{"id":75,"date":"2023-02-01T23:54:32","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T23:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?p=75"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:22:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:22:34","slug":"ancient-transgender-history-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/ancient-transgender-history-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"An Intro To Trans Ancient History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"We Have Always Existed Episode 1: Introduction | Ancient Transgender LGBT Queer History\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XHNY29yZ6Ko?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8d5c2b4706d83ca369d3a1748538b201\">There are a lot of anti-transgender talking points circulating the discourse, but one that\u2019s always stuck out to me was the idea that being transgender is just a new trend, a silly thing that silly kids do. Boys pretend to be girls and girls pretend to be boys, just like they might pretend to be dinosaurs or superheroes or something. But they grow out of this childlike foolishness and become adults, well-adjusted adults with responsibilities and families and pensions. And of course, trans adults are just delusional and out of touch with reality. And nonbinary? Give me a break, all these made up genders are ridiculous. You\u2019re either a man or a woman, it\u2019s just basic biology that there are only two genders!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3866b5f150df7181e47bfc01c2856f7a\">*deep breath*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-19452412aaafe3d0a0c3c9df2d206c0f\">I hope it\u2019s clear I don\u2019t believe any of this. Transgender people do exist and have always existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d3388e83766f54d61c79ed75ad6fa3c1\">But if that\u2019s so, why don\u2019t we hear stories about them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6888279ea18a9399a96aa5debba91c10\">That\u2019s why I\u2019m here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-48fd990bb480a2a34afca4a2c08f2125\">I\u2019m <a href=\"\/\">Sophie Edwards<\/a>, though you may also know me as the <a href=\"\/creative-writing\/\">fiction writer S.B. Edwards<\/a>. I mostly write science fiction, and now I\u2019m sitting here talking to you about <a href=\"\/transgender-history\/\">transgender history<\/a>. Life is full of contradictions, I suppose. I came out as transgender about four years ago, and since then I\u2019ve found myself pretty disappointed at the state of research and exploration into our history, even on an amateur level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-261fc1852d5fe8b8231f521ff436b0ce\">We\u2019ve done a pretty good job of documenting the history of transgender people in the more modern era, from the early twentieth century, onward. Figures like Lily Elbe, Marsha P Johnson, Billy Tipton, and others have become well-known figures in queer circles, but my historical interest has always been the ancient world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a717d58e66150306f090298bfbcb3e88\">The vast majority of the world\u2019s history has been lost over the millennia. That\u2019s true of general history, so it\u2019s true of transgender history too. And what does survive has been told, re-told, and re-interpreted almost entirely through a cisgender, heterosexual lens. What that means is that the tidbits of transgender history we have aren\u2019t even told as transgender history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a82e6b7400d47580f00852f3dbf9f085\">I think back to my undergrad, where I did a degree in classical studies. In my Roman history class, my professor, the absolute stereotype of the old white guy historian \u2013 British accent, scholarly beard, tweed suits, the whole shebang \u2013 could barely control his condescending snickering as we talked about the Roman emperor Elagabalus, whom in retrospect was clearly transgender \u2013 more on them in another video. He acted like they were some sort of bizarre historical curiosity, sort of the way you might think of people looking at an early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century circus freak show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5bdbcd930e90054f2d6aee4aaf81e075\">If you look more into scholarly research on Elagabalus, you\u2019ll find scholars humming and hawing about whether they were actually transgender, or just a mentally ill deranged pervert. It\u2019s so controversial! We can\u2019t ever possibly know! I mean they did say \u201ccall me not lord, for I am a lady,\u201d but how can we possibly be sure??????