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How Castration Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all new Toyota Corolla. Welcome
0:04
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
0:14
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles Debuto, Bryant,
0:17
Speaker 1: Jerry's over there, and we all want to warn you
0:19
Speaker 1: that if you were squeamish, you should skip this one.
0:23
Speaker 1: And if you're a man, you may just sit there
0:26
Speaker 1: with your legs crossed the entire episode. Yeah, don't be confused.
0:29
Speaker 1: We're not talking about circumcision. We already did that one.
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Speaker 1: This one's castration, and it is nothing like circumcision. Really.
0:37
Speaker 1: Uh And as a matter of fact, I'm pretty proud
0:39
Speaker 1: of our circumcision episode. That one was really good at
0:41
Speaker 1: head at All had history, anatomy um scalpels, controversy, controversy.
0:49
Speaker 1: That was a good one. This one's a little different.
0:51
Speaker 1: This is castration. It better not be anything like circumcision,
0:54
Speaker 1: because that means something has gone very wrong or you
0:57
Speaker 1: just haven't finished. Yeah, all right, yeah, castration. I don't
1:01
Speaker 1: remember how this came up, but this is from a
1:03
Speaker 1: bog post. I wrote, Hey, yeah, you did a great job. Yeah, well,
1:07
Speaker 1: I just wanted to find out everything there is to
1:09
Speaker 1: know about castration. I did pretty much. I've got a
1:12
Speaker 1: couple of historical bullet points for you. Okay, Um, Apparently
1:18
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy eight, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill reducing
1:22
Speaker 1: punishment for rape, polygamy, and sodomy from death to castration. Okay,
1:28
Speaker 1: t J. And you know, we should also point out
1:30
Speaker 1: we got a lot of letters from people about the
1:32
Speaker 1: revisionist history with Thomas Jefferson that said, you know, Sally
1:37
Speaker 1: Hemmings was more than likely forced into that relationship. And
1:42
Speaker 1: some people go so far as to call Thomas Jefferson
1:44
Speaker 1: a rapist himself for that relationship. And um, so I
1:49
Speaker 1: had never seen that, but then I did some reading,
1:51
Speaker 1: and that is a theory that we can't really base
1:54
Speaker 1: and say, hey, they were in love. Yeah, so are
2:00
Speaker 1: in love because they made love. I don't know that
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm going to go out and say that he was
2:05
Speaker 1: a rapist, but um, it's it's definitely some hinky history.
2:08
Speaker 1: Well that's a really excellent point. Like with revisionist history again,
2:12
Speaker 1: like a lot of its interpretation. But I mean, if
2:15
Speaker 1: you do look at it, like she was his slave
2:18
Speaker 1: and they had a relationship, Like how can it be
2:22
Speaker 1: consentual right at the very least, it's it's tarnished with
2:26
Speaker 1: the concept that she was a slave, and there's a
2:28
Speaker 1: chance that he forced her into it. So thanks for
2:30
Speaker 1: everyone who wrote in. Yeah. Um. And also the other
2:33
Speaker 1: quick thing is that Genghis Khan supposedly like says that
2:36
Speaker 1: Jingis might have been castrated himself by princess seeking revenge.
2:40
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name, Jingis, No, no Hang See
2:46
Speaker 1: or Hang Fee. I can't remember. He was like the
2:48
Speaker 1: admiral of the Chinese navy when they were undertaking basically
2:52
Speaker 1: their own age of exploration. That again named Gavin Menzies
2:56
Speaker 1: thinks beat Columbus too the New World in four he
3:01
Speaker 1: was castrated as well. There's actually been a lot of
3:05
Speaker 1: very prominent people in history who have held positions of
3:08
Speaker 1: great power who were castrated people. It's very interesting. Hadn't
3:12
Speaker 1: heard a Jengis though, Yeah, and that's you know, that's
3:15
Speaker 1: not verified. No, you can see that being like a
3:18
Speaker 1: rumor that his enemies made up to see make him
3:21
Speaker 1: seem weaker or something. Sure, but you know we should
3:25
Speaker 1: point out that. Um with this, with the concept of
3:28
Speaker 1: castration as as shocking and as weird, and horrific as
3:32
Speaker 1: it sounds, there is like a certain, um, certain group
3:36
Speaker 1: of people who are either castrated or interested in being castrated,
3:40
Speaker 1: that there's nothing really weird to it at all from
3:45
Speaker 1: their perspective. So, um, let's talk about this. This is
3:49
Speaker 1: not like a widespread thing today, but if you look
3:54
Speaker 1: back into the ancient world, um, it was actually fairly common,
3:58
Speaker 1: especially in parts of Asia like Korea and China. A
4:02
Speaker 1: lot of their high bureaucrats were actually castrated, and UM,
4:06
Speaker 1: like I said, a lot of them went on to
4:09
Speaker 1: hold great places of prominence in history. And very oddly,
4:13
Speaker 1: there's been some sort of um longevity research into the
4:16
Speaker 1: idea that if you're castrated mail, you may live longer
4:21
Speaker 1: than the average mail. Yeah. You found a study, uh
4:25
Speaker 1: from two thousand twelve from Korea that unix and that's
4:29
Speaker 1: the word you're gonna hear a lot. Um the subject
4:32
Speaker 1: group group produced more centenarians. That's people who live a
4:36
Speaker 1: hundred or older than UM a hundred and thirty times
4:39
Speaker 1: more than just normal folks in the West. And yeah,
4:43
Speaker 1: not say they're abnormal, but you know what I mean,
4:44
Speaker 1: well in their right and their average lifespan of that
4:48
Speaker 1: group was fourteen and nineteen years higher than the control group. Interesting. Um,
4:53
Speaker 1: the thing is that somebody pointed out like, well, they
4:56
Speaker 1: were high bureaucrats, so their life was cushier. They were
4:58
Speaker 1: less likely to be killed in an ox accident or
5:01
Speaker 1: something than their contemporaries. They're also less likely to die
5:04
Speaker 1: from a STD. Yeah. That's another really good point in
5:07
Speaker 1: that I hadn't thought about another study though that that
5:11
Speaker 1: um had similar findings too, though, so it is possible.
