Galli without a cause

Among the gods the Romans worshiped was a relatively late addition: Cybele, the Great Mother. The Galli were her devotees. They castrated themselves, probably amputated the penis, and wore women's clothing. They collected alms in return for fortune-telling--or else for going away. In any case, they made their devotion to their goddess perfectly clear.

Some three hundred years ago if a young Italian boy had a good voice he might be castrated to preserve his beautiful soprano. That was brutal, but a career as a singer was more lucrative than many other available opportunities. There was a grisly point to the mutilation.

Today we have despicable hucksters hawking expensive surgery and drugs to make people into modern Galli. It makes the hucksters wealthy, but the victims have neither the honor of being dedicated to a god nor the possibility of a lucrative singing career. They become Galli in the name of finding their true selves--as though mangling yourself and drugging yourself out of your mind was ever likely to be a path to self-discovery. It's much more likely to lead to suicide, but that doesn't phase the hucksters or the fashionistas.

The fashion seems to be based on sympathetic magic--if you make a doll of something that looks like X, it becomes X. It might also remind you of the Aristotelian notion that a woman is an incomplete man--just make yourself incomplete, and presto!

We usually don't intervene in most affairs of adults, even when one party is plainly preying on the other. But they have taken to preying on children and persuading gullible parents that being a tomboy or wanting to dress like a Cavalier is a sign that the child needs to be mangled.