Quote"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." - Carl Sagan
Over this last weekend i have been researching the ancient history of gender variance and trans people, and what pains me so much is that the majority of it seems to have been successfully erased by those that eliminated our once level of high respect in previous civilizations.
If full equality is ever to be restored, it is important for as much to be reconstructed as possible, only with the facts gathered can we have any hope of getting the recognition other oppressed minorities have begun to receive. The false idea that all this surfaced for the first time in the modern would needs to be fully eliminated.
I would love to see an initiative launched to collect, compile and promote Trans and gender variance history, it surely would be a powerful tool in the realm of activisim, after all knowledge is power.
It would make an amazing dissertation. Are you interested in forming a research group?
I am unsure if I have the stability to commit to such a thing tbh...
It seems however from the little I've found that in the early middle ages, the roman Catholic church went on a campaign of gendercide, exterminating all third gendered and transgendered individuals. If this is indeed true it is horrific that they have been allowed to get away with erasing that crime and our past from history...
It would also mean that they are directly responsible for demonizing us and triggering 1500 years of intense discrimination and oppression...
true true,
what I think is annoying is not only is it very difficult to find transgender informations in the old times, but it also very black/white without much deeper details when it comes to lgbt and queer stuff.
exemple I wanted to show some exemple on axel axgil who was wellknowed for being the first person who made registered partnership with the same gender. it not long ago he made a book with alot of details on his life which was interesting, yet theres almost nothing to find about this in english. a world famours GLBT person and then theres really no translations exept a few small lines here and there? I felt very disapointed,
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I also wanted to look into acient isreal history, I heard rumour they had 6 genders but everywhere you look it seams imposible to find anything in english who even mention this.
In general it seams like if you want to know something about these acient things then you should know the original languarge and cultural background, it dosent seams as many really care to make an efford to translate or focus on transgenders. =(
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Olivia,
Quality research and good writing require passion more than stability. If this is your passion, and it seems like it might be, don't be afraid to start. I'm willing to help, and I know other T-girls and boys who might also be interested in participating. I an already committed to more projects than I can honor right now, but if you lead, others may very well come.
Julie
I can help with stuff like acient nordic text and views.
I do understand danish, norwegian and sweden so I can read original text from these languarges.
I also tried to read some nordic mythology and being queer in the viking age. I cant read runes or latin, but I
did read text as close to the original languarge as posible.
You Rock Ms Natkat!
Quote from: JulieBlair on May 28, 2014, 08:38:21 AM
You Rock Ms Natkat!
:-* oh no its, nothing, i'm flattered thou.
I'm not sure what you are looking for. A number of individuals and groups have already devoted time and effort to restoring this forgotten history. If you look around, you can find books, dissertations, archives, historical societies, and so forth.
I would be glad to contribute information from the 1950s thru to the 1970s from a North American perspective. ;)
Yes, the information is out there, but I for one have not discovered a narrative, that is both compellingly written and not autobiographical in nature. I think that the trans experience can inform the human experience, much as the best of the gay literature informs us as trans people. I might also be that I just like spending my days in both the virtual and physical stacks, and even more enjoy endlessly rehashing the discoveries made there.
Julie
A lot of the stuff I've read over the years seems to have been heavily filtered by the lens of whatever culture or time period was doing the telling, on top of bias effects of the era being talked about. It's hard to pick apart what behaviors and identities are trans as opposed to sexual orientation-related or the result of cultural pressures. I'm pretty sure a fair amount of cis and/or hetero people engaged in activities like cross-dressing or same-gender prostitution just for economic or safety reasons or to join wars or whatever, but so many books paint that as the only story. And there are some people who were obviously trans without a shadow of a doubt but they are glossed over as oddities and ignored.
It's frustrating to feel unmoored and like we have no history, especially as we barely exist publicly now. I think everyone would welcome any attempt to further explain how we existed and coped in the past.
I have Native American ancestry so ->-bleeped-<- does run on my family genealogy. Until colonization, people having the trait opposite their birth gender were highly respected. Some were shamans and spiritual leaders, sages, and an integral part of the hierarchy. This was common in most Native American tribes. I've traced some things back to the 8th century B.C. Gender variance was quite normal in many cultures.
Drag queens and transgender people were front and center during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Same thing at the Dewey Lunch counter sit in Philadelphia in 1965 and 1966 with Compton Cafeteria Riot. There have been many activities long before Stonewall. Some are trying to erase our history about our participation at Stonewall.
Yes,we have a very rich history that we need to know and cherish and share. A book I recommend is Susan Stryker's 'Transgender History'.