5:15
Speaker 1: The theory goes that without testostro in raging through your body, um,
5:20
Speaker 1: your lifespan could conceivably increase over time. That's true. Okay,
5:26
Speaker 1: So who else famous I know? Uh? Boston Corbett, Thomas
5:30
Speaker 1: Boston Corbett. Yeah, you said you knew about him already.
5:34
Speaker 1: I'm impressed I had heard this before. It might have
5:36
Speaker 1: been like a Jeopardy thing. Um. But he was the
5:39
Speaker 1: guy who most people believe shot John Wokes Booth, who
5:43
Speaker 1: shot Lincoln, and he was castrated himself. He castrated himself.
5:50
Speaker 1: He was a case of auto castration, and there aren't
5:53
Speaker 1: that many on record of auto castration. But um may
5:57
Speaker 1: I so, Mr orbit Um, you said he was the
6:01
Speaker 1: guy who shot John Wolkespooth against orders even Yeah, he
6:05
Speaker 1: was to be taken alive and this guy shot him. Yeah,
6:07
Speaker 1: I didn't know. It's disputed, but some people say he
6:08
Speaker 1: didn't do it. But um, I think he's largely held responsible.
6:12
Speaker 1: So later on in life, he uh, he became widowed.
6:16
Speaker 1: He was a widower, his wife died, is another way
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Speaker 1: to put it. And he was worried about being tempted
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Speaker 1: by other people, other women. So he one night took
6:25
Speaker 1: a pair of scissors and castrated himself, and then he
6:29
Speaker 1: went to church for the evening service, went home and
6:33
Speaker 1: had dinner, and then decided to go to the local
6:36
Speaker 1: doctor's house to see if it should get checked out. UM.
6:40
Speaker 1: That obviously made national news. One of the one of
6:43
Speaker 1: the ideas that UM suggests Corbett was crazy when he
6:49
Speaker 1: did this was that he was a hatter. That was
6:52
Speaker 1: his profession, and hatters at the time worked with mercury. Mercury,
6:56
Speaker 1: which the phrase mad as a hatter, the mad hatter.
7:00
Speaker 1: That's because people who made hats worked with mercury, and
7:03
Speaker 1: all of that mercury poisoning over time supposedly affected their
7:06
Speaker 1: personality and their i Q. What they did with the mercury.
7:11
Speaker 1: You know, I think it was had something to do
7:13
Speaker 1: with giving the head as shape. Okay, I'm not sure.
7:16
Speaker 1: I look, I looked for this and I couldn't find it.
7:18
Speaker 1: But I did find that that idea is in dispute. Um. Well,
7:21
Speaker 1: I did see that Corbett cited a Bible verse. Um,
7:24
Speaker 1: it's not surprising they went to church after Matthew nineteen
7:28
Speaker 1: twelve May. For there are eunuchs who were born that
7:33
Speaker 1: way from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who
7:36
Speaker 1: were made so by man. And then there are also
7:39
Speaker 1: eunuchs who made themselves Unichs for the sake of the
7:43
Speaker 1: Kingdom of heaven. The one who was able to do this,
7:46
Speaker 1: let him do it. So there was another early church
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Speaker 1: father who carried out auto castration because of that same
7:55
Speaker 1: Bible verse. So talking about in the Bible, if you're
7:59
Speaker 1: able to castrate yourself for the King of Heaven, just
8:01
Speaker 1: go ahead and do that. Right. There is a passage
8:03
Speaker 1: in the Bible that has led to at least two
8:05
Speaker 1: people cutting off their own genitalia. And this is New Testament,
8:08
Speaker 1: by the way. Yeah, I noticed the s Matthew, the supermodern. So. Um,
8:15
Speaker 1: the Corbett was nineteenth century. That's a fairly recent case.
8:19
Speaker 1: The early church father was obviously in the first couple
8:21
Speaker 1: of centuries a d and then the Korean eunuchs, although
8:25
Speaker 1: um they the the last one died in pretty recent Um,
8:32
Speaker 1: they were really operating in the more than nineteenth and
8:35
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, and then way you know, earlier in
8:38
Speaker 1: the millennia. But there are cases every once in a while,
8:41
Speaker 1: like an auto castration. Um, like every once in a while,
8:45
Speaker 1: like I think in two thousand six or something like that,
8:48
Speaker 1: I came across the case study of a person who
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Speaker 1: castrated himself. Um. He was a twenty year old with
8:55
Speaker 1: what sounds like Cottard's delusion. He said that he had
8:57
Speaker 1: died and he was trying to wake himself up. That
8:59
Speaker 1: was one reason that he was awake. He also said
9:02
Speaker 1: he felt guilty for experiencing lust, and then overall he
9:06
Speaker 1: said he felt more female than male, but he was heterosexual.
9:10
Speaker 1: So it sounds like he was throwing everything at the
9:12
Speaker 1: wall to see what's stuck. But ultimately the thing that
9:15
Speaker 1: stuck out to me was he said he felt relief afterwards,
9:19
Speaker 1: like he was he was fine. His affect was flat,
9:23
Speaker 1: but he was fine. He wasn't like, oh my god,
9:25
Speaker 1: what have I done? And apparently he expressed relief at
9:27
Speaker 1: no longer having a sanitalia, which is something we'll get
9:30
Speaker 1: into it comes up later on. But the point is
9:34
Speaker 1: when he went into the hospital and doctors found out
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Speaker 1: what he'd done to himself, they thought he was totally crazy,
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Speaker 1: and a lot of people would. But it's really important
9:43
Speaker 1: to point out that with castration, it's typically auto castration
9:50
Speaker 1: that is deemed the results of psychosis, and it's not
9:54
Speaker 1: the castration part. It's the fact that you've harmed yourself. Yeah,
9:58
Speaker 1: just self mutilation exactly. That that's the that's the part
10:01
Speaker 1: that has the psychosis label attached, not being castrated. And
10:05
Speaker 1: so there's this internet survey that I think kind of
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Speaker 1: really um explodes the idea that you have to be
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Speaker 1: crazy to be castrated, or want to be castrated. Yeah.
