Of all the successes I’ve had as a therapist, my work with two clients stands among my proudest achievements because I saved their testicles from the trash heap of sexual shame and obsession.
JEREMY’S STORY
Jeremy was a well-educated, articulate and very affable professional in his 40s. He was coming to me, he said, for a non-judgmental evaluation of his fetish situation, so that’s where we started. I took a sex history and learned that he was doing pretty well overall. He had decent relationships with his family, had a good job that he enjoyed, had no signs or depression or any kind of sexual dysfunctions or relationship problems, had a fairly dull but okay sex life. But he almost whispered at first, he was so nervous about talking to me.
Jeremy didn’t think he could ever feel whole until he was partial.
The nervousness stemmed from the direct reason he wanted the evaluation. He was obsessed with getting castrated. He had found and already set an appointment for the procedure to be done by a retired M.D. who worked underground. Castrations for medical reasons are legitimate; but elective castration for erotic reasons is not something reputable physicians are willing to perform. So he was planning to get a back-room surgery from a sketchy doctor which, as he himself admitted, was pretty dubious and risky. Not that castration is really that complex a surgery, as anyone who’s seen Rover or Mittens undergo the vet’s knife knows uncomfortably well. Still. This was a human, and the risk of an infection from unclean instruments was real. A botched castration can be life-threatening.
BUT…. Jeremy didn’t think he could ever feel whole until he was partial. He had been brooding and fantasizing and obsessing over it since he first had stumbled across castration porn on the Internet a few years earlier. He soon joined a secret castration group whose members lovingly described what they wanted to do, and how they would do it, and how it would feel to be balless in the world. There were even some shared grainy videos of the procedure and instead of scaring him, it left him breathlessly aroused to see the scrotum sliced and peeled back to reveal the quivering egg-like testicles.
From that moment on, his imagination feverishly latched on to that image to the near-exclusion of all other erotic kicks. He lost interest in dating and succumbed to his obsession. It became his single most powerful masturbatory fantasy. Over the years, he had honed and perfected the script, start to finish. It always ended with a vision of his excised testicles, held up in front of him on a metal surgical tray. That’s what made him climax.
I was the 11th hour call as he went down his pre-castration To Do list. He told me he wanted to be able to say, later, that he had covered every base and had a professional tell him he wasn’t insane. He understood there was a risk that he might regret it forever afterwards. Yes, he knew the kind of doctor who’d perform the surgery was probably third-rate. Yes, it would change the course of his life and yes, it might make it impossible to find partners afterwards who could understand or appreciate his transformed physique.
Most of us just absorb life’s harsh blows, cultural sex-negativity, and myths about how dirty and ugly our genitals are, without ever stopping to realize that we were, in fact, being damaged by all those invisible assaults on our sexual self-esteem.
We talked about his childhood and youth, and his feelings about his testicles. He did not reveal any surprising secrets; he had no traumas, no major kinky epiphanies, nor any remarkable sexual quirks outside this fetish for castration. Nor was he a transwoman. He was comfortable in his cis-male gender. He just thought life would be easier as a eunuch. And, to be honest, he was hardly the first client to express that sentiment.
Was he being completely honest with me about his history? Probably not, but I don’t think it’s because he deliberately lied. It’s just that we ourselves don’t always know how to frame some of our childhood or youthful experiences. Most of us just absorb life’s harsh blows, cultural sex-negativity, and myths about how dirty and ugly our genitals are, without ever stopping to realize that we were, in fact, being damaged by all those invisible assaults on our sexual self-esteem. Did he get negative messages about his genitals? No doubt! What man doesn’t?
I asked him more questions about his life, searching for clues that might help me untangle the mystery of his desire to be rid of his testicles. Was it shame? What did his balls represent to him that he wished to discard them so brutally? Was he rejecting manhood? He just kept saying that he just knew life would feel emotionally easier without his balls.
I’ve seldom met a person more prepared for the outcomes of an extreme choice. But I suspected he was in the grip of an obsession. And that, for better and worse, can happen to the sanest of us. Something triggers something — an unfulfilled desire from childhood, a profound craving for something to fill a void we developed as adults, a secret self-hatred we never even knew was there — and anyone can fall prey to a kind of mental fugue state where we want what we want, no matter what the cost to life and limb.
I aimed to walk the line between compassionate support for his choices and responsible counseling. It didn’t really shock me to hear his fetish. Coming up in the early BDSM scene of the 1980s, there were lots of over-the-top male genitorture fantasies in the magazines and porn. However, in real life, actions have consequences, and cutting off your own balls changes the shape of your life in ways you may not expect. For example, it reduces your chances of finding an accepting romantic partner and may, in fact, make you less social if you then develop self-consciousness or shame about not having the standard set of equipment.
