Transgender Warriors (Leslie Feinberg)

Part 1

The Give Away

I found my first clue that trans people have not always been hated in 1974. I had played hooky from work and spent the day at the Museum of the American Indian in New York City.

The exhibits were devoted to Native history in the Americas. I was drawn to a display of beautiful thumb-sized clay figures. The ones to my right had breasts and cra- dled bowls. Those on the left were flat chested, holding hunting tools. But when I looked closer, I did a double-take. I saw that several of the figures holding bowls were flat chested; several of the hunters had breasts. You can bet there was no legend next to the display to explain. I left the museum curious.

What I'd seen gnawed at me until I called a member of the curator's staff. He asked, "Why do you want to know?" I panicked. Was the information so classified that it could only be given out on a "need to know" basis? I lied and said I was a grad- uate student at Columbia University.

Sounding relieved, he immediately let me know that he understood exactly what I'd described. He said he came across references to these berdache practically every day in his reading. I asked him what the word meant. He said he thought it meant transvestite or transsexual in modern English. He remarked that Native peoples didn't seem to abhor them the way "we" did. In fact, he added, it appeared that such individuals were held in high esteem by Native nations.

Then his voice dropped low. "It's really quite disturbing, isn't it?" he whispered. I hung up the phone and raced to the library. I had found the first key to a vault containing information I'd looked for all my life.

"Strange country this," a white man wrote in 1850 about the Crow nation ofNorth America, "where males assume the dress and perform the duties of females,while women turn men and mate with their own sex!"

I found hundreds and hundreds of similar references, such as those in JonathanNed Katz's ground-breaking Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.,published in 1976, which provided me with additional valuable research. The quotes were anything but objective. Some were statements by murderouslv hostilecolonial generals, others by the anthropologists and missionaries who followed intheir bloody wake.

Some only referred to what today might be called male-to-female expression. "Innearly every part of the continent," Westermarck concluded in 191 7, "there seemtohave been, since ancient times, men dressing themselves in the clothes and per-forming the functions of women. . .."2

But I also found many references to female-to-male expression. Writing about hisexpedition into northeastern Brazil in 1576, Pedro de Magalhaes noted femalesamong the Tupinamba who lived as men and were accepted by other men. and whohunted and went to war. His team of explorers, recalling the Greek Amazons,renamed the river that flowed through that area the River ofthe Amazons.

Female-to-male expression was also found in numerous North Americannations. As late as 1930, ethnographer Leslie Spier observed of a nation in thePacific Northwest: "Transvestites or berdaches ... are found among the Klamath, asin all probability among all other North American tribes. These are men andwomen who for reasons that remain obscure take on the dress and habits of theopposite sex."4

I found it painful to read these quotes because they were steeped in hatred. "I sawa devilish thing," Spanish colonialist Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca wrote in the six- teenth century.5 "Sinful, heinous, perverted, nefarious, abominable, unnatural, dis-gusting, lewd" - the language used by the colonizers to describe the acceptance ofsex/gender diversity, and of same-sex love, most accurately described the viewer,not the viewed. And these sensational reports about Two-Spirit people were used tofurther "justify" genocide, the theft of Native land and resources, and destruction oftheir cultures and religions.

But occasionally these colonial quotes opened, even if inadvertently, a momentary window into the humanity of the peoples being observed. Describing his first trip down the Mississippi in the seventeenth century, Jesuit Jacques Marquette chronicled the attitudes of the Illinois and Nadouessi to the Two-Spirits. "They are summoned to the Councils, and nothing can be decided without their advice. Finally, through their profession of leading an Extraordinary life, they pass for Manitous, - That is to say, for Spirits, - or persons of Consequence."6

Although French missionary Joseph Francois Lafitau condemned Two-Spirit people he found among the nations of the western Great Lakes, Louisiana, and Florida, he revealed that those Native peoples did not share his prejudice. "They believe they are honored ..." he wrote in 1 724, "they participate in all religious cer- emonies, and this profession of an extraordinary life causes them to be regarded as people of a higher order. . . . " 7

But the colonizers' reactions toward Two-Spirit people can be summed up by the words of Antonio de la Calancha, a Spanish official in Lima. Calancha wrote that during Vasco Nunez de Balboa's expedition across Panama, Balboa "saw men dressed like women; Balboa learnt that they were sodomites and threw the king and forty others to be eaten by his dogs, a fine action of an honorable and Catholic Spaniard."8

This was not an isolated attack. When the Spaniards invaded the Antilles and Louisiana, "they found men dressed as women who were respected by their societies. Thinking they were hermaphrodites, or homosexuals, they slew them."9

Finding these quotes shook me. I recalled the "cowboys and Indians" movies of my childhood. These racist films didn't succeed in teaching me hate; I had grown up around strong, proud Native adults and children. But I now realized more consciously how every portrayal of Native nations in these movies was aimed at diverting attention from the real-life colonial genocide. The same bloody history was ignored or glossed over in my schools. I only learned the truth about Native cultures later, by re-educating myself - a process I'm continuing.

Discovering the Two-Spirit tradition had deep meaning for me. It wasn't that I thought the range of human expression among Native nations was identical to trans identities today. I knew that a Crow bade, Cocopa warhameh, Chumash joya, and Maricopa kwiraxame' would describe themselves in very different ways from an African-American drag queen fighting cops at Stonewall or a white female-to-male transsexual in the 1990s explaining his life to a college class on gender theory.

