Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Community Conversation => Transsexual talk => Male to female transsexual talk (MTF) => Topic started by: Sad Girl on January 04, 2012, 04:56:04 PM

Title: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Sad Girl on January 04, 2012, 04:56:04 PM
I'm trying to imagine how folks in the Roman period, Medieval Age & Renaissance  dealt with dysphoria in those ages WITHOUT SRS. I once read there were some sorts of facial plastic surgeries existed in the 1800's but what about SRS? It should have been terrible to be a mtf without going SRS throughout an entire lifetime. Do you have an idea how they dealt with it?  :o
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Joeyboo~ :3 on January 04, 2012, 04:59:04 PM
I'm pretty sure there was nothing.

So you should be grateful for what ya'll ->-bleeped-<- asses have now.
None of this "OMG I H8 MUH BAWDEE" bs.

c:
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Michelle. on January 04, 2012, 05:11:55 PM
Literally wondering if they weren't going to starve to death that day. Die of disease that week. Or be pillaged that month.

As Hobbes pointed out, "life is brutish and short".
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: supremecatoverlord on January 04, 2012, 05:14:48 PM
Found this.

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/02/transgender_history_the_rise_of_hatred_t.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2008/02/transgender_history_the_rise_of_hatred_t.php)


Here you go. :3
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Lily on January 04, 2012, 05:16:18 PM
If you were young, you could crush your own testicles with a rock or cut them off. If done early enough (and if it didn't kill you) this would prevent puberty. You wouldn't grow breasts, but it would stop a lot of the destructive effects of T.

You could pluck your facial and body hair.

Voice training would still work just as well.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Hermione01 on January 04, 2012, 05:23:02 PM
Volunteer to become a eunuch? Idk.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 04, 2012, 05:24:59 PM
They were likely considered "bringers of plague" or something. Medieval societies seem to have a lot of romance in the modern day view. But the actual time was anything but that. On top of that, they actually looked like characters from a Monty Python skit... LOL

I wonder about transgender future....Like a vagina engineered from stem cells with a working birth canal and ovas. Probably RuBot too...
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Sad Girl on January 04, 2012, 05:40:21 PM
Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on January 04, 2012, 05:24:59 PM
They were likely considered "bringers of plague" or something. Medieval societies seem to have a lot of romance in the modern day view. But the actual time was anything but that. On top of that, they actually looked like characters from a Monty Python skit... LOL

I wonder about transgender future....Like a vagina engineered from stem cells with a working birth canal and ovas. Probably RuBot too...

A futuristic mtf transsexual for me is someone who will be able to FALL PREGNANT & change all her chromosomes from XY to XX!  :laugh:
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 04, 2012, 05:42:04 PM
Quote from: Happy Girl on January 04, 2012, 05:40:21 PM
A futuristic mtf transsexual for me is someone who will be able to FALL PREGNANT & change all her chromosomes from XY to XX!  :laugh:

I just want a RuPaul Bot.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Sad Girl on January 04, 2012, 05:43:10 PM
Quote from: Hermione01 on January 04, 2012, 05:23:02 PM
Volunteer to become a eunuch? Idk.

Hey yeah an eunuch is a sort of post-op? But I always wondered how do they urinate? Is there a hole as a vagina? For me, any hole would do it. But the problem is how they undergo Hormone Treatment Therapy, I think they'd get osteoporosis and menopause so soon.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Joeyboo~ :3 on January 04, 2012, 05:45:01 PM
Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on January 04, 2012, 05:42:04 PM
I just want a RuPaul Bot.

In the future I want to be able to take my own cells and use them to create a new me.
And have my brain put in the new body.

So I can live forever and in a brand new youthful body :D

I mean it depends.
If the future is boring then I'd prolly off myself.
With style of course, prolly commit a kamikaze at a park.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 04, 2012, 05:45:46 PM
They prayed a lot to god or gods to change them, which worked as well then as it does now.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 04, 2012, 05:46:31 PM
Quote from: JoeyD on January 04, 2012, 05:45:01 PM
In the future I want to be to take my own cells and use them to create a new me.
And have my brain put in the new body.

So I can live forever and in a brand new youthful body :D

I mean it depends.
If the future is boring then I'd prolly off myself.
With style of course, prolly commit a kamikaze at a park.

