Current Concepts in Transgender Identity

Dallas Denny

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134821174
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998. This meaningful study looks at the transsexual experience from the point of view of those that are living experts, those that live transsexualism or cross-dressing and have been directly affected.

Part I
Toward a New Synthesis

1 Mythological, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Transsexualism*

Richard Green

Descriptions from classical mythology, classical history, Renaissance, and nineteenth-century history plus cultural anthropology point to the longstanding and widespread pervasiveness of the transsexual phenomenon.

The term "transsexual," being of comparatively recent origin, cannot be found in historical sources. Therefore, many inferences must be made in interpreting reference material. Even specific mention of "change of sex" may only imply a "change of dress" or the practice of genital homosexuality, the fuller assumption of the individual of cross-gender identity not being apparent. In the following references, the criterion of cross-gender identity appears to be met.

Mythology and Demonology

In Greek mythology the transsexual influence is dramatized in the designation of Venus Castina as the goddess who responded with sympathy and understanding to the yearnings of feminine souls locked up in male bodies (Bulliet, 1928).

Specific myths of sex change, not only as a result of desire, but also as a form of punishment, appear frequently. For example, Tiresias, a Thebian soothsayer, is reported to have been walking on Mt. Cylene when he came upon rwo snakes coupling. He killed the female, and for this act was changed into a woman. Later, after coming to look favorably on his new form and testifying that women's pleasure during intercourse was ten to man's one, he was changed back into a man—again as punishment (Leach, 1949).¹

Another mythical account concerns the Scythians, whose rear guard pillaged the temple of Venus at Ascelon. The goddess is alleged to have been so enraged that she made women of the plunderers, and further decreed that their posterity should be similarly affected (Herodotus, cited by Krafft-Ebing, 1931). Hippocrates, describing among the Scythians "No-men" who resembled eunuchs, wrote, "they not only follow women's occupations, but show feminine inclinations and behave as women. The natives ascribe the cause to a deity. ..." (Hippocrates, cited by Hammond, 1887). Still another account deals with the ancient kingdom, Phrygia, where the priests of the god Attis, the consort of Cybelle the Earth Mother, were obliged to castrate themselves. This was in deference to Attis, who was alleged to have emasculated himself under a pine tree. The priests were said (following castration) to become transvestites and perform women's tasks. Some of the priests were believed to have gone beyond testicular castration and completely removed their external male genitalia (Spencer, 1946).

The previously noted Tiresias myth parallels a related folk tale of East Indian lore. According to legend in the Mahabharata, a king was transformed into a woman by bathing in a magic river. As a woman, he bore a hundred sons, whom he sent to share his kingdom with the hundred sons he had as a man. Later, he refused to be changed back into a man because the former king felt that "a woman takes more pleasure in the act of love than does a man," Contrary to the fate of Tiresias, the transformed king was granted his wish (Leach, 1949).

Not only were the gods empowered with the ability to change one's sex, but change of sex was performed on both human and beast by witchcraft and by the intervention of demons. Witches were claimed to be the possessors of drugs that had the capacity to reverse the sex of the taker.² Some said that males could be transformed into females and females into males, but it was also argued that the sex change worked only in one direction. Thus it was declared that the devil could make males of females, but could not transform men into women, because it is the method of nature to add on rather than to take away. In Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer Against Witches"), published in 1489, the book which served as the source of "treatment" of the insane for nearly three hundred years, an eyewitness accounting was reported of a girl changed into a boy by the devil, in Rome (Masters, 1962).

Classical History

Accounts exist from the legacy of ancient Greece and Rome of those grossly discontent with their gender role. Philo, the Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, wrote, "Expending every possible care on their outward adornment, they are not ashamed even to employ every device to change artificially their nature as men into women. . . . Some of them ... craving a complete transformation into women, they have amputated their generative members" (Masters, unpublished).

The Roman poet Manilus wrote: "These [persons] will ever be giving thought to their bedizement and becoming appearance; to curl the hair and lay it in waving ripples ... to polish the shaggy limbs. . . . Yeah! and to hate the very sight of [themselves as] a man, and long for arms without growth of hair. Woman's robes they wear . . . [their] steps broken to an effeminate gait. . . ." (Masters, unpublished).

A satirical description written of some Romans has been translated:

But why
Are they waiting? Isn't it now high
time for them to try
The Phrygian fashion to make
the job complete . . .
Take a knife and lop off that
superfluous piece of meat?

—Juvenal, translated by Creekmore, 1963

Even among the histories of Roman emperors are reported instances of "change of sex." One of the earliest sex-conversion operations may have been performed at the behest of the infamous Emperor Nero. Allegedly, Nero, during a fit of rage, kicked his pregnant wife in the abdomen, killing her. Filled with remorse, he attempted to find someone whose face resembled that of his slain wife. Closest to filling the order was a young male ex-slave, Sporum. Nero then is reported to have ordered his surgeons to transform the ex-slave into a woman. Following the "conversion," the two were formally married.

Another Roman emperor, Heliogabalus, is reported to have been formally married to a powerful slave and to have taken up the tasks of a wife following the marriage. He is described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the Queen of Hierocles" (Bulliet, 1928), and is said to have offered half the Roman Empire to the physician who could equip him with female genitalia (Benjamin & Masters, 1964).