What stunned me was that such ancient and diverse cultures allowed people to choose more sex/gender paths, and this diversity of human expression was honored as sacred. I had to chart the complex geography of sex and gender with a compass needle that only pointed to north or south.

You'd think I'd have been elated to find this new information. But I raged thatthese facts had been kept from me, from all of us. And so many of the Native peopleswho were arrogantly scrutinized by military men, missionaries, and anthropologistshad been massacred. Had their oral history too been forever lost?

In my anger, I vowed to act more forcefully in defense of the treaty, sovereignty,and self-determination rights of Native nations. As I became more active in thesestruggles, I began to hear more clearly the voices of Native peoples who not onlyreclaimed their traditional heritage, but carried the resistance into the present: thetakeover of Alcatraz, the occupation of Wounded Knee, the Longest Walk, the Davof Mourning at Plymouth Rock, and the fight to free political prisoners likeLeonard Peltier and NormaJean Croy.

Two historic developments helped me to hear the voices of modern Native warriors who lived the sacred Two-Spirit tradition: the founding of Gav American Indi-ans in 1975 by Randy Burns (Northern Paiute) and Barbara Cameron (LakotaSioux), and the publication in 1988 of Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology. Randy Burns noted that the History Project of Gay American Indians "has documented these alternative gender roles in over 135 North American tribes." 10

Will Roscoe, who edited Living the Spirit, explained that this more complexsex/gender system was found "in every region of the continent, among ever) typeof native culture, from the small bands of hunters in Alaska to the populous, hierar-chical city-states in Florida." 11

Another important milestone was the 1986 publication of The Spirit and the Flesh 12 by Walter Williams, because this book included the voices of modern TwoSpirit people.

I knew that Native struggles against colonialization and genocide - both physical and cultural - were tenacious. But I learned that the colonizers' efforts to outlaw, punish, and slaughter the Two-Spirits within those nations had also met with fierce resistance. Conquistador Nurio de Guzman recorded in 1530 that the last person taken prisoner after a battle, who had "fought most courageously, was a man in the habit of a woman. . . ." 13

Just trying to maintain a traditional way of life was itself an act of resistance. Williams wrote, "Since in many tribes berdaches were often shamans, the government's attack on traditional healing practices disrupted their lives. Among the Kla- maths, the government agent's prohibition of curing ceremonials in the 1870s and 1880s required shamans to operate underground. The berdache shaman White Cindy continued to do traditional healing, curing people for decades despite the danger of arrest."14

Native nations resisted the racist demands of U.S. government agents who tried to change Two-Spirit people. This defiance was especially courageous in light of the power these agents exercised over the economic survival of the Native people they tried to control. One such struggle focused on a Crow bade (bote) named Osh-Tisch (Finds Them and Kills Them). An oral history by Joe Medicine Crow in 1982 recalled the events: "One agent in the late 1890s . . . tried to interfere with Osh-Tisch, who was the most respected bade. The agent incarcerated the bades, cut off their hair, made them wear men's clothing. He forced them to do manual labor, planting these trees that you see here on the BIA grounds. The people were so upset with this that Chief Pretty Eagle came into Crow Agency, and told [the agent] to leave the reservation. It was a tragedy, trying to change them."15

How the bades were viewed within their own nation comes across in this report by S. C. Simms in 1903 in American Anthropologist: "During a visit last year to the Crow reservation, in the interest of the Field Columbian Museum, I was informed that there were three hermaphrodites in the Crow tribe, one living at Pryor, one in the Big Horn district, and one in Black Lodge district. These persons are usually spoken of as 'she,' and as having the largest and best appointed tipis; they are also generally considered to be experts with the needle and the most efficient cooks in the tribe, and they are highly regarded for their many charita- ble acts....

"A few years ago an Indian agent endeavored to compel these people, under threat of punishment, to wear men's clothing, but his efforts were unsuccessful."16

White-run boarding schools played a similar role in trying to force generations of kidnapped children to abandon their traditional ways. But many Two-Spirit children escaped rather than conform.

Lakota medicine man Lame Deer told an interviewer about the sacred place of the winkte ("male-to-female") in his nation's traditions, and how the winkte bestowed a special name on an individual. "The secret name a winkte gave to a child was believed to be especially powerful and effective," Lame Deer said. "Sitting Bull, Black Elk, even Crazy Horse had secret winkte names." Lakota chief Crazy Horse reportedly had one or two winktemves. 17

Williams quotes a Lakota medicine man who spoke of the pressures on the winktes in the 1920s and 1930s. "Themissionaries and the governmentagents said winktes were no good, andtried to get them to change their ways.Some did, and put on men's clothing.But others, rather than change, wentout and hanged themselves."18

Up until 1989, the Two-Spirit voices I heard lived only in the pages of books.But that year I was honored to beinvited to Minneapolis for the first gathering of Two-Spirit Native people, theirloved ones, and supporters. The bondsof friendship I enjoyed at the first eventwere strengthened at the third gathering in Manitoba in 1991. There, I foundmyself sitting around a campfire at thebase of tall pines under the rolling col-ors of the northern lights,drinking strong tea out ofametal cup. I laughed easilyrelaxed with old friends andnew ones. Some were feminine men or masculinewomen; all shared same-sexdesire. Yet not all of thesepeople were transgendered,and not all of the Two-Spirits I'd readabout desired people of the same sex.Then what defined this group?