10:14
Speaker 1: A hundred and twelve people responded UM. Of those reported
10:19
Speaker 1: a desire to be free from sexual urges, and another
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Speaker 1: thirty percent said they either wanted to be castrated for
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Speaker 1: the cosmetics, uh, the appearance. I guess you reference kindall
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Speaker 1: appropriately or as a way to act out of sexual fetish,
10:37
Speaker 1: which later is a thing it is a North Carolina
10:41
Speaker 1: there was. Yeah. So as bizarre as it sounds and
10:44
Speaker 1: is is um I guess across the board and universal.
10:47
Speaker 1: It might seem that that, you know, thinking that you'd
10:50
Speaker 1: have to be crazy to be castrated, or you you
10:53
Speaker 1: would never want to be castrated. There are some people
10:56
Speaker 1: out there who do, I think, and I don't think
11:01
Speaker 1: it makes sense for me. But that makes more sense
11:03
Speaker 1: to me than the people who say, like, I just
11:06
Speaker 1: feel like my left arm shouldn't be on my body. Yeah,
11:10
Speaker 1: because at least castration is tied to lust and these
11:13
Speaker 1: other things that people think might ruin their lives, these
11:18
Speaker 1: sexual urges or in the case of like pedophilia, you
11:22
Speaker 1: know that that comes up later too, So that makes
11:24
Speaker 1: more sense to me than cutting off my left arm
11:27
Speaker 1: because it feels weird. Yeah, you know, like with your
11:30
Speaker 1: left arm every due Yeah, well you know my left arm.
11:36
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen my left foot? I knew you
11:38
Speaker 1: were going to say that I have, of course I
11:39
Speaker 1: have not. Oh, it's good. That was That was the
11:43
Speaker 1: beginnings of Daniel day Lewis is like mastery of acting.
11:48
Speaker 1: He was amazing and that was the first time I've
11:49
Speaker 1: heard of him. I remember, Yeah, I think I don't
11:51
Speaker 1: think that was his first movie. I think My Beautiful
11:54
Speaker 1: Laundrette was before that. No, there was another one that
11:57
Speaker 1: I saw that was before that was the merchant Ivory film. Yeah. Yeah,
12:01
Speaker 1: he was in it and it was man, it was
12:02
Speaker 1: a merchant Ivory. I think he made his name though,
12:05
Speaker 1: and one the Academy Award for that. Yeah. Sure, alright,
12:09
Speaker 1: let's talk about the history. Yeah, Um, I saw a
12:12
Speaker 1: thing that was disturbing that in Korea, Um, they would
12:16
Speaker 1: cast rate boys. You might want to not listen to this.
12:19
Speaker 1: Fair warning me here it comes. I have to you
12:22
Speaker 1: know the other people. Um, that they would allegedly dip
12:27
Speaker 1: the genitals in feces and have a dog eat the
12:31
Speaker 1: genitals off. Well that's a really awful way to do it.
12:36
Speaker 1: I can't imagine anything worse weird. Yeah, that's it's it's
12:39
Speaker 1: pretty awful. Um. So let's get into why someone do this.
12:44
Speaker 1: If you're a eunuch, you were a trusted um friend
12:49
Speaker 1: of the court, perhaps, yeah, well, especially in Korea, the
12:51
Speaker 1: reasoning went and again, like for millennia, eunuchs ran Korea
12:56
Speaker 1: at the behest of the royal families that had the
13:00
Speaker 1: dynasty's in power. Well, you're not gonna start your own dynasty,
13:03
Speaker 1: so there's one reason to trust you. That's the point. Uh.
13:06
Speaker 1: Unuchs were allowed to have families, but they had to
13:09
Speaker 1: adopt kids obviously, and any males that they adopted had
13:12
Speaker 1: to be unix themselves to prevent them founding. Since they
13:16
Speaker 1: were very powerful people. They had to kind of die out.
13:19
Speaker 1: Can you that's so awful? These kids are like, yeah,
13:22
Speaker 1: I'm adopted finally and then then oh, yeah, oh you're unich.
13:27
Speaker 1: Can I go back to the orphanage? Right? Um. The
13:31
Speaker 1: other thing that eunuchs, The other reason unuchs were trusted
13:33
Speaker 1: obviously because they weren't gonna be making any moves on
13:38
Speaker 1: the queen. Well in in the Middle East especially, harms
13:42
Speaker 1: were very popular, and if you have a harem of wives, uh,
13:46
Speaker 1: they need protecting, and you want the guy who's going
13:49
Speaker 1: to protect them to be physically incapable of doing anything
13:54
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, so hence eunuchs. But these are the
13:59
Speaker 1: point is with the removal of these men's genitalia, they
14:04
Speaker 1: were automatically imbued with a trust because they simply were
14:09
Speaker 1: incapable of of circumventing that trust. So that's that's like
14:15
Speaker 1: one of these weird things about unichs is like, what
14:17
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand with being a eunuch at least
14:20
Speaker 1: as far as government or powers concerned. Sure, trust goes
14:23
Speaker 1: hand in hand with it. Isn't the history of this
14:25
Speaker 1: world crazy when you really kind of get down to
14:28
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty. That's how we're trying to show a
14:30
Speaker 1: little by little just how insane humanity is. Uh So,
14:35
Speaker 1: let's move on to the eighteenth century century in Italy. Um,
14:41
Speaker 1: where saw a movie called Farinellie. Did you ever see that? No? Again?
14:46
Speaker 1: It was it was a movie about a castrato singer. Um,
14:51
Speaker 1: that's I'm glad you said that. Castrato, the pluralist castrati.
