In American Eunuchs, George expresses a version of Plato’s creed for the supremacy of the mind through reflections on the castrated body: “I guess everything you would do at this point would be based on your personality, ’cause there’s no testosterone rush, or being a tough guy sort of thing. . . .Decisions now are made completely thought out, and I feel pretty cool about that part, you know, it makes me feel in a sense that you’re reaching perfection because you’re not making decisions based on an emotion at the time but actually a calculated process. If that makes sense at all.” Reflecting on this new rational state, George brandishes a faux samurai sword (a large wooden stick), slicing it through the air and vanquishing an invisible opponent. “You know, how many people would know how to draw a samurai sword, smash a head, wipe off the blood?” George says while acting out the execution described. George’s implication suggests that the cacophonous message of chemistry and desire formerly manufactured within the testicles made it impossible to function rationally in the world. Now, free of male body chemistry, George can lay claim to “manly” pure reason, even while reinforcing a fantasy of masculine dominance through blade and blood. It is perhaps more telling than George imagines that an ersatz samurai sword functions as the avatar of masculinity, since Asian masculinity has itself so often been associated with what David L. Eng (2001) describes in Racial Castration as a place of absence commonly linked to the exotic and orientalized feminine.

>Boocum