A man who came to international attention after being arrested for performing dozens of fetishistic castrations out of his home in North London can be revealed as a Norwegian activist affiliated with a powerful ‘Queer’ lobby group.
Marius Gustavson, 44, was arrested along with six other men in February. Shortly after his arrest, he told The Independent in an interview that had undergone an amateur orchiectomy himself and carried the operation out on 58 other men. He stated that he had his own genitals surgically removed because he wanted to “look like a Ken doll with nothing down there.”
Gustavson told media that he executed the procedures using a Burdizzo, an instrument for removing the testicles of livestock. He admitted that he kept the amputated appendages in his freezer and preserved them in alcohol in his basement apartment.
Neighbors in the residential area where Gustavson was performing the castrations said they had seen ambulances regularly arriving at the property — despite Gustavson, who is also an amputee, insisting he conducted surgeries in a “very professional way.”
Despite the international coverage of the disturbing case, media failed to note that Gustavson had been a prominent member of the LGBT activist community.
According to Gustavon’s LinkedIn profile, he was a volunteer and Senior Steward for London’s Pride organization between 2016 to 2019. His first Eunuch Maker site was registered in 2016, and in 2018, he started a film production company called Nullset.
Prior to his relocation to London, Gustavson was Chairman of the Board for the Buskerud chapter of transactivist lobbying group The Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity, now known as FRI. Gustavson was involved in a leadership position at the organization from 2001 through 2007. During this time, FRI went by the name ‘The National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation,’ or LLH.
In 2018, The Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity (FRI) successfully lobbied the World Health Organization to officially depathologize fetishism, sadomasochism, and fetishistic transvestitism by removing them from the 11th revision of the International Classifications of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11).