14:56
Speaker 1: Same with gelato. Little little do you know? So if
14:59
Speaker 1: your family goes out, you get Gelatti. So his name
15:03
Speaker 1: was Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, and his stage name
15:09
Speaker 1: was Faranelli. And it's a good movie. You should get it.
15:11
Speaker 1: It was a biopic. It's a biopic about a famous castrado.
15:15
Speaker 1: And in Italy at the time there were women weren't
15:20
Speaker 1: allowed to sing in church. So if you wanted that
15:22
Speaker 1: mezzo soprano, you just got a grown man. With no genitalia.
15:28
Speaker 1: Well he said, sing your heart out. The thing is
15:31
Speaker 1: it was illegal to castrate somebody in Italy at the time.
15:34
Speaker 1: Well in in eighteen seventy it became illegal, So before
15:37
Speaker 1: that I think they were just sort of well so
15:39
Speaker 1: from my understanding, at the very least, it was frowned upon.
15:42
Speaker 1: Because in the eighteenth century, the seventeen hundreds, UM, there
15:46
Speaker 1: were there was basically an underground network of castration surgeons,
15:54
Speaker 1: and there was an anonymous book that came out that
15:56
Speaker 1: was published on it that basically explained how it was
16:00
Speaker 1: one and apparently they would, um, they would basically take
16:03
Speaker 1: a boy. Here's the thing. You wanted your kid to
16:07
Speaker 1: possibly be a castrado because it could mean wealth for
16:11
Speaker 1: you and your family. So a kid's parents, a boy's
16:14
Speaker 1: parents would take him to this castration surgeon. The castration
16:18
Speaker 1: surgeon would pinch the boy's karated artery until he passed
16:21
Speaker 1: out and then cut his testis off the death grip
16:25
Speaker 1: pretty much, then cut his tests off. And this is
16:28
Speaker 1: the way they did it, according to this book from
16:30
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen UM. Because they tried opium before, but too
16:33
Speaker 1: many of the boys like died from from Yeah, they
16:37
Speaker 1: odeed and died, so they would just pinch their karate
16:40
Speaker 1: and then remove their tests. Uh. And a lot of
16:44
Speaker 1: people think that you could do this at any stage
16:47
Speaker 1: and produce a high pitched voice. Yeah, that's like the
16:50
Speaker 1: whole thing. Like even when you get kicked in the
16:52
Speaker 1: groin and guy, you can thank Martin Short for perpetuating
16:57
Speaker 1: that joke. Uh, that's not true. It has to be
17:01
Speaker 1: done before puberty, before your vocal cords have lengthened, and
17:06
Speaker 1: those of the male sex hormones are produced in the testy.
17:11
Speaker 1: So if you get rid of those, what you've got
17:13
Speaker 1: is a man that continues to grow. And interestingly, castrato castrati,
17:19
Speaker 1: their limbs grow really long, and their ribs, the rib
17:23
Speaker 1: cage gets bigger because there without testosterone, their bone joints
17:29
Speaker 1: don't harden like they should. So that produces an effect
17:32
Speaker 1: of better able to breathe and so like it makes
17:37
Speaker 1: you a better singer. But you're singing through the vocal
17:39
Speaker 1: cords of a child, right because during puberty one of
17:41
Speaker 1: the things your voice change. You remember that Brady bunch
17:44
Speaker 1: where Peter Brady's voice changes. Can forget what was going on?
17:47
Speaker 1: Was the testosterone in his body was lengthening his vocal
17:50
Speaker 1: cords by anywhere between thirty five and ninety two millimeters.
17:55
Speaker 1: So your vocal cords increased by length during puberty. Within
17:59
Speaker 1: a castrado, the vocal chords don't link and nearly as
18:03
Speaker 1: much because they've only got about five percent of the
18:05
Speaker 1: testosterone compared to an uncastrated person. But their pharynx grows,
18:10
Speaker 1: their oral cavity grows, their lungs grow, and then, like
18:14
Speaker 1: you said, their ribcage grows to allow their lungs to
18:17
Speaker 1: grow even more. Take a deeper breath. So you have
18:19
Speaker 1: somebody who has, like this, the ability to hold a
18:23
Speaker 1: note like a male, a male adult, but a high pitched,
18:27
Speaker 1: resonant voice. Yes, it's a weird combination of like a
18:30
Speaker 1: super powerful, like an extra powerful singing voice through the
18:34
Speaker 1: vocal chords of a kid. But the upshot is if
18:36
Speaker 1: you remove the testings of an adult male, his voice
18:39
Speaker 1: isn't going to change a bit. He's just going to
18:42
Speaker 1: be really mad. His demeanor might right. Um, so I
18:46
Speaker 1: guess what'd you say? Eighteen? What when they outlawedit is
18:50
Speaker 1: when it became officially illegal. The thing is is it
18:52
Speaker 1: was definitely frowned upon because I found criticism of the
18:56
Speaker 1: church that the acchoir at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome,
19:00
Speaker 1: which is where the Pope says masks um, had tons
19:04
Speaker 1: of castrati even though you weren't really supposed to, and
19:08
Speaker 1: the opera houses would have castrati. The thing is it
19:10
Speaker 1: was very, very very competitive. So there are a lot
19:13
Speaker 1: of boys who were castrated and never went anywhere with
19:16
Speaker 1: their singing career, and then over time they outlawed it.