Interposed between the era of the Roman Empire and Europe of the sixteenth century is a perhaps apocryphal, but still extraordinary accounting of ninth-century Rome. This concerns a figure known as Pope John VIII. The report goes that this person, nominated as successor to Pope Leo IV in 855, was, in fact, a woman. In an accounting published with the approval of Pope Julius III, it was stated that "she gave birth to a baby and died, together with her offspring, in the presence of a large number of spectators" (De Savitsch, 1958).

Renaissance Period to the Close of the Nineteenth Century

French history of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century contributed a number of public transsexual figures. Moreover, at this time the term of reference to the sovereign was "Sa Majeste," which means literally, "Her Majesty." The feminine gender was used, initially, in deference to King Henry III of France, who wished to be considered a woman. It is reported that once, during February, 1577, Sa Majeste made his point strongly felt by appearing before the Deputies "dressed as a woman, with a long pearl necklace and low cut dress . . ." (De Savitsch, 1958).

Among the notable Frenchmen of the seventeenth century, the Abbe de Choisy, also known as François Timoleon, has left for posterity a vivid firsthand description of a strong cross-gender wish. During his infancy and early youth, his mother had attired him completely as a girl. At 18 this practice continued and his waist was then "encircled with tight-fitting corsets which made his loins, hips and bust more prominent," As an adult, for five months, he played comedy as a girl and reported, "Everybody was deceived; I had lovers to whom I granted small favors."

At 32 he became Ambassador of Louis XIV to Siam. Regarding his gender identity he wrote: "I thought myself really and truly a woman. I have tried to find out how such a strange pleasure came to me, and I take it to be this way. It is an attribute of God to be loved and adored, and man—so far as his weak nature will permit—has the same ambition, and it is beauty which creates love, and beauty is generally woman's portion.... I have heard someone near me whisper, 'There is a pretty woman.' I have felt a pleasure so great that it is beyond all comparison. Ambition, riches, even love cannot equal it. . . ." (Bulliet, 1928; De Savitsch, 1958; Gilbert, 1926).

One of the most famous examples of cross-gender behavior in history is the Chevalier d'Eon, whose name became the eponym "eonism." He is reported to have made his debut into history in woman's garb as the rival of Madame de Pompadour as a pretty new mistress for Louis XV. When his sccret was made known to the King, the latter capitalized on his initial mistake by turning the Chevalier into a trusted diplomat. On one occasion, in 1755, he went to Russia on a secret mission disguised as the niece of the King's accredited agent, and the following year returned to Russia as a man to complete the mission. Following the death of Louis XV he lived permanently as a woman. There was great uncertainty in England, where he spent his final years, as to whether his true morphologic sex was male or whether the periods in male attire were not, in fact, the periods of impersonation. When he died, the Chevalier d'Eon had lived 49 years as a man and 34 years as a woman (Bulliet, 1928; De Savitsch, 1958; Gilbert, 1926).

Another case of interest was l'Abbe d'Entragues, who attempted to replicate feminine facial beauty "pale and interesting" by undergoing frequent facial bleedings (De Savitsch, 1958). One last pertinent abbe was Becarelli, a false messiah, who claimed to be able to command the services of the Holy Ghost and boasted of possessing a drug which could "change sex." While physical sex was not changed, men who took the drug temporarily believed themselves transformed into women and women thought themselves transformed into men (Masters, 1962).

Finally, a person who through the whole of her adult life had been known as Mlle. Jenny Savalerte de Lange died at Versailles in 1858 and was discovered to be a man. During his lifetime he had managed to get a substitute birth certificate, designating himself female, was engaged to men six times, and was given a thousand francs a year pension by the King of France with a free apartment at the Chateau of Versailles (De Savitsch, 1958).

The following brief case histories reported by physicians bring the historical European review to the close of the nineteenth century. Bloch described a person of the mid-nineteenth century "who from doing feminine tasks [sewing and knitting] at the bidding of his mother became completely effeminate, plucked his beard, put up his hair, padded his breast and hips, and behaved in every respect as a woman. . . . He called himself Frederica. . . . He managed to deceive [men] so completely that they [unwittingly] performed coitus in anum with him" (Bloch, 1933). Krafft-Ebing reported this firsthand account by a patient: "I feel like a woman in a man's form. ... I feel the penis as clitoris, the urethra as urethra and vaginal orifice, which always feels a little wet, even when it is actually dry, the scrotum as labia majora. In short I always feel the vulva. . . . Small as my nipples are, they demand room. ... Of what use is female pleasure, when one does not conceive? ..." (Krafft-Ebing, 1931).

America, too, had its examples of prominent cross-gender identified persons. The first colonial governor of New York, Lord Cornbury, arrived in the New World from England in full woman's dress and so appeared during his time in office. And, a century later, during the Civil War, Mary Walker became the first American woman to be commissioned an Army surgeon and the only woman expressly granted Congressional permission to wear man's clothing (Brown, 1961).

Cross-Cultural Data

American Indians

Anthropologic studies of peoples from many areas of the world furnish varied material on cross-gender behavior and identity.

During the first quarter of the century, exhaustive data were gathered on traditional practices among several tribes of North American Indians. "In nearly every part of the continent there seem to have been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and performing the functions of women. . . ." (Westermarck, 1917).

Among the Yuman Indians there existed a group of males called the elxa who were considered to have suffered a "change of spirit" as a result of dreams which occurred, generally, at the time of puberty. A boy or girl who dreamed too much of any one thing "would suffer a change of sex." Such dreams frequently included the receiving of messages from plan...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Toward a New Synthesis
• Part II Research and Treatment Issues
• Afterword
• Appendix The Empowerment of a Community
• Contributors
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects