Transgender Myth — Part 3

Transsexualism: The Divine Power of Metamorphosis

We know that transvestism was practiced in the ancient world, just as it is in modern times. There is evidence for ritual crossdressing in some religious and ceremonial practices, and female roles were performed by male actors in Greek and Roman theatre.

There is no reason to believe that these acts of public transvestism were not matched by private acts; indeed, the myth in which Heracles (Hercules) and Queen Omphale exchange clothes for their own amusement indicates that ordinary men and women must have been known to do the same thing. I suspect (though I certainly cannot prove) that crossdressing began in each human society when its clothing became sophisticated enough to be different for males and females.

Transsexualism was another matter.

If the yearning of a male to be truly female (or a female to be male) defines transsexualism, it must be as old as the capability of human intelligence to express (if only inwardly) such yearnings — predating male and female clothing differentiation and probably predating clothing itself. Yearning thoughts were possible, and there is evidence of men — in particular, shamanistic men — living as females and being treated as females in many so-called “primitive” societies.

But to experience a genuine physical metamorphosis from male to female or from female to male! That was beyond human powers, something requiring divine intervention or magic, and even the most devout of ancient Greeks and Romans must have recognized that their gods seldom did anything that did not further their own private agendas. Nevertheless, there were several instances in mythology in which one deity or another exercised his or her divine powers to produce transsexual metamorphoses. The ordinary human with transsexual longings could only pray…and hope.

The Gods

Athena

The Greek myths provide a few instances of deities performing gender transformations on themselves. Athena, for example, frequently assumed the form of a man in order to visit and counsel Odysseus as he wandered about the Mediterranean. She also visited Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, in male guise. The myths don’t say that she carried a change of clothing with her; she appears to have actually transformed herself into a man each time. With powers such as she had, it’s safe to assume that her disguises were anatomically correct and were therefore transsexual rather than transvestic.

Male-to-female metamorphoses are infrequent in Greek myth. I found only one instance of a male Olympian deity assuming female form. Dionysus (who, it will be remembered, was raised as a girl) made an appearance in the form of a girl to three young women in an attempt to induce them to participate in one of his orgiastic revels. When they refused, he changed his form in rapid succession to a lion, a bull, and a panther, driving the young women insane.

Teiresias

Teiresias with a sphinx.

Teiresias, the wisest and most renowned seer of his time, appears to have been the first and only mortal male-to-female transsexual in Greek mythology. As he was walking one day in the woods on the slopes of Mount Cyllene, he encountered two serpents intertwined in the act of mating.

When both serpents attacked him, he struck out at them with his staff, killing the female. He was immediately transformed into a woman and, according to Graves, became a celebrated harlot. After seven years of celebrated harlotry, Teiresias again took a stroll in the woods on the slopes of Mount Cyllene. Once again, in the very same place, she saw two serpents coupling; this time, she killed the male and immediately regained manhood, becoming the first to have an MTF transformation reversed (Dionysus, remember, followed MTF with FTL, LTB, and BTP before the ultimate PTM).

Some time after Teiresias’s transformations occurred, Hera was berating Zeus for his endless infidelities. Zeus, in his own defense, observed that on those occasions when he actually did share Hera’s bed, she had by far the more enjoyable experience. It was well known, he stated, that women derived much more pleasure from the sexual act than men did. “That is utter nonsense!” Hera said. “It’s exactly the other way around, and you know it!” This argument reverberated around Olympus for some time, with neither side willing to change its opinion.

Finally, after many contentious words, one of the antagonists had an inspired thought. Why not ask Teiresias to settle the argument? He, after all, had known sexual pleasure from both the male and female perspectives. (One might think that Zeus and Hera would simply have used their powers to transform themselves and find the answer experimentally. This idea may not have occurred to them — Greek scientists would later gain a reputation for being long on theory and short on experiment-or they may have just enjoyed arguing — or there may have been another reason that I will explore later.)

In any event, Teiresias was delighted to be of assistance to the gods. His judgment, according to Graves, was expressed in verse: “If the parts of love, pleasure be counted as ten, Thrice three go to women, one only to men.”

This report pleased Zeus greatly, but Hera, outraged by her husband’s self-satisfied smirk, immediately lashed out at Teiresias, inflicting him with blindness. Since one god could not undo the deeds of another, Zeus could not restore Teiresias’s sight. In compensation, however, he granted him the power to see the future and extended his lifespan to seven generations, thus enabling him to pop up in many other myths. In this story, Teiresias’s metamorphoses are described as magical or miraculous rather than as due to a god’s actions. In another version of the story, however, Teiresias was called upon to settle a dispute among Aphrodite and the three Graces as to which of them was the most beautiful. When Teiresias made the wrong call, selecting the grace Cale, Aphrodite transformed him into an old woman. Cale was happy, though. Filled with gratitude, she gave Teiresias a magnificent head of hair.

Tags: featured, History, myth, mythology

Category: Transgender History