Abstract
In the aftermath of the Ming-Qing transition, philosopher Tang Zhen 唐甄 (1630–1704) wrote of eunuchs: “If a castrated individual can become a female, then [the eunuch] is acceptable, but if they cannot do this, then they remain a male” 奄若化為女子則可，不然，固男也. Here, Tang suggests the topical question: without sexual potency, does a castrated male become female? And if not, what is to be made of an emasculated male? Due to their perceived part in the dynastic fall of the Ming, eunuchs were a subject of curiosity and unease among Qing scholars like Tang, who began to question the effects of castration upon the male body. Castration, beginning with its earliest usage as a commutation for the death sentence, signaled not only social death but an entrance into the yin 陰, the cosmological force associated with the feminine and counteracted by the masculine yang 陽. Through the removal of the entire sexual organ, the castrated male was removed from Confucian society and sexually neutered in a way that was thought to render him more female than male. Eunuchs, who were also often illiterate, possessed neither sexual or social determiners of masculinity.
As my following analysis of fictional Ming-Qing castration narratives will show, the presence of literally or metaphorically castrated men threatened masculine identity. A masculinity that is defined by its opposition to a constructed femininity is necessarily a fragile existence, at all times endangered by a fall into the feminine. Narratives of castration, whether of eunuchs, transformation into the female or male-male relationships, offer a compelling glimpse into late imperial definitions of gender, by illustrating when and how a male body was no longer considered that of a man.