At first, Jeremy was like a man who had steeled himself for a military mission. He wanted those balls gone. Until they were gone, he could not know the happiness inside he craved. So I assured him that while I would not spend our sessions trying to break his resolve, I would offer an alternative to try before he got the surgery. I asked him if he had ever considered getting a genital piercing. He had not and was surprised by the idea. My reasoning was that he might be able to get SOME of the urge for intense pain to the area satisfied without losing testicular function. I was hoping that a controlled and non-permanent experience like scrotal piercings could help mitigate the obsession. We discussed the kind of piercings he could try and how they could be a kind of trial by fire, but with a lower flame.
In our last session, he said he would get a scrotal piercing before his scheduled appointment and take it from there, but he still expected to get the surgery done. I didn’t hear from him again for about five years.
ELLIOT AND ANNA’S STORY
An elegant, sophisticated couple had traveled a long distance specifically to talk to me about a subject that required absolute confidentiality. Unbeknownst to everyone in their worlds, Elliot and Anna were, in their erotic lives, a hardcore BDSM couple. It was a secret and sacred bond between them, well-hidden from family and friends alike and precious to them both. But they had recently been having some conflicts over Elliot’s ongoing need to masturbate. Anna felt that, as her slave, he owed it all to her and should never touch himself unless she was there. And Elliot was…well, you know, a guy. A guy who just spontaneously jerked off sometimes, and then got into trouble for it with his wife, which led to conflict, and then to Elliot feeling like a terrible submissive and a guilty husband all in one.
Elliot became convinced that castration was the solution to his impulse control issue.
They weren’t sure who first came up with the idea but over the course of several months, they had both become intrigued at the possibility of having him castrated. Intercourse wasn’t as important to them as their BDSM rituals. The more they talked about it, the more Elliot became convinced that castration was the solution to his impulse control issue, and soon Anna was equally insistent that this was the best solution. He envisioned the more ecstatic submissive place he could inhabit, thinking that not having balls would eliminate his horniness and make him more docile. Most of all, he was just tired of those pesky balls stirring a nest of hornets at home.
These were not giddy kids who read about it on the Internet but highly educated adults. I didn’t question why they wanted to do it. I just explained the science to them so they understood the full medical implications. For one, when you surgically remove the balls, you end the production of testosterone. And by interfering with your body’s androgen production so precipitously, you may see rapid change. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. You might get the effects you want OR you may get effects you hate. It’s true that some men feel calmer, more at peace; but other men get depressed over the psychological reality of being a eunuch and find it emotionally hard to adjust to their new physical identity.
ALL men go through a kind of accelerated male menopause after castration. Symptoms may include decreased bone density and correspondent higher risk of osteoporosis, weight redistribution that feminizes the body, fatigue, loss of muscle mass and mood disorders. Meanwhile, some men will still get hard and may continue to climax too. So no guarantee that castration will end a man’s urge to jerk off. Best case, over time, lack of testosterone might kill his libido. But then … if his libido died, where would that leave the parts of their sex lives that they did enjoy? Would Elliot still be as eager for BDSM if his sex drive was gone? Probably not. It wouldn’t have the same oomph.
My idea to help mitigate the urgency and keep the castration on ice was basic. I suggested they experiment with chastity devices. Lock Elliot up so he can’t play with himself and Anna can unlock him at her whim. What she really wanted was the feeling of 24/7 control and, clearly, he felt he needed an outside control to keep him on the straight and narrow. A chastity device could do the trick.
BALLS ARE BEAUTIFUL
Balls. Testicles. Rocks. Nuts. Jewels. Whatever you call them, those curious appendages that swing between a man’s legs have been objects of fascination throughout history. In some cultures, testicles are the be-all of masculinity and membership card to the male privilege society. In all cultures, castration and emasculation are viewed as monstrous humiliations and the end of a man’s life as a man. A man without balls is not just a eunuch…he’s a woman! At least that is the way people have traditionally derided and taunted men.
Men’s relationships with their testicles are often as complex and self-hating as their relationship with their penises. They worry about the size of their balls and the shape and symmetry of them. They worry about how they hang and how to disguise them in clothes. Some hate the dense hair which grows on them or the sweaty smell. Others worry that sparse hair growth makes them look effeminate. We may not admit it out loud but there is an unspoken social consensus that testicles are unattractive, somewhat silly-looking and just plain bothersome. They bobble. They sway. They need frequent adjusting. They droop with age. They drop with hernias. Frankly, most people would just as soon forget that they’re there. The culture re-enforces the negativity.
