another unnecessary and unsustainable scam that creates barriers to entry to keep a status quo rather than genuine change, if in doubt take a look at the replication crisis more than 75% of our science cannot be replicated ! Then there is the humanities and the subjective arbitrary drivel that comes out from there at great expense to the tax payer and student alike . .
And then there’s demography among a vast array of variables that can take our civilisation down .if we want to continue to live in the most Liberal society that has ever existed with the luxury of energy and technology we need to get real and face the extreme fragility of the social cohesion and technical infrastructure with the vast complexity that we ignore at our peril as well as the real natural environment that we are evolved to live in .
Interesting punctuation.
Rhetorical overdrive is good at that.
“Oxford University recieved a paper on intersectionality which was really Mein Kampf but the author had changed the words Aryan to women and girls and Jew to men and boys .Oxford duly peer reviewed and published the paper !”
Absolute genius hoax! Have you got a link?
Edit: Don’t worry, it took me about 10 seconds of googling to find it. Thanks for that. You made my day.
I too was intrigued. Has a name “Grievance studies affair” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair and a YouTube https://youtu.be/thHO2btnWJA. And even an eZine https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/05/academic-freedom-or-social-justice-what-kind-of-university-is-portland-state/.
Not that this sideline has a lot to do with feminization of men. The decline in testosterone over time in advanced societies for whatever reason is doing a lot toward emasculation by itself with unknown future consequences.
Would take whole piece, Mary Harrington makes the point that she does not believe in progress . We’ll this castration anxiety fits into that only I would say it is reflected by society and women saying men are not and where are the real men . Its the anxiety that society has when Men decide to walk away from being the disposable sex . Society gets anxious who is going to save them when the fall comes . English men had to by law practice archery every Sunday not because they would use bows in battle no the law came in long after the bow ceased to be used , no it was because men were considered morally soft because guns made killing to easy . Men pay 74% of the tax women make 80% of the spending time women provided and protected themselves. The 99% of combat deaths and 97% of workplace deaths and the death gap need to change after all the death gap is clearly a social construct with women getting 10 years more of life , time we addressed that .
Sorry, that is wholly incorrect. The archery law was introduced in 1252 – where all men between 15 and 60 were required to be trained to use the bow. Edward III took it a step further just over 100 years later to specify that this should be done on each Sunday.
This, as you will be aware, is very much during a time where bows were in use.
Assize of Arms 1252
As explained A Spetzari I was correct but thanks to you for encouraging me to reference it .
I was a bit to dismissive of my own knowledge it nagged me and I thought I had it from Toxophilus by Sir Roger Ascham archery tutor to king Henry Viii published 1545 so I reference back to this and Robert Hardy . A Spetzari I can inform you that the use of archery in war in the western world ended around 1500 ad I refer above to the law requiring men and boys to practice archery beyond the time that it was used in war in order to improve their manliness and moral backbone which it was felt that the introduction of the gun feminised men . You will observe that archery ended in battle around 1500 AD as I have already stated . The unlawful games act 1541 put into law by King Henry VIII compelled men and boys to practice archery despite it not being used in battle. Furthermore King Charles 1st reinforced the compulsion of men and boys to practice archery in 1633 with a further order issued by him . So it is I who is wholly correct and you who is wholly incorrect .
Interesting! Thanks!
Didn’t know about Henry VIII’s later law.
A Spetzari and Marys Harrington and Julie Bindel Indulge me for a few moments, I am flattered to have the highest scoring coment on your article but I felt that I had not done Marys Article justice as I was off point about castration the above was an attempt to Conservatively address the point of how men are prepared to be disposable,to society and I am not saying that to complain about it Or say woman oppressed men it is just simple reality
Wow! I’m breathless reading that last sentence!
I am not wanting to wish more death on any one just saying we should be seeking more life .
Some great points but you have misunderstood this:
Replication crisis was in the social sciences (arguably not science at all). There is an enormous body of science that works perfectly well – hence the luxuries and technologies you rightly are concerned of losing exist.
