Transgender Identities in the Ancient Mediterranean - Transsexual News
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The interaction between religion and a society’s construction of gender has important ramifications for transgender communities within that culture. This relationship is especially compelling in the Ancient Mediterranean, in which a number of cultures with diverse spiritual and social environments thrived prior to the spread of Christianity. Within these cultures, religion provided a space for transgender individuals within a larger society that enforced strict regulations on gender binaries. This paper will focus specifically on the Greco-Roman Empire and the pre-Islamic cultures of the Middle East. Transgender communities within the Greco-Roman and pre-Islamic cultures demonstrate some of the commonalities found throughout the Mediterranean. Namely, the ability of these cultures to accommodate transgender identity within their religious institutions allows transgender people to occupy a mildly tolerated space within their culture.
Before examining these transgender communities in depth, however, it is important to explicitly define the terminology that will be used throughout this paper. Firstly, “transgender” is used differently throughout academic literature. For the purposes of this paper, the term “transgender” will be used liberally to identify any individual whose gender identity or gender expression does not entirely correspond to their assigned sex. This umbrella term includes crossdressing, androgyny, intersexuality, and transsexuality; where relevant, these terms will also be employed to indicate specific behaviors or identities. The regions discussed will be collectively referred to as the Ancient Mediterranean; however, the time frame and geographical space covered is quite large, and cannot be exhaustively discussed within the bounds of this paper. As such, the paper will focus on a selection of cultures which illustrate the most important aspects of Mediterranean transgenderism. “Greco-Roman culture” refers to the historical and mythological tradition beginning with early antiquity in Greece and ending with the fall of the Roman Empire and onset of the Dark Ages in the 5th and 6th centuries AD . “Pre-Islamic culture” refers to the pagan religions of the Middle East prior to the introduction of Islam in the 7th century AD, with specific consideration of traditions practiced by the peoples of Ancient Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq as well as those of Phrygia in modern-day Turkey.
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