Savage Love

 I know this is a little late, but I want to complain about watching Brokeback Mountain in a theater full of gay people.

Oh, and speaking of tortured homos...

I've been getting a lot of mail about a news story out of the American South. Three men were arrested last week in rural North Carolina and charged with castrating willing victims in their dungeon. "Richard Sciara, 61, Danny Reeves, 49, and Michael Mendez, 60," according to one report, "admitted performing at least eight surgeries, including castrations and testicle replacements, on six consenting clients over the past year. None of the three is licensed to practice medicine... Each man faces 10 felony counts—5 each of castration without malice and conspiracy to commit castration without malice—as well as 8 misdemeanor counts of performing medical acts without a license."

Yeesh. While I'm constantly coming to the defense of BDSMers in Savage Love—"so long everything's safe, sane, and consensual, it's nobody's business," "they're not hurting anyone that doesn't want to be hurt," and, um, "some of my best friends are..."—I can't defend castration, whether it's malicious or, you know, festive.

For the record: There are some men out there who want to have their balls cut off. Some are into BDSM, some are not. For a guy turned on by castration, offering up his nuts is the ultimate act of sexual surrender. The vast majority of men turned on by castration don't go through with it, as they get their kicks by anticipating and fearing castration. They may act out castration scenarios with partners who threaten to cut their balls off, but these men are aware that they have to keep their balls if they want to continuing enjoying their extreme fantasies—and keep having erections, orgasms, children, male hormones, etc.

There are also men who want to be castrated because they are tormented by sexual desires that repulse them. Men who are pedophiles or rapists, for instance, have opted for surgical castration. These men are not castration fetishists but castration realists who have taken radical steps to "solve" their sexual problems.