No A Spetzari the replication crisis is not limited to the social sciences it is alive and well in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics and Biology . There are of course things that work and serve our purposes but that does not mean we have a full understanding of them .
I have thought more about this metaphoric castration discussion and have considered the following points . As a society we put alot of emphasising on testosterone doing everything to make a male male . But men are the disposable sex they are ! Really and I am not being disparaging to the either sex in saying that it just is the way mother nature or God made us , biology does not do waste the earth has scarcity for all living things . Evolutionis the adapting to environments where scarcity of resources is still the deal but your a female ant eater so you select the males with the longest noses because longer snouts mean going deeper for those ants . Females select males and ma,led protect females from rape becauseits in the males self interest to make sure the children he is investing in is biologically his. Most primates are the same, baby boys play with things toy cars toy guns and girls with dolls and social interaction that is not to say women or men can’t do different, but swap the children for chimpanzees and the same happens femalechimps go for the dolls and malechimps the thing’s where did they get the social conditioning , you can repeat and get the same results with Orangutans guerillas . Feminism does not speak for women , many women have there own views separate to feminism and feminism is not one church there are a multitude of philosophical views such as the academic feminist Sally Gearhart Miller who was charged with setting up gender studiesin British universities. She confidently espoused in public that the male gender had served its usefulness and was now obsolete she proposed that only 10% of the entire human race should be male , she wanted to show humility to the obsolete gender so she said it would best be achieved by abortion of male baby’s. Can you imagine a man proposing genocide of women do you think he would keep his job ? Sally Gearhart Miller not only kept her job but got promotion . That’s one type of feminist I do not like. On the other hand we have the author of this article Mary Harrington who describes herself as a reactionary feminist and a non believer in progress and I find I agree with much of what she says she and I could talk about Marxian materialism and my favourite quote from Marx you are determined by your relationship with the means of production, Marx was a genius on his critique of capitalism but he did not have the answer . So back to to Marys Article obviously the male sex organ produces testosterone and all the ills of the world are because of males according to the type of feminist who dominates our media , politics and campus in the Sally Gearhart Miller type of feminist the answer is rid the world of males . Here is where I have abet with you in the not to distant future the molly coddled shielded feminist who was privately educated and works in journalism at the BBC or the Guardian ie not Mary Harrington these entitled and privileged women will sound a chorus for the benefit of the world they are nearly there already the media sells itself with polarising articles that only ever show one side of the story in my lifetime that has been every which way to denigrate men and worship women this I think is a sales tactic women do 80% of the buying so if you are going to be sexisr and hateful pick men especially white ones that’s a free for all . It is actually enshrined in British law that the life of a white straight male is worth less than any other human in Britain and where is this law its in the Equality act 2010 because of course we are all equal just some are more equal than others so I am referring to class more than any thing else you a well to do educated woman who is the victim despite being the most privileged human ever to have lived the obvious solution to toxic Masculinity is to castrate boys at birth then none of that nasty testosterone can corrupt them of course they can go back to school where 98% of primary school teachers are women and a boy knows by the end of the first day school is meant for girls , a boy will witness the television , the media at large wringing its hands at providing more role models for girls . The boy in his 98% female school has been told he has privilege the girls are oppressed . But it’s OK in school because they believe in Equality and we are all the same and that means we are all girls a boy who doesn’t behave like a girl is a defective girl the 98% female world of primary school ensures behaviour by the standards of girls . With more concern being expressed by the feminist contributors to the Guardian that doyen of the left with its 100 % privately educated working class oxbridge interns ! The concern of Britain’s other progressive newspaper is domestic violence which is solely perpetrated by men and boys , the article in the progressive Independent talks about women and girls as the victims no mention of men and boys . The standard media game of telling only one side of the story is continued by the independent news paper owned by the Mecca of progressive thinking the government of Saudi Arabia. Most domestic violence like most human relationships takes two and most times it is