My club had two astro-archeologists on North American studies speak at one of our meetings. They said that some of the Native American tribal words for "Shaman" is the same for female. The male shamans were treated as women. The word "transgender" was mentioned in that talk. The carved figure of a feeding bear on all fours is a crescent one denoting the Moon, a woman. The bear is seen denning in the Fall, to come out with cub(s) in the Spring. The animate symbol the shaman wears is usually that of a crescent bear.
A piece that addresses the question of gender archaeology with the traps that the research people fall in with the biases of the times they lived in: http://www.anca-szilagyi.com/genderarchaeology.html
Good luck in researching this subject. It will take awhile.
Joelene
Its interesting that there was once a Transgender Roman emperor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elagabalus
Quote from: gennee on June 05, 2014, 05:35:40 PM
I have Native American ancestry so ->-bleeped-<- does run on my family genealogy. Until colonization, people having the trait opposite their birth gender were highly respected. Some were shamans and spiritual leaders, sages, and an integral part of the hierarchy. This was common in most Native American tribes. I've traced some things back to the 8th century B.C. Gender variance was quite normal in many cultures.
Drag queens and transgender people were front and center during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Same thing at the Dewey Lunch counter sit in Philadelphia in 1965 and 1966 with Compton Cafeteria Riot. There have been many activities long before Stonewall. Some are trying to erase our history about our participation at Stonewall.
Yes,we have a very rich history that we need to know and cherish and share. A book I recommend is Susan Stryker's 'Transgender History'.
I belive religion had alot to say, I saw a documentary once of how religion had changed and about how culture and diffrent people had changed religions like christianity to the version we know today specially with a femenism view on how women was viewed.
there where a part exemple of an maiden who become a male disible which have been cencured in the bible because of that times taboo, and i'm sure other text and points have been changed and cencured for which meaning people prefer to tell.
the same with norse mythology which have been re-written by christians. being trans and gay was a bad thing, if you read parts like "lokeskralla" (lokis quarrel) where the gods acuse each other for being "femenine-gayish and sluttish", things who probably have been bad at these time where it been re-written.
however acording to other points from the viking age and the rest of details with norse mythology these things dosen't make much sense. I mean if Odin exemple was shamed for using seid(magic) which is considered femenie, then how come he still is the most powerfull of all gods? wouldn't it be wierd to adore someone you belived did bad things, and even ranking him as the god of all gods? this leave me into confussions.
Quote from: Natkat on June 07, 2014, 11:23:07 AM
I belive religion had alot to say, I saw a documentary once of how religion had changed and about how culture and diffrent people had changed religions like christianity to the version we know today specially with a femenism view on how women was viewed.
there where a part exemple of an maiden who become a male disible which have been cencured in the bible because of that times taboo, and i'm sure other text and points have been changed and cencured for which meaning people prefer to tell.
the same with norse mythology which have been re-written by christians. being trans and gay was a bad thing, if you read parts like "lokeskralla" (lokis quarrel) where the gods acuse each other for being "femenine-gayish and sluttish", things who probably have been bad at these time where it been re-written.
however acording to other points from the viking age and the rest of details with norse mythology these things dosen't make much sense. I mean if Odin exemple was shamed for using seid(magic) which is considered femenie, then how come he still is the most powerfull of all gods? wouldn't it be wierd to adore someone you belived did bad things, and even ranking him as the god of all gods? this leave me into confussions.
Confusing? Not when you take into account, that magic then became a symbol of power/strength a male domain. Man is of course going to flock to the worship a god with something that can be seen as power.
With religion what I have seen is than man rewrite it for their own gain, If it was true that religion moulded society then yes it would be perplexing, but its society that moulds religion. A gods power is measured by the number of their followers. Basically if a "preacher" convinces the masses that magic is a symbol of power and strength, things that a man is taught to work towards. All he need do then is say woman only had it due to trickery, then boom society flocks to the rightful and just god that won back the power and strength of magic for men.
But that at the time, could of been believed by just one human, that preacher. Then convert a small group, they convert more. And then the "real" truth, overtakes the "real" truth. For man the "real" truth is what the majority believe.
Trans woman and medieval historian speaking.
The problem with looking for trans people in the past is that our "transgender" category is recent. I don't think we can go much farther than the 20th century with our own concept. Of course, our gender system with fixed, binary genders taken as a biological truth and establish by genitalia is also recent, but the idea of ->-bleeped-<- depends on this system and on not respecting it. When we use it in the past or with other cultures, it's problematic.
At its core, ->-bleeped-<- expresses a movement toward a gender category different than that assigned at birth. Of course people who did not live in the gender they were assigned at birth have always existed, but this is only pertinent if gender is thought as fixed at birth, which it is not in many societies. Basically, defining these people as trans is projeting our own understanding of gender on them. In the same way, people who were neither men nor women always existed, but this is only meaningful if we reproduce our system of binary gender.
