History

Gendered Voices – Day 2

~ Cheryl

Following on from yesterday’s post, here’s what we got up to on the second day of the Gendered Voices conference.

Session one was all about representation and began with Rosie talking about her research into coming out experiences. This is very valuable work, and the sort of thing that Berkeley and I will keep a close eye on as it can be used as evidence to encourage action by local and national government.

Next up an emergency fill-in from Louise (always a brave thing to do) about the 19th Century gothic writer, Lucas Malet, noted for her particularly morbid imagination. Malet was the daughter of novelist Charles Kingsley who wrote The Water Babies, an exceptionally unpleasant piece of Christian allegory aimed at kids. It is no wonder the poor woman grew up warped. There are a lot of people doing research on 20th century women Gothic writers, but Louise is the only one I know who is working on the 19th Century. I’m sure she’d welcome some company.

The final paper was from Jenn and was about trans and non-binary representation in literature, in particular the literary fiction market. Jenn says that they know of only nine literary novels featuring trans characters. I’m pretty sure I could name nine from the past year in SF, and a similar number in realist YA, but thus far Jenn is resisting all of my attempts to lure them to the Dark Side.

Session two was all about violence and was very intense. It began with Jassi, a lawyer, talking about girl soldiers. When we hear about child soldiers in the media it is always about boys, but in fact between 30% and 40% of child soldiers are female. Not only are they erased by the Western media, but if the war they are fighting in is halted then they will be forced back into subservient social roles by their supposed rescuers.

Elena talked about group counseling for victims of sexual violence. Apparently this is quite effective, whereas one-to-one counseling can often further isolate the victim. Elena says that it is very rarely used in the UK. That’s interesting, because this sort of counseling is specifically mentioned in the Equality Act as a circumstance in which trans women can be excluded from women-only spaces. I had assumed that it would therefore be common, but no, the government made all that fuss about trans women not being women over a situation that was very unlikely to arise.

Encouragingly, Elena said that the rape crisis center she is working with is trans-inclusive.

The final speaker was Patrick who talked about women volunteers in the IRA. There were apparently a lot of them, and the way that they worked reminded me a lot of the French Resistance. Interestingly the IRA, despite being Catholic, were (and presumably still are) pro-abortion. I gather from social media that one of these IRA women is now a Conservative parliamentary candidate.

The keynote speaker for the conference was Thangam Debbonaire, the current MP for Bristol East. It was really good of her to keep the commitment despite there being an election on and her seat being very much at risk. She also gave a great speech. She’d make a brilliant WEP MP, but I can’t blame her for going with a party that can get her elected, even if its policies on women’s issues are not as good as ours.

Session three was on masculinities and opened up with Katherine talking about Priapus and modern masculinity. Priapus, you may remember, is the Roman god with the massive dick. The Romans used pictures of him to demonstrate how supposedly virile they were. Katherine compared Roman poetry and graffiti to modern social media posts and came to the brilliant conclusion that dick pics are modern day Priapus images. If cameras had been around in Roman times, they would have sent people pictures of their own dicks too. And they would have sent them to men that they wanted to dominate as well as to women.

Charlotte talked about the contrasting portrayals of King Richard and Henry Bolingbroke in Shakespeare’s Richard II. It bemused me as to why Shakespeare, writing during the reign of Elizabeth, would have written about an effeminate king being replaced by a manly usurper. So I asked, and discovered that the play had been sponsored by Essex, who was in the process of plotting a coup at the time. I have no idea how Will talked his way out of that one. I’m sure that Elizabeth must have been tempted to do the “Off with his head!” thing.

The paper that generated most social media chatter was one by Henry on the gender of mediaeval clergy. Some historians hold that the clergy were seen as a third gender by the rest of society. Henry, by examining the writings of late mediaeval chroniclers, made a convincing case that many of them did not see themselves in that way, and indeed went to great lengths to show how manly they were in their own domain (which was the spiritual war against sin).

The final session was on feminism, and kicked off with Ana looking at the educational reforms promoted by the lesbian author, Bryher. She had some really good ideas about how to give kids better education, but they did not go down well with the Great British Public. The Daily Mail asked readers to give their own views on the proposals. One man wrote in to say that it was the duty of school to educate girls out of having an imagination.

This was followed by Teresa talking about historical fiction writer, Sylvia Townsend Warner. She sounds like someone I would like to read, especially her fantasy novel, Lolly Willowes.

Finally we had James, a philosophy student, asking, “Why is there Feminist Epistemology at all?” The title apparently riffs off a well-known paper about the theory of mathematics. James made some very good points, particularly about Standpoint Theory. However, I don’t think you can even begin to talk about what feminist epistemology might be until you have first defined what feminism is. As that’s enough to keep many philosophers busy for decades to come, I think James’s question will have to wait.

You will note that I found something good to say about every paper. Huge congratulations to the organizers. That’s what I call a quality conference. I do hope it runs again next year.

Gendered Voices – Day 1

~ Cheryl

With apologies for the delay, here’s a look back on some of the things that I heard about during the Gendered Voices conference last week. This post is about the first day’s papers. I’ll do one for the second day later.

The first session was all about stereotypes, and began with Sauleha talking about Muslim women in Frankenstein. I had entirely forgotten about this. There is a character in Mary Shelly’s book called Safie who is initially presented as a veiled, cowed Eastern woman, but who throws off her patriarchal shackles and becomes a character with a fair amount of agency and something of a happy ending. It is revealed that her mother was a Good Christian woman who was kidnapped by a Vile Oriental, and intimated that her ability to escape her situation is only because of her Christian blood.

One the one hand, headdesk, Mary, what were you thinking? On the other there are apparently signs of progressive thinking. One of the dafter things that 18th Century Britons believed is the idea that in Islamic theology women have no souls. Goodness only knows where they got this idea from. Apparently Mum (Mary Wollstonecraft) had swallowed this one whole, but Mary Jr. wasn’t so sure. She was, after all, writing about an artificial being, the Monster, whose claim to having a soul was far more dodgy than Safie’s.

Gender and theology and science fiction: I could not have asked for a more interesting start to the day.

Paper two from Leonie was about Vita Sackville-West and the book review program that she had on BBC radio, complete with actual audio from one of the shows. My goodness, that woman had a cut-glass accent. I can quite see where the idea of the Sackville-Bagginses came from. On the other hand, I ended up quite liking her. Vita shared her reviewing duties with a male colleague (whose name I have shamefully forgotten), each doing a show every other week. She listed the books she was going to cover in the Radio Times in advance, and encouraged readers to write in with their own views. She also managed close to a 50:50 gender split on authors. He just turned up for his shows and talked at his audience.

Finally in that session, Sam told us all about her research into gendered attitudes towards pain relief. I am going to be one of her test subjects in early June. Work like this is badly needed because there is very little understanding of how the various aspects of health care are different for women.

On then to session two which was all about religion, kicking off with our first male presenter, Alun, who was talking about the Song of Songs. This is a particularly intriguing part of the Old Testament, because it is basically about sex. Alun is interested in it because of the possibilities for sex-positive theology, which some parts of Christianity could badly do with. I’m interested in the possible origin of these verses.

