for the more transgender parts of castration and eunuch identity you can check out howard chiang’s work, it’s not necessarily related to court eunuchs but still interesting i’m also happy to discuss more i probably missed out a lot of the interesting stuff like the economic and ethnic dynamics etc

after the republicans took over a lot of the gay prostitution houses from the qing closed down, and when the eunuchs were chased out of the palace and the eunuch system ended many were forced into male prostitution out of poverty and substituted for the previous institutions

it’s pretty intuitive but many eunuchs were oppressed because of their eunuchism, in some dynasties they could marry but in others it was banned and typically the ones of lower status were automatically barred from marriage, it was seen as something very unnatural and cruel for women

eunuchs were taken as lovers by emperors sometimes because of their proximity, but there’s not much to say on this when homophobia (or just awareness of gayness) became more common in china certain eunuchs would become feminized and accused of gayness by rival officials, like ming dynasty liu jin

in the early days people playing the role were intersex (around the zhou dynasty), then castrated prisoners were used, in the eastern han the use of eunuchs in certain offices was fully institutionalized, and the practice of selling children into the palace became more common in the han dynasties

okej! i’m more knowledgable about china, but afaik there’s an ongoing debate on whether byzantine eunuchs were considered a third gender identity or simply effeminate men, which you might be interested in chinese eunuchs were not rlly viewed as a third sex until influenced by western orientalism

yay! would you prefer dms?

i have a lot to talk about this subject if you’re willing to listen, i think you already understand that eunuchs were deeply exploited and often unjustly vilified by political opponents and that sets you ahead of many people

sorry i know it’s a very late reply and i found this via word searching but howard chiang’s after eunuchs delves into this! it’s an interest of mine as well and actually goes quite deep even though chinese eunuchs were not typically associated with “queerness” in the regular sense