Abstract
Like the materially bounded body, the representation and reproduction of the online body is subject to ambiguities and multiplicities. Online discussion boards provide spaces that not only reinforce traditional norms and practices related to gender and sexuality but also provide spaces that highlight the transgressions of these traditional norms and practices. This paper aims to explore the ways in which the category of ‘eunuch’ is reimagined in multiple subjectivities in online interactions, specifically by examining how the body of a eunuch is constituted in online discussion boards. Importantly, the paper also proposes the analytical construct of the “CyborgianTrans” in order to reveal the multiplicities and ambiguities inherent in online self-representations of eunuch identities.
Highlights
Like the materially bounded body, the representation and reproduction of the online body is subject to ambiguities and multiplicities
This paper focuses upon gender ambiguity in online representations of the eunuch self, examining the ways in which the material offline body, the body of a eunuch, could be reproduced or represented in online spaces
In order to explore how the discursive performativity of gender in online discussion boards works in many different and scrambled ways to produce multiple subjectivities as well as multiple definitions of the ‘eunuch’, I propose the construct of the ‘CyborgianTrans’ as an analytical resource
Summary
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a eunuch is a human male who has been castrated or deprived of his testes. Eunuchs were men who were castrated in order to perform specific court and social functions such as serving as guards and domestic servants in women’s quarters (such as harems) as well as courtiers and chamberlains in palaces in the Middle East and China. These eunuchs, castrated either involuntarily or by force, were prized for their association with impotence and the inability to sire children (and being threats to the court), often becoming trusted advisors to kings and holding high administrative positions in the court. I would argue, that the term ‘eunuch’ cannot be fixed in meaning (whether socially, culturally, historically, politically and medically), and is open to diverse and ambiguous meanings
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