Castration Quotes

“Rape and sexual assault ... should be understood not just as a form of forced sex, they should also be understood as as a form of injury to the brain and body, and even as a variant of castration.”
― Naomi Wolf, Vagina: A New Biography

“The punishment for rape should be castration.”
― Amit Abraham

“He would have been half-hanged, taken down alive, castrated, his genitals stuffed in his mouth, his stomach slit open, and his intestines taken out and burnt, and his carcase chopped into four quarters.”
― John Broadbent, John Milton: Introductions

“Grandma had been encouraging me to castrate men since I was old enough to know what dicks even were.”
― Danielle Henderson, The Ugly Cry

“Correlation and causality. Why is it that throughout the animal kingdom and in every human culture, males account for most aggression and violence? Well, what about testosterone and some related hormones, collectively called androgens, a term that unless otherwise noted, I will use simplistically as synonymous with testosterone. In nearly all species, males have more circulating testosterone than do females, who secrete small amounts of androgens from the adrenal glands. Moreover, male aggression is most prevalent when testosterone levels are highest; adolescence and during mating season in seasonal breeders. Thus, testosterone and aggression are linked. Furthermore, there are particularly high levels of testosterone receptors in the amygdala, in the way station by which it projects to the rest of the brain, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and in its major targets, the hypothalamus, the central gray of the mid-brain, and the frontal cortex. But these are merely correlative data. Showing that testosterone causes aggression requires a subtraction plus a replacement experiment. Subtraction, castrate a male: do levels of aggression decrease? Yes, including in humans. This shows that something coming from the testes causes aggression. Is it testosterone? Replacement: give that castrated individual replacement testosterone. Do pre-castration levels of aggression return? Yes, including in humans, thus testosterone causes aggression. Time to see how wrong that is. The first hint of a complication comes after castration. When average levels of aggression plummet in every species, but crucially, not to zero, well, maybe the castration wasn't perfect, you missed some bits of testes, or maybe enough of the minor adrenal androgens are secreted to maintain the aggression. But no, even when testosterone and androgens are completely eliminated, some aggression remains, thus some male aggression is testosterone independent. This point is driven home by castration of some sexual offenders, a legal procedure in a few states. This is accomplished with chemical castration, administration of drugs that either inhibit testosterone production or block testosterone receptors. Castration decreases sexual urges in the subset of sex offenders with intense, obsessive, and pathological urges. But otherwise, castration doesn't decrease recidivism rates as stated in one meta-analysis. Hostile rapists and those who commit sex crimes motivated by power or anger are not amenable to treatment with the anti-androgenic drugs. This leads to a hugely informative point. The more experience the male had being aggressive prior to castration, the more aggression continues afterward. In otherwise, the less his being aggressive in the future requires testosterone and the more it's a function of social learning.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Flying anuses, speeding vaginas, there is no castration.”
― Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“..there are men who regret that we cannot hear our Handel exactly as Handel meant us to because, unfortunately, we no longer castrate boy singers”
― Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene

“Christians like Justin Martyr, one of the fathers of the church, shared such aspirations for self-mastery. Justin wholeheartedly admired Christians who practiced renunciation and celibacy; he even singled out for special praise a young convert in Alexandria who had petitioned Felix, the governor,asking that permission might be given to a surgeon to castrate him. For the surgeons had said they were forbidden to do this without the governor’s permission. And when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the young man remained celibate. (Justin, First Apology 29.) Origen, also revered as a father of the church, had been so determined to win his struggle against passion that as a young man he had castrated himself, apparently without asking anyone’s permission, least of all the governor’s.”
― Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics

“I flinch. Maybe you have to be male to understanding that castration can't be reduced to finger-scissors and some onomatopoeia.”
― Mark Mills, Waiting for Doggo

“The Beaver is an amphibious creature: by day it lives hidden in rivers, but at night it roams the land, feeding itself with anything that it can find. Now it understands the reason why hunters come after it with such eagerness and impetuosity, and it puts down its head and with its teeth cuts off its testicles and throws them in their path, as a prudent man who, falling into the hands of robbers, sacrifices all that he is carrying, to save his life, and forfeits his possessions by way of ransom. If however it has already saved its life by self-castration and is again pursued, then it stands up and reveals that it offers no ground for their eager pursuit, and releases the hunters from all further exertions, for they esteem its flesh less. Often however Beavers with testicles intact, after escaping as far away as possible, have drawn in the coveted part, and with great skill and ingenuity tricked their pursuers, pretending that they no longer possessed what they were keeping in concealment.”
― Aelian, Historical Miscellany

“Crimes against women won’t stop! As women gain more independence (both in thought and in spirit), castration anxiety will act out and will always find a Medusa to behead!”
― Mallika Nawal

“The Cynecure. Looking for the Cynecure (in the palinody of my cenesthesias, as Segalen would say). The Sabbatical form.

What was the Stoic dream of our adolescence - detachment - suddenly materializes in maturity. I now find myself out on my own, within a rainbow-hued research structure.

Towns are never left alone; there are always works going on - digging, demolition, construction. Knocking down, building up again. Perhaps only certain places in California, completely anaesthetized by domestic luxury and suburban comfort, seem to have come to rest in a fixed and lasting ambience, beyond this perpetual deconstruction. Works are always going on in our bodies too. They are constantly being disturbed, tortured, renovated. Never at rest, never serene. Peace of mind - impossible to keep it more than a few hours. Impatience always gets the upper hand. Everyone aspires to peace and quiet, but they do so today in a thoroughly derisory manner, wherein we see the last moments of the contemplative soul. In the countryside there is always a dog howling. And sterility is hereditary.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“It is perhaps not enough to say that there is no essence of femininity; one could go a step further and say that the essence of femininity is to pretend to be a woman. One is a woman if one carries castration as a mask.”
― Alenka Zupančič, What IS Sex?

“It is better to be violently resented and ignored, than to be castrated quietly and slowly.”
― Connor Patrick Sullivan, Philosophy of The Individual: A Radical Exploration of Consciousness, Individualism, and the True Nature of Reality

“When he first told me about his condition, I laughed and said, “Darling, you suffer from MAP!”

“MAP, Mistress????? What's that?” he asked innocently.

“Mistress Addiction Priapism! It's a very common ailment! Don't worry, Darling! I can take care of that any time you like!”
― Octavia Taylor