Testicle-Removal for Do-It-Yourself types
You really have to be careful when you’re searching the Internet, or you might find some do-it-yourself instructions that you just have to try. Really, ’cause that’s sort of what happened with Howard Shelly, shown here with a satisfied smirk sometime after castrating himself with a kitchen knife.
Howard found a website which gave him a step-by-step walk-through to the kind of home surgery that most of us wouldn’t ever consider trying, but for Howard, this was just what he needed to see.
Once he had the ‘how-to’ information in hand, Howard waited for his wife to leave for work (and his two children for school we’re assuming here), and then took a kitchen knife with him into the bathroom. There he made the required cuts and then wrapped his detached testicles in a cloth and tossed them away. Afterwards he drove himself to the nearby doctor’s office and was then admitted to a local hospital.
To quote Howard Shelly: “I’m the sort of guy who, when I make up my mind to do something, wants it done there and then. … The worst bit was steeling myself for the first cut. The whole thing took six minutes. It was agony, but I knew I couldn’t stop.”
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Man performs self-castration
Brit admits self-castration ‘was risky’ but worth it
You can find do-it-yourself makeover guides for just about anything on the web.
British construction boss Howard Shelley discovered just that when — desperate for a change in his own plumbing — he searched out directions for homemade castration.
When Shelley recently used online advice and took a common kitchen knife to his manliness — in a dangerous search for a quicker way to take a step to becoming a woman — he did what many people would consider unthinkable.
But this is not the part of the story Shelley — a 42-year-old father of two who, by his own hand, became a eunuch during a quick procedure done at home — now finds rather amazing.
That comes afterward, when his most private pain became very public news — and few people in England seemed the least bit shocked.
WAR TROPHIES
The history of castrations is older than paintings on Egyptian tombs. The disquieting practice of lopping off testicles runs down through many darker chapters of history — from war trophies to choir boys.
It even finds an odd last line in the saga of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The president’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, was later cornered and shot by a soldier named Boston Corbett.
At one point in his life, Corbett, who had come from England to the U.S. and worked as a rather mad hatter, sheared off his own testicles in order to avoid the temptation of prostitutes.
But the western world couldn’t conceive of such a thing today, figured Shelley, who was told it would be years before he could undergo a sex change operation. So at least three years ago, he began to read online about a few others who have apparently taken matters into their own hands. Among almost 1.5 million Google hits for “self and castration” were exact directions for an at-home dissection — taking the testicles off but leaving the male organ so the skin can be used for any future operation.
A botched procedure could kill a man, but it didn’t stop a troubled Shelley, who after wrestling with the costs and time restrictions of a complete sex change operation, held a knife and made a first, deep cut when he was alone at home.
Afterward, he tossed his unwanted testicles away and drove off for medical treatment. Lucky not to have died from shock or blood loss, he felt quite pleased with his extreme at-home make-over. It even healed within days with no infection — gaining him painful and questionable admission into what historically has been chronicled as “the third sex”.
“My mind is far ahead of any changes to my physical appearance,” the construction company co-owner tells me when I ask if he felt more like a woman afterward. “The castration has made me feel more relaxed about my body — not because I look more female but because I am no longer male.
“This is very important to me.”
But he adds: “I could not recommend a DIY (do-it-yourself) castration to others … it was risky. I would strongly recommend getting professional help.”
He had hoped to keep his change of privates a very private affair, but a few weeks ago, the most popular English-language newspaper in the world, Britain’s The Sun, found out what he had done to himself. He says they contacted him to explain to almost eight million people who would soon read the details of his Internet-prompted quick-change from Howard to Holli.
“It hasn’t been through choice,” he says of any notoriety.
But he adds he did take just more than $3,000 from that daily paper to tell his painful story, and recently signed a deal with a British magazine to cover — or uncover — his brazen transformation.
However, the moment he was first contacted by the press was even more difficult than his layman’s operation, he swears. He believed the world would turn on him — banish him for what he had done in secret.
The U.K. Sun’s recent story was accompanied by the picture you see here, so there was no place to hide.
“I had some interesting walks down the street that first week,” he recalls, as he waited for the comments on his sanity and leers of neighbours.
But most people have stayed quiet.
People in his town of Bletchley didn’t seem too shocked. Even those close to him at his family’s business — not surprisingly called “Women Builders” — weren’t especially revolted.
“I had to tell my father, brother, in-laws, employees at work as well as key business partners and customers,” he says of the days just before the story appeared. “Overall there has been no negative responses.
“Most people have shrugged their shoulders and carried on as normal.”
He now feels freer, and is saving money for a full sex change to come.
He’s also more relaxed with the world, he says — waiting for the day when stories like this can use “she” instead of “he.”
“The lack of testosterone has given me a sense of peace that I have never previously known,” he adds.
But he has plenty of cautions. Don’t try this at home, he advises.
“It may take some time to get to where you need to be but it will be safer, and more importantly, it may not be such a big surprise to your nearest and dearest,” he admits.
Because while millions of people apparently had no real problem stomaching his decision, his wife, whom he still works with, had serious issues.
She separated from him — soon after his unwanted symbol of manhood was forced to do the same.
