Auto Castration

I am aware that some of my recent postings have, perhaps, focussed a little too narrowly on certain strange and gruesome incidents in Indian religions. In the interests of balance and fairness however, I might opine that such tales of decapitation (which was always very much a minority pastime anyway) and the like are no more bizarre and awful than the phenomenon of self-castration in the Christian world. It is probably because of its identification of sex with sin that Christianity has thrown up its own fair share of those who were drawn to this most extreme of measures, in order to avoid any form of concupiscence whatsoever. Historically, perhaps the most highly organised and widespread example of this was the heretical Russian Orthodox sect known as the Skoptsy ("the self-castrated ones"). The Skoptsy movement began in the late 18th century and lasted well into the 1930s. This weird sect adopted a literalist reading of Christ's words: "...for there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven..." (Matthew 19:12). Just as the Gospels say that "if an eye offend you, pluck it out," so the Skoptsy avoided sexual temptation by removing all of the male genitalia and mutilating the female pudenda and lactatory glands. At its zenith in the 1800s, the sect reached 100,000 to 300,000 followers, with about half of the sect so castrated. Laura Engelstein has penned an eye-watering account of their history and practices in her 1999 book `Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom'. Although fundamentally an academic work, this book is quite accessible to the general reader and includes much anecdotal evidence from the Skoptsy themselves. Drawn almost entirely from the ranks of the Russian peasantry, once converted, Skoptsy males set about removing the testes and, usually six months later the membrum virile - procedures which were undertaken using the tools and techniques of animal husbandry. It was also customary for these new converts to perform this excrutiating procedure on their sons just prior to the onset of puberty - aargh! I must admit, though, that I did find some humour in Engelstein's book. The Skoptsy were outlawed in Tsarist Russia and when caught and brought to trial, often came up with some quite implausible explanations for their emasculation. One Skopets, for example, claimed that he had castrated himself to facilitate greater comfort in horse-riding! I could not help but to feel sorry though for the tragic plight of those unfortunate Skoptsy youths who would later, in all probability, reject their parents' belief systems. Engelstein traces the history of this sect until it died out with the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, but I can't help wondering if any of them went `underground' and survived into the present day. Are there any Skoptsy still out there? If anyone who chances upon this post can shed any light on this question, I'd be interested to hear.

Bone Idle