The “Peculiar Colouring of the Mind”

How China Became a “Castrated Civilization” and Eunuchs a “Third Sex”

“…Similarly, in Coltman's reports, all of the information about the actual castration experience were filtered and made accessible only through what the eunuchs said. 92 So the evidential status of foreigners' accounts is substantiated only when its epistemological function as a secondary, rather than a primary, source is adequately acknowledged. But Chinese eunuchs did not narrate their experience only through the voice of "outsiders."…”