reciprocated and where it is not reciprocated more than 500 studies have shown that where only one partner engages in physical violence it is the woman that inmates physical violence 70% of the time and of course Erin Prezzi the woman who opened the world’s first domestic violence shelter for woman found out that it was the norm for both men and women to hit each other and it was learned behaviours from their own parents that they repeated not the sexist Duluth model that even the women who created the duluth model now denounced it as sexist but it is still to be found in the UK social services . So would castration make men safer for women I fully expect to see an argument developing out of toxic Masculinity declaringthat the world will be so much safer when working class boys are castrated at birth of course upper class boys will be deemed to be well supported a d will keep their testicle. The progressive woke can sneer at the white working class that it will be good for them that they once castrated could grow up to be a girl like everyone else instead of being a defective girl . IMen have 200% the upper body strength of a woman but castration is not going to change it that much as its genetic muscle fibres. I have to say that I spent much of my working life working with offendrs including sex offenders some agreed to use testosterone reducing drugs, chemical castration and a few had been born with out a functional sex organ none the less they had offended one with penetrating a woman with a knife another’s with an auger bit in an electric drill quite horrific . Castration is not the answer though a psychologist made an argument for plastic surgery to give a p***s to one such challenged person I Don’t think anything was done then and I don’t think is possible today to have a functioning organ made . . Well I have written to much but it’s amazing the thoughts that build up over this I really do think castration working class boys is not a joke , women are an in-group themselves and view themselves mostly not all but they socialise more while men see each other as rivals so the men at the top are served by feminisms in the media brand to divide and rule . The top of a society is more threatened by working class men yes women do protest but might is right when the chips are down so it would never surprise me to see male politicians push such a move ! The Labour leader in Wales a man called for a curfew of men because one sick police officer murdered a woman,. Only the killer knows why he did it to try and blame all men or police or even banter for it is perverse and just feeds the division, sorry I write to much all over the place .
Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. I’d never heard of the cults mentioned in the article, least of all the Japanese guy who cooked and served certain parts of his anatomy (I’m being careful which words I use in case the Unherd moderation software pings me).
As ever, Mary H provides a very scholarly interpretation of her subject matter, but I suspect these online-driven cults are yet another manifestation of cultural decline and decay. No sign of men with c*str*tion anxiety in Ukraine. They’re fighting to the death to defend their country and their metaphorical b*lls are very much intact.
As reported extensively in Unherd, this winter is likely to be tough in western Europe. Power cuts and shortages are likely, together with a plummeting standard of living. All kinds of left-wing, progressive fantasies and aberrations are about to collide with reality. Short-term pain for sure, but in the long-term a hard reality check might not be a bad thing.
Isn’t this exactly what Transexualism is? And that seemingly is the most powerful political force in the West today.
Only because it benefits large pharmaceutical companies and there is excess capital available to waste on surgeries and drugs. In a crisis this madness wouldn’t last very long.
Yes, but transexualism, actually going through medical transition, is apparently only about 5% or so of those claiming to be trans. The majority of the adults just dress funny!
I know. I find it quite extraordinary that she managed to write a hugely scholarly article on castration anxiety with scarcely a mention of the trans phenomenon.
At the risk of sounding flippant, male-to-female TS people almost by definition have the opposite of castration anxiety, namely non-castration anxiety, until they are in effect castrated as part of their transition surgery.
As is pointed out in the article, castration cults have been around for some time, and they have always been the preoccupation of a tiny section of society, so it is with the present ones, However, the problem now is the internet, where they can parade their nonsense and make it seem that more people are involved than is the actual case. Things change, people adapt, but I don’t see s*x going out of fashion any time soon, and I don’t know of any woman who is really attracted to the psychologically castated male (and particularly not the physical one). I don’t think men are so fragile that, because women are making inroads into what were previously all male spheres, they want to divest themselves of their family jewels (metaphorically or actually); the wilest extremes are being given too much publicity. By the way, I really could have done without knowing about Mao Sugiyama; I hope he got the psychiatric help he so obviously needs.