<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fab0f7ac4f2741fcce621f9e723446d3\">This comes from the same tradition of scholarship \u2013 again dominated by cisgender heterosexual men \u2013 that questions whether Sappho was into women. Yeah, Sappho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5ef47d755272e1e17ffa37f0ecc6d36c\">And <a href=\"\/transgender-roman-emperor-elagabalus\/\">Elagabalus<\/a>, believe it or not, is sort of one of the lucky ones. At least their story is told in the first place. In a lot of other cases, these stories are either briefly glossed over, or full on ignored. We have some really interesting information, but nobody has bothered to dig into it and make it accessible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-978db4cc55ad8ce5208c78abba57512f\">We deserve to know, and own, our own history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7ebf63adeca46be84cfa6aec418e9657\">And it\u2019s with that idea in mind that I\u2019m introducing this project \u2013 We Have Always Existed: A History of Transgender Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East. My intention is to take a look at the stories that have either been glossed over or misrepresented or ignored entirely, with the idea of giving modern transgender people a greater perspective into our history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-be8ab12c6eebff0821650b29825c2e4b\">We have always existed, and I\u2019m going to show you the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9700e2880c06e87dd7bc4ee02d40704b\">I doubt it will convince too many transphobes of anything, but they may be shocked to learn that I don\u2019t actually care about their big smelly opinions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-960a3d5d3585a96845e24e51f6ea35a8\">Before we get into any actual historical stories, though, we need to get a better understanding of what it means to be transgender in a historical sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-stackable-table-of-contents stk-block-table-of-contents stk-block stk-689a2c9\" data-block-id=\"689a2c9\"><p class=\"stk-table-of-contents__title\">Table of Contents<\/p><ul class=\"stk-table-of-contents__table\"><li><a href=\"#were-they-actually-trans\">Were They Actually Trans?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#why-is-there-so-little-information\">Why Is There so Little Information?<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#the-problem-of-transmission\">The Problem of Transmission<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#the-problem-of-illiterate-cultures\">The Problem of Illiterate Cultures<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#the-problem-of-prudery\">The Problem of Prudery<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"#moving-forward\">Moving Forward<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"were-they-actually-trans\">Were They Actually Trans?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f5d6a3371b6d668f669f02b566b8a2af\">Within the study of history, there\u2019s a concept called presentism, and it\u2019s pretty much universally agreed upon by serious historians that we need to do our best to avoid it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d48b0584ddb883d1d994547de2266981\">So what is presentism?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a16f950e0e5c5133b34ff215e1577f1a\">Broadly speaking, presentism is the idea of projecting our own cultural biases and attitudes onto other cultures. That\u2019s true of ancient peoples as well, because those of us in the west might be the cultural inheritors of ancient Greece and Rome, but we\u2019re not them, regardless of how many dudes cosplay as Spartan soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-47c412f72d641168433771117875f078\">Why is this such a big deal? When we\u2019re talking about ancient cultures, it tends to pollute our understanding of them as we try to squeeze them into boxes we can understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-377047d126485ef70f81b01f7a837c62\">One might think of an ancient soldier, for example, choose your state, as playing a similar role in their society as a modern infantry soldier might in your own country, wherever you\u2019re listening to this from, but they\u2019re so drastically different that to make such an assumption about them is to misunderstand the realities of both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2e0b1fc0fd4629c9cf78e5aedfad3117\">Which brings us to gender, and gender roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-309089e3513db35b005dc948199058f8\">Sure, the term cisgender is a modern one. But there have always been men and women who were perfectly comfortable in the gender role they were assigned at birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1591a2ebb974cbc42ad49f15a2f1434a\">Yes, cis people have always existed too, and that\u2019s a hill I\u2019m willing to die on. I\u2019m not cisphobic! I have lots of cis friends. My mom is cis! I would proudly date a cisgender person! I will stand for cisgender rights!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-614c397ff0cc9700e3737ecd299efe4d\">But no matter far back we look, we find people who stepped outside their assigned gender roles as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-20e35a80b62d4a06f06edbdb284a46ca\">But if we call them transgender, isn\u2019t that just succumbing to the same presentism we\u2019re supposed to avoid?