Other parts of the Old Testament, specifically the tale of Jezebel, suggest that some people in ancient Israel worshiped other gods, including Baal and Asherah, who are of Mesopotamian origin. In Mesopotamia kings have a tendency to legitimize themselves by describing themselves as the Beloved of Ishtar (or some other version of the goddess). It is possible that the Song of Songs was originally a religious rite in which the goddess, in the form of the High Priestess, confirms the king’s right to rule because of his sexual appeal to her and the Daughters of Israel.

Next up was Jade who was talking about female divinity in Catholicism. Specifically she was discussing the figure of Lady Poverty, who features in stories about Saint Francis. She is depicted as someone at least as old as Adam and Eve, and therefore a semi-divine figure of sorts. Of course this being Catholicism her femaleness has to be controlled by marrying her to Francis. Personally I am deeply suspicious of the idea of a man marrying a personification of poverty; it has way too many sexist jokes about it. Interesting paper nonetheless.

Our final religious paper was Chiara who is studying the works of the experimental novelist, Kathy Acker. Acker has a complicated relationship with just about everything, and religion is no exception. Chiara was looking specifically at Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula and My Mother: Demonology, both of which have strong religious elements. Personally I want to read Pussy, King of the Pirates because, well I think that should be obvious.

After lunch we began with a session on fertility. One speaker had to cancel so we were down to two papers, starting with Claire on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth in mediaeval letter. She focused on the famous Paston letters from Norfolk, and in particular the matriarch, Margaret Paston. It is lovely to see sane discussion of pregnancy between a mediaeval husband and wife, though I suspect that the idea that all men through history have been uninterested in “women’s issues” is yet another of those 19th Century lies. If anyone knows why the Paston women were obsessed with eating (presumably very expensive) dates while pregnant, Claire would probably love to talk.

Maria told us all about a fascinating French novel, Constance et la Cinquantaine (Constance in Her Fifties), which is all about a group of feminist friends who panic when going through menopause because their men are deserting them for younger women. Apparently the only thing that results in a happy ending is becoming a lesbian.

The final session was on various expressions of gender. It began with Di explaining the complex history of the image of Medusa from a scary, quite masculine version in Bronze Age Greece to a much more feminine version in later times. The Romans, bless them, used both. I’m particularly fascinated by the image on the pediment of the temple in Bath, which shows the snake hair on the head of a male Celt.

James entertained us with images of gendered behavior from Sparta, which is a fascinating place (and which got very bad press from the Athenians). He didn’t specifically mention non-binary gendered presentation, but we chatted a bit and I do have a few clues to follow up. He did mention the possibility that songs written to be sung by a girl’s chorus celebrated same-sex attraction between women.

The last paper of the day was from Lucy, a fellow fan of Romosexuality, who introduced us to an amazing mosaic from a villa in Spain. On the one hand it is a stunningly beautiful piece of art. On the other it is obvious that it depicts only people (female and male) whom Zeus is said to have raped, and is intended to imply that the man of the house is just as powerful and rapey as old Thunderbolts himself.

That’s it for day one. More later. And if you think the owner of that Roman villa reminds you of Trump, just wait for the next Roman paper.

Gendering The Past

~ Cheryl ~ 10 Comments

One of the inevitable results of the greater media interest in trans people is an increase in interest in trans history. On the one hand this is good for me, because it means I get invited to conferences and taken seriously, whereas even five years ago I would have been laughed at by most historians. On the other hand it means that a lot of cisgender historians are writing about trans issues in past cultures, often with very little understanding of what they are doing.

Much of this comes from a set of behaviors that stretches at least back to Roman times and probably much further. Elite men are quick to seize on any male whose appearance, mannerisms, sexual tastes and so on deviate from the currently acceptable social standards for masculinity. Such people are deemed “girly men”, or whatever the local translation thereof is. Women, on the other hand, are quick to reject this as an invasion of their territory that must be resisted at all costs. Men are men, and can never be anything else. The one thing that both sides tend to agree on is that trans people don’t exist, and therefore cannot be considered as an option.

The same sort of thing happens when cis historians look at people from the past. Men make fun of any people from history whose behavior they see as effeminate, and women insist that those people are really men. That these past people cannot be trans is backed up by a firm statement as to what being trans means.

I’m getting a little fed up with cis people telling me what it means to be trans. I wish they’d tell me, because I’m damned if I know.

Trans people can’t agree among themselves what it means to be trans. India Willoughby thinks that non-binary identities are fake. Many non-binary people insist that they are not “trans”, usually because they don’t want any medical treatment. If you talk to a two spirit person from North America, or a fa’afafine from Samoa, they may tell you that they are not trans because being trans is a Western concept that doesn’t work in their society.

There are other issues at work here as well. Historically most hijra from India seem to have identified as non-binary, despite the fact that they live full time as women and sometimes marry men. They make this identification on the grounds that they can’t bear children, and therefore can’t be a woman. That’s a cultural definition of what a “woman” is, and one that TERFs like to throw at trans women today, but it is not a distinction that we tend to draw because we prefer not to shame cis and intersex women who are infertile.

Whether someone from the past is “trans” or not is therefore a very open-ended question, and one I tend to approach in two ways: firstly by looking for persistent behaviors outside of the gender binary, and secondly by taking a very broad and inclusive definition of what it means to be trans.

All of this came to mind today when I was reading this blog post about Peter Ackroyd’s new book, Queer City. Much of the post I agree with. The tendency of male historians to only recognize the possibility of lesbianism if one party in the relationship can be shown to be using a dildo is ridiculous in the extreme. You’d think that with the amount of lesbian porn men watch they’d have a better understanding of how lesbians have sex, but there you go. Clearly their minds (or more likely their eyes) are on other things.

Where the post goes off the rails a bit is when it gets onto discussing the famous 14th century figure of John Rykener. I should state up front that Rykener’s case is a very complex one whose interpretation is heavily dependent on an understanding of mediaeval English and the mediaeval mindset. I have a couple of friends who have made an in depth study of the case and I defer to their judgement for most of the issues.

What appears to be agreed upon is that Rykener was a sex worker, and often dressed as a woman while working. They (and I’m using non-binary pronouns for Rykener because that’s the right thing to do when there is some uncertainty) appear to have done very well out of this business and their clients seem to have accepted them as a woman. When not working Rykener spent at least some of their time as a man, and had sex with women while presenting as both binary genders.

There is, of course, much debate as to how Rykener may have identified. All of the possible identities from trans woman to drag queen are possible. I gather that the consensus favors the latter end of the possibilities, though goodness knows how one makes sense of people’s statements when many of them are from court transcripts in a case where the defendant’s life was on the line.

I’m not going to get into discussing how Rykener identified. Rather I want to talk about how Lucy Allen, the author of that post, interrogated Ackroyd’s treatment of the case.

