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Illustration: Sturt Krygsman
Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

The castrati were boys deprived of their masculinity in the name of a sublime, sonic effeminacy so that others could celebrate the higher registers of culture. Eunuchs also were castrated before they reached puberty so that they became more submissive and servile to their masters. In both cases, the mutilation of manhood drastically reduced their testosterone levels, with boys developing high-pitched voices and more effeminate characteristics.

The literal castration of boys may be a practice of bygone eras, but psycho-cultural castration is very real and happening throughout the Western world.

Today’s boys are being psychologically and culturally neutered in the early stages of their cognitive and affective development through a subliminal conditioning aimed at the gradual rejection of their masculinity to ensure their development along the lines of fluid identities.

Gone are the days of “man” and “woman”, “strong” and “weak”. Introducing our children to this fluidity is a crime against their humanity, in that it is deliberately engineering their personalities, sense of gender, even sex. A sinister agenda driven by political correctness and rabid misandry.

Throughout the Western world children are being inoculated against the inherent “toxicity” of masculinity. They are taught that it is an evil social construct, and part of a trans-historical male ­despotism; that it has long been the source of injustice for billions of society’s more vulnerable.

The unspoken aim of this “humanism” is to reduce masculinity to an ailment that must be cured via collective psycho-cultural emasculation. This involves nipping it in the bud before boys discover the advantages of their testosterone, and by altering their reality. This means changing the cultural grammar required to articulate their existential predicaments — thus transforming them into passive acolytes of the new, effeminised vision of humankind; a place where the primal brutishness of males has been subdued and everyone is judged on their merit, on a level playing field.

The truth is that nothing in the entire history of the world has ever been fought on a level playing field due to our inherent differences. Of course, there will always be those who are offended by such premises. Their offence, however, ­cannot erase the manner in which nature selects to distribute its gifts, and the fact it does so without caring about who may be ­offended.

What we have is a movement intent on resetting the natural laws/odds in the name of a utopian level playing field, where the unfair advantages of testosterone have been eliminated. To achieve this bizarre societal equilibrium half the players must be “castrated” so that there is no unfairness coming from those who have been endowed with much higher levels of androgen. One would never expect a rugby coach to select his players on the basis of human emotions rather than physical ­capacity. Yet men, today, are expected to reject their masculinity to avoid offending those who are always offended.

And since one cannot contend or reason with nature, then it must be circumvented by creating political, linguistic and psychological categories that rationalise its randomness and “unfairness” — which explain differences between male and female as misconceptions rather than a fact of nature. They claim there is no such thing as difference; each person is what he or she wants to be. For those men insulted, there is a solution — get used to it. Society must be refashioned so that it more equitably represents our modern needs and those whom toxic masculinity has marginalised and oppressed for so long.

Hence, we are all suddenly being ordered to accept that men and women are exactly the same when they are not. They are intrinsically different beings with different qualities, needs and perceptions of the world. Societies throughout history have been driven by the virility of masculinity and nurturing femininity.

Women are innately more nurturing. They are also, generally, better with children, the elderly and the infirm. Most do not aspire to become generals, CEOs or heads of state. They are also not interested in the man-hating mantra of those who have recently infected society with a venomous contempt that far exceeds the misogyny and chauvinism they have supposedly sought to combat. Yet their misandry somehow seems acceptable because of its “humanism”, which purports to dignify the vulnerable while reducing the domineering male to a state of helplessness, a pathetic groveller finally getting a taste of his own medicine.

Medicine is indeed needed for a being relegated to the margins of modern society, forced into roles that are not congruent with his essential nature. The diminution of masculinity and the skyrocketing suicide rates among men are directly related. That is not to say that men should remain on the couch and women in the kitchen. There is, however, an elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring: the blatant emasculation of 21st-century men.

Control language and you control everything. It is only a matter of time before punitive legislation — aimed at facilitating the wholesale emasculation of our societies through the mandatory application of specific vocabulary and concepts — is introduced. Our social justice warriors may be celebrating their nomenclatorial victories, but they are relinquishing more than they know. The barbarism once inflicted on the castrati and on eunuchs continues in the name of an effeminised vision of humanity. It’s no surprise that male testosterone levels are diving at an unprecedented rate — everything is against them. Most of what maleness once found expression in is slowly vanishing. The one-time hunter has lost his hunting ground, the warrior his battleground, the lover his virility, the husband his purpose.

Dimitri Gonis is a Melbourne-based writer.