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b017b7d9a7de3aec2fb05bd02cb71a58\">Well, sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b80a51ad8fff199b015e9b9c94eed852\">Being transgender is a modern concept, but being gender nonconforming is nothing new. So how do we get around this without being bogged down in a bunch of obnoxious and unnecessary pedantry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-828579862b0ccebe80861eac2ac35ce0\">Queer historian and researcher Susan Stryker has a solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2fbf0a369097b660561eeba7592c9a8b\">In her book, <em>Transgender History<\/em>, she defines transgender people in a historical context using the broadest possible definition, as \u201cpeople who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-83f323f52a1a3d055150e4c21fb62dfb\">If we look at the literal definition of the word \u201ctransgender\u201d, she\u2019s on the mark here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-207621ee350aaab99fd911c82b45147e\">And we are going to look at the literal definition of the word \u201ctransgender\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c80ffe71668045a9beb653ef7d6139c8\">Sorry y\u2019all, we\u2019ve got to go back to grammar school for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bf5c09c1ba5059dc6223f8f58a78a5f4\">The prefixes <em>trans<\/em> and <em>cis <\/em>both come from Latin. Trans means \u201cacross from\u201d or \u201caway from\u201d, and cis means \u201con the same side\u201d. Here\u2019s an easy demonstration of how this worked &#8211; In ancient Rome, for example, two of their provinces were called Cisalpine Gaul and Transalpine Gaul, or Gaul on the same side of the Alps (as the city of Rome), and Gaul across the Alps. And gender, of course, comes from the Latin <em>genus<\/em>, meaning category or type. So one being trans-gender would be one existing across from the category that was given to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4614663dbf1ff0d8ea145a7b378aa1f8\">So in this series going forward, I\u2019ll be referring to a variety of different figures as transgender, but I\u2019ll be using this definition. It doesn\u2019t make much sense to try to shoehorn people into modern gender identities, but they still moved away from their assigned gender, so they still count as transgender under this definition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4678750c30a43946d51cd65d8498aad4\">I hope this doesn\u2019t seem too pedantic, but it\u2019s important to understand the history of people like us and how their gender identities would have differed from our own. If you invented a time machine and brought baby Elagabalus to grow up and be raised the modern world, for example, it\u2019s entirely possible they would identify as a trans woman. But that\u2019s not reality. We\u2019re talking about ancient people, so it\u2019s important that we recognize that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ae87acb89907a23246002f696539ebaf\">So the TL;DR version of this is that I\u2019ll be referring to ancient people who moved away from their assigned gender roles as transgender. That doesn\u2019t mean they <em>were<\/em> transgender in the modern sense of the word, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-palette-color-1-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aee101a9de803c7028d43f361b461ea7\" id=\"why-is-there-so-little-information\">Why Is There so Little Information?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-abfa7137b56fd020a9f582af22e06c5d\">If you\u2019re intellectually lazy, or you\u2019re just looking for reasons why it\u2019s okay to treat trans people like dirt, you might just jump to the conclusion that you\u2019ve never heard of trans history because there is no trans history, and it\u2019s a 20<sup>th<\/sup> century phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1049fa8531895e2eb1f25934e9b5a63a\">You can think that, if you like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-943ae403cb604971b36512818cf8a3b7\">You\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-015447ac01c48d19d64868562f90f4af\">But you can think that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d0208c079a0c4409826a925616977184\">At the beginning of this, I told three different stories. They were fiction, but they outline three of the reasons why we don\u2019t have a lot of information about ancient transgender people. These reasons aren\u2019t restricted to just ancient transgender history, but they definitely affect it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e2c48390064212436e9c823e9f7065e6\">Let\u2019s take a closer look at these three main points: transmission, literacy, and prudery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-problem-of-transmission\">The Problem of Transmission<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b4ed6161c1dffefce3501082cab4e997\">There are some major gaps in the evidence we have about the ancient Mediterranean. We know the ancients wrote quite a bit \u2013 especially the Greeks and Romans \u2013 but only a small part of it survives today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c54940e900e21176ab6ebe8c082f3b8f\">Take Sophocles, for example. He was a playwright in ancient Athens, and we know he wrote more than 120 different plays during his lifetime. Today, we have seven of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-28d6c6c8c775cb8ceb120120cd18f653\">Aeschylus was a contemporary of Sophocles who wrote ninety plays, and we have six.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-37c240ca7c80c53438cbabc24ed77e7a\">The Roman Menander wrote over a hundred comedies, and we\u2019ve got one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fc495fd07fd22573e19899bf881e5a47\">We also know about some pretty important historical figures who wrote as well, including Cleopatra, the Roman dictator Sulla, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and several Roman emperors, but their works survive only in fragments or the occasional literary reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-598fa9b9486bf2b67133eaa9d04b1281\">I could go on, but I think you get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-82b9a45f30eca49e377e6964d8a99374\">So why don\u2019t we have these works? Part of it is just the reality that the older something is, the harder it is to preserve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bc9d513ec3f60dcac8b9667207e2f437\">That\u2019s true even today with mass production of consumer goods. Wayne Gretzky rookie cards, for example, are so rare now they sell for millions of dollars, even though there were tons of them made. Probably. Likely. I think. I don\u2019t know anything about sports, I should have chosen a better analogy here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e450fda0063194b40018c87c847b1ed5\">Before the printing press was invented in Europe in the 15<sup>th<\/sup> century, the only way you could make a copy of a manuscript was to write it out by hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5e0972f959198ba8a564449c5d83acb9\">In fact, a lot of the ancient texts we have today come to us through copies made by medieval monks. It\u2019s hard to make a piece of paper survive for 2500 years, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9c2e9d09ce6c0bb5aec0851cc0e2a18e\">Sometimes things are just lost, and we don\u2019t know the reason. But a lot of it was deliberately destroyed as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-488b419d9519bd8793641a6d5ddf622a\">The Great Library of Alexandria was one of the largest depositories of human knowledge in the ancient world. During its peak in the third and second centuries BCE, it housed the equivalent of about a hundred thousand books. Many of these were either unique, or one of only a few existing copies. It was first burned by Julius Caesar, after which it was repaired and burned again several times. But each time it burned, a large number of texts were destroyed, many forever.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9aba0f1007b9befbc944027137b9e751\">Sadly, we\u2019ll never know the extent of the information lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-problem-of-illiterate-cultures\">The Problem of Illiterate Cultures<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86b6d16930e1e95ed8413ac93dca0180\">We sometimes think of human progress as a linear process. Cultures reach certain milestones, and leave certain cultural ideas behind, on a very specific timeline, like reality is a game of Sid Meier\u2019s Civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1f98541ab0f0d05e150cceb1d2e71ae2\">Oh good, we researched mining! That will allow us to research the wheel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a32d42d082ce882e403855ae17a88bf9\">Wait, what\u2019s the wheel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-01ffc93eaea12551ec7daa2cbf3b03b8\">But reality is a lot messier than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ef9fcba90b5ebef4222b874e50665540\">Cultures only develop new ideas when they have a need for them. And it may sound surprising, but a whole lot of cultures throughout human history never needed to develop a system of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-da9957a539d5a96809b6a46fefdc4710\">Why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-47d971d5ccac2d2cdb5bb67108b0913f\">We have some inscriptions of Bronze Age language which we\u2019ve called Linear B, written mostly on clay tablets. Most of the Linear B inscriptions we have were found in palaces in mainland Greece and on the island of Crete. When these palaces were burned down, it baked the tablets, preserving them for the ages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-29470fb0c3bf81f415513c46ef98f7b3\">So, big thanks to whomever destroyed Bronze Age Greece, great job! Historians are grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c9429ed8226707701ed84fa8bd768b28\">This script was first rediscovered in the late nineteenth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5d9347ecc95268b1d06a7af81f607df1\">I think about the historical imaginations that must have been running wild as people contemplated the secrets hidden in each of these tablets. What great literary works would they uncover? Could it be a more direct chronicle of the Trojan War, or some other precursor to Homer? Or maybe a historical chronicle older than anything we have from Greece? Could it be an as yet undiscovered work of history?