With the exception of sex education courses where testicles are analyzed clinically with garish charts and Latin words, testicles are pretty much absent from polite discourse. While a big penis is generally considered sexy and desirable, big balls are generally only of interest to coterie audiences of gay men and some women. I once had a great conversation with a gay friend where we both regaled the virtues of balls. I love their sensitivity and how alive they feel when you play with them. He was enamored of the snakelike rippling and wrinkling of his lover’s scrotum. “I could watch it wrinkle and unwrinkle for hours,” he said. “There’s something so sexy, so strange about it. It’s fascinating.” I agree! Balls are beautiful and mysterious parts of the male body, like primitive sea creatures undulating to ancient rhythms. They are sacred parts of the reproductive process and integral to male sexual pleasure.
We don’t teach that to boys. We teach them to be ashamed. We teach them not to talk about them. We teach them that they can be easily crushed, sometimes making them dread having their own bodies handled. We teach them to mock their own balls. Long before they even become sexually active, they learn that the worst thing in the world is to be emasculated. It’s built into our fundamental narratives about testicles. “You’re busting my balls!” “Stop breaking my balls!” Never let anyone “get you by the balls.” Instead you need “brass balls” or “big balls” to survive. Meanwhile, nothing gets a movie audience guffawing like an on-screen injury to balls — as if that kind of excruciating pain is funny. It wouldn’t be funny if someone was kicking a woman in the tits, would it? I think not.
No one ever seems to frame male anatomy in gentle, sensual, erotic and normal ways. I know a lot of men who worship at the vagina yet think their own balls are icky and deserving of punishment. I know lots of women who are happy to suck a penis but still maintain a sex-negative, judgmental view of balls. As a culture, we treat testicles, in general, as embarrassing biological vulnerabilities, and not as the wonderfully sensitive seat of male sex drive, second only to the brain in their ability to prepare the male body for the bliss of orgasm.
It’s very difficult to separate a genuine castration fetish (something you likely formed in childhood and enjoy play-acting out in bed) and an obsessive urge to suddenly, radically, sexually disable yourself. To me, what’s also important is that even if it is your burning fetish, the path of sanity is to find ways to safely enact it, without actually causing permanent harm to yourself or another. I will never argue with a dyed-in-the-wool fetishist because that’s how they are wired and that doesn’t change. But I will always advocate for the safest, most self-loving and affirmative ways of acting out even the most radical fetish fantasies. That starts with LOVING yourself, all over, head to toe and groin included. It means reaching the emotional understanding that genitals are equipped to give us the highest natural highs of ecstasy. They are not junk to be abused or harmed because you think they are offensive, ugly or inconvenient.
JEREMY’S HAPPY ENDING
I was pretty thrilled when, out of the blue, Jeremy called me several years after our original counseling. I would finally get an answer to the question that had been haunting me: did he get the surgery or not? Lo and behold, hallelujah and amen, Jeremy still had his balls. They were very well-pierced balls now and he was kind of delighted with them. He wanted to thank me for predicting that the piercing experience would mitigate the urge. For one, it hurt like hell; for another, it was the right kind of pain, a kind that did not leave him hormonally other and which did not impair his function. If anything, the piercings had revived a more active interest in sex and dating. Now he was proud of his balls. He had reclaimed them. He had changed them in ways he felt positive about. He wasn’t in hiding anymore. He had formed a great relationship with someone who loved his piercings. His sex life was better than before. I don’t know who was happier that he still has his balls, him or me, but I had tears in my eyes to know he was doing so well.
ELLIOT AND ANNA’S HAPPY ENDING
Elliot contacted me again after a few months with his update. He and his wife changed their minds about castration after weighing the pros and cons. At first, they were very disappointed, but the more he mulled over my questions about his own eagerness to suddenly get cut, the more his fantasy evaporated. As he explained it, a few weeks after counseling, he felt like he woke up from a bad dream that had caught hold of him. Now he and his wife were taking a bigger, more sober view of how to keep themselves on keel. And they were playing with chastity, which was taking the edge off of things in a big way.
Looking back, he couldn’t even fully explain why castration had become such an obsession for him for those many months. My guess is that he felt so ashamed of his appetite for masturbation, he longed for a clean, swift surgical solution to what was, really, a psychological issue. Elliot was really punishing his testicles, as if they were to blame for his behavior, rather than the choices he’d made.
So that’s how I got to rescue 4 balls and help 2 men get their lives back. If they’d been raised in a world where the message was loud and clear that every body is good enough and beautiful enough as it was naturally made to be, I don’t think either Jeremy or Elliot (or Anna, for that matter) would have even considered castration in the first place.
Men need sexual empowerment too. They need to know every inch of them deserves love.