I turned to Native people for theseanswers. Even today, in 1995. I readresearch papers and articles aboutsex/gender systems in Native nations in which every source cited is a white socialscientist. When I began to write thisbook, I asked Two-Spirit people to talkabout their own cultures, in their ownwords.

Chrystos, a brilliant Two-Spirit poet and writer from the Menominee nation, offered me this understanding:"Life among First Nation people,before first contact, is hard to reconstruct. There's been so much abuse of traditional life by the Christian Church. But certain things have filtered down to us. Most of the nations that I know of traditionally had more than two genders. It varies from tribe to tribe. The concept of Two-Spiritedness is a rather rough translation into English of that idea. I think the English language is rigid, and the thought patterns that form it are rigid, so that gender also becomes rigid.

"The whole concept ofgender is more fluid in traditional life. Those paths are not necessarily aligned with your sex, although they may be. People might choose their gender according to their dreams, for example. So even the idea that your gender is something you dream about is not even a concept in Western culture - which posits you are born a certain biological sex and therefore there's a role you must step into and follow pretty rigidly for the rest of your life. That's how we got the concept ofqueer. Anyone who doesn't follow their assigned gender role is queer; all kinds of people are lumped together under that word."19

Does being Two-Spirit determine your sexuality? I asked Chrystos. "In tra- ditional life a Two-Spirit person can be heterosexual or what we would call homosexual," she replied. "You could also be a person who doesn't have sex with anyone and lives with the spirits. The gender fluidity is part of a larger concept, which I guess the most accurate English word for is 'tolerance.' It's a whole different way of conceiving how to be in the world with other people. We think about the world in terms of rela- tionship, so each person is always in a matrix, rather than being seen only as an individual - which is a very different way of looking at things."20

Chrystos told me about her Navajo friend Wesley Thomas, who describes himself as nadleeh-like. A male nadleeh, she said, "would manifest in the world as a female and take a husband and participate in tribal life as a female person." I e-mailed Wesley, who lives in Seattle, for more information about the nadleeh tradition. He wrote back that "nadleeh was a category for women who were/are masculine and also feminine males."21

The concept of nadleeh, he explained, is incorporated into Navajo origin or creation stories. "So, it is a cul- tural construction," he wrote, "and was part of the normal Navajo culture, from the Navajo point of view, through the nineteenth century. It began changing dur- ing the first half of the twentieth century due to the introduction of western education and most of all, Christianity. Nadleeh since then has moved underground."22

Wesley, who spent the first thirty years of life on the Eastern Navajo reservation, wrote that in his initial fieldwork research he identified four categories of sex: female/woman, male/man, fe- male/man, and male /woman. "Where I began to identify gender on a continuum - meaning placing female at one end and male on the other end - I placed forty-nine different gender identifications in between. This was derived at one sitting, not from carrying out a full and comprehensive fieldwork research. This number derived from my own understanding of gender within the Navajo cosmology. "

I have faced so much persecution because of my gender expression that I also wanted to hear about the experiences of someone who grew up as a "masculinegirl" in traditional Native life. I thought of Spotted Eagle, who I had met in Manitoba, and who lives in Georgia. Walking down an urban street, Spotted Eagle's gender expression, as well as her nationality, could make her the target of harassmentand violence. But she is White Mountain Apache, and I knew she had grown up withher own traditions on the reservation. How was she treated?

"I was born in 1945," Spotted Eagle told me. "I grew up totally accepted. I knewfrom birth, and everyone around me knew I was Two-Spirited. I was honored. I wasa special creation; I was given certain gifts because of that, teachings to share withmy people and healings. But that changed - not in my generation, but in generations to follow."

There were no distinct pronouns in her ancient language, she said. "There werethree variations: the way the women spoke, the way the men spoke, and the cere-monial language." Which way of speaking did she use? "I spoke all three. So did thetwo older Two-Spirit people on my reservation."24

Spotted Eagle explained that the White Mountain Apache nation was small and isolated, and so had been less affected early on by colonial culture. As a result, theU.S. government didn't set up the mission school system on the White Mountain reservation until the late 1930s or early 1940s. Spotted Eagle said she experiencedher first taste of bigotry as a Two-Spirit in those schools. "I was taken out of the mis-sion school with the help of my people and sent away to live with an aunt off reser-vation, so I didn't get totally abused by Christianity. I have some very horriblememories of the short time I was there."25

"But as far as my own people," Spotted Eagle continued, "we were a matriarchy,and have been through our history. Women are in a different position in a matri-archy than they are out here. It's not that we have more power or more privilegethan anyone else, it's just a more balanced way to be. Being a woman was a plus andbeing Two-Spirit was even better. I didn't really have any negative thoughts aboutbeing Two-Spirit until I left the reservation."26

Spotted Eagle told me that as a young adult she married. "My husband was alsoTwo-Spirit and we had children. We lived in a rather peculiar way according to stan-dards out here. Of course it was very normal for us. We faced a lot of violence, butwe learned to cope with it and go on."27

Spotted Eagle's husband died many years ago. Today her partner is a woman.Her three children are grown. "Two of them are Two-Spirit." she said proudly."We're all very close."28

I asked her where she found her strength and pride. "It was given to me by the people around me to maintain," she explained. "If your whole life is connected spiritually, then you learn that self-pride - the image of self - is connected with everythingelse. That becomes part of who you are and you carry that wherever you are.