I agree. Too many “societal trends” are tiny groups of disturbed people given a megaphone by social media.
Nutcases obsessed by their nuts, what b*ll*cks.
The internet is not the only problem though. The trans phenomenon has been justified by our government, the EU and the UN. It is now, officially, legally, a way of ‘being’, it is a protected characteristic alongside being gay, or b l a c k, or disabled, none of which are the same thing at all, unless you subscribe to the belief that gayness is a choice or an illness.
I usually adore Mary’s work, but extrapolating trends from a tiny clique of mentally-unhinged internet weirdos – and some uber-wonky thinktanks – doesn’t really persuade me. And let’s be blunt, this supposed Female supremacy exists solely as long as the physically stronger gender acquiesces to it. Newtonian laws apply as much to culture and politics as it does science. Mary’s point about humanity’s love for each other, gender notwithstanding, is the most pertinent point here.
…you’re right Ben, it’s only a small coal mine and only one canary.
Mary’s hard work in this article needs your deeper consideration. The longer the Yin outbalances the Yang, the more suffering ahead.
There were never any complaints when the Yang outbalanced the Yin, though, when it was all sweetness and light.
Another great article here by Mary Harrington about how female competition is changing and externalizing office politics:
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/december-january-2022/new-female-ascendency/
when it was all sweetness and light.
No, it was never so.
Nature always snaps back toward balance. Just remember the ascendency of the Yin is associated with chaos over order, darkness over light, destruction over construction and decay over growth. Sure seems to fit the times we live in. When its over the Yang will ascend again.
Who said the ascendency of the Yin is associated with chaos etc ? A man? Yang will ascend again? I think we know by now extremes are not profitable. What seems to be happening in this techno age is that Yin and Yang are being merged into each individual.
…who said that? Complaint is justified whenever a balance of differences is lost, in either direction.
In America too, there is a push to emasculate men.. but we are silently resisting by construction jobs around the house, brewing beer, hunting, fishing, raising livestock on small plots and practicing animal husbandry. (There’s a reason why they call it animal husbandry.) Little secret: there’s one thing women deep down do not want… that’s emasculated men.
Yep, it’s all rainbows and bubblegum until we need to go to war. “Raise your sons to be warriors and your daughters to be the entertainment of warriors. All else is folly”
I’d be interested to know more about how the creation of a foetus without sperm works. Not only that, but what possible iteration of a human being such a foetus might develop into. Firstly, would it fully develop? What would its DNA look like? What characteristics, sexual or otherwise, might it have? And has this already been attempted?
The article focuses to a considerable extent on how males deal with their progenerative capacity, but there’s little in the way of exploring why a modern male should seek to self-castrate, especially in a performative way! It would, of course require a whole library-shelf of research to more fully explore; or should i say a whole hard drive, without it sounding too euphemistic? It has been speculated that the rise of transexualism is in fact more of a desire to become asexual, or that the latter is a more significant driver than yet understood.
In addition to transexualism, the rise of technological drivers of this phenomenon also points towards transhumanism. It seems there are forces at play here that are just rising to a level of conscious awareness. Perhaps that process has been ongoing for longer than we yet understand, and certainly for reasons we haven’t yet fathomed. If so, is it a good thing or not? Or, as yesterday’s article on Nietzsche seemed to touch upon (was this intentional, Unherd editors?) perhaps the paradigm is simply Beyond Good and Evil. It’s the text i referenced in Comments, and others have drawn parallels in Comments with Nietzsche leading from other articles too!
A female only non-sperm foetus is absolutely theoretically possible. In practice it would be an incredibly rare replication accident. The foetus would be a literal clone of the mother, a twin if you like, but separated in time. I have no doubt this is already technologically possible as a fertility exercise but not pursued commercially because there would be no market (yet).
Dimorphic reproduction has huge evolutionary advantages, but once you get to the point where you can get the same effects via technology, accelerated so they happen instantly rather than over aeons, then the requirement for dimorphism becomes kinda moot – not a thought many will be overjoyed about, but there you have it – neither nature nor technology care about anyone’s opinions or feelings.
