eunuchs

I think it is important to come out of our cultural paralysis and admit that we don't know things. I had no idea previously what a eunuch was. I had heard it over and over again, and had always forgotten to look it up. Now I know, and I'm so much the better for it now that I know whenever I hear eunuch, I know they're referring to a castrated man. Here's some history for everyone:

A eunuch is a castrated man; the term usually refers to those castrated in order to perform a specific social function, as was common in many societies of the past. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 21st century BC. Over the millennia since, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures such as courtiers or equivalent domestics, treble singers, religious specialists, government officials, military commanders, and guardians of women or harem servants. In some societies, the notion of eunuch has been expanded to include men who are impotent with women or are simply celibate.

HISTORY

The English word eunuch is from the Greek eune ("bed") and ekhein ("to keep"), effectively "bed keeper." Servants or slaves were usually castrated in order to make them safer servants of a royal court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence – seemingly lowly domestic functions such as making the ruler's bed, bathing him, cutting his hair, carrying him in his litter or even relaying messages, giving him "the ruler's ear" could impart de facto power on the formally humble but trusted servant, as reflected in the humble origins and etymology of many high offices (e.g. chancellor started out as a servant guarding the entrance to an official's study). Eunuchs supposedly did not generally have loyalties to the military, the aristocracy, or to a family of their own (having neither offspring nor in-laws, at the very least), and were thus seen as more trustworthy and less interested in establishing a private 'dynasty'. Because their condition usually lowered their social status, they could also be easily replaced or killed without repercussion. In cultures that had both harems and eunuchs, eunuchs were sometimes used as harem servants (compare the female odalisque) or seraglio guards.

Eunuchs were familiar figures in the Assyrian Empire (ca. 850 till 622 B.C.), in the court of the Achaemenid emperors of Persia and the Egyptian Pharaohs (down to the Lagid dynasty known as Ptolemies, ending with Cleopatra).

In ancient China castration was both a traditional punishment (until the Sui Dynasty) and a means of gaining employment in the Imperial service. At the end of the Ming Dynasty there were 70,000 eunuchs (宦官 huàn'guān, or 太監 tàijiān) in the Imperial palace. The value of such employment—certain eunuchs gained immense power that may have superseded that of the prime ministers—was such that self-castration had to be made illegal. The number of eunuchs in Imperial employ had fallen to 470 in 1912, when their employment ceased. The justification of the employment of eunuchs as high-ranking civil servants was that, since they were incapable of having children, they would not be tempted to seize power and start a dynasty. Concurrently, a similar system existed in Vietnam.

The tension between depraved eunuchs in the service of the emperor and virtuous Confucian officials resisting their tyranny is a familiar theme in Chinese history. In his History of Government, Samuel Finer points out that reality was not always that clear-cut. There were instances of very capable eunuchs, who were valuable advisors to their emperor, and the resistance of the "virtuous" officials often was procrastination on the part of a privileged class which blindly resisted any change, whether it be for the good or the bad of the empire.

The practice was also well established in Europe among the Greeks and Romans, although more rarely as court functionaries than in Asia. For example in late Rome, emperors such as Constantine were surrounded by eunuchs for such functions as bathing, hair cutting, dressing, and bureaucratic functions, in effect acting as a shield between the emperor and his administrators from physical contact. Eunuchs were believed loyal and dispensable.

At the Byzantine imperial court, there were a great number of eunuchs employed in domestic and administrative functions, actually organized as a separate hierarachy, following a parallel career of their own. Archieunuchs—each in charge of a group of eunuchs—were among the principal officers in Constantinople, under the emperors.[1]

It [citation needed] was only after the Muslim Arabs conquered parts of the Roman Empire that they acquired eunuchs from the Romans, and not knowing what else to do with them, made them into harem guards. For the Eunuchs in the Ottoman Great Sultan's harem and wider palace service, see the (Topkapi) Seraglio.

The Ancient Indian Kama Sutra refers to people of a "third sex" (trtyaprakrti), who can be dressed either in men's or in women's clothes and perform fellatio on men. The term has been translated as "eunuchs" (as in Sir Richard Burton's translation of the book), but these persons have also been considered to be the equivalent of the modern hijra of India (see relevant article and the section below).

from Wikipedia

I am also aware that these are becomming lamer and lamer, but... well I refuse to appologise as of yet.