eunuch lore question apropos of nothing: i'm curious what the social outcome would be for a normative Wardi man who loses his penis/testicles unintentionally, due to disease or tragic scything accident or whatever.
say a man is like 35, gainfully employed, sexually normal, married, has healthy kids, enjoys hunting and sporting with The Guys, generally the perfect specimen of Wardi masculinity; then a spider bites his dick while he's asleep and it gets the worst infection ever and the doctor has to chop the whole thing off to save his life. what happens to this man? does he get kicked out of the male gender space and reassigned as a eunuch, or has he successfully established himself as enough of a father/husband/brother to stick around even with his Biological Male Essence destroyed?
alternative scenario: this same man, with all his perfectly masculine interests and personality, gets his fateful spider bite like 15 years earlier, after he's had most of the expected male puberty but before he's fully taken on any of the social roles of a grown man. what does his family do? is he still considered a son for the purposes of inheritance? can he ever get married? what is life like in this society for a man who genuinely wants to have kids and be a dad and all that but is definitely, obviously, 100% infertile?
If you asked the average person, they would definitely say that men and eunuchs are at least a little different, and they would probably invoke an Essential Maleness That Is Stored In The Balls. Ones more enlightened in the ways of medicine could explain to you that having enough semen Stored In The Balls is specifically what masculinizes a body and has subtler effects on a man's health, character, and temperament; cutting off the source entirely makes one more akin to a woman in body and temperament. But the image of "a eunuch" in their mind is really less about what parts of their anatomy are present, and more about how and when and why these parts were taken away, and what role that action places them in.
The Eunuch in the cultural imagination and practice is a servant administrator in the court, or guards of female priests and royalty, the vast majority of whom were probably sold and castrated at approximately 9-14 years old at their father's behest and you can really tell they aren't Men. Or a specific body of priests who are gelded as the first of many autosacrificial acts. Or a criminal who was gelded in punishment and humiliation. Or maybe the natural kind who never saw a blade but still sounds like a girl at 30 and can't grow a beard or sire children. It's not the beloved friend of 20 years who just lost his balls in a desperate act of medical intervention after a horrific spider accident. He's technically a eunuch now, but he's not, like, a eunuch eunuch. If anything he's more akin to former warriors who made it into old age alive, minus a limb. If he was born without the limb he never really could've been a complete man to begin with, it's a pity. If he lost the limb on the cusp of adulthood it's outright tragic. But he had a full life and nothing about him has Really changed. Mocking him for lacking some of the traits of manhood would be like mocking the elder who's lived to the uncommon old age of 85 for not being able to hold a spear. It borders on absurd. Similar logic can more or less go for the spider victim in his late 30s, though there are differences in that losing your balls has much more specific baggage than losing a limb and people are likelier to giggle about it a little, or may evoke his loss of Essential Maleness if it's socially or politically advantageous to cast him as weakened and feminized.
But the average man clasps his spider victim friend's hands and warmly assures him he's lost none of his spirit, and from there on strictly avoids invoking his lack of testes unless the latter has found some humor in his circumstances. The average woman finds any desperation-tinged displays of machismo from the spider victim extra amusing and/or irritating given the literal lack of balls to back it with (some might even take a little vindictive glee), though her opinion on this behavior probably did not change with the loss of his testes. The respected, established spider victim goes on hunting with the guys and being the head of his household because Biological Male Essence Of The Balls is really only present or absent by social and societal consent.
The spider incident happening to a much younger man is different along a similar line of logic, he's not going to just suddenly Stop being a man to others around him, but unlike the older victim his his role Has materially changed. The chief economic value of a sons is as an inheritor of property and a guarantor of your family's future prospects by making more sons. That's not the ONLY economic value of a son (much less their only value in general), but that's their primary purpose when it comes to securing the collective family's future. The youth who has been mauled by a ferocious spider doesn't stop being a 'son', there's no law or taboo that Prevents you from treating him identically to your other boys, there's no (non-reproductive) stations in life he's forbidden from strictly on the basis of not having balls (there are many he will be passed over for in favor of an intact man if his status is known, though). But he's not going to be managed the same way as other young men, in the same way that you don't offer a post-menopausal woman in a political marriage. He unambiguously physically cannot do his Job, and this job is a major part of entering the world of adult manhood. This is complicated a little by adoption being a legitimate means of acquiring an heir (almost always of a family member along your same patriline) but that's Never going to be your first choice, especially not when the stakes are high, and you're unlikely to bank your family's future on your sterilized son's choice of adoptee. You're just going to rearrange your inheritance to position an intact son as heir (or adopt one if you don't have any), who will receive most of your property and eventually have sons of his own, and meanwhile your spider victim son gets whatever share is contextually appropriate, probably what the youngest would have gotten.
There's nothing preventing him from getting married, he can be head of his own household and adopt an heir and pass whatever he inherits to him, but the primary incentives for marriage are gone and the spectrum of marriage opportunities that will suit your family's socioeconomic needs (and marriage IS about benefiting the collective first, and everything else second) is much narrower. It might just not be worth the bride price. He's not going to just Not Be Seen As A Man Anymore, but he may be unable to fully inhabit an adult man's role in his family and community, which will bring his Lack Of Essential Maleness Stored In The Balls closer to the forefront of the minds of people who know his condition.
I should note that 'receiving an accidental sterilizing injury where your balls are removed' is also an extreme outlier scenario so there's no conventions for how that Changes things. The analogues that have specific cultural baggage are being a 'natural eunuch' (usually describes undescended/absent testes, sometimes describes otherwise 'abnormal' male characteristics co-occurring with infertility, even if the testes are developed), or actually being Made A Eunuch By Intent To Make A Eunuch (the exact baggage of which depends, in part, on what you've been made a eunuch for). Both of these cases are likely to make you perceived as something that is effectively Other than a man by default, are commonly assumed to annihilate your sex drive, and are considered to make you physically weaker than other men.