Maybe, but reproducing in such a way maybe less messy than the old-fashioned way, but not nearly as much fun.
Thanks for the reply to my question. There’s usually someone on Unherd who can answer with sufficient knowledge to provide an insight, without needing to Google!
We homo sapiens are a binary species, descended from other binary species over hundreds and hundreds of millions of years… now suddenly you presume to change that without ramifications?!
This is utter foolishness.
Would a world of clones lead to stagnation?
I guess it could, no telling where all this heads once humans can alter or otherwise manipulate their genetics in a controlled manner, which is imminent. Within that I imagine there will be some (but not all) that might decide to reproduce via cloning themselves. My guess is this will start playing out within a decade, and carry on in the oddest directions over the subsequent half a century. We might get a Boys From Brazil playout with Putin and Kim Jong Un clones all over the place. That might not be stagnant as I imagine the clones would descend into a fight amongst themselves – I can’t imagine they would want to rule as a committee of clones.
Creation of a fetus without sperm, pardon my ignorance but isn’t that cloning?
What! No mention of the castrati of the Sistine Chapel Choir?
I don’t know that ‘castration anxiety’ is on the rise. I think its a concept that’s always made men anxious. I actually had a castration dream of sorts last night. Maybe what’s on the rise now is different forms of castration itself. Perhaps that’s just a minor nuance to the main point, and only a criticism of the title. But I would add internet porn to the list of forces castrating the modern man. Any man reading this knows exactly how that works.
“Throughout history, it’s usually been men who have defended order (and their loved ones), sometimes at great risk to their own safety.”
Yes, and importantly, not always through brute force. Men and women resolve conflicts in different ways and men generally do not resolve their conflicts through force, despite what Hollywood says. Confrontations between men tend to be direct and out-in-the-open, which allows direct resolution through direct communication and negotiation. Confrontations between women tend to be iindirect and covert rather open, and resolution of such conflicts is more difficult because the conflict itself is less clearly in view. In fact, keeping the conflict hidden is part of the strategy.
Take-home: when wars end, it is because men (who bear the burden of war) sit down to barter a peaceful resolution. Conflicts between women can simmer indefinitely because their aggression is more covert.
This applies not just to humans but to our ape cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos, and it has been documented in detail by Frans de Waal.
There have been some very nasty,sadistic,cruel and vicious women in history. I loathe this earth mother myth the feminists used to promote as its a generalisation. I’m not one (sadly).
Without a doubt, a vasectomy is an excellent lifestyle choice for any young man today.
He frees himself from the financial burden of providing for children and eliminates any possibility of a woman using pregnancy to ensnare him in marriage. Dating becomes risk and worry free. Child support is completely eliminated.
Who wouldn’t want that peace of mind.
It might be all fun and games, until you’re old and dying alone in a nursing home. I honestly would never want to ever have relations with a woman unless there was the dangerous excitement of the possibility of a new life. That’s probably why I’m married.
…or turn to one of the increasingly diverse substitutes for sex with flesh & blood women. This is the risk that no one is really commenting on, yet is written on the wall. With AI progressing at the pace it has, deriding the risk is at best irresponsible. Imagine a world where men no longer depend on women collaboration for having sex – regardless of the opinion you might have on the quality of such sex. The drivers for development of such tech have never been higher.
You can already get sex dolls which learn what their male owner likes. And even more creepily child sex dolls….it’s not a complete surprise that quite a few women wish men didn’t exist at all!!!
Real MEN will still want women. Since they will be the ones who reproduce we will get more of their sort over time.
You’ll be able to jump fences and hurdles way better, but wont be able to run in The Derby and other big races….
“Throughout history, it’s usually been men who have defended order (and their loved ones), sometimes at great risk to their own safety.”
Um, it’s usually been men who CAUSE the disorder. All the crises you mentioned: “two international financial crises, terrorist attacks, a return of great-power politics, a global pandemic and rocketing inflation” were mostly fueled by the decisions of men.
