TransAntiquity

Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World

Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Margherita Facella, Domitilla Campanile, Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Margherita Facella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317377375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

TransAntiquity explores transgender practices, in particular cross-dressing, and their literary and figurative representations in antiquity. It offers a ground-breaking study of cross-dressing, both the social practice and its conceptualization, and its interaction with normative prescriptions on gender and sexuality in the ancient Mediterranean world. Special attention is paid to the reactions of the societies of the time, the impact transgender practices had on individuals' symbolic and social capital, as well as the reactions of institutionalized power and the juridical systems. The variety of subjects and approaches demonstrates just how complex and widespread "transgender dynamics" were in antiquity.

Part I
Transgender dynamics in the ancient social and political space

1 “Between the human and the divine”

Cross-dressing and transgender dynamics in the Graeco-Roman world

Filippo Carlà-Uhink

Introduction

The decision to dedicate a collective volume to cross-dressing and transgender dynamics in the ancient world necessarily requires an introductory explanation.¹ While the first concept is clear, in that it is taken to refer to a series of practices whose relevance and meaning (for instance, in religious rituals) have already been explored in scholarship, subsuming these practices into the bigger frame of transgender dynamics, as happens throughout this volume, is new and requires explanation. The concept “transgender” is a modern category, developed in the 1990s as an “umbrella” term to cover and define the range of experiences of those who, for a short time or for most of their lives, behaviourally adopt elements (from clothes to anatomical characteristics) generally attributed to a gender which does not correspond to their sex at birth. It is, therefore, a category that is completely different, if not opposed, to that of homosexuality, and has an ontological nature.² Starting from the premise that a new vocabulary has the power to generate the object it defines,³ it is clear that a transgender identity has existed only since the last decade of the twentieth century.⁴ Additionally, the concept of transgender has recently come in for very strong criticism: it has been underlined, for example, how academic definitions of transgender often fail to mirror the real-life experience,⁵ as this concept – until very recent times – has also only partially managed to emerge from the academic milieu, and enter the collective perception of gender and sex, in which identity and orientation are still generally strongly connected.⁶ At the same time, by ontologizing the ideas of gender and of sexuality, it obscures the intersections of these categories with concepts of class, ethnicity, nationality, wealth, education, etc.⁷

Nonetheless, in Classical Antiquity, it is possible to identify forms of behaviour and action which might fall into our modern category of transgender. Starting from a constructivist view of gender as performance,⁸ all those behaviours implying a performative assumption of characteristics, which, in the culture of reference, are not generally ascribed to the birth sex of the actor, can be defined as transgender. In this sense, this volume does not deal, for instance, with hermaphroditism, which is the co-presence of masculine and feminine physical and/or performative characteristics, or with the passage from one gender to another.⁹

It is not only an exercise in definition, since it is obvious that one cannot investigate ancient sexuality through modern categories; the question as to whether the ancients were more or less tolerant is in this sense by no means historical,¹⁰ despite whatever political relevance it may have acquired outside academia.¹¹ But a systematic analysis of such behaviours in their cultural and social contexts,¹² such as we wish to offer in this volume, highlights a complex code of behavioural norms and perceptions and, more generally, aspects of ancient sexuality which would otherwise be only partially visible. Starting from Foucault’s assumption that sexuality is experience, and thus a correlation of knowledge, norm, and subjectivity,¹³ this introductory chapter aims to shed light on mentalities, structures of power, forms of political self-representation, and on their reciprocal connections. In order to achieve that, I will first analyse the adoption of transgender elements in discourse, and illustrate thus the mental structures underlying gender issues in the Graeco-Roman world. After that, I will reflect on the practice of cross-dressing in Classical Antiquity, and finally, I will concentrate on some very significant examples of “performative gender (self)reassignment”.¹⁴ All in all, I will argue that Greek and Roman mentality recognized gender boundaries as a central element, constitutive of the human – their transgression was admitted only as part of a “posthuman world”, and therefore considered as revealing a divine nature or a divine protection.