I just want to have robots do thy bidding..........

on ebay.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Rain Dog on January 04, 2012, 05:55:10 PM
Quote from: Happy Girl on January 04, 2012, 05:43:10 PM
Hey yeah an eunuch is a sort of post-op? But I always wondered how do they urinate? Is there a hole as a vagina? For me, any hole would do it. But the problem is how they undergo Hormone Treatment Therapy, I think they'd get osteoporosis and menopause so soon.
I believe eunuchs were only castrated. An orchiectomy, in modern terms.

An alternative for FTMs in societies that did in fact practice this, but I think it was rarely voluntary. There were probably health problems, as you say.

But I think many transsexuals were rather forced into sex work, as many still are today.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Anatta on January 04, 2012, 06:06:46 PM
Kia Ora HG,

::) Perhaps you are a reincarnation of one of them! Perhaps we all are, only this time round some of us have managed to do something about it...You never know ... ;) ;D

Metta Zenda :)
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 04, 2012, 11:09:49 PM
Quote from: Venus-Castina on January 04, 2012, 07:55:48 PM
In Ancient Greece and Rome transsexuals were considered strange, but weren't prosecuted. They had a place in society as priestess or as oracle. The Romans even had a goddess for "Female souls locked in male bodies": Venus Castina. There are several myths concerning the origin of transsexuality in the ancient world.  The greeks told a tale of a barbarian horde plundering a temple of Artemis (Later the Roman Venus, Goddess of love and femininity). Artemis was enraged by this and punished these barbarians by changing their souls into female ones so they and their offspring would struggle with their male bodies for life.

Wow...do you have a degree in folklore and mythology? LIGHTNING BOLT!

You know when guys used to hit on me as a gay boy, I said, "They are going Roman!"
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 04, 2012, 11:17:37 PM
transsexuals were considered strange, but weren't prosecuted. They had a place in society as priestess or as oracle.

A few of them maybe.  But the majority of the population in both Greece as well as Rome were slaves, and treated as such.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 04, 2012, 11:35:35 PM
Quote from: tekla on January 04, 2012, 11:17:37 PM
transsexuals were considered strange, but weren't prosecuted. They had a place in society as priestess or as oracle.

A few of them maybe.  But the majority of the population in both Greece as well as Rome were slaves, and treated as such.

Wasn't Jesus a slave?
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: wheat thins are delicious on January 04, 2012, 11:40:23 PM
Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on January 04, 2012, 11:35:35 PM
Wasn't Jesus a slave?

no
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Lily on January 04, 2012, 11:43:30 PM
Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on January 04, 2012, 11:35:35 PM
Wasn't Jesus a slave?

No that was Spartacus.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 04, 2012, 11:45:20 PM
Wasn't Jesus a slave?

No, but plenty of people are slaves to Jesus, so close enough.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: wheat thins are delicious on January 04, 2012, 11:47:05 PM
Quote from: Rain Dog on January 04, 2012, 05:55:10 PM
I believe eunuchs were only castrated. An orchiectomy, in modern terms.

I have read of them cutting the penis off too.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 05, 2012, 12:01:50 AM
Quote from: Andy8715 on January 04, 2012, 11:47:05 PM
I have read of them cutting the penis off too.

In a time before BOBBIT.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Keaira on January 05, 2012, 12:43:41 AM
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi281.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk203%2Finsane_in_the_membrane123%2FAnime%2520and%2520Manga%2FGhost%2520in%2520the%2520Shell%2FMotokoKusanagi27.jpg&hash=e6b2a1e710fb18cb7af8303acc79f9179d495e40)

The future. our brains in female cyborg bodies.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Jayr on January 05, 2012, 01:19:14 AM
Quote from: Lily on January 04, 2012, 05:16:18 PM
you could crush your own testicles with a rock or cut them off.
Quote from: Andy8715 on January 04, 2012, 11:47:05 PM
I have read of them cutting the penis off too.

x__x
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: fleshpull on January 05, 2012, 01:24:20 AM
Quote from: JoeyD on January 04, 2012, 05:45:01 PM
In the future I want to be able to take my own cells and use them to create a new me.
And have my brain put in the new body.

So I can live forever and in a brand new youthful body :D

I hope we live to see this someday, and to be able to afford it.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: AbraCadabra on January 05, 2012, 10:53:40 AM
Hm, in fact quite some were priestesses of the e.g. Cybele Oracle much favoured over natal female priestesses.
They still unearthing some "->-bleeped-<-s" (trans-priestesses) in some ancient graves in the UK for instance.