What is more useful than looking for trans people in the past is to look for different understandings of gender, in different places and time, and to look for the transgression of this particular system by people who lived in it. Someone of a third gender, like Native American two-spirited people, is only gender variant from the point of view of Western society/gender, not from that of the people who lived this. Of course, our point of view enjoys hegemony, so people of a third gender are oppressed in that way, but describing them as trans is reproducing colonalizing these people's experiences.
Hum, I wrote something on that recently (http://lucreziacontarini.com/2014/06/09/-%3E-bleeped-%3C--history-and-postcolonial-theory/). It's a bit of a coincidence.
DolceFragola, your getting too hung up on labels and definitions. Yes different terms are used throughout history, but thats the case for everything. The essence however remains the same regardless of interpretation.
The problem with definitions is it can only define what is already known, and in this case, terms used today didnt exist before and the various cultures of the society's throughout history interpreted things their own way. However just because the term Trans is fairly new, it doesnt mean that trans people only existed as long as the term existed.
And fyi, male and female is included in gender variances, they are two options of many. Hence variances...
And by your logic, that trans people can only exist if they was assigned a gender at birth, would mean that if a law or the culture changed that stopped that process, trans people would cease to exist. That makes no sense. The essence of what trans people are is not defined by a protocol in hospitals. The essence that defines us is much deeper than that, on a genetic, hormonal, neurological and biological level it seems.
In order to gain true insight we need to look beyond labels and definitions
Quote from: Olivia P on June 14, 2014, 10:26:22 AM
DolceFragola, your getting too hung up on labels and definitions. Yes different terms are used throughout history, but thats the case for everything. The essence however remains the same regardless of interpretation.
The problem with definitions is it can only define what is already known, and in this case, terms used today didnt exist before and the various cultures of the society's throughout history interpreted things their own way. However just because the term Trans is fairly new, it doesnt mean that trans people only existed as long as the term existed.
And fyi, male and female is included in gender variances, they are two options of many. Hence variances...
And by your logic, that trans people can only exist if they was assigned a gender at birth, would mean that if a law or the culture changed that stopped that process, trans people would cease to exist. That makes no sense. The essence of what trans people are is not defined by a protocol in hospitals. The essence that defines us is much deeper than that, on a genetic, hormonal, neurological and biological level it seems.
In order to gain true insight we need to look beyond labels and definitions
The essence is only the same of you make it an essence. However, gender is contingent. I prefer to understand something specfic within its own specificity. (EDIT: There is no need to bring biology into this. All the biology stuff is unproven hypotheses. While I would not dismiss that biology plays a part, saying it is the "essence" of being trans in not founded on actual evidence.)
It is unfair to say that I think you need the term "trans" to have our phenomenon of ->-bleeped-<-. However, you do need a norm where gender is fixed from birth onwards. And in most uses of the term, you also need gender to be binary and imposed as such.
Quote from: DolceFragola on June 14, 2014, 10:39:45 AM
The essence is only the same of you make it an essence. However, gender is contingent. I prefer to understand something specfic within its own specificity. (EDIT: There is no need to bring biology into this. All the biology stuff is unproven hypotheses. While I would not dismiss that biology plays a part, saying it is the "essence" of being trans in not founded on actual evidence.)
Umm... every single part of the human experience is biology, its impossible not to bring biology into it.
It is impossible to break reality down into boxes, nature doesnt work like that, everything is interconected. If you separate things from the whole, you wont understand them.
The only way to construct a true picture and form true understanding is to observe things from the whole.
Science is the process of a never ending flow of hypotheses, forever adapting to new insights, in order to seek understanding it is extremely important to keep that in mind. Science will never get to a point where it knows everything about everything completely, the universe is unknowably complex, jumping to conclusions because you cant accept this will just get people hurt.
Well, saying everything is biology is either something of a truism (because of course humans are living beings, etc.) or a very strong assertion (because either it excludes environment/culture or collapses it into biology). In the meanwhile, we do know that gender is not always the same everywhere, that different cultures and groups use different categories, and that these are understood and organized differently. Even if (I won't deny that) biology is a factor, we don't know how it operates, and in any case, it depends on a specific system of gender to operate on individuals.
And what you say is exactly what I ask for: replacing trans-like experiences within their context. If we don't do that, we run into methodological issues and ethnocentric/colonialist tendencies.
All the same, you're not really answering my only positive claim: "What is more useful than looking for trans people in the past is to look for different understandings of gender, in different places and time, and to look for the transgression of this particular system by people who lived in it." It's not really that different from the OP. It's the same project, without the universalizing tendency.
Quote from: DolceFragola on June 14, 2014, 11:10:37 AM
All the same, you're not really answering my only positive claim: "What is more useful than looking for trans people in the past is to look for different understandings of gender, in different places and time, and to look for the transgression of this particular system by people who lived in it." It's not really that different from the OP. It's the same project, without the universalizing tendency.
