Talk:Eunuch

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LGBT+?

Would eunuchs fall under our LGBT category? Wikipedia considers them as third gendered. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 06:35, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I would think that's too strong of a claim. Can you show me where Wikipedia says this and what they mean by it? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:46, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Gender_and_sexual_identities Lacrossedeamon (talk) 07:12, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not the most informed when it comes to gender issues. I am confused why the status of one's sexual organs would describe their gender identity or sexual orientation. I have a friend who majored in gender studies who has described a recent trend towards conflating sex and gender, or where the concept of sex is subsumed into gender, and that this has ignited furious and schismatic debates in her discipline. I don't think we should assume that every eunuch would have had the same gender identity. Furthermore, if the argument for them being LGBTQ+ is based solely on them being castrated, what about individuals who were involuntarily castrated like Sima Qian? Sima Qian had a wife and children, but he was castrated as a punishment for defending a disgraced general before the Emperor. He was given the choice of suicide or castration and only chose the latter because he resolved that he had to live long enough to finish his work. Not all eunuchs were eunuchs by choice either. Some were men who, like Sima Qian, were castrated as punishment. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 09:08, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

True. I was only thinking of those specifically operated on in order to fill the social role rather than other instances such as accident or punishment. As for why it could pertain this is a weak justification but being castrated phenotypically changes the person's sex and can be seen as intersex regardless of method? I'm not well versed in gender studies so I might have just said something really stupid/ignorant. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 09:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Going from my own academic research on sex/gender and from wikipedia's own page for eunuchs, it seems to have been included in the third sex category because of the hijra, which was traditionally translated into English as "eunuch", but is a gender identity that encompasses a lot more that that, also including intersex people and trans people. So, eunuchs who are hijra are a third sex, but not all eunuchs would fall under that term, especially not the ones castrated for public offices, as I understood it. Also, castration wouldn't make someone intersex, that's determined by the characteristics present at birth. - Soranin (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2023 (UTC)