Allen begins by highlighting this comment by Ackroyd about Rykener:

Rykener called himself Eleanor, and dressed in women’s clothing. He would sometimes be a male for males, sometimes a female for males, sometimes a female for females … He enacted all these roles quite naturally, and was never thought of as being particularly adventurous.

The word that she takes exception to is “naturally”. Now certainly it is a mistake for anyone to use that word in connection with sexual behavior. The idea that cisnormative and heteronormative behavior is “natural” while anything queer is not has been rightly ripped to shreds on far more occasions that I can count. I would have been happy with a simple statement to that effect, but Allen goes on at some length.

Part of my concern is the language used to describe Rykener. We have: “conning men” and “lucrative deceptions”. It is, of course, entirely possible, that Rykener did think that they were deceiving their clients, but this sort of language is very dangerous. The idea that trans women are engaged in a massive deception aimed at cis men is the number one reason for trans women being murdered. If you are going to make such allegations then you should make sure you are certain that is what is going on, and note that deception is not the default mode of trans women.

The other issue is that Allen attempts to prove that Rykener’s behavior is not “natural” by showing that they had to learn it.

Specific women helped in the process, each experts in her trade: Anna, a ‘whore,’ and Elizabeth, whose surname ‘Brouderer’ denotes her profession of embroiderer or seamstress. Rykener’s citation of these women’s names may partly be an attempt to spread blame (Elizabeth Brouderer crops up elsewhere in the London court records, and her name might easily have elicited knowing nods from an audience). But it’s also a subtle way of reminding that audience of the artificiality of the performance of femininity. Rykener needed to learn to dress and act like a woman; he may have fooled men, but the women who worked with him were under no illusions whatsoever.

And later:

But, in attempting to naturalise ‘queer’ London, Ackroyd instead erases all traces of artificiality from the performance of femininity, naturalising a very different type of gender politics, in which women’s awareness of things men do not notice is simply overlooked.

What Allen appears to be saying here is that Rykener’s femininity was not “natural” because they had to learn it from women, and that Rykener could only learn it imperfectly, as opposed to women who don’t need to learn such things. In other words, she’s saying that for women femininity is “natural”, but for men it isn’t and that therefore trans women can never be women.

In practice, of course, transition is a process, a very long process. No one taught me to dress and behave as a woman. I learned most of it myself through reading teen girl magazines and through observation. When I started living as a woman I thought I had it pretty much sorted, but of course I didn’t and I learned a lot more from experience. Twenty-odd years later I don’t think much about it, I just do it. Whether I do it well or not rather depends on who is looking at me and whether they know I am trans.

What I do know is that I have friends whose performance of femininity is not the same as mine. Some of them are much more feminine, but others are much less so. There are some for whom we might say that being feminine “comes naturally”, and others for whom it doesn’t. We are not using “natural” here in a way that suggests that all women are biologically coded in their chromosomes to be feminine: to love pink, frilly dresses and the latest Hollywood heartthrob. Rather we are using “natural” in the same way as we might say that someone takes naturally to swimming, or speaking French, or mathematics. There may be some biology involved here, but if there is it is a more subtle, less well-understood biology than simple chromosomes, and it may be strongly influenced by upbringing.

What stands out to me about Rykener is that they appear to have been very comfortable wearing women’s clothing, adopting feminine mannerisms, and having sex with men while doing so. Most men would run a mile rather than do any of that. Rykener, therefore, is a person to whom femininity seems to have “come naturally”, despite the obvious social pressures in 14th Century England for people assigned male at birth to behave in a masculine fashion. That doesn’t prove where on that continuum from trans woman to drag queen Rykener might have fitted, but it does show that there was something about them that was radically different to the typical mediaeval man.

China in Bristol

~ Cheryl

On Friday evening China Miéville was in Bristol to promote his newly published history of the Russian revolution, October. Naturally I, and many of the Bristol SF crowd, where there to see him, even though he barely mentioned SF.

Despite his background in academia (he has a PhD in Marxist theory of international law from LSE), China has written this book using his novelist brain. There are, he says, no footnotes. This sounds like a smart move. Popular history, that is history made accessible to the general public, sells very well. Also, by focusing on people and events, China will hopefully dispel the fear that his book might be full of Marxist theology, debating which comrades have the right to dance on the head of a pin and which should be executed as traitors. While some description of the disputes and demarcation lines between the various factions that created the revolution is inevitable, I trust China not to make this a work of hagiography or demonology.

One of the reasons that China gave for taking this approach is that he has a truly remarkable story to tell. Indeed, he joked that if it he had presented the plot as a novel he might have been told by his editors that it was too fantastic, even for him. Personally I am not surprised that the revolution was kickstarted by a women’s strike. After all, the French revolution was kickstarted by the women’s march on Versailles, and the Stonewall riot was begun by trans women. When it comes down to actual revolution, as opposed to just talking about it, it is always those who have nothing to lose who throw the first stone. However, some of the stories that China has found in the letters from revolutionary soldiers to the party leadership sound really interesting. I wish I had time to read the book, but of course I have a huge pile of Tiptree reading to get through.

Despite our politics often being seemingly poles apart, China and I tend to find ourselves agreeing on quite a lot. He made a point during the talk of distinguishing between those liberals who actually adhere to the principles of Liberalism (“a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality” according to Wikipedia) and those who simply support the instruments of the so-called Liberal state. He also thinks a lot about his politics. One of the questions he was asked was whether he thought it was inevitable that the revolutionaries resorted to terror tactics. His lengthy answer covered the fact that the Whites used terror tactics too, that in such situations terror may well have been inevitable, and that this doesn’t mean we should glorify it. I might have added that the original suffragettes did a lot of things that would be counted as terrorism today.

China’s view of the success and failure of the revolution appears to be (on a very simplistic level which I am sure is addressed much more deeply in the book) one of Lenin v Stalin, and in particular Stalin’s disavowal of the project of internationalism in favor of building a Communist state in Russia. You can read more about his views, both on that and on why the story of the Russian revolution is still relevant today, in this Guardian article.

On Friday he also talked about the tension between those who feel that revolution is necessary, and those who prefer to work within the establishment for what they presumably hope will be a more peaceful transfer of power. That reminded me a lot of Ruth Hunt’s comments on Wednesday about how the previous regime at Stonewall adopted an assimilationist approach to LGBT rights, emphasizing that gays were people “just like anyone else” and eschewing anything deemed too outré (such as trans people). China, of course, is a revolutionary by inclination, and these days who is to say that he is wrong? I certainly accept his point that “revolutions always eat their children” is a trite and simplistic slogan, not a natural law. On the other hand, the more chaos a revolution generates, the easier it may be for someone to sell the need for Strong and Stable Leadership.

I note in passing that internationalism is a core belief of the pro-EU movement in Britain today, and that some of the Labour support for Brexit appears to be based on the idea that revolution will be much easier to achieve in a small and isolated country than in the EU.

Politics can be really complicated.

It occurs to me, however, that most of you didn’t want me to talk about politics, you wanted to know if China has any fiction in the pipeline.

Before I get to that, there was brief discussion of his fiction during the evening. His interviewer asked whether there was any connection between his interest in fantastic fiction and his politics. China very wisely pointed that while he might be in the part of a Venn diagram that overlaps those two obsessions, the two circles are by no means congruent. Beyond that he would not commit, so allow me to propose a thesis.

Science fiction is often, though by no means always, about future history. The philosophical project of SF is to examine technological change (and other factors such as alien contact) and examine how that might change the world. Fantasy is often used to examine social issues through a framework of an alternate world (Juliet McKenna being a good example of this). Both of these things are of obvious interest to historians. And politics is, at least in part, the art of applying historical knowledge about how human societies work to try to create a better future.

As to new books, China told me that he does have a novel he is working on. However, October has eaten up two years of his life, and now he is on a book tour. He needs all of that to be over before he can get back to being a fiction writer again.

There wasn’t a lot of time to chat after the event because China had to catch a train back to London. He was, of all things, appearing at Blackwells in Oxford the following night. (That would be the bookstore with the famously pro-UKIP owners.) However, we did manage a brief catch-up. China, if you are reading this, I have checked out your pal and have read this. It seems pretty good despite the potentially incendiary headline, but he does need to think about trans identities outside of the modern Western cultural bubble.

Me On Notches: Serious Trans History

~ Cheryl

In case you were wondering what all of this swanning off to conferences on Assyriology was about, all can now be revealed. I have a post up on Notches, the History of Sexuality blog. It is all about trans people who lived over 4,000 years ago. And yes, I do have evidence. I hope that someone at the British Museum reads it (or indeed reads the email I sent them) and puts the Silimabzuta fragment in the LGBT+ history exhibition they are launching in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I’m a little bit proud of this (and very grateful to Monica, Sophus, Omar and Alexandra for their help). Hopefully it is written in a very accessible manner so you can all enjoy it. Traffic boosting would be appreciated.

This doesn’t quite count as academic publication, but I’m getting there.

A Day at the V&A

~ Cheryl

The Siege of RanthambohrI spent most of today at the Victoria & Albert Museum in the company of some of their volunteer tour guides, in particular my friend Dan Vo with whom I have worked on various LGBT History projects. I was there to talk to Dan and his colleagues about trans terminology, and how to represent trans people in a respectful and authentic way when talking about them during LGBT-themed tours of the museum. We also took the opportunity to have a look around some of the galleries to see if we could spot some trans-themed exhibits. I’m pleased to say that I found a few. Nothing on quite the scale of a Grayson Perry Vase depicting April Ashley, which has to be their prize exhibit, but I was pleased with what I found.

I also found a mystery, which I’m going to talk about here. The picture to the left is in the South Asia gallery and is one of a series depicting the conquests of the Mughal emperor Akbar. It shows bullocks pulling cannon up a hill to attack the fortress of Ranthambhor in Rajasthan.

Most of the characters in the scene are depicted with facial hair, either mustaches or full beards, and they wear turbans. But my eye happened upon one character in the painting who is clean-shaven and is wearing what looks to be a more feminine style of head covering.

Possible hijraI know nothing about Mughal art, but I do know that hijra were common at the courts of the Mughal emperors. (They were, for obvious reasons, used in the harem as guards and servants, which gave them a place of honor in Mughal society.) So I am now wondering whether the artist has chosen to depict a hijra among Akbar’s army. Dan is going to make inquiries with the museum staff for me to see if anyone knows anything about this. If anyone reading this is an expert on Mughal history, I’d love to hear from you.

At the end of the day I got to see Dan in action doing one of his guided tours. The V&A has a wealth of LGBT+ material and Dan is very knowledgeable. If you happen to be in London on the last Saturday of a month I recommend popping along. You may even get to hear one of the guides talk about an item I found for them. Though of course the tours can’t be too long, there are several depictions of Roman emperors, and I could talk all day about them. Dear Goddess, Tiberius, what were you thinking?

Fringe Tonight, And January Readings

~ Cheryl

Tonight sees the return of the legendary BristolCon Fringe Open Mic, at which a whole host of lovely people get just five minutes to wow us with their fiction. I have to catch a train to Plymouth tonight because I’m doing training first thing tomorrow morning, so the event will be primarily hosted by the fabulous Tom Parker. If he lets me go on early you might get a very rough piece from the space marine midwives story that I’ve been working on (also knows as the Amazons In Space story). We’ll be at the Volley from 7:00pm, with the first reading starting at around 7:30pm.

For those of you who can’t be there, I have instead the recordings from the January event. Our first reader that night was Amanda Huskisson whose work we have very much enjoyed at previous open mics so we got her back to read more from her Egyptian fantasy, Melody of the Two Lands. We get to learn a lot more about her characters in this.

The second reading came from Tej Turner who joined us all the way from Cardiff in Welsh Wales. Tej writes fix-up novels about mostly queer characters. The stories revolve around goings on at a night club in a small town. As you might expect, there’s plenty of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, and a significant amount of magic too. It kind of reminded me of Charles de Lint. I have since read and enjoyed The Janus Cycle, and am looking forward to Dinnusos Rises which was launched a couple of weeks ago.

The Q&A was basically me showing off my knowledge of Egyptian history and investment banking. Sorry folks. At least I wasn’t showing off my knowledge of eating psychotropic mushrooms.

And because I love you, here’s an example of Egyptian flute playing so you can get some idea of what Neferu’s music sounds like.

Queer Romans in London

~ Cheryl

I have had a number of conference acceptances over the last week. One is in Bologna, so probably out of reach of most of you, and one is more about the work of OutStories Bristol than about trans history. However, if you are in London in June you will have a chance to listen to my paper on Queer Romans. It will be essentially the same paper that I gave at the LGBT History Month Academic Conference in March. The conference is at Royal Holloway on June 10th. It is free to attend, and you can book a place here. Justin Bengry who runs the Notches blog is the keynote speaker and will be well worth listening to.

Two Days in Assyria

~ Cheryl

I have been rather quiet here for a few days, though busy on Twitter. That’s because I have been in Oxford for a conference on Assyriology. I got to catch up with some of the great people I met in Barcelona, and made a bunch of new friends. I also got to hear some really great academic papers. Here are some highlights.

One of the strangest things I learned about was the Assyrian practice of appointing a “substitute king” when astronomical omens predicted the real king was in danger. Basically this meant that during an eclipse the king would retire to a safe place and a disposable person would be appointed to “rule” in his place. Then, if any magical attack happened, it would be the substitute who suffered.

Being a substitute king was no fun. All of the power still lay with the real king, who for the purposes of the interregnum was known as “The Farmer”. You got to live in the palace and eat nice food for 100 days, but after that you were killed so that the real king could have his throne back. You also got a wife, and she would be killed at the end of your reign too. This was not a nice custom.

Some of us got to chatting about the fictional possibilities, because this would make a great novel. The title even writes itself: The Substitute King. I’d set it during the reign of Esarhaddaon, partly because he was chronically ill for much of this reign, which adds plot possibilities, and partly because I could then have Taharqa and the Nubian Dynasty of Egypt in the story. Sadly I do not have the time to write this, but thanks to Adam Howe for a great paper.

Ashurbanipal's Garden Party

Talking of Esarhaddon, this is his rather better known son, Ashurbanipal, in one of his most famous reliefs. It was a subject of a paper by my new pal, Sophie Walker. (No, not that Sophie Walker; and yes, this will do my head in.) The relief shows a banquet in the royal gardens at Nineveh. If Stephanie Dalley is correct, then these were the famous Hanging Gardens, built by Ashurbanipal’s grandfather, Sennacherib. (By the way, Stephanie was at the conference.) The banquet was held to celebrate Ashurbanipal’s victory over the Elamites. However, the focus of Sophie’s paper was not the reclining king, but the seated person to his left.

That figure is believed to represent Liballi-Sharrat, Ashurbanipal’s queen. Analysis of her outfit suggests that she has deliberately adopted an Elamite style of dress. Sophie’s paper was all about why she might have done such a thing. This appears to have been a deliberate act of cultural appropriation by the Assyrian court. Exactly why they would have done so is unclear, but it is very obvious that a message is being sent to someone in this scene.

Given that the conference did not have a gender focus, I didn’t expect there would be much relevant to my own research. Little did I know that the most important paper for me would be the one by Alexandra Llado on the subject of bears in Sumer. (Despite that double-l, Alexandra is not Welsh, she’s Spanish.)

It turns out that bears were a big thing in ancient Ur. Bears are not native to the Tigris-Euphrates valley, but the Sumerian empire stretched north to more mountainous areas where bears could be found. Given the time of year most bears were shipped to the city, and the language used to describe them, it is pretty clear that bear cubs were being captured and sent to Ur for training. There was even an official job title, Aluzinnu, for someone in charge of bears. (Interestingly some Assyriologists translate this word as “jester”, presumably on the basis of context.)

It seems highly likely that the bears were being brought in for entertainment, not as fighting animals as might have been the case in Rome. This is supported by the fact that, in some of the records we have, the Aluzinnu seem to have reported to the chief Gala, a person called Dada. Those of you who have seen my presentations will know that the Gala were singers and musicians. You’ll be hearing more about Dada from me in just over a week. For now I just want to thank Alexandra for saving me from a potentially embarrassing situation.

Mention of the Gala brings me to Michael Moore (no, not that Michael Moore) who had come all the way from UCLA to present. His paper was about the Hittites, who lived in Anatolia (Turkey) and were a very different ethnic group to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. As far as I knew, they had their own religion (though one quite important to me because their homeland was the region later known as Phrygia, whence Rome claimed to have acquired Cybele). I was therefore astonished to hear Michael talk about court ceremonies in which musicians used “Inanna-instruments”.

Naturally I asked him about this. It turns out that the Hittites were using cuneiform and the scribes had chosen to use the Sumerian word for Inanna to represent something in their own language. Probably it would have been a local goddess. But equally the word might have been chosen because pictorial evidence suggests that the instruments in question may have been Sumerian in origin. Specifically, things like this:

Sumerian Bull Lyre

All of which goes to show that it is really hard to interpret ancient texts, even when the words they use are familiar to us.

There were lots of other really interesting papers. Many of them were, of course, deeply technical. Others, while brilliant, were not that dramatic. But I want to end with my favorite paper of the event which came from my Danish friend, Sophus Helle. It was a literary paper focusing on Babylonian attitudes to death, and it strongly featured the Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The section that Sophus quoted is from the passage where Gilgamesh, grief-stricken after the death of his friend and lover, Enkidu, encounters an old man called Ut-napishti. Those of you familiar with the Epic will know that Ut-napishti is the character on whom the Biblical Noah is based. In Mesopotamian mythology he is chosen by the gods to survive the flood in an ark, and is rewarded with immortality. Naturally Gilgamesh questions him about death. The old man explains that death is something that sneaks up on mortals, unseen, and snaps off their lives as if they were reeds in the river. The passages below are from the A.R. George translation. Words in square brackets indicate unreadable signs whose meaning as been guessed from context. Ut-napishti says:

No one sees death,
No one sees the face of [death],
No one [hears] the voice of death –
Yet furious death snaps mankind!

He then goes on to illustrate this point in the next two verses.

At some point, we build a house
At some point, we make a nest,
At some point, brothers divide it,
At some point, hate between [sons] occurs.

At some point, the river rose, brought high water
A mayfly drifting on the river.
Its face looked on the face of the sun,
But in that very moment, nothing was there.

Between lines 2 and 3 of the first verse the man who built the house must have died, because his sons inherit it. Equally between lines 3 and 4 of the second verse the mayfly dies. The Babylonian poet has shown death without showing it: silent and invisible just as Ut-napishti described it. It’s beautiful.

My thanks to Monica, Lynn, Adam and Parsa for running a great event, and to everyone there for making me so welcome. I hope to see many of you again soon.

The Strange History of Hot Cross Buns

~ Cheryl

Easter is a time when all sorts of nonsense tends to get talked about religious history. For the record, the only evidence of a goddess called Eostre is a single paragraph written by the 8th century English cleric, the Venerable Bede. He does not mention rabbits, hares or eggs in connection with this supposed Anglo-Saxon deity. There are no known shrines to Eostre, no votive offerings, nothing.

Even more so, there is no known connection between Easter, Eostre and Ishtar, other than the fact that Ishtar’s main festival may well have been held in the spring.

I say that because Ishtar was, in part, a fertility goddess, and spring is the time when fertility festivals were held. In Rome the Rites of Attis, part of the cult of Cybele, were celebrated in late March. Spring is the obvious time to have a fertility festival.

One of the things that the ancients appear to have done at such festivals is make offerings of bread. These may have taken a phallic form. The most famous reference to this is an epigram by Martial

Si vis esse satur, nostrum potes esse priapum:
Ipse licet rodas inguina, purus eris.

You’ll rarely see that translated because it talks about eating a phallus. However, Martial isn’t extolling the virtues of oral sex. Rather, he’s probably he’s probably expressing the well known Roman abhorrence of that activity. The epigram is titled “priapus siligineus” which probably means “bread phallus”. Martial seems to be suggesting that, rather than engage in oral sex, it is much cleaner to eat a bread substitute.

So the Romans may have baked bread in phallic shapes (and frankly if they didn’t then bread might well be the only thing they didn’t make into phallic shapes), and these may have been associated with spring fertility festivals. I’ve found no firm evidence of this. What we do know is that this practice appears to have found its way into Christianity.

Kulichi

Exhibit one is the Russian Orthodox Easter tradition of baking Kulichi. These are tall, cylindrical breads traditionally topped with white icing. No doubt about the symbology there.

The 19th century French historian, Jacques Antoine Dulaure, reports that in the town of Saintonge phallic bread was still being baked for Easter in his lifetime.

The most obvious example comes from the Portuguese town of Amarante, but these magnificently phallic objects are now made for a festival in June, not for Easter.