What was responsible for the imposition of the present-dax rigid sex gender system in North America? It is not correct to simply blame patriarchy, Chrystos stressed to me."The real word is 'colonization' and what it has done to the world. Patriarchy is a tool of colonization and exploitation of people and their lands for wealthy white people."3

"The Two-Spirit tradition was suppressed," she explained, "l ike all Name spiri- tuality, it underwent a tremendous time of suppression. So there's gaps. Bui we've continued on with our spiritual traditions. We are still attached to this land and the place of our ancestors and managed to protect our spiritual traditions and our lan- guages. We have always been at war. Despite everything - incredible onslaughts that even continue now - we have continued and we have survived."31

Like a gift presented at a traditional give away, Native people have patiently given me a greater understanding of the diverse cultures that existed in the Western hemisphere before colonization.

But why did many Native cultures honor sex/gender diversity, while European colonialists were hell-bent on wiping it out? And how did the Europeans immediately recognize Two-Spiritedness? Were there similar expressions in European societies?

Thinking back to my sketchy high-school education, I could only remember one person in Europe whose gender expression had made history.

They Called Her "Hommasse"

Didn't Joan of Arc wear men's clothes?" I asked a friend over coffee in 1975. She had a graduate degree in history; I had barely squeaked through high school. I waited for her answer with great anticipation, but she dismissed my question with a wave of her hand. "It wasjust armor." She seemed so sure, but I couldn't let my question go. Joan of Arc was the only person associated with cross-dressing in history I'd grown up hearing about.

I thought a great deal about my friend's answer. Was the story ofJoan ofArc dress- ing in men's clothing merely legend? Was wearing armor significant? If a society strictly mandates only men can be warriors, isn't a woman military leader dressed in armor an example of cross-gendered expression?

All I knew about the feudal period in whichJoan ofArc lived was that lords owned vast tracts of land and lived off the forced agricultural labor of peasants. But I made the decision to study Joan of Arc's life, and her story opened another important window on trans history for me.

In school, we'd quickly glossed over the facts ofJoan ofArc's life. So I hadn't real- ized that in 1431, when she was nineteen years old, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church because she refused to stop dressing in garb traditionally worn by men. And no one had ever taught me that her peasant followers considered Joan of Arc - and her clothing - sacred.

I discovered that more than ten thousand books have been written aboutJoan of Arc's extraordinary life. She was an illiterate daughter of the peasant class, who as a teenager demonstrated a brilliant military leadership that helped birth the nationstate of France. What impressed me the most, however, was her courage in defending her right to self-expression. Yet I was frustrated at how many texts analyzedJoan of Arc solely as an individual, removed from the dynamics of a tumultuous period and place. I was particularly interested in understanding the social soil in which this remarkable person was rooted.

Joan of Arc was born in Domremy, in the province of Lorraine, around 1412. Only half a century before her birth, the bubonic plague had torn the fabric of the feudal order. One-third of the population of Europe was wiped out, whole provinces were depopulated. Peasant rebellions were shaking the very foundations of European feudalism.

At the time, France was gripped by the Hundred Years War. French peasants suf-fered plunder and violence at the hands of the marauding English occupationarmies. The immediate problem for the peasantry was how to oust the English army,a task the French nobility had been unable to accomplish.

Joan of Arc emerged as a leader during this period of powerful social earth-quakes. In 1429, dressed in men's clothing, this confident seventeen year old pre-sented herself and a group of her followers at the court ofPrince Charles, heir to theFrench throne. In the context of feudal life, in which religion permeated everything, Joan asserted that her mission, motivation, and mode of dress were directedby God. She declared her goal: to forge an army of peasants to drive out the English.Prince Charles placed her at the head of a ten-thousand-strong peasant army.

The rest is history that has been replayed again and again in text and film.Unable to read or write, Joan ofArc dictated a letter to the King of England and theDuke of Bedford, leader of the English occupying army in Orleans, demanding thevleave French soil, vowing, "[I]f you do not do so, you will remember it by reason ofyour great sufferings." 1

On April 28, 1429, Joan led a march on Orleans. The next day, she entered thecity at the head of her peasant army. By May 8, the English were routed. Over thenext months, she further proved her genius as a military strategist and her abilitv toinspire the rank-and-file soldiers by liberating other French villages and towns andforcing the English to retreat.

Joan persuaded Charles to go to Rheims to receive the crown. It was an arduoustrip - long and dangerous - through territory still occupied by English troops.Although her army was exhausted and famished along the way, they forced the English to yield still more turf. As Charles was crowned King of France, Joan stood beside him, holding her combat banner. The French nation-state, soon to be fully liberated from occupation, was born.

