I know from the courses I took that in the Byzantine world, becoming a eunuch could be an avenue to familial advancement, if you could get employment in the imperial palace bureaucracy in Constantinople. Some eunuchs even became powerful enough that they made their brothers emperor, like with Michael IV. It's all very interesting history to learn about.
yes, i actually know a trans lady that is wanting to write a book about trans history through a marxist lens, and a lot of societies were like this before industrialization and the spread of mercantilism. ive been helping her get into contact with people so she can touch on every region of the world, im mostly parroting what she has told to me. eunuchs (re: usually trans people) held an immense amount of power due to 'checking out' of inheritance, which was necessary for primitive accumulation and allowed bureaucracies and impartial judges to appear. to the point that eunuchs were THE people to please, and were given all sorts of things for free, like primitive hrt, food, money, surgeries, leniency for homosexuality in some homophobic societies, ability to create laws and solve marital and inheritance disputes, and so on
That's cool to hear that your friend is writing about the topic. It's interesting to explore that aspect of societies through a materialist lens like that. Just off the top of my head I'm thinking right now of how these societies essentially tried to use eunuchs to get around bureaucrats reducing the effect of meritocratic recruitment through generational acquisition of privileges through their offspring. But eunuchs like John the Orphanotrophos still found a way around it.
I know from the courses I took that in the Byzantine world, becoming a eunuch could be an avenue to familial advancement, if you could get employment in the imperial palace bureaucracy in Constantinople. Some eunuchs even became powerful enough that they made their brothers emperor, like with Michael IV. It's all very interesting history to learn about.
yes, i actually know a trans lady that is wanting to write a book about trans history through a marxist lens, and a lot of societies were like this before industrialization and the spread of mercantilism. ive been helping her get into contact with people so she can touch on every region of the world, im mostly parroting what she has told to me. eunuchs (re: usually trans people) held an immense amount of power due to 'checking out' of inheritance, which was necessary for primitive accumulation and allowed bureaucracies and impartial judges to appear. to the point that eunuchs were THE people to please, and were given all sorts of things for free, like primitive hrt, food, money, surgeries, leniency for homosexuality in some homophobic societies, ability to create laws and solve marital and inheritance disputes, and so on
That's cool to hear that your friend is writing about the topic. It's interesting to explore that aspect of societies through a materialist lens like that. Just off the top of my head I'm thinking right now of how these societies essentially tried to use eunuchs to get around bureaucrats reducing the effect of meritocratic recruitment through generational acquisition of privileges through their offspring. But eunuchs like John the Orphanotrophos still found a way around it.