If you interested open up this link and you will find some interesting answers (I think).

http://www.goddess.org/vortices/notes/cybele.html (http://www.goddess.org/vortices/notes/cybele.html)

Axélle
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Bishounen on January 05, 2012, 11:21:58 AM
Quote from: Venus-Castina on January 04, 2012, 07:55:48 PM
In Ancient Greece and Rome transsexuals were considered strange, but weren't prosecuted. They had a place in society as priestess or as oracle. The Romans even had a goddess for "Female souls locked in male bodies": Venus Castina. There are several myths concerning the origin of transsexuality in the ancient world.  The greeks told a tale of a barbarian horde plundering a temple of Artemis (Later the Roman Venus, Goddess of love and femininity). Artemis was enraged by this and punished these barbarians by changing their souls into female ones so they and their offspring would struggle with their male bodies for life.

So in the ancient world you didn't have a high social status, but there was a place for you in society and you weren't prosecuted.

There were transgenders with high status aswell. For instance, the Roman Emperor Elagabalus, that loved flirting with bypassing men from his palace while wearing heavy makeup, wigs and earrings, and offered a great sum of money to the physician that could provide him with female genitalia.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 05, 2012, 12:05:12 PM
First, Rome at its' zenith was the most openly mulit-religious place in the world until the modern age.  People shopped for religions more than they followed them.  You went to the temple cult, or the mystery cult that would help you the most with the specific problem you were having.

Yeah, and wasn't Elagabalus killed for those very things?  When he was 18?  After 5 marriages, including one to a vestal virgin?  After prostituting himself in the Imperial Palace as well as out in public?  The great modern historian of Rome, Edward Gibbon, said that he "abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures and ungoverned fury." While Neibuhr settled for calling him out on his "unspeakably disgusting life." And, exactly because of that decadence he was killed along with his mother, both by having their heads cut off and then  the bodies were stripped naked, dragged all over the city, with the mother's body cast aside somewhere or other, while Elagabalus headless corpse was tossed into the Tiber.

You can do better than pointing to the Roman Emperors, my favorite, Emperor Caligula tried to make his horse a consul (he didn't, settling on making the horse a priest instead - take that for what you will, but saying that a ->-bleeped-<- was a priest or priestess puts them on the same level as Caligula's horse) in one of the interludes when he wasn't boinking his sisters, Agrippina, Drusilla and Livilla.  (Several Roman Emperors showed a special fondness for sexing up their sisters, and on occasion, mom too - family values I guess.)  Well, until his own guards killed him that is.

But of course most of that for either of them could have been made-up after the fact to justify killing them.  It's hard to say.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Pica Pica on January 05, 2012, 12:20:31 PM
Ahhh, you beat me to Elagabalus.

I don't know much about Medieval, but the eighteenth century (in London at least) had a thriving, though secretive queer culture, which included people living as a woman and gay marriages where one of the partners would dress as a female, and even a ceremony where that person gave birth to a doll.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Bishounen on January 05, 2012, 12:32:32 PM
Quote from: Pica Pica on January 05, 2012, 12:20:31 PM
Ahhh, you beat me to Elagabalus.
If it is of any comfort, I sort of have that habit. :laugh:

QuoteI don't know much about Medieval, but the eighteenth century (in London at least) had a thriving, though secretive queer culture, which included people living as a woman and gay marriages where one of the partners would dress as a female, and even a ceremony where that person gave birth to a doll.
Yeah, those times were quite "Queer" indeed, not to mention those makeups and wigs. :P
Seriously though, I think I know which ceremonies you are referring too, and they are really extremely interesting and not the least, they prove that things like gay marriage and transgendered "lifestyles" is far from anything new, as anti-activists tries to make it.

Tekla:
QuoteYou can do better than pointing to the Roman Emperors
Do better? Is it a competition, in your mind?
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 05, 2012, 12:40:24 PM
No, but if I was to try to pick some people out to demonstrate the normally of something I sure wouldn't pick the Roman Emperors as the example, being one of the greatest freak shows ever on this planet.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: catherine - remy on January 05, 2012, 01:52:38 PM
I dont know that much about the middle ages, but I do know that in the period just before then in England (and after the fall of the Roman Empire) Trans people have been found in grave sites in Kent.

There are writings of 3 - 400 years before this, by the Roman writer Tacitus (98 AD) "Amongst the Naharvalians is shown a grove, sacred to devotion extremely ancient. Over it a Priest presides apparelled like a woman". In the viking areas north of this around 1000 AD there were also Preist / ess who seemed to be doing the same thing, so it appears that transgender prieistess played some sort of role in the religion of the north europeans before christanity came along, the viking sorces indicating some sort of religious play.