On May 23, 1430, Joan was captured by the Burgundians, French allies of the English feudal lords. The Burgundians referred to her as hommasse, a slur meaning "manwoman," or masculine woman.2 Had she been a knight or nobleman, King Charles would have offered a ransom for Joan's freedom, since ransom was the customary method of freeing knights and nobility captured in battle. Even the sums were fixed - one could ransom a royal prince for 10,000 livres of gold, or 61,125 francs. 3 Once ran- som was offered, it had to be accepted. ButJoan's position as military leader of a popular peasant movement threatened the very French ruling class she helped lift to power. The French nobility didn't offer a single franc for her release. What an arrogant betrayal. How anxious they must have been to be rid of her.

The English urged the Catholic Church to condemn Joan for cross-dressing. The king ofEngland, Henry VI, wrote to the infamousInquisitor Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop ofBeauvais: "It is sufficiently notorious and well- known that for some time past a woman callingherselfJeanne the Pucelle (the Maid) , leavingoff the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominablebefore God, and forbidden by all laws, woreclothing and armour such as is worn by men."Buried beneath this outrage against Joan'scross-dressing was a powerful class bias. It wasan affront to nobility for a peasant to weararmor and ride a fine horse. This offense waslater elaborated in one of the charges againstJoan that claimed she dressed "in rich andsumptuous habits, precious stuffs and cloth ofgold and furs."4

The Burgundians sold Joan of Arc to theEnglish, who turned her over to the Inquisi-tion in November 1430.Joan was held in a civil prison in Rouen, France, an English stronghold at that time. She was reportedlv guardedby English male soldiers who slept in her cell, in violation of the Church's own rules. She wasshackled in a small iron cage "in which she waskept standing, chained by her neck, her handsand her feet," according to the locksmith whobuilt the cage.5

Joan's trial began in Rouen on Januan 9, 1431. The Grand Inquisitors condemnedJoanfor cross-dressing and accused her of beingraised a pagan. Church leaders had longcharged that the district of her birth, Lorraine, was a hotbed of paganism and witchcraft. One of the principal accusations againstJoan was that she associated with "fairies, a charge leveled by the Church in their waragainst paganism. (Which, incidentally,derives from the Latin paganus, meaning ruraldweller or peasant.) The Church was wagingwar against peasants who resisted patriarchal theology and still held onto some of the old pre-Christian religious beliefs and matrilineal traditions. This was true of peasants in the area of Lorraine, even in the period ofJoan's lifetime. For instance, the custom of giving children the mother's surname, not the father's, still survived there. 7

Scapegoating Joan of Arc and the area of her birth fueled the Church's reac- tionary campaign. And the moreJoan ofArc was idolized by her followers, the more she posed a threat to the Church's religious rule. Article III of the Articles ofAccusations stated this clearly: "Item, the said Joan by her inventions has seduced the Catholic people, many in her presence adored her as a saint... even more, they declared her the greatest of all the saints after the holy Virgin "8 No wonder the Church fathers feared her!

On April 2, 1431, the Inquisition dropped the charges of witchcraft againstJoan, because they were too hard to prove. Instead, they denounced her for asserting that her cross-dressing was a religious duty compelled by voices she heard in visions, and for maintaining that these voices were a higher authority than the Church. Many his- torians and academicians viewJoan ofArc's wearing men's clothing as inconsequential. Yet the core of the charges againstJoan focused on her cross-dressing, the crime for which she ultimately was executed. However, the following quote from the verba- tim court proceedings of her interrogation reveals it wasn't just Joan of Arc cross- dressing that enraged herjudges, but her cross-gendered expression as a whole:

You have said that, by God's command, you have continually worn man's dress, wearing the short robe, doublet, and hose attached by points; that you have also worn your hair short, cut en rond above your ears, with nothing left that could show you to be a woman; and that on many occasions you received the Body of our Lord dressed in this fash- ion, although you have been frequently admonished to leave it off, which you have refused to do, saying that you would rather die than leave it off, save by God's command. And you said further that if you were still so dressed and with the king and those of his party, it would be one of the greatest blessings for the kingdom of France; and you have said that not for anything would you take an oath not to wear this dress or carry arms; and concerning all these matters you have said that you did well, and obediently to God's command. As for these points, the clerks say that you blaspheme God in His sacraments; that you transgress divine law, the Holy Scriptures and the canon law; you hold the Faith doubtfully and wrongly; you boast vainly; you are suspect of idolatry; and you condemn yourself in being unwill- ing to wear the customary clothing of your sex, and following the cus- tom of the Gentiles and the Heathen.9

Even though she knew her defiance meant she was considered damned,Joan's testi- mony in her own defense revealed how deeply her cross-dressing was rooted in her identity. "For nothing in the world," she declared, "will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man's dress."

But by April 24, 1431, Joan'sjudges claimed she had recanted, after having beentaken on a tour of the torture chamber, and brought to a cemetery where she wasshown a scaffold that her tormentors said awaited her if she did not repent. Joanallegedly accused herself of wearing clothing that violated natural decency, andagreed to submit to the Church's authority and wear women's apparel. She was"mercifully" sentenced to life in prison on bread and water - in women's dress.