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2093d4c3d93e4aa81a56f7c148917196\">When we finally did decipher it in the 1950s, though, what we found resembled an Excel document much more than Word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2b1ffe4585e34e9484d245808c45019c\">They used Linear B, so far as we can tell, for keeping track of the amount of grain, wool, and other goods they had stored in the palace, and who they distributed it to. That\u2019s better than nothing, but it doesn\u2019t give us a whole lot to go on when we\u2019re trying to piece together a historical narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e62cf6cffe58c23eb3cdb62608adbde7\">Imagine, for example, our civilization is destroyed, and somebody from 3000 years in the future digs up our remains. They find some burned out buildings, a little bit of consumer goods, maybe a few pieces of wall art or statues, and your 2013 income tax statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-76cd3fb166d1537cf2f80ee911dcf94a\">Not a lot to go on, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fbf4c8fbfc66a12ce3966d8b1b81d311\">So what\u2019s the point here? So far as we can tell, a lot of early forms of writing in the ancient Mediterranean developed as a way to tally stockpiles of goods. And as a result, they tended to develop in cultures that, well, stockpiled goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ba0935247cf1c6e1c070af9950016fc3\">And since nomadic cultures don\u2019t tend to stockpile goods the way more sedentary cultures did, they were less likely to develop writing systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3b76026c170dbf99cd1b0a1b62fdced6\">The ancient Mediterranean cultures we know the most about are the Egyptians, the Athenians, and the Romans. Why? They wrote the most stuff. The Persians wrote too, but nowhere near as much. The Spartans and Etruscans wrote very little. And as for the Scythians, the Thracians, the Gauls, the Dacians, the Illyrians, the Boii, and a whole bunch of others? Nothing at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d4572261ae0fa69391d0d17e1f1ca0a9\">So how did these cultures pass on their cultural ideas? For some, we don\u2019t know for sure, but a lot of them did so through oral traditions. And when their culture dies out, those oral traditions die with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-77de2c73281b689c0548d600ba155807\">That leaves us with archaeological evidence, or outsider viewpoints when we have them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-932f83f84e8b39beb376bdfce83610ca\">So it\u2019s possible many of these cultures had transgender people living among them. But we either don\u2019t know about them, or we have such scant evidence that we have to piece things together in a way that makes it almost impossible to say anything conclusively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a32e4e9bd608d9e4af6776eca547305c\">And that sucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-problem-of-prudery\">The Problem of Prudery<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e3e71147fb2677665bc59ca9ba35328b\">Would it shock you if I told you that western culture hasn\u2019t always been kind to transgender people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e733a08441604d3d11becf87009d881f\">There\u2019s a long history of Europeans and their descendants being deeply uncomfortable with the display of any sort of sexuality. And while being trans isn\u2019t inherently sexual any more than being cis is, conservatives certainly seem to think it is, which is I think one of the big disconnects between conservatives getting angry about trans characters in children\u2019s cartoons, for example. But that\u2019s another idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6b50745f24e4097fc0615f92b0fe8078\">There are two things here I think really illustrate this point well: the Loeb Classical Library, and the Gabinetto Segreto.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-eed27d6b29b156c0528fe0d0a6d4a1ce\">The Loeb Classical Library was founded in 1912, and it\u2019s still around today. They publish translations of classical literature, and their goal is to make it more accessible to the average person. That\u2019s really cool, since they helped repopularize classical history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7c4eb7d80b5845d95b9ca8dd5733e3aa\">But here\u2019s the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8d68335299c3df6acc8a2530cf632336\">Translations are inherently imperfect. They\u2019re subject to the biases of the person who\u2019s translating them. And if you want to make something popular, you have to make sure it appeals to the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2bc6f7a68329b8b9517e4cc5e17048be\">So for early 20<sup>th<\/sup> century readers, that meant removing the sexy bits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a16932ef7c66333823405cefd9360a6c\">In his essay \u201cFor The Gentleman And The Scholar: Sexual And Scatological References In The Loeb Classical Library\u201d, Philip Lawton points out some examples of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3e46d328bca367ba90278bcd10cbe1ff\">Here\u2019s