“Brute force” has caused a lot more problems than it has ever solved.
That being said, brute force in the service of protecting the vulnerable is extremely important. I am a huge supporter of MORE funding of police in high crime areas and the incarceration of violent predators, preferably for life.
But brute force is not a “good” in itself, but must be directed on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.
Also, a petite woman with a gun is far more powerful than a large man without a gun. If any form of technology has “emasculated” men, it’s the hand gun.
Until a spider comes along and she starts squealing in terror.
Don’t be ridiculous Jim!
Sorry, it was too good to resist :). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTXG8FReno
If women were in charge all over the world life would be kisses and roses.
Margaret Thatcher was an iconic Prime Minister. She opened the pathway to where we are now. And she wasn’t big on Sisterhood. A woman ran the Post Office and under her regime thousands of innocent postmaster,male and female were sent to jail or killed themselves due to a fault in the computer programme she was in charge of. Dame Dido Harding,a well connected broad,first screwed up Talk Talk,then made a total hash of the Track and Trace,then screwed up something else. There are other instances as well. Look how Jacinda Ardern implemented Nazi policies in New Zealand. Far from making things better,when women get put in charge,things go downhill. I’m female.and I’m a traitor but I’m about as much into sisterhood as Mrs Thatcher was.
“Um, it’s usually been men who CAUSE the disorder. All the crises you mentioned: “two international financial crises, terrorist attacks, a return of great-power politics, a global pandemic and rocketing inflation” were mostly fueled by the decisions of men.”
Um, that’s facile, Penny, and false. Both historically and cross-culturally, women have almost always supported and encouraged men who go to war in the name of society as a whole. Sometimes, women manipulate men into risking their lives. At the very least, women are the cheerleaders. They, along with children, stand to gain much, after all, from the raiding or warfare that bring more communal land, food, wealth, security or whatever.
Think about only a few examples from recent history. How many women on either side objected to World War I instead of handing out white feathers (explicitly or implicitly) to reluctant men? How many women, Northern or Southern, opposed the Civil War instead of volunteering in their thousands for their respective moral crusades? (Eventually, many Southern women became active champions of segregation.) As for German women, they were among Hitler’s most enthusiastic supporters (and not only because some of them found him attractive). Apart from anything else (such as the material opportunities that he gave “Aryans” by reviving anti-Semitism), he promised to avenge the shame of German men who had lost the war and thus failed to protect German women both militarily and financially (which is why millions of middle-class women eventually ended up as prostitutes in the streets along with mutilated former soldiers who ended up as beggars). How many Israeli women oppose their country’s many wars? And how many Palestinian women oppose the terrorist activities of their own sons (and occasionally become suicide bombers themselves)? And then there was the American temperance movement, which produced Abolition. We all know how that “noble experiment” ended.
As for “global pandemics,” that accusation, too, is both facile and false. Women were among those who made foolish or dubious decisions during the Covid pandemic–notably Shi Zhengli (the “Bat Woman” who led a research team at the lab in Wuhan) but even Deborah Birx (who admits that she fumbled along as Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator along with Anthony Fauci).
Women enjoy order, because it protects them and their offspring. Men enjoy chaos, because it provides a stage for their power.
The paradox is that both bring into being, the opposite of what they would enjoy.
In this age, feminine empathy is now dominant in all aspects of Western society. But mercy ahead of justice is causing chaos. So the stage is set for another violent turn of the cycle.
“ And only peaceful and prosperous societies have the luxury of pretending we can do without brute force as a guarantor of peace and order.” The west is in for some hard time
Thirty years of marriage – the ultimate castration cult. Physical castration completely unnecessary.
Only divorce is worse!
Nice conclusion. Didn’t see it coming, to be fair.
All very well name-dropping articles (the intersectionality paper) but not all of us have institutional access. Can someone risk a visit from the copyright police by posting the link? In the public interest of course.