The “transgender discourse”

A clear distinction between gender identity and sexual orientation, as known in Western (intellectual elite) culture since Simone de Beauvoir,¹⁵ could not have existed prior to the introduction in the nineteenth century of the category of homosexual. Before that moment (and still today in more conservative milieus), a person who was recognized as sexually “deviant” compared to the admitted norm, was defined or labelled according to the categories of the other gender.¹⁶ The deviant male has, thus, been feminized in discourse, and the deviant female masculinized. This is what I define as “transgender discourse”. While in the ancient world, as in the modern, such socially dominant discourse could have contributed, in a situational way, to changing the forms of self-representation (as in the well-known case of male homosexuals adopting feminized modes of expression),¹⁷ the application of this kind of discourse does not require any kind of transgender practice, such as cross-dressing. A few examples will suffice. As is well known, homosexual practices were accepted when they fell within specific culturally defined boundaries, and censored when they infringed them.¹⁸ In Greece, the main boundary was connected to the age of the people involved: over a certain age, it was considered “deviant” to have a passive role in homosexual acts,¹⁹ incurring the risk of being framed as feminine, as shown on many occasions, for example, by Aristophanes.²⁰ In this case, deciding whether the central issue was not penetration but desire is irrelevant, since an excessive and insatiable sexual desire was attributed to women, and is therefore part of the same feminizing discourse.²¹

Aeschines’ Against Timarchos provides a very good example: in 346 BCE, the orator successfully rebutted an accusation against himself by arguing that, according to Athenian law, Timarchos was not authorized to speak in front of the assembly, because he had been a prostitute.²² The speech makes it absolutely clear that intercourse between an erastes and eromenos in accordance with the traditional norms is perfectly acceptable.²³ Aeschines thus pretends not to linger on what Timarchos did as a boy, as if this had been “pardoned”;²⁴ in point of fact, however, it was not possible to criticize it in the first place,²⁵ and it is alluded to only so that an overview of Timarchos’s “sexual development” may be provided. A passive role in homosexual acts adopted by adult male citizens could not be punished, but it could be ridiculed – and this is precisely what Aeschines does, in order to present the public with a negative image of Timarchos (which also includes excessive drinking).²⁶

Timarchos’s relationship with Hegesandros is thus presented in strongly feminized terms:

During the same archon-year in which he was on the Council, Hegesandros the brother of Krobylos was a treasurer of the goddess’ funds; they were engaged in stealing, collectively and very amicably, a thousand drachmai from the city. A reputable man, Pamphilos of Acherdous, discovered the affair; he ran up against Timarchos and was very angry with him, so at an Assembly he rose and spoke: “Athenians, they are stealing from you, a man and a woman together, a thousand drachmai”. When you expressed astonishment, about how it could be a man and a woman, and what the story was, he went on after a bit: “Don’t you understand what I’m saying? The man is Hegesandros over there, though he too used himself to be Leodamas’ woman; the woman is Timarchos here”.²⁷

The transgender element in the discourse is so strong that Aeschines even claims that a failure to condemn Timarchos would lead to the women becoming uncontrollable.²⁸ Aeschines is not new to this, since here, as in other speeches, he has also attacked Demosthenes’ anandria, his lack of masculinity, by highlighting the femininity of his clothes.²⁹ A deviation from normative masculinity implies an automatic passage to a feminine type of vocabulary. Such discursive use of references to the other sex is recurrent throughout the most diverse literary genres, ranging from Hypereides, according to whom nature clearly divided humanity into men and women, and men ought not to be disrespectful of the “gift” they have received by attempting to transform into women,³⁰ to Epictetus, who condemns men who depilate their bodies by using nature as his argument, because they ignore the boundary between masculine and feminine.³¹

In Rome, saliency was accorded instead to social status: the passive role was unacceptable if the active participant was of inferior status, and this applied particularly when a citizen was penetrated by a slave.³² With the first century BCE and the “Hellenization” of Roman culture, age may also have become a more relevant factor than before, along the lines of the Greek m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Part I Transgender dynamics in the ancient social and political space
• Part II Ancient transgender dynamics and the sacred sphere
• Part III Transgender as subversive literary discourse
• Part IV Transgender myth
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of sources