What happened between then and the 18th C I dont know, if I was to guess it would have been something to do with plays and the theatre. The religious pagan plays which the preistress played a role in somehow surviving till early modern times. The only very slight eveidence I have for this is  the traditional east Kent folk tradition of Hoodening, which is a strange sort of play. In this one of the characters is called "Mollie" a bit like a pantomine dame. This tradition seems very ancient, having roots maybe in the 5th century (from which the trans graves come from, and the same area), and maybe the character of Mollie is some sort of remembrance of trans peoples involvent in the now lost religion.

Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: tekla on January 05, 2012, 01:55:16 PM
What happened between then and the 18th C I dont know

Christianity become the dominant religion and suppressed, repressed, and killed anyone who did not agree with them or go along with 'the new program.'
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Pica Pica on January 05, 2012, 02:27:27 PM
Funny you should mention the name Mollie, the places where the transgender/gay/queer get togethers happened were called Molly-Houses and the people Mollys.

This is an interesting book on it if anyone fancies

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcovers.openlibrary.org%2Fb%2Fid%2F650480-L.jpg&hash=a5ed5b626ca452e5f13e2e00f68258d57cba3323)

Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Anatta on January 05, 2012, 02:56:48 PM
Quote from: Pica Pica on January 05, 2012, 02:27:27 PM
Funny you should mention the name Mollie, the places where the transgender/gay/queer get togethers happened were called Molly-Houses and the people Mollys.

This is an interesting book on it if anyone fancies

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcovers.openlibrary.org%2Fb%2Fid%2F650480-L.jpg&hash=a5ed5b626ca452e5f13e2e00f68258d57cba3323)

Kia Ora Pica,

::) Ah...Those were the days... ;) ;D

Metta Zenda :)
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: pretty on January 05, 2012, 07:50:06 PM
Quote from: Andy8715 on January 04, 2012, 11:40:23 PM
no

Was Jesus real?  :o
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: wheat thins are delicious on January 05, 2012, 08:19:32 PM
 
Quote from: pretty on January 05, 2012, 07:50:06 PM
Was Jesus real?  :o

I don't know.  I personally believe he did exist, but as a teacher only, not the son of God or any of that.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: MacKenzie on January 05, 2012, 09:33:28 PM
  THIS IS SPARTA!!!.....wait where am I again?  :icon_crazy:
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: xXRebeccaXx on January 05, 2012, 10:13:31 PM
Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on January 04, 2012, 11:35:35 PM
Wasn't Jesus a slave?


Jesus was a jew who was crucified for treason(saying he was the king of the jews)
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Mahsa Tezani on January 05, 2012, 10:16:30 PM
Quote from: xXRebeccaXx on January 05, 2012, 10:13:31 PM

Jesus was a jew who was crucified for treason(saying he was the king of the jews)

Oh, I thought because him and Caligula did stuff.
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Anatta on January 05, 2012, 11:46:18 PM
Quote from: Happy Girl on January 04, 2012, 04:56:04 PM
I'm trying to imagine how folks in the Roman period, Medieval Age & Renaissance  dealt with dysphoria in those ages WITHOUT SRS. I once read there were some sorts of facial plastic surgeries existed in the 1800's but what about SRS? It should have been terrible to be a mtf without going SRS throughout an entire lifetime. Do you have an idea how they dealt with it?  :o

Kia Ora HP,

::) It's possible in Medieval Europe , some would have been burnt at the stake, they would have  been seen as witches or being possessed by an evil spirit/demon...

::) If one thinks about it, 'superstition' was rife back then and people were being put to death left right and centre....

An interesting bit of "Believe it or not"

"The pure Latin phrase for surgeon was actually "medicus vulnerarius", which means, literally, "wound doctor".) Roman military surgeons were, in fact, only rivaled by specialist arena surgeons, who repaired valuable gladiators.

Roman surgeons were also adept at several forms of minor plastic surgery. They did facial and other repairs, removed growths, etc. The most common operation appears to have been male de-circumcision. Reversal of genital mutilation, which might have been the result of religious observance or mischance, was an important procedure which one would seek in order to avoid embarrassment when appearing naked at the baths or in the gymnasia !"

Metta Zenda :) 
Title: Re: How did mtf do in the Medieval Age and Roman epoch?
Post by: Nurse With Wound on January 06, 2012, 03:20:14 AM
If you're my mum there was no such thing as transgender before, it's a modern thing that people make up in their minds.