I'm very glad I finally managed to acquire a copy of this book—it's out of print and for quite a while I wasn't able to locate an affordable used copyI'm very glad I finally managed to acquire a copy of this book—it's out of print and for quite a while I wasn't able to locate an affordable used copy—and it was certainly interesting to compare it to The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, which I read this summer. The two authors have very different views on the gendering of eunuchs in Byzantine society, which is perhaps unsurprising since Byzantine writers didn't really consider or conceive of gender as a distinct concept from sex or embodiment, and tended to conceive of traits that we would consider to be learned or inculcated as being results of physical differences in the body. However, Kathryn M. Ringrose does seem to make a good case that the Byzantine understanding of the nature of eunuchs was, on some level, a parallel "third thing" different from men and from women.
The extended discussion of parents' decision to castrate their sons to prepare them for careers in the Church was interesting in particular because of how it falls into a general pattern of seeing children as property and as entities to be shaped by their parents without consideration of concepts like consent. Also a bit stressful to think about, admittedly....more
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