However, sinceJoan could neither read nor write, did she know the exact detailsof what she was signing? This is an important question, because cross-dressing wasnot a capital offense at that time. And the Inquisition did not have the power to turna heretic over to the secular state for execution. But the churchjudges were empowered to condemn a relapsed heretic. 11

Did Pierre Cauchon, the Inquisitor, trick Joan into making her mark on a document that signed away more than she'd realized? Perhaps Cauchon later revealedthe exact contents of the phony confession in hopes she would renege. Or wereparchments switched? Witnesses described Joan making her mark on a short declaration; the confession in the court records is very long. 12

Whatever the case, Joan recanted the alleged abjuration within days andresumed wearing men's clothes. Herjudges asked her why she had done so. whenputting on male garb meant certain death. According to the court record she saidshe had done so "of her own will. And that nobody had forced her to do so. Andthatshe preferred man's dress to woman's." Joan told the judges she "had neverintended to take an oath not to take man's dress again."13 The Inquisition sentencedher to death for resuming male dress, saying "time and again you have relapsed, asa dog that returns to its vomit. . . ." H

Joan ofArc was burned alive at the stake on May 30, 1 431 , in Rouen. She was nine-teen years old. The depth of her enemies' hatred toward her transgender expression was demonstrated at her execution, when they extinguished the flames inorder to prove she was a "real" woman. After her clothing was burned away andJoanwas presumed dead, one observer wrote, "Then the fire was raked back and hernaked body shown to all the people and all the secrets that could or should belongto a woman, to take away any doubts from people's minds."15

Joan of Arc suffered the excruciating pain of being burned alive rather thanrenounce her identity. I know the kind of seething hatred that resulted in her murder - I've faced it. But I wish I'd been taught the truth about her life and her couragewhen I was a frightened, confused trans youth. What an inspirational role model-abrilliant transgender peasant teenager leading an army of laborers into battle.

But one aspect of the information I'd gathered left me puzzled. Why did the feu-dal ruling class and the Church abhor her transgender so violently, while the peas-ants considered it so sacred? There's no question how much Joan of Arc washonored by the peasantry. Even the Church admitted that the peasants consideredher the greatest of all the saints after the holy Virgin.

It's also clear thatJoan of Arc's cross-dressing was central to that reverence. Gay historian Arthur Evans noted that before Joan was captured by the Burgundians:"[W]henever she appeared in public she was worshipped like a deity by the peas-ants The peasants believed that she had the power to heal, and many would flock around her to touch part of her body or her clothing (which was men's clothing). Subsequently her armor was kept on display at the Church of St. Denis, where it was worshipped." 16

According to Professor Margaret A. Murray, "The enormous importance as to the wearing of the male costume is emphasized by the fact that as soon as it was known in Rouen that Joan was again dressed as a man the inhabitants crowded into the castle courtyard to see her, to the great indignation of the English soldiers who promptly drove them out with hard words and threats of hard blows."17

I could not answer, yet, why the peasants venerated Joan of Arc's cross-dressing. But I thought back to a clue buried in the con- demnation ofJoan by herjudges. What did they mean when they charged that her cross-dressing was "following the custom of the Gentiles and the Heathen?" What cus- tom? Were there other examples of cross- dressing among the peasantry? Did the peasants consider transgender itself to be sacred? If so, why?

I had no idea where to find the answers to these questions.

Part 2

Our Sacred Past

I remember riding a bus in the middle of the night during a bitter snowstorm in the early months of 1976. was traveling, along with many other activists, to a political conference in Chicago. Unable to sleep, I read a xeroxed copy of a Workers World pamphlet so new the typeset copies weren't yet back from the printers. 1 That landmark pamphlet - a Marxist examination of the roots of lesbian and gay oppression - was authored by Bob McCubbin, a gay man I worked with in our New York City branch. I had known Bob was working on that history, but I'd had no concept of how his research and analysis would impact on my life.

I found myselfin those pages. For the first time since I'd acknowledged my own sexual desire to myself, I felt released from a layer of unexamined shame. Bob pre- sented an overview of human history so I could see that same-sex love had always been part of the spectrum of human sexuality. He provided examples of early com- munal societies that honored all forms of human love and affection. Bob analyzed how and why the division of society into classes led to increasingly hostile attitudes by rulers towards same-sex love. And to my surprise, he included examples of accep- tance of transgender in cooperative societies.

As I shivered next to a bus window thick with ice, I cried with relief. I realized how important it was for me to know I had a place in history, that I was part of the human race.

As I read and reread that pamphlet in the years that followed, I saw that I could also approach trans history from a materialist point of view. So I went back and took another look at the charge byjoan's Inquisitors that she followed "the custom of the Gentiles and the Heathen." In my family, gentiles meant non-Jews. But I remembered Engels's use of the term gens- and it occurred to me that the French clerics were referring to free farming communities still organized into gens, the family unit of cooperative matrilineal societies.

I wanted to go back further, to dig around for prehistoric evidence of transgender in communal societies in Europe. But how could I? Although these early communities were cooperative up until about 4000 B.C.E.* - estimated to be the endofthe Stone Age, or the Neolithic period - these ancient farmers and hunters left no written records.

So I combed through books, periodicals, and news clippings devoted to the his-tory of Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. I searched for theearliest written records of any forms of trans expression. Much to my surprise, I found a lot of information.

For example, I discovered abundant evidence of male-to-female transsexualwomen priestesses who played an important role in the worship of the Great Mother.Extensive research by scholars has revealed that this goddess, not male gods, was ven-erated throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa, Europe and western Asia.