All im interested in is understanding the general history throughout time of gender and sex, as ive probably demonstrated, im not letting words of today restrict myself. Prior to any of this i did a lot of reading up on ancient teachings from the buddhist tradition and other related religons, and to understand the intended meaning, a specific art is required to look through the words and understand it from the context, looking through and understanding the messages sent through symbolism and so on.
This seems to have a good collection of past cultures on gender beyond standard m or f
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/two-spirits/map.html
This one catches my eye:
Fa'afafine are biological males who have a strong feminine gender orientation, which the Samoan parents recognize quite early in childhood, and then raise them as female children or rather third gender children. Fa'afafine traditionally assume roles of family care, although they are present in many spheres of Somoan society: painter and writer Dan Taulapapa McMullin, artist and curator Shigeyuki Kihara, poet and performance artist Brian Fuata, and fashion artist Lindah Lepou are all famous fa'afafine.
Fa'afafine are not considered "gay" in Samoan culture, as they may be sexually involved with men, women, or other fa'afafine.
As does this one:
Philippines
Bakla is a Tagalog term that encompasses an array of sexual and gender identities, but especially indicated a male-born person who assumes the dress, mannerisms, and social roles of a woman. While bakla have existed as a recognized third gender for centuries, more conservative influences in recent decades has marginalized them.
The bakla actually developed their own language to use with each other, called swardspeak. It is a mixture of Filipino, English and Spanish and is spoken with a "hyperfeminized inflection."
I like this blog (http://zagria.blogspot.com/) a lot when it comes to a history of gender variant people.
Me too.
:)
I'm new to this topic, but I think transgender-ism everywhere might be the same (or maybe a few similar) neurological phenomena, but can have different expressions depending on the culture and the availability of medical interventions. I have more questions than answers though. I am curious about what impact universal access to HRT and surgery would have on gender expression in cultures that have a "third gender" concept. Do you think societies would adopt a more gender-binary cultural view and label transsexual women and men as women and men, retain the third-gender label for transsexual people, or define transsexual women and men as women and men while retaining the third-gender label for transgender, but not transsexual people?
I am also curious about how language and linguistics impacts our understanding of gender. For example both Western and Thai culture have people with male anatomy, a gay sexual orientation, and an extremely effeminate gender expression. In the U.S. these people might be called effeminate gay men, and they might be drag queens, but our culture considers them men, while in Thai culture, the same person might be called a "ladyboy" or a "kathoey" and would be defined as a third gender rather than as men or women (although many would be considered transgender/transsexual women in our culture). At least from my point of view, these are the same phenomena given different names
In the west linguistics is not the limiting factor. Religion, specifically Christianity, has defined western metaphysical understanding for over 1700 years. Under this system there is room for only two genders and nothing in between.
I do not see the idea of a third gender taking hold in the west anytime soon.
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this makes me think about eunuchs, more specifically Hijras (in South Asia) where some young people go through something called nirwaan, which refers to the removal of penis, testicles and scrotum (the first type of sex change surgery known in history)
N if your looking for information about the mistreating of the lgbt community, you should take a bit of a look at Eugenics, it's something that comes from all around the globe and the most known advocate in history of eugenics was the nazis, it kinda makes me wonder what was really going on during that time.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijra_(South_Asia)
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
You also might want to know eugenics is the same things the nazis practiced.
I am sure that a ton of historical revisionism has taken place. Especially by the church, who, before science held all knowledge in their possession. We like to think we know everything about history, but everyday new facts arise about our true history, in which mankind was far more advanced than we previously thought. I do believe that a conspiracy has been forged by religious institutions of the past to repress anything that went against the patriarchy and much knowledge has been either burned or kept secret in societies. If not, we are simply oblivious about our history until the moment it was written down, before that moment we simply do not know how life took shape. So we have a gap of about 150.000+ years of unwritten history to account for. Archeology doesn't help much either, because the best it can do is to interpret a meaning from something that was nowhere defined.
Quote from: PinkCloud on December 09, 2014, 11:59:24 AM
I am sure that a ton of historical revisionism has taken place. Especially by the church, who, before science held all knowledge in their possession. We like to think we know everything about history, but everyday new facts arise about our true history, in which mankind was far more advanced than we previously thought. I do believe that a conspiracy has been forged by religious institutions of the past to repress anything that went against the patriarchy and much knowledge has been either burned or kept secret in societies. If not, we are simply oblivious about our history until the moment it was written down, before that moment we simply do not know how life took shape. So we have a gap of about 150.000+ years of unwritten history to account for. Archeology doesn't help much either, because the best it can do is to interpret a meaning from something that was nowhere defined.
Not to mention some of the world's worst atrosaties known, have been committed in the name of religion.