19:19
Speaker 1: In Italy was kind of like, we should probably stop
19:22
Speaker 1: doing this, Yeah, and maybe we should just let girls
19:24
Speaker 1: sing in church. Yeah, you know, I'm sure that had
19:26
Speaker 1: a pretty big impact. Um. You should see Fairnelly. Check
19:29
Speaker 1: it out. It's good. Um. So you might think that
19:33
Speaker 1: this is the kind of thing that went away and like,
19:36
Speaker 1: let's say the eight hundreds, But no, it happened up
19:41
Speaker 1: until in England, at least chemically the nineteen fifties. Because
19:46
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before. The great father of computing
19:49
Speaker 1: an adventure of the Turing test. Alan Turing was homosexual,
19:53
Speaker 1: which is illegal. It was was at the time, and
19:57
Speaker 1: he was given a choice and go to prison or
20:00
Speaker 1: you can take this These injections of still but straw
20:05
Speaker 1: it's a female sex hormone, and it gave him boobs
20:10
Speaker 1: and made him impotent, and he he laced an apple
20:13
Speaker 1: with cyanide and died by his own hand by eating
20:16
Speaker 1: the apple a couple of years later. Yeah, And I
20:19
Speaker 1: don't think they called it chemical castration at the time.
20:21
Speaker 1: They just were like, this is will limit your libido, right,
20:24
Speaker 1: So I think that came up in the mid nineteen
20:28
Speaker 1: sixties in the United States. So basically we went from
20:30
Speaker 1: people's parents having them castrated as boys to the state
20:35
Speaker 1: taking over. So that's that's how castration is typically carried
20:41
Speaker 1: out at the hands of the state these days as
20:43
Speaker 1: punishment um for crime. And in six um, a guy
20:49
Speaker 1: named John Money uh, an American physician uh he um,
20:55
Speaker 1: he came up with this procedure, which is just a
20:58
Speaker 1: simple round of injections of something called medoxy progesterone acetate,
21:04
Speaker 1: which is a birth control used by women. And basically
21:07
Speaker 1: you just take the same round of birth control that
21:10
Speaker 1: you would give a woman and give it to a
21:12
Speaker 1: guy who was having sexual urges that he was scared
21:15
Speaker 1: of or um sexual feelings for children or whatever, and
21:19
Speaker 1: it would reduce his libido and he would be cured.
21:22
Speaker 1: The thing is this, this first chemical castration in America
21:28
Speaker 1: was voluntary. It was a treatment basically for a pedophile
21:33
Speaker 1: who hadn't committed a crime yet. And the state said, hey,
21:35
Speaker 1: that's a pretty good idea. We're gonna start making that compulsory.
21:38
Speaker 1: In California was the first. I think that is a
21:41
Speaker 1: good time to break for a message that will learn
21:44
Speaker 1: about modern castration after that. Okay, so you said California,
21:53
Speaker 1: which is kind of surprising, as liberal as it is,
21:57
Speaker 1: to get on board first and allowing chemical castrat shan
22:00
Speaker 1: as uh Well was it was? It still like an
22:04
Speaker 1: option or no. Before that, it was like if you
22:08
Speaker 1: were a caught if you were a pedophile who was
22:10
Speaker 1: caught doing something, or a rapist or something it's sex criminal. Um,
22:15
Speaker 1: you could say, hey, I heard about this this chemicals
22:18
Speaker 1: castration thing. How about instead of going to prison, you
22:21
Speaker 1: just give that to me. It was a bargaining chip.
22:23
Speaker 1: So if you if you use your penis to commit
22:25
Speaker 1: a crime, they would give you this option, or you
22:28
Speaker 1: your lawyer could bring it up. They may not give
22:30
Speaker 1: you the option, but it was something that was out
22:32
Speaker 1: there that you could use to bargain your way out
22:34
Speaker 1: of prison with potentially In the mid nineties, California said,
22:39
Speaker 1: it's not a bargaining chip anymore, Like you're this is
22:41
Speaker 1: gonna happen to you, Like this is something that can
22:44
Speaker 1: happen to you. This is a sentence we can we
22:47
Speaker 1: can exact on you. Well, the Czech Republic surgically castrated
22:51
Speaker 1: sex offenders until so did Germany. Germany did. I don't
22:56
Speaker 1: think nearly as long, but for a long time, like
22:59
Speaker 1: in your up. That's how um pedophilia was was cured,
23:04
Speaker 1: was through castration or sex offenses. Yeah, and since there's
23:07
Speaker 1: a surgical they had success rate of uh no recid recidivism.
23:14
Speaker 1: So the word reciitativism, recidativism, it's a bone head word.
23:17
Speaker 1: It's uh but that ain't me no more. Um So, Yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: the chemical one, uh, the chemical variety can be reversed
23:27
Speaker 1: if you stop taking the drugs. It's generally thought that
23:30
Speaker 1: you you can go back to achieving erections and doing
23:34
Speaker 1: things with your penis. Well, there's a study right of
23:37
Speaker 1: um of German sex offenders. Well, let me tell you
23:40
Speaker 1: about Joseph Frank Smith first. So when you are chemically castrated,
23:45
Speaker 1: the recidativism rate drops from eight percent for non treated
23:50
Speaker 1: like just basically, you send the person to prison, there's
23:52
Speaker 1: an eighty percent chance they're going to commit another sex
23:54
Speaker 1: crime later to just five percent among chemically castrated people. Yeah,
24:00
Speaker 1: takes the window of their sales, it does. And one
24:03
Speaker 1: of the reasons why America got really behind the idea
24:06
Speaker 1: of chemical castration was because of a guy named Joseph
24:09
Speaker 1: Frank Smith. So back in three he was convicted of
24:13
Speaker 1: raping a woman for the second time, the same woman. Yeah,
24:18
Speaker 1: and they were like, you're you're losing your junk. We're
24:21
Speaker 1: going to chemically castrate you. And he basically became this
24:26
Speaker 1: poster boy for chemical castration. He would give interviews about it.
24:29
Speaker 1: He would talk publicly about how it freed him and
24:32
Speaker 1: how it changed his life, and like how this is
24:34
Speaker 1: such a great humane treatment for the for people with
24:37
Speaker 1: you know, sex offense problems, um, and all the while
24:43
Speaker 1: he was out there raping and committing other sex crimes
24:46
Speaker 1: while he was giving these interviews. And finally he got
24:49
Speaker 1: caught and he was he was convicted of a few
24:52
Speaker 1: sex offenses, but he's suspected of seventy five more over
24:56
Speaker 1: the years. And the whole reason was he stopped taking
24:59
Speaker 1: his injections. Yeah, I see. That's the thing that I
25:01
Speaker 1: didn't get, is that not they just said, here, just
25:04
Speaker 1: take these. I guess over time enough trust See that's
25:08
Speaker 1: the thing that you That trust in unis was still
25:12
Speaker 1: reflected all these years later on this guy, because people
25:16
Speaker 1: thought he was castrated, and because he was really working
25:19
Speaker 1: people with his public image as well. Yeah, I think
25:22
Speaker 1: the state would carry out that punishment for you know life, right,
25:26
Speaker 1: you would think so. But I guess, hey, Joe Frank,
25:30
Speaker 1: you've really you've really knocked us off our feet. You
25:32
Speaker 1: just handle this. We'll give you some needles. You do
25:34
Speaker 1: it at home. Or maybe he suggested, maybe he's like, Doc,
25:37
Speaker 1: I've seen yeah, right, I can do this. Yeah. But
25:40
Speaker 1: however it happened, whoever was in charge of him getting
25:44
Speaker 1: that that chemical castration injections really dropped the ball in
25:48
Speaker 1: Possibly as many as eighty people were victimized as a result.
25:54
Speaker 1: So you did mention earlier that something we should clear up.
25:57
Speaker 1: You said that even if the testes are removed, there's
26:00
Speaker 1: still that five percent chance. Um, that's because some of
26:04
Speaker 1: your testosterone is made in the pituitary gland. About five percent. Yeah,
26:08
Speaker 1: not all of it comes from the old testicles, which
26:11
Speaker 1: is why your vocal cords grows some when you're castrado.
26:16
Speaker 1: So that explains that. Right. The thing is, now we've
26:18
Speaker 1: come to the German sex offenders study called study right. Yeah,
26:23
Speaker 1: so back in nineteen s somebody carried out a study
26:27
Speaker 1: of German sex offenders who had had um are ectomys. Yeah,
26:32
Speaker 1: that's the testicle removal. Right. So even these guys orchaeect
26:38
Speaker 1: to me, sorry, um, even among these guys, we're still
26:42
Speaker 1: able to have sex twenty years after the procedures. Germans are,
26:46
Speaker 1: they have a stick to it. They're they're very efficient.
26:50
Speaker 1: But they that's because their pituitary gland it's still generating
26:54
Speaker 1: enough testosterone that they could get interaction. Well, you know
26:59
Speaker 1: what Germans say, my pituitary gland produces more testosterone by
27:03
Speaker 1: ten am than years does all day the field saying right, um,
27:08
Speaker 1: if they got a penick to me, which is cutting
27:12
Speaker 1: off your testicles and your penis complete removal of all
27:16
Speaker 1: of your junk, followed by drug therapy to reduce the hormones,
27:22
Speaker 1: then you're basically that's only the only way to get
27:26
Speaker 1: a chance of like no following no crimes. That's the
27:31
Speaker 1: only way to reduce libia. Well, that was my two cents,
27:34
Speaker 1: based on my research. It would take the removal of
27:37
Speaker 1: the penis, the removal of the testing, and drug therapy
27:39
Speaker 1: to to drop the libido down enough. But yeah, that
27:44
Speaker 1: was just my research. Uh So you go on to
27:48
Speaker 1: point out I think that's very fair to call out
27:52
Speaker 1: some of the positives that people feel um for sex offenders.
27:56
Speaker 1: A lot of them say that, you know what this is.
27:59
Speaker 1: I feel freed, I feel serenity. I don't have these
28:02
Speaker 1: urges anymore. I did not feel normal and well before,
28:06
Speaker 1: and now I do, and I can go out and
28:08
Speaker 1: live my life as a normal person because no one
28:11
Speaker 1: else knows about what's going on downstairs. But there is
28:14
Speaker 1: criticism of the use of castration in any form by
28:18
Speaker 1: the state as punishment for um for a sex crime,
28:22
Speaker 1: though mainly if it is in the United States at least,
28:28
Speaker 1: if it is punishment for a crime, then groups like
28:31
Speaker 1: you know, Amnesty International and a c L you say, well,
28:35
Speaker 1: then that's a cruel and unusual punishment. Sure. Uh. Secondly,
28:40
Speaker 1: if you're using it to prevent future crimes, I can't
28:46
Speaker 1: think of anything more unconstitutional than that. Unless it's voluntary.
28:51
Speaker 1: But if it's the state saying we're gonna give you
28:53
Speaker 1: this to keep you from possibly committing a crime that
28:56
Speaker 1: you may or may not commit in the future, you're
28:58
Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to do that. But society
29:00
Speaker 1: kind of looks the other way on that one. And
29:03
Speaker 1: then thirdly, it doesn't always work. It is the case
29:07
Speaker 1: of Joe Frank Smith shows us. But you're right, there
29:11
Speaker 1: are some people who who have had umbrating experience exactly,
29:16
Speaker 1: but they're not necessarily criminals. We should probably divide that
29:20
Speaker 1: right about here. Anyone who's been castrated doesn't mean they're
29:23
Speaker 1: a criminal. Um. There's a lot of there's a lot
29:27
Speaker 1: of parallels between people who voluntarily seek castration and um
29:33
Speaker 1: A sexuals, the third sexual orientation who We've did a
29:37
Speaker 1: podcast on BEA that was a good one too. Yeah. Uh,
29:40
Speaker 1: And I guess that brings us to the final piece
29:42
Speaker 1: of the pie, is uh, castration seeking sexual gratification. Right,
29:51
Speaker 1: it's a very small niche group of people. I would
29:55
Speaker 1: hope these are like the people who are the opposite
29:59
Speaker 1: of the people who want to be castrated, to be
30:01
Speaker 1: free from sexual urges and desires so they can just
30:04
Speaker 1: live their lives in a freer way. These people want
30:08
Speaker 1: to be castrated for sexual gratification. Yeah, like masochists get
30:13
Speaker 1: into this. You know, not all of them, but there
30:17
Speaker 1: you know, you know they'ld saying whatever floats your boat.