The Great Mother was emblematic of pre-class communalism. Today, many scholars describe her as a female goddess. But perhaps those who revered her saw thisdivinity as more complex. While it's impossible today to interpret preciselv how people who lived millennia ago viewed this goddess, Roman historian Plutarchdescribed the Great Mother as an intersexual (hermaphroditic) deity in whomthesexes had not yet been split.

The Great Mother's transsexual priestesses followed an ancient and sacred pathof rituals that included castration. These transsexual priestesses continued to servethe Great Mother in societies in which class divisions were just developing. They aredocumented in Mesopotamian temple records from the middle of the third millen-nium B.C.E., and are also found in Assyrian, Akkadian, and Babylonian records.

Many Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Near Eastern goddesses were servedby transsexual priestesses, including the Syrian Astarte and Dea Syria at Hierapolis,Artemis, Atargatis, Ashtoreth or Ishtar, Hecate at Laguire, and Artemis (Diana) atEphesus. Statues of Diana were often represented draped with a necklace madeofthe testicles of her priestesses.4

Transsexual women priestesses known as gallae were found in such large numbers in Anatolia, an area which today is part of Turkey, that some classical texts report as many as five thousand in some cities. 5 The gallae served the Great Mother, known to the Phrygians as Cybele, whose worship is believed to date back to the Stone Age.6

Was the sacred service of transsexual priestesses a practice rooted in communal matrilineal societies? Or was it an example of men, living under patriarchy, castrating themselves in order to wrest this position from women? Not all researchers and histo- rians agree.

For example, historian David F. Greenberg's find- ings seem to support the first position. He concludes that evidence of trans shamans, "among peoples whose later ways of life have been very diverse, suggests that the role does date back to the late Paleolithic (if not earlier)."7

Feminist researcher Merlin Stone is a prominent spokesperson for the latter argument. She wrote about the transition in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures from communal to early class- divided societies. Stone argues: "It seems quite possi- ble that as men began to gain power, even within the religion of the Goddess, they replaced priestesses. They may have initially gained this right by identifying with and imitating the castrated state of the son/lover; or in an attempt to imitate the female clergy, which originally held the power, they may have tried to rid themselves of their maleness by adopting the ritual of castration and the wearing of women's clothing."8

Stone's argument rests on a biological deter- minist definition of these transsexual priestesses as men. But how could priestesses who had "rid themselves of their maleness" expect to curry much favor with the new wealthy men who so valued males over females? Besides being bereft of "maleness," these priestesses continued the practice of matrilineal goddess worship that rivaled the patriarchal religions of new male-dominated ruling classes.

And what about the statement that the female clergy "originally held the power"? From where did women's "power" derive in cooperative societies? Was it based on holding the spiritual reins?

Anthropologists have reconstructedpatterns of life in Stone Age Europe,inmuch the same way as paleontologists haverebuilt models of dinosaurs. The Stone Agewas a span of human development beforethe use of metals, when tools and huntingimplements were fashioned from stone.Humans lived by hunting and food gathering; group labor was cooperative.

In these early societies, most menhunted while most women developedadivision of labor in large centers of production and shared the responsibility of child-care. Women didn't rule ot^rmen, the waymen dominate women in a patriarchal society. There were no signs of pharaohs andemperors, queens or presidents, who livedin luxury while others toiled in squalor.Leadership could not be coerced orbought, so it had to be earned throughgroup respect.

The family structure of these societieswas matrilineal and matrilocal - meaningwomen headed the family groupings andthe collective homes. Blood descent andinheritance were traced through women.In these Stone Age societies, womenwereso respected that anthropologist JacquettaHawkes concluded, "Indeed, it is tempting to be convinced that the earliest Neolithic societies throughout their range in time and space gave woman the highest status she has ever known."9

But did these cooperative societies only have room for two sexes, fixed at birth? It has become common for social scientists to conclude that the earliest human divi- sion of labor between women and men in communal societies formed the basis for modern sex and gender boundaries. But the more I studied, the more I believed that the assumption that every society, in every corner of the world, in every period of human history, recognized only men and women as two immutable social cate- gories is a modern Western conclusion. It's time to take another look at what we've long believed was an ancient division of labor between only two sexes.

Our earliest ancestors do not appear to have been biological determinists. There are societies all over the world that allowed for more than two sexes, as well as respecting the right of individuals to reassign their sex. And transsexuality, transgender, intersexuality, and bigender appear as themes in creation stories, legends, parables, and oral history.

As I've already documented, many Native nations on the North American continent made room for more than two sexes, and there appeared to have been a fluidity between them. Reports by military expeditions, missionaries, ethnographers, anthropologists, explorers, and other har- bingers of colonialism cited numerous forms of sex-change, transgender, and intersexuality in matrilineal societies - societies where men were not in a dominant position. In these accounts - no matter how racist or angrily distorted by the colonial narrative voice - it is clear that transsexual priestesses and other trans spiritual leaders, or medicine people, have existed in many ancient cultures.

It's not possible in many of the following examples to make a distinction betweentranssexual, transgender, bigender, or mixed gender expression. However, transspiritual leaders played a role in far-flung cultures all over the world.

