- Joined
- Nov 16, 2021
Well, ritual eunuchs are by far the minority of all eunuchs that existed. Most, like the legions of them in China or the Ottoman Empire, were prisoners and slaves who were castrated as a way of removing the danger of cuckoldry for the nobles and royalty who used them.
But in general the problem is with history as polemic vs history as analytical exercise. Because many works of history (and anthropology) historically contained a lot of biases in one direction, there's a certain cadre of activist academia (basically all of critical theory) that seems to believe that distorting in the other direct is somehow needed to balance things out. They wouldn't articulate it this way but it boils down to that. For every one interesting paper examining some obscure or overlooked element of previous eras, there's ten arguing that because Hatshepsut wore the Pharaoh's beard in her royal regalia she must have wanted to have a penis installed (or some similar garbage).
To be fair, as a I said the opposite problem was very prevalent in scholarship in the late 19th and earlier 20th century, but critical theory really needs to be reigned in and its more ridiculous excesses purged.
But in general the problem is with history as polemic vs history as analytical exercise. Because many works of history (and anthropology) historically contained a lot of biases in one direction, there's a certain cadre of activist academia (basically all of critical theory) that seems to believe that distorting in the other direct is somehow needed to balance things out. They wouldn't articulate it this way but it boils down to that. For every one interesting paper examining some obscure or overlooked element of previous eras, there's ten arguing that because Hatshepsut wore the Pharaoh's beard in her royal regalia she must have wanted to have a penis installed (or some similar garbage).
To be fair, as a I said the opposite problem was very prevalent in scholarship in the late 19th and earlier 20th century, but critical theory really needs to be reigned in and its more ridiculous excesses purged.
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