30:20
Speaker 1: For some people, this floats their boat. And it may
30:22
Speaker 1: seem really weird to us. But in um, North Carolina
30:26
Speaker 1: and Waynesville, which is right outside of Asheville, in two
30:29
Speaker 1: thousand six, these uh, well actually three men, um many,
30:38
Speaker 1: Yeah you did. You could have just seen them without
30:41
Speaker 1: the story men like I know what those guys are into. Yeah.
30:45
Speaker 1: Um they had a quote unquote dungeon fashion from an
30:47
Speaker 1: enclosed car poard and they carried out uh, surgical castration
30:54
Speaker 1: for people voluntarily. At least six dudes voluntarily did this
30:58
Speaker 1: for sexual gratification in their little dungeon. They were like underground,
31:02
Speaker 1: unlicensed surgeons who did it in their own home. And um,
31:07
Speaker 1: the reason that people went to this guy, these guys
31:10
Speaker 1: was because there are supposedly surgeons around the world who will,
31:14
Speaker 1: for enough money carry out surgical castration. But if you're
31:19
Speaker 1: into like S and M and that's why you're being castrated,
31:23
Speaker 1: they don't allow that you're going to, Well, they're not
31:26
Speaker 1: gonna like torture you sexually before, after, or during the operation,
31:32
Speaker 1: which is what you're after. And with the castration for
31:36
Speaker 1: um massochistic purposes for sexual gratification. Uh, the you're never
31:40
Speaker 1: going to have a pen ectomy because you still want
31:43
Speaker 1: to be able to have sex afterwards. But you may
31:47
Speaker 1: have you may have your scrotum removed, you may have
31:49
Speaker 1: one testicle removed, you may have both removed, and you
31:52
Speaker 1: will probably do this under more than one operation over time.
31:56
Speaker 1: But you're being sexually tortured while you're Wow, you're being
32:00
Speaker 1: operated on. That's like you said, another piece of the pie.
32:05
Speaker 1: That's right. And uh, Richard Master Rick Ciarra, he was
32:10
Speaker 1: the lead um physician. I guess you could say he
32:15
Speaker 1: actually worked for twenty three years as a physician's assistant,
32:18
Speaker 1: so he had a little background. Yeah, from what I
32:20
Speaker 1: understand that none of the surgeries were like, nobody died
32:24
Speaker 1: or got an infection or anything like that. They seemed
32:27
Speaker 1: to know what they were doing. So it was him,
32:29
Speaker 1: it was his partner of twenty years, Michael Mendez, and
32:32
Speaker 1: then a man they called their slave, Danny Carroll Reeves,
32:36
Speaker 1: who all pleaded. Originally, they were charging them with um
32:39
Speaker 1: operating medical establishment and practice practicing medicine without a license. Right,
32:43
Speaker 1: And we should also point out like every single one
32:45
Speaker 1: of their patients was there voluntarily. One guy flew from
32:48
Speaker 1: South America for his surgery. Yeah, Like where do you go, Waynesville,
32:53
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Yeah, right, it's the it's the home of
32:56
Speaker 1: S and M operations. In the end, they did not
32:59
Speaker 1: get convicted of those crimes. There were misdemeanors. They ended
33:02
Speaker 1: up leading guilty to felony castration and maiming and uh
33:07
Speaker 1: Master Rick served a year in prison. Um Michael Mendez
33:11
Speaker 1: for four months and the slave man served eight months
33:15
Speaker 1: and at the time of his life may have So
33:18
Speaker 1: I think it's neat that those guys found each other,
33:20
Speaker 1: like three people who are in another thing about this
33:23
Speaker 1: small town. Yeah, I mean, I can understand the guy
33:26
Speaker 1: from South America finding these guys from the internet. But
33:29
Speaker 1: if like these guys were partners for twenty years, and
33:31
Speaker 1: this is in two thousand and six, that definitely predates
33:34
Speaker 1: the internet. So like, these guys who were into some
33:36
Speaker 1: very unique stuff found one another. Yeah, and it may
33:41
Speaker 1: have been thanks to uh An S and M website
33:44
Speaker 1: because I looked. I was like, I gotta see what
33:46
Speaker 1: this Master Rick looks like. And there was pictures of
33:49
Speaker 1: him from his uh profile at kolar me dot com
33:53
Speaker 1: and I was like, collar me dot com what's that?
33:55
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, well, what do you think
33:58
Speaker 1: it is? Put it coller on like a dog collar.
34:01
Speaker 1: Yeah right, yeah, I'm hip, Yeah you're you're in the now.
34:07
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was a picture of the dude with
34:08
Speaker 1: his uh buttless chaps on and Mr Rick served a year. Yeah.
34:14
Speaker 1: I feel like if there's anything about castration, it's that
34:19
Speaker 1: it has it encompasses a lot of different people with
34:23
Speaker 1: a lot of for a lot of different reasons, over
34:26
Speaker 1: a lot of period of time. Yeah, that's just another
34:28
Speaker 1: one of those weird human things that we have to
34:31
Speaker 1: let you know about. Yeah, now we never have to
34:33
Speaker 1: talk about it again. You got anything else, I got
34:36
Speaker 1: nothing else. I've got something else. We'd probably be remiss
34:40
Speaker 1: to not mention the Heaven's Gate cult. Remember them, Yeah,
34:44
Speaker 1: they were castrated and weird. Well yeah, they were led
34:48
Speaker 1: by Marshall apple White and all of them, all the
34:51
Speaker 1: male members of Heaven's Gate except for him, was castrated. No,
34:56
Speaker 1: that's not true. He was castrated as well, so all
34:59
Speaker 1: of his followers had to be as well. So yeah,
35:01
Speaker 1: we should probably. I don't think you could do a
35:03
Speaker 1: castration episode without mentioning Heaven's Kate. I'm glad we did,
35:08
Speaker 1: so thank you for joining us. This was castration. If
35:11
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about castration, you can type
35:14
Speaker 1: that word into our website. Stuff you should know dot
35:17
Speaker 1: com because this came from one of our articles. And uh,
35:20
Speaker 1: since I said stuff you should know dot com, that
35:23
Speaker 1: means it's time for all right. This is the time
35:36
Speaker 1: in the show where we say thank you to you
35:39
Speaker 1: for sending us babbles and trinkets and handmade goods. Uh.
35:45
Speaker 1: So I've got one, Josh uh White River Knife and
35:49
Speaker 1: Tool of Coopersville, Minnesota. This dude Luke sent me a
35:54
Speaker 1: really cool knife and he sent one and you were like, here,
35:57
Speaker 1: you take the knife, Chuck. Oh, you spend more time
35:59
Speaker 1: out of doors. Yeah, it was to defend yourself against
36:02
Speaker 1: jack rabbits and stuff. He sent the seven inch backpacker
36:05
Speaker 1: and it's awesome and it is super sharp. Yeah, very sharp,
36:08
Speaker 1: and it is from White River Knives dot com. Yeah,
36:11
Speaker 1: we also want to say thank you to Jack Schaefer
36:13
Speaker 1: for sending us life is LARPing bro bracelets. Yeah, we
36:18
Speaker 1: should thank Anthony Lawson who sent us some really cool gifts,
36:23
Speaker 1: pricey gifts, handmade gifts, brass spinning tops and bottle openers.
36:29
Speaker 1: You should see Jerry spin this top. She's like, look,
36:31
Speaker 1: it just keeps going. I know it's pretty awesome. Um,
36:33
Speaker 1: these are machine by hand, so like when you look
36:36
Speaker 1: at something that's intricate, like made of metal, and like
36:39
Speaker 1: how do you make this? But the dude makes in
36:41
Speaker 1: my hand. So you should check it out at J. L.
36:43
Speaker 1: Lawson and Company UM, which is j L. Lawson Co
36:49
Speaker 1: dot com. Matt rob rab I can't know. I don't
36:54
Speaker 1: know how I know him from our correspondence, but I
36:57
Speaker 1: don't know how to pronounce the last thing you mean,
36:59
Speaker 1: Matt Broccoli row up he uh. He sent us a
37:02
Speaker 1: School on Wheels mobile tutoring program, umbrellas and stickers some
37:07
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37:10
Speaker 1: think Los Angeles, I believe that's right. School on Wheels.
37:14
Speaker 1: Go check it out. Thank you School on Wheels and
37:16
Speaker 1: thanks also to Baby in the Nobody's Band that sent
37:19
Speaker 1: us some shirts and c d s. Yeah, thanks music. Uh.
37:23
Speaker 1: Steve with his plain number of N six and X
37:26
Speaker 1: sent us to thank you card for accompanying him on
37:29
Speaker 1: a forty nine state, three country to any thousand miles
37:33
Speaker 1: Cessna journey. Yeah we went on that, did you know? Yeah?
37:38
Speaker 1: Uh and thanks to Jane jen Av we thanked her
37:41
Speaker 1: before Jane's creation, she does custom knit um items to
37:45
Speaker 1: benefit Animal Rescue. Goes to Animal Rescue. So go to
37:49
Speaker 1: facebook dot com slash Jane's creations and um, we're trying
37:54
Speaker 1: to drum up some dough for her, right yeah, like
37:57
Speaker 1: bye bye little nit cap for someone for Christmas, and
38:00
Speaker 1: percent of that will go to Animal Risk. We want
38:02
Speaker 1: to give a huge thank you to Anna Krukowska. Yeah, Kukowska.
38:08
Speaker 1: She's got one of those last names. It's difficult to
38:10
Speaker 1: pronounce until you really look at it and then you're like, yeah,
38:12
Speaker 1: it's Krukowska. Um, you remember her. She's that in Sound.
38:17
Speaker 1: So you and I curated a sale in Sound. We
38:20
Speaker 1: just picked our favorite albums and they put them on sale,
38:22
Speaker 1: and uh, as thank you. She ended up sending us
38:25
Speaker 1: gift cards, that's right, and thank you very much because
38:28
Speaker 1: I got some pretty cool records as a result, and
38:30
Speaker 1: I got posters Yeah. I also want to say very
38:34
Speaker 1: very big thank you to Charlotte Alfred for sending me
38:37
Speaker 1: her copy of Dark Dungeons the Jack Chick Publications tracks.
38:42
Speaker 1: Remember we talked about the Duncis and dragons things. I
38:44
Speaker 1: have an original copy of it. That's nice. Yeah, thank you.
38:48
Speaker 1: Uh you want to keep going. I've got a couple more. Um,
38:51
Speaker 1: let's see. Thanks to Jim Moorehouse for sending us the
38:55
Speaker 1: Sasquatch Field guides for tracking. Yes, thank you to you. Brandon.
39:01
Speaker 1: Uh passilia, is that you pronounce that voisca? Voisca? I
39:05
Speaker 1: don't know. I can't read my own handwriting, he said,
39:07
Speaker 1: handmade art books about asthma. Oh, that's right, I remember those. Yeah,
39:12
Speaker 1: and the asthma books. Yeah, they're pretty awesome. He's like, please,
39:15
Speaker 1: do you one on asthma. Have some books to bribe
39:18
Speaker 1: you that I made myself. Thanks to Emily who's working
39:21
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39:25
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39:29
Speaker 1: from Kristen Curran. Yeah. Uh, and we got a hundred
39:34
Speaker 1: trillion dollars Zimbabwe. Note. Do you remember that? That's pretty awesome?
39:40
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39:43
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39:47
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39:52
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39:54
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