The theory is that early Christian clergy could not stop people making bread for spring festivals. But they could ask them to make it in a different shape. And just for good measure they put a cross on top to prevent anything devilish going on.

Hirschfeld and Hatshepsut

~ Cheryl

My friend Jen Grove has a post up on Notches, the history of sexuality blog, today. In it she talks about looking for trans people in the ancient world. As her main example she tells us that Magnus Hirschfeld was one of the people who has suggested that the Egyptian Queen, Hatshepsut, might be trans. I’ve said my piece about Hatshepsut before, and I’m pretty sure I have ranted to Jen as well. I’m not surprised that she’s cautious about the identification. When you are looking for trans people from the past it is really important to understand the culture in which they lived, and how that culture understood gender.

For me, of course, it is also important to maintain academic respectability. If I were to make a case for Hatshepsut being trans I would get torn to shreds by my Egyptologist friends. Jen can get away with slightly more because she can’t be accused of projection the way I can, but she still has to play the academic game.

There’s also the fact that claiming feminist icons such as Hatshepsut as trans is a sure fire way to turn feminists against the trans community. Politically it’s not wise.

Mainly, however, I want to echo Jen’s point in the Notches post about not relying on famous people from the past. It’s great that we have a few celebrities to talk about, Elagabalus being the most high profile, but there were very many ordinary people in ancient cultures who lived outside of the gender binary. We don’t need celebrities to make the case. And indeed the case is far more powerful if we can identify lots of ordinary trans people, rather than just a few high profile ones.

Trans Theory in Assyriology

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Some of the talks from the conference I attended in Barcelona in February have been put online. The full playlist is here (including one on Nefertiti, Egypt fans), but I just want to highlight one here because it demonstrates that trans and intersex issues are being taken seriously by academia. It is one of the keynote talks by Ann Guinan who, delightfully, studies Sex and Gender, Magic and Divination in the Ancient World at the University of Pennsylvania. The first half of the talk is basically a history of Western sexology and how it has impacted our view of Mesopotamia. Ann then brings in knowledge of trans and intersex people, and asks how their existence might affect how we interpret the ancient world.

My apologies to intersex readers for the focus on genitalia, but in the ancient world intersex conditions were generally only noticed when they caused a distinct physical change. Everyone else may remember the 2015 BBC program that featured the guevedoce community in the Dominican Republic.

I remember this talk with some pride because I was able to introduce Ann to a friend of mine, Alan Greaves, who studies Classics at Liverpool University. Alan has written about evidence for the existence of intersex people in Rome, of which there is quite a lot (some of which found its way into my LGBT History Month talks this year).

Anyway, here’s the video. It’s about half an hour.

Sexism in Ancient Egypt?

~ Cheryl

Last night’s meeting of the Egypt Society of Bristol saw a lecture on Egyptian graffiti by Dr Hana Navratilova of the Griffith Institute in Oxford. This did not mean Egyptian kids spray-painting anti-government slogans on walls in Cairo. It meant Egyptian scribes from the 18th and 19th dynasties writing on the walls of more ancient temples and tombs. Graffiti, it seems, has a very long history.

Possibly we should not be surprised that the vast majority of what these scribes wrote was their contemporary equivalent of “Kilroy was here”. Being what passed for academics in ancient Egypt, they also couldn’t resist noting that they knew who was buried in each individual tomb they wrote on, even if it was hundreds of years old. And because Egyptian culture hadn’t changed that much in all that time, they also made a point of paying their respects to the departed.

For those interested in the technical side, the graffiti was normally written in hieratic script rather than full hieroglyphs. It was done mostly with brushes and black ink. To do good graffiti you had to refresh your brush frequently, otherwise what you wrote would soon fade away.

The people writing this graffiti were mostly scribes who were traveling for some reason, possibly visiting the monument on which they left their names. Most of the names left are male. Interestingly a few female-signed graffiti have also been found. However, as literacy was not universal in Egypt at the time we can’t be certain that these were made by women scribes. They may, for example, have been made by a scribe employed by a noblewoman who liked visiting ancient monuments.

Dr. Navratilova says that there is a lot more female-authored graffiti in Thebes, a major religious center, and that much of it relates to religious ceremonies. That sounds like it was being written by literate priestesses.

There is, however, one very famous piece of graffiti from Saqqara, the necropolis of Memphis. It is signed with a male name, and it goes something like this (I paraphrase because Dr. Navratilova recited it from memory and I can’t remember exactly what she said):

I’m horrified! Disgusted! There is some terrible writing on this wall, and it is by a crazy woman! This sort of thing shouldn’t be allowed!

Sadly the wall in question is in a very poor state of repair and it hasn’t been possible to identify the graffiti that Mr. Angry was complaining about. We don’t know whether he was angry about the quality of the handwriting, about what was written, or simply because the writer was a woman. However, the archaeologist who discovered this rant did say that it was made in very ugly handwriting. Maybe he was too angry to write well.

The Dangers of Heterosexuality

~ Cheryl

My research for an essay on trans people in Sumer led me to a book called The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies by James Neill. As you might guess from the title, it is partly based in evolutionary biology. That’s not a discipline that I have much time for as so much of it appears to be thinly veiled justifications for Patriarchy and racism. However, Neill shows you can turn that on its head. After a fascinating tour through homosexual behavior in animals (loved the lesbian dolphins) he goes on to postulate that male homosexuality has significant advantages for humans at a social level. It means fewer teen pregnancies, a more stable population, and less dangerous conflict between males. (If you want to argue with that, by the way, go read the book yourself. I’m not going to engage with discussion based solely on the very bare outline I have given here.)

The upshot of all this is that same-sex relations were rife in most ancient societies, and indeed there’s plenty of evidence for this (though not for “homosexuality”, which is a much more modern concept). Nevertheless, exclusive heterosexuality developed as a desired practice among strongly patriarchal religions, and that left me wondering why. If Neill is right, unfettered heterosexuality will lead to population expansion which poses problems for the tribe because it can’t feed all of the babies. One possible way of dealing with that is territorial expansion and conquest. So what we might be seeing here is patriarchal society insisting on behavior that it knows will drive the need for war, and will provide the bodies needed to wage it.

This is the sort of thing that makes me want to go back and read The Gate to Women’s Country again.

Neill also provided me with a very interesting research lead. He quotes an observation about the Hidatsa people of North America (a Sioux tribe based in North Dakota). It reads:

“If a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations, he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, and sometimes married to men. They submit as women to all the duties of a wife.”

Those words were written by William Clark, one half of the famous explorer duo, Lewis and Clark. They are the clearest expression yet that I have seen showing that at least some native North American people could recognize trans kids and would accept their identities. Western “civilization” is so uncivilized in comparison.

Powerful Women of the Classical World

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Earlier today I noticed the British Museum tweet a link to this blog post by Mary Beard containing a list of powerful women of the classical world. I was surprisingly unimpressed. On the one hand, of course, Beard is Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge and Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement. She knows far more about this stuff than I do. On the other hand, I suspect that I know more about editing a newspaper than George Osborne does, so I’m going to have a go at being a Classics professor too. First up, here are the women Professor Beard picked.

  • Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons
  • A Vestal Virgin
  • Athena
  • Cleopatra
  • An anonymous Roman woman

I think that Penthesilea is an excellent pick. What caused my eyebrows to rise was Beard saying of the Amazons, “They were entirely mythical, of course.” There’s no known historical people that called themselves Amazons, but we have plenty of evidence from burials that women warriors were commonplace around the Black Sea — the area where the Greeks claimed that the Amazons lived. Herodotus says that descendants of the legendary Amazons lived in the area in his day, and the most likely suspects are a people known as the Sarmatians. One possible derivation of their name means, “ruled by women”, and they certainly had women warriors. An all female nation is, I think, entirely unlikely, but an all-female war band such as the one that Penthesilea led to the defense of Troy is entirely possible.

Of course if one is looking at the Trojan War one might have picked Clytemnestra who ruled Mycenae for 10 years while the men were away besieging Troy and who murdered her feckless husband, Agamemnon, when he returned home so that she could carry on doing so. Or there is Helen, who was so beautiful that no man could resist her. Both exercised tremendous power in their their ways. You could also pick Dido, the Queen of Carthage, who fell in love with Aeneas when he stopped in her city on his way to found Rome.

The Vestal Virgins certainly had an important role in Roman society, and being a Vestal must have been an attractive career prospect for a high class Roman girl. How much actual power they had, however, is open to question. Whenever things went bad for the Romans they were in the habit of accusing the Vestals of not being virginal enough and sacrificing them by burying them alive.

Roman women were somewhat downtrodden, though by no means as much as Athenian women. By the time of the empire, however, their lot had improved. Part of the reason for that was that the incessant warfare produced a lot of rich widows (Roman women could own property) with extensive business experience who could work their way around social restrictions. Tansy Rayner Roberts is far better placed to pick powerful women from the empire, having done her PhD on the subject, but I’m going to pick Livia Drusilla who, as wife of Augustus and mother of Tiberius exerted significant influence over the founding of imperial Rome.

I’m a big fan of Athena, but she is very much a Greek man’s view of the ideal woman, being divorced from all things feminine. She doesn’t even have a mother. If I was going to pick a goddess I might have gone for Artemis/Diana who made more use of her martial talents and was at least seen as sexual (not that I have anything against being asexual, but I am suspicious of virgin goddesses created by men).

The other option, of course, is Cybele who, despite being viewed as deeply suspect by the male rulers of both Greece and Rome, and not being part of the Olympian pantheon, managed to become hugely popular in both civilizations.

That brings us back to religion and Roman trans women. It is by no means certain exactly how Elagabalus identified, but Cassius Dio might have reported faithfully. If that was so then we can list Elagabalus as the only woman to have been emperor of Rome.

That’s hugely speculative, but there’s no doubt that the cult of Cybele, or Magna Mater as the Romans called her, was very important in Rome. Their main temple was on the Palatine hill, and her spring festival was a big deal. The Archigallus, the head of the order, was a trans woman and a very important person in Roman society.

Back with emperors for a moment, Beard says in her book, SPQR, that she deems the reign of Caracalla as the end of Rome. After that it becomes something very different and rather un-Roman. However, the empire did continue for a long time after that. In terms of powerful women, you should not be looking any further that the Empress Theodora of Byzantium.

Cleopatra is another good choice, but she’s by no means the only foreign queen to have worried the Romans. Boudica’s rebellion was brief and ineffectual, but Cartimandua was much smarter and more powerful. By negotiating with the Romans she kept her position as Queen of the Brigantes, one of the largest of the British tribes, for 18 years after the conquest.

Pride of place in Beard’s list should, however, have gone to Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra. When her husband was assassinated in 270 she launched a war against Rome which built an empire covering central Turkey, Syria, the Levant, all of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Sadly the Romans eventually managed to beat her, but frankly she makes Boudica look like a rank amateur.

It is worth noting, by the way, that one of the most famous women during classical times was Semiramis, the legendary Queen of Assyria. Sadly she is only legendary, though Shammuramat did rule the Neo-Assyrian Empire as regent for five years. She was, however, a major bogeywoman in Roman history.

I do like the choice of an anonymous Roman woman. I’m a bit dubious about choosing one who is flashing her boobs on her tombstone. However, as Beard points out, the fact that she is portrayed as Venus shows that she was seem as a goddess by her family, and that’s good enough for me.

There are many other options, of course. There are women who, despite the misogyny of the time, managed to forge a career in male-dominated professions. The poet, Sappho, is the most famous, but you could also pick the Athenian doctor, Agnodice, or Hortensia who because a politician in the late republic. Constantine’s mother, Helena, is arguably the world’s first archaeologist. I’m sure that Professor Beard is well aware of all of these women.

First Mother

~ Cheryl

Here’s a little bit of archaeology for you. The figurine pictured above was found at the Turkish site of Çatalhöyük. It dates back at least to 5700 BC. The site had been occupied from around 9000 BC, but the figurine was found in the upper layer.

The resemblance to images of Cybele seated on her lion throne is remarkable, but caution is advisable here. That image was only used for the goddess after Greek culture swept across Turkey. The original Phrygian goddess, while often shown with wild animals, including lions, was not depicted on a lion throne, or riding on a lion for that matter.

It is also worth noting that the cats in the Çatalhöyük figurine are leopards, not lions. Possibly that’s a result of access. If the neolithic people of the region didn’t see lions they would have picked leopards instead to represent feline majesty.

While Inanna/Ishtar and Cybele are more usually associated with lions, the connection of women with leopards has continued for thousands of years. The Amazons, whom the Greeks said lived around the Black Sea, were depicted on vases they were often shown wearing leopard print clothing, or perhaps actual leopard fur.

Which just goes to show that there is nothing new in fashion, and gives me an excuse to wear leopard print with pride.

Wonder Woman V0.1

~ Cheryl

International Women’s Day is coming up tomorrow. I’ll be in Bristol doing training, then in Bath for their Reclaim the Night march, so I’m unlikely to get any blogging done. So I am doing something today instead.

We’ll hopefully see the Wonder Woman movie later this year (and fingers crossed DC won’t have butchered it the way they have done with other major releases recently). Diana first appeared in a comic in 1941, but she is not the first Amazon princess to have captivated America. The photo below is of a 24-year-old Kathryn Hepburn taking the part of Antiope in a stage play in New York in 1932. Antiope was a younger sister of Hippolyte and therefore Diana’s aunt. She famously was either kidnapped by or ran off with Theseus and became Queen of Athens. The play was a huge success and led to Hepburn being spotted by a Hollywood talent scout.

Sexing The Past

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Don’t blame me for that title, it is what the conference I spent the weekend at was called. It was, of course, the annual LGBT History academic conference. This year it took place in Liverpool. I had a great time, despite the ongoing disaster at Lime Street station which caused all sorts of transport issues (and despite the Liverpool rain).

