The plot seems taken from one of those American series that solve a different crime in each chapter. Of course, it had all the ingredients: a cabin, a refrigerator stocked with what looked like amputated testicles, and two so-called surgeons joking about eating them like bull criadillas. Black chronicle in its purest form. The news hit the newspapers just a year ago, when the victim, a 28-year-old man, arrived at an Oklahoma hospital bleeding profusely from his groin. The most surprising thing, however, is that the boy had voluntarily responded to the call of these two butchers who advertised on a website under the claim “From theEunuchMaker and the EM Crew” (from the Eunuch Maker and his team “) Eunuchs, yes yes, how they read it. But does that still exist? It sounds like a biblical insult, old-fashioned, legends about Joselito (the little nightingale turned into a dealer).

Well, it turns out that yes, others before us, obviously, have already investigated the subject, and that according to the journalist José Antonio Díaz Sáez in his book ‘Eunucos’ (Ediciones Almuzara) , which began millennia ago to become more docile and easy to fatten cattle, it can still be traced to this day. Ever since some clever thought that if cutting to the chase worked with the calf, why wouldn’t it serve to create a caste of loyal and incorruptible servants (curious to think that everything bad about men is stored in their testicles), eunuchs are they have moved throughout history between marginalization and privilege. Slaves, prisoners of war, high-ranking officials, harem caretakers, singers …the emasculated could be totally or partially, that is, they could cut off their penis and testicles, only the testicles, or simply damage them without cutting them until they were useless.

The first documents on the existence of eunuchs come from China and are dated in the thirteenth century BC. Many families castrated their children before the promise of social advancement, they were valued as trustworthy men who, deprived of having children, would not conspire against the official power (we will not go into detail, but what nonsense). They were also supposed to be better at taking care of women, but as history and also ‘Game of Thrones’ taught us, the lack of genitalia does not eliminate desire , and many managed to explore another type of sexuality. Not to mention, eunuchs with penises were valued for satisfying sexual uses by both men and women .

However, perhaps the most famous eunuchs in the world are the castrati, boys with a beautiful voice mutilated before puberty to preserve it and who were in high demand for their high tones when women could not participate in the choirs. And although the most famous was Farinelli and perhaps that is why they are considered to come from Italy, it was medieval Spain, as Díaz Sáez points out, the first European country to resort to castration of children for musical purposes.

Leaving Lorena Bobbitt’s husband aside , the  largest population of eunuchs is found today in India, where the Hijras , officially recognized as the third gender, form a millennial community comprised of gender-fluid people, transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and also, according to some estimates, by 10% of eunuchs who live, in many cases, from their participation in ceremonies such as weddings and births where they sing and dance to bless or rid the evil eye. But there is more.

In the year 1971, in Afghanistan castration was still used in children. In 2002, the British channel BBC reported that in Niger slaves were still emasculated in some rural areas. And even today, in some parts of Africa, testicles are used to be used in aphrodisiac potions , and huge amounts of money can be paid for freshly cut genitalia.

You see that we have not evolved so much since Cronos castrated his father Uranus and threw his testicles into the sea, but that was just a story.