one, from the Greek comedian Aristophanes\u2019 work Lysistrata:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-92cc347d079312d44267df713c7584da\">Euripides: Don\u2019t you know him really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4682cfcb2dd30e628dd1e7d0cfb15521\">Mnesilochus: No. (thinks again) No I don\u2019t; at least I don\u2019t remember<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-36d4523bcec729699b28d2b18a595c76\">Euripides: (severely) I fear there\u2019s much you don\u2019t remember, sir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d03f32d656b5ed88f7199d62ffebb950\">So what? That final line was deliberately mistranslated. A much better translation would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-26091c0c4c57b71fd9f4995bf61f5e59\">\u201cWell you must have fucked him, though you might not know it\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8a002a7c1d21149882286db00dee4a07\">There are plenty more examples of this, but this illustrates the point pretty well. Post-Victorian Britain was just not comfortable with men talking about banging other men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-aa51d893e5e5627da81195c2f3beabcc\">But okay, so where\u2019s the trans part?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-287a1bd3f6ea4be2a8bd4bfab5219f1f\">For that, let\u2019s take a look at Pompeii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7cbc30a5b79bb0bb26f70c19038917b6\">For those who don\u2019t know, Pompeii was a Roman city close to where Naples is today. In the year 79 CE, nearby Mt. Vesuvius erupted, burying Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum in volcanic ash. It was rediscovered in the 17<sup>th<\/sup> century, and to this day only about two thirds of it have been fully excavated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a9bfaac500e13b9959f0ff67122dca46\">Over the years, Pompeii has been one of the most incredible sources of stuff from the Roman world. Wall paintings, statues, pottery, jewelry, protective gear gladiators would wear to fight in, tons of graffiti that said things like \u201cGaius was here\u201d or&nbsp; \u201cSecundus took a dump here\u201d, advertisements, and even perfectly preserved loaves of bread. Okay they\u2019re carbonized loaves of bread you wouldn\u2019t want to eat them, but it\u2019s still cool that in some museum somewhere we have a 2000 year old loaf of bread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-00baa66ee9287da5e93076a3b28d98f2\">Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d96e788fa19aac31b3a59c43ed02cf59\">Amid all this stuff, we found a lot of, shall we say, erotic imagery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-10dc520ccbaee418dff6c0ac3c729203\">Take this statue, for example, of the god Pan banging a goat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-61a3c1ced15f964b825a5af292c80b09\">Or this one, of a wind chime depicting a man who\u2019s dong has turned into an animal and he\u2019s ready to cut a *bleep*<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-014ff9071ba26fd7ee1b9d880d0ca702\">Or this one, another wind chime, of an animal with a dick where its head would be, and a dick where its dick would be, and a dick where its tail would be, and wowwee is that ever a lot of dicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b683a98440224754adf47639f4f0228e\">Or this wall fresco from Herculaneum, depicting the god Hermaphroditus as a woman with a dick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d88db0b3f1219ca6a81fabde0b26dfe9\">When these pieces were first discovered, we know that sadly some of them were destroyed where they were found. Others were locked away in the <em>Gabinetto Segreto<\/em>, or Secret Museum, where only certain male scholars were allowed to access, and they were still looked at strangely if they did access it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-92305f67d90d2a80fa623ba52418b777\">And lest you think this is just an old timey thing and it\u2019s not a big deal anymore, the <em>Gabinetto Segreto<\/em> was only permanently opened to the public in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7969e7498afb1b89d1d483f7e4d527e1\">So with this long history of the suppression and destruction of art that displayed any sort of sexual or gender deviation, we\u2019re only now beginning to rediscover some of these suppressed histories. But sadly, we\u2019ll never know what was taken from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"moving-forward\">Moving Forward<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2609caa1b5aee98d9360ae5ff06d2a3b\">I hope this wasn\u2019t too pedantic or dry, but I think it\u2019s important to establish a base level of understanding for what we\u2019re talking about here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3881a451623d561905e1ed54189fd2df\">I also wanted to make something I could point to in anticipation of some of the responses I might get in future videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4fa737ba77de11a15082f04825cce07b\">WELL ACKSHUALLY, TRANSGENDEREDSED IS A MODERN PHENOMENON BASED ON THE TAXONOMIC NOMENCLATURE ESTABLISHED IN