Friday night saw the annual guest lecture, or rather two of them this year. I had seen Diana Souhami’s talk in Exeter, but it was just as good second time around. I was delighted to be able to hear a talk by Bisi Alimi, who has many important things to say about the legacy of colonialism, and says them incredibly eloquently.

For some reason best know to themselves, the conference decided to kick off one track with me talking about queer Romans. The audience wasn’t huge as there were two really good things on at the same time, but those who did listen to me seemed to enjoy what I had to say.

I was followed by Jonah Coman who gave a paper on the weird ways in which mediaeval mystics feminised Christ. The picture below is not the Eye of Sauron, it is Christ’s wound as a vulva. See here if you want to learn more.

Finally in that session we had a great paper from Richard Godbeer who, as well as having an awesome name, is an expert on early American colonists. Through him I learned about Thomas/Thomasine Hall, a genderfluid and probably intersex person who lived in Virgina. We know a lot about them because of a well documented court case in 1629.

The intersex theme continued into the next session where Blake Gutt showed how a mediaeval cleric tried to make sense of the existence of people who seemed to be neither male nor female. Then Kit Heyam treated us to an entertaining tour through mediaeval buggery law. The extreme reluctance of anyone to describe what sodomy or buggery actually was made it very difficult for courts to convict anyone. Kit also noted that pictures of Thomas Aquinas almost always show him looking very depressed. It’s not a good advert for theology.

The rest of the day was given over to panels telling harrowing stories of LGBT+ people in the military and LGBT+ asylum seekers. The British government did not come out of either panel looking good. In fact more accurately it ended up looking petty and vindictive.

I spent Saturday evening in a pub with Leah and Amber Moore and their mum. We were there primarily to listen to Marty O’Reilly, a very good guitarist from Santa Cruz. Leah tells me that the Caledonia puts on live gigs for free most nights. I am seriously impressed.

Of course when Leah and I get together mischief tends to happen. This time we ended up doing Google searches for weird pictures from mediaeval manuscripts, and I discovered the phenomenon of the Hairy Mary Magdalene. The short version is that in the 15th Century artists began to depict Mary Magdalene as covered in fur (apart from her boobs). Apparently the hairiness denoted her beastly (i.e. sexual) nature.

The following morning we had a panel about how we understand sexual and gender identities from past times. This was right up my street and I got to bore people about Foucault for a second time that weekend. The important point to remember is that heterosexuality is a 19th Century invention. Before that the idea that the world is divided into gays and straights would have seemed quite odd.

There was a session of papers by Nordic scholars, of which the most interesting was about attempts in 1984 by the Swedish government to persuade museums to pay more attention to LGBT+ issues.

After lunch there was supposed to be a panel on trans history by Stephen Whittle, but he couldn’t make it so I bullied Kit, Jonah and Blake into taking over the session. (They didn’t need that much bullying, to be honest.) It was a very good discussion, helped by some great audience participation. I’d love to do that again when we have had a bit of time to prepare.

Finally we had a museums and archaeology panel. Sarah Douglas has been doing some great work on gendering graves in Bronze Age Cyprus. Char Keenan has been equally busy filling Liverpool museums with queer content. And Lois Stone had some sage things to say about how archaeologists treat potentially trans burials.

I will entirely understand if much of this seems rather dull to you, but I love doing it and without it I would not be able to present fun public talks like the ones I have been doing in February. I was very pleased that we had at least six trans people attending this event. Hopefully next year there will be more. If you are a trans person with an academic interest in history, please do get in touch. As Blake said very eloquently on Sunday, and I said in my speech at Exeter, trans history is a political necessity in a time when people are actively trying to erase us from the historical record. This is important work.

The CN Lester LGBTHM Lecture

~ Cheryl

One of the events in LGBT History Month that I am sad I was unable to attend is CN Lester’s lecture at Oxford University. Like me, CN takes a keen interest in trans history, and they have made a particular study of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. I’m expecting to learn a lot more when their book, Trans Like Me, comes out in May. In the meantime, however, their lecture throws a bit of light on some key issues, and demonstrates clearly how erasure of trans history by the mainstream media is hugely damaging to our cause.

I knew that the film, The Danish Girl, was bad, but I haven’t had a chance to look into the issues as thoroughly as I would like. CN has done the work, not just looking at Lili Elbe’s original supposed memoir, but finding out how that too was changed to appeal to a cis readership. By the time we have been through that, the novel that the film is based on, and the film itself, Lili’s life is all but unrecognizable.

If you want to learn more, you can watch the lecture here:

The short version is that there have always been trans people. There have always been:

“Those of them who […] have desired to be completely changed into women and gone on to mutilate their genital organs”

Not the most flattering of descriptions, but that was Philo of Alexandria. He died in 50 CE.

A Quick Trip to Kush

~ Cheryl

This evening I attended a meeting of the Egypt Society of Bristol for a lecture by Dr Julie Anderson of the British Museum. As well as working at the BM, Julie is employed as a field archaeologist by the Sudanese government. She’s involved with a project to excavate and preserve the ancient sites of the Kingdom of Kush.

As some of you may know, Egypt was conquered by the Kushite, King Piye, in the 8th Century BCE. He founded the 25th dynasty which ruled Egypt for around 100 years when an Egyptian called Psamtik took back the country with the aid of the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. Egypt remained a puppet state of Assyria until the Neo-Assyrian empire fell into civil war after Ashurbanipal’s death.

The Kushites were not wholly vanquished. They just went home to Kush (northern Sudan) and carried on ruling their own kingdom for another 1000 years. Julie’s dig is at the city of Dangeil which is somewhat to the north of the capital, Meroë.

One thing I learned this evening is that the Kushites took Egyptian culture back home with them. Both Dangeil and Meroë have large temples of Amun. Julie was reporting on the excavation of the one in Dangeil. It is a large building, and must have been very impressive as it was brightly painted in red, yellow and blue. Sadly I can’t find any of the colored images of the temple online.

However, that wasn’t what prompted me to write. What really caught my attention were some graves, six in all, and all found inside the temple. The dating is uncertain as the environment on the site has degraded all of the organic material in the bones, so C14 won’t work. However, the burials are pre-Christian in style. They are all of women — very rich women. No equivalent male burials have been found.

When I say “rich” I mean these women were loaded down with jewelry. They had masses of glass beads, all of which would have been imported from the Mediterranean. They had a profusion of copper bangles — so many that Julie told me she wondered how one of the women could have raised her arm. I asked, and Julie said the bioarchaeology people had been all over the skeletons confirming that they were indeed female.

Here’s one of the beaded belts found in the graves:

Where are the equivalent high-status men? We don’t know. In Meroë there are pyramids for kings, but I’m not sure how the dates line up and in any case I’m sure Julie would have noticed if Dangeil had them too. If these women are queens, why are they not buried with their husbands? It is all very mysterious. It sounds like Kush had a story to tell. I hope some African fantasy writers have a go at it.