Its about population reduction. Its about reducing the population to save the planet. Its a long game. They tried birth control but it hasn’t worked. People just won’t stop breeding. The birth control pill may have helped reduce the size of families in the West but overall the world population is rising. We are told.
Other methods like vasectomy enforced or encouraged by bribes in the third world,as it was then,was exposed by the media as cruel and demeaning and against human rights. So they’ve been developing another option. It started off as being gay,but the flaw there was you can be gay but still engender children. So now they’ve upped the game. Under the guise of trans they are trying to make a significant mass Sexless but of their own accord,so the people who go for it THINK its their choice. That’s why they want to put drugs in little children,it’s to render them infertile later in life. It’s very important to reduce the world population as natural habitats where the lion,the elephant,the tiger roam are getting increasingly nibbled at by human populations,a village here,a farm there. We don’t want people. We want wildlife! That’s the agenda. It’s a bit concerning what they’ll do next to reduce the population in order to rewild that George Monbiot is such an advocate for. Black Death anyone?
another very interesting piece Mary. yes brute force is sometimes needed. eg to oppose Nazism.
One axiom of physical castration today, as responsible surgeons are at pains to emphasise to would-be nullos and suchlike, is its irrevocability and permanence. Hence much of the anxiety of those less keen to lose their genitalia!
But at the present rate of progress, that probably won’t remain so for long. One can envisage a society in the near future where physical castration or even sex change, in either direction, is fully reversable with new genitalia capable of being regrown and reshaped from scratch, and likewise a change of skin colour.
So perhaps one day it will even be considered a rite of passage and a commendable achievement to “see how the other sex lives” or “experience life as a black person” for a while, before settling on a final preferred sex and appearance.
Maybe there will be a Duke of Edinburgh award, or equivalent, for a course on “temporary transition”, akin to orienteering or sailing. Not sure the old boy would have much approved, but there you go.
There are also practical applications. For example, once people are scooting around the Solar System, and thus subject to higher levels of radiation which even a heavily shielded spacecraft would be unable to suppress entirely, it would be very handy and perhaps even essential to be able to regenerate a pristine new set of genitals, having possibly of necessity foregone the old set for a year or two!
Another practical example is in crime prevention and deterrence. Most people these days would probably frown on the medieval approach of lopping off body parts for crimes such as theft or rape. But if genitalia and limbs could be regrown, then a temporary loss of either as a punitive and preventive measure might again be considered a fitting and not unduly harsh penalty.
John Ramsden
https://highranges.com
‘Masculine’ & ‘feminine’ are social constructs traditionally imposed on the biological sexes aka ‘gender’; how to act, dress, speak, etc. 70s feminists called them stereotypes and argued for their abolition. Girls and boys should be encouraged to ‘exit the gender box’ so as to develop a healthy personality. This article not only disregards this important theoretical development but actually amplifies the outdated lore of manly men and womanly harridans. It also makes no mention of WPATH’s recent campaign to include the eunuch identity in its inventory of ‘transgenders’. Nor is there a mention that it has been mostly women who have braved the genderist onslaught on boys (castrated) and girls (mastectomies & hysterectomies) to the clarion call of ‘be who you are’. As far as I know, identity is constructed by the mind using data drawn from the material world. As this construct needs validation from others it explains why the genderist ‘debate’ was initially opposed and critics subsequently verbally abused or savaged. Ms Harrington might well consider me a bigot or Nazi for saying so.
…I think your down votes are because people are taking the opposite conclusion to what you intended !
Another slow news day, eh?
If it’s todays news you’ve subscribed to Unherd for, you’ve wasted your money.
The topic Mary discusses here might make some people feel very uncomfortable, but it could hardly be more salient to the events which generate the news. For instance, the Russian cult which Stalin surpressed has significance with regard to Putin’s underlying feeling that Russia has been emasculated and therefore he needs to prove otherwise. A more thought-provoking piece could hardly be written.
I can, however, understand why some men might baulk at it, or even seek to deride it.