THE 20<sup>TH<\/sup> CENTURY&#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fc24f9512d22f12ff9322de44348da8b\">Next time, we\u2019ll get to some real trans stories, I promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6f0b9f6929cf98a9c1f474a1fad1054e\">I\u2019m starting off this series committing to seven pieces \u2013 this one, and then six more proper historical stories. I might end up doing more, but starting with seven feels more manageable to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e0f3837182fcab3bc9652208a6f07b7\">If you want to know more about some of the trans histories I\u2019ve managed to uncover, please consider liking, sharing, and subscribing. I know it\u2019s clich\u00e9 at this point but it really does make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ae8bfe855d61b2a3fdc3480d1aa92598\">The next episode in this series is on the Scythians, and it\u2019s being released alongside this one. That means if you\u2019re listening to this one now, the next one is already uploaded. I can\u2019t tell you how excited I am to share that one with you all. It\u2019s actually the reason I started this project in the first place. The things we talk about there, and in future episodes, are going to completely change the way you think about transgender history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c446a5ede03c208e80aa4cf2ae713502\">We have always existed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5a7bd1e10c6118c9369151a483b3661d\">And I\u2019m going to show you the evidence for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-57af607ca15ab3aadfa22925e63eb899\">Until next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<ul 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c-0.344,0.094-0.707,0.144-1.081,0.144c-0.264,0-0.521-0.026-0.772-0.074c0.522,1.63,2.038,2.816,3.833,2.85 c-1.404,1.1-3.174,1.756-5.096,1.756c-0.331,0-0.658-0.019-0.979-0.057c1.816,1.164,3.973,1.843,6.29,1.843 c7.547,0,11.675-6.252,11.675-11.675c0-0.178-0.004-0.355-0.012-0.531C20.985,7.47,21.68,6.747,22.23,5.924z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-instagram  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\/\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M12,4.622c2.403,0,2.688,0.009,3.637,0.052c0.877,0.04,1.354,0.187,1.671,0.31c0.42,0.163,0.72,0.358,1.035,0.673 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20.9517 7.92225 20.9997C10.6715 21.0356 11.0809 17.3967 12.3529 15.6442C13.258 14.3974 14.4233 14.0452 15.8578 13.6806C18.3233 13.0537 20.0036 11.0551 20 8.40755Z\" \/><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Patreon<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-chain  wp-block-social-link\"><a rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/transgenderhistory.bsky.social\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M15.6,7.2H14v1.5h1.6c2,0,3.7,1.7,3.7,3.7s-1.7,3.7-3.7,3.7H14v1.5h1.6c2.8,0,5.2-2.3,5.2-5.2,0-2.9-2.3-5.2-5.2-5.2zM4.7,12.4c0-2,1.7-3.7,3.7-3.7H10V7.2H8.4c-2.9,0-5.2,2.3-5.2,5.2,0,2.9,2.3,5.2,5.2,5.2H10v-1.5H8.4c-2,0-3.7-1.7-3.7-3.7zm4.6.9h5.3v-1.5H9.3v1.5z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Bluesky<\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a lot of anti-transgender talking points circulating the discourse, but one that\u2019s always stuck out to me was the idea that being transgender is just a new trend, a silly thing that silly kids do. Boys pretend to be girls and girls pretend to be boys, just like they might pretend to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transgender-history","category-we-have-always-existed"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>An Intro To Trans Ancient History - Sophie Edwards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/ancient-transgender-history-introduction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Intro To Trans Ancient History - Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are a lot of anti-transgender talking points circulating the discourse, but one that\u2019s always stuck out to me was the idea that being transgender is just a new trend, a silly thing that silly kids do. Boys pretend to be girls and girls pretend to be boys, just like they might pretend to be [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/ancient-transgender-history-introduction\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-02-01T23:54:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T22:22:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/we-have-always-existed-transgender-history-introduction.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"16 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"An Intro To Trans Ancient History - Sophie Edwards","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/ancient-transgender-history-introduction\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"An Intro To Trans Ancient History - Sophie Edwards","og_description":"There are a lot of anti-transgender talking points circulating the discourse, but one that\u2019s always stuck out to me was the idea that being transgender is just a new trend, a silly thing that silly kids do. 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