For example, African spiritual beliefs in intersexual deities and sex/gendertransformation among their followers have been documented among the Akan,Ambo-Kwanyama, Bobo, Chokwe, Dahomeans (of Benin), Dogon, Bambara, Etik.Handa, Humbe, Hunde, Ibo, Jukun, Kimbundu, Konso, Kunama, Lamba, Lango,Luba, Lulua, Musho, Nuba, Ovimbundu, Rundi, Shona-Karonga, Venda, VUi-Kongo,and Yoruba.

Transgender in religious ceremony is still reported in the twentieth century inwest Africa. And cross-dressing is a feature of modern Brazilian and Haitian cere-monies derived from west African religions. 11

In addition, male-to-female shamans have been recorded among the Araman1- ans in southern Chile and parts of Argentina. 12 They are also reported amongtheGuajire, a cattle-herding people of northwest Venezuela and northern Colombia,13 and the Tehuelche, who were hunter-gatherers in Argentina. 14

Transgender historian Pauline Park, who is Korean American, wrote to me abouttrans spiritual expression in Asia:

Transgendered identities and practices have been documentedinevery traditional Asian society. In some Asian traditions, transgendered figures perform religious or quasi-religious functions. One suchexample is the basaja of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (the Celebes) . 16 The hijra of India also can be understood in a religious context, in relation to the mother-goddess Bahuchara Mata, though some hijras also worship the Hindu god Shiva in his manifestation as the half- man, half-woman Ardhanarisvara. 11 Finally, the mudang must be mentioned. The Korean mudangwas a shaman or sorceress who frequently was a transgendered male, and like many other shamanic traditions, the idea that combining the characteristics of both sexes and both genders could connect one to a tran- scendent spiritual realm seemed to underlie the practice.

In ancient China, the shih-niangwore a combination of female, male, and religious garb. 19 In Okinawa, some shamans took part in an ancient male-to-female ceremony known as winagu nati, which means, "becoming female."20 And trans shamans were still reported practicing in the Vietnamese countryside in the mid-1970s.21

Female-to-male priests also exist - and most importantly, even co-exist with maleto-female shamans. Among the Lugbara in Africa, for example, male-to-females are called okule and female-to-males are named agule. 22 The Zulu initiated both male-to-female and female-to-male isangoma. While male-to-female shamans have been part of the traditional life of the Chukchee, Kamchadal, Koryak, and Inuit - all Native peoples of the Arctic Basin - Inuit female-to-males serve White Whale Woman, who was believed to have been transformed into a man or a woman-man.23 And female-to-male expression is part of rituals and popular festivals with deep matrilineal roots in every corner of the world - including societies on the European continent.

Women and trans spiritual leaders continue to coexist in this century. Although South African Zulu diviners are usually women, some are male-to-female diviners. 24 Among the Ambo people of southern Angola, even in this century, women - including trans women - serve the deity Kalunga.25

And in several areas of the world, the replacement of trans shamans with nontrans women spiritual leaders was a result of patriarchal pressure. For example, Walter Williams wrote that in South America, "Among the precontact Araucanians, the Mapuche, and probably other people, shaman religious leaders were all berdaches. When the Spanish suppressed this religious institution because of its association with male-male sex, the Indi- ans switched to a totally new pattern. Women became the shamans."

Although these brief examples of trans expression are limited to spiritual contexts, thousands of books, essays, and field research cite transgender, bigender, transsexuality, and intersexuality in societies on every continent, in every stage of development. I'm not arguing that all of these examples from diverse cultures are identical to modern Western trans identities. Nor am I trying to unravel the matrix of attitudes and beliefs around trans expression in these societies. The importance for me is the depth and breadth of evidence underscoring that gender and sex diversity are global in character, and that trans people were once revered, not reviled. How else could a trans person be a sacred shaman? In communal societies, where respect could not be bought or sold or stolen, being a shaman, or medicine person, was a position of honor.

So how and why, I wondered, did attitudes towards trans people plummet so drastically?

Why Bigotry Began

The earliest written edicts I could find against cross-dressing and sex-change were in Deuteronomy. Did that makeJews responsible for the rise of this bigotry? I hoped not, since I was sick to death of blame.

I grew up fighting anti-Semitism with balled-up fists. I was one of only fourJewish kids in my grade school. Our absence during religious holidays reminded the bullies who we were, so there was always a fight waiting for me around the school entrances.Jews were not allowed on the school playground. I thought the other kids made up the rule, but years later I discovered it was a parent who had given the instruction to his son and to others to enforce the edict, because, he said, "Jews killed our God!"

I can still remember the night in 1965 when my father, Irving, made an announcement to the whole family at the dinner table: "The pope says the Jews aren't responsible anymore for the crucifixion of Christ!" He added, "Tonight I'll get the first good sleep I've had in two thousand years! " Though it was funny, the so- called absolution didn't blunt the hatred I faced as ajewish teenager.

But being Jewish presented me with my own questions. Why did the religious men I knew thank god every morning in their prayers that they weren't born women? And how could I reconcile myself to the fact that Deuteronomy and Leviti- cus - two of the five books of Mosaic law - condemned my cross-dressing and my sex- ual desire? My resolute insistence on cross-dressing had already cut short my religious education at our synagogue. So where, and to whom, could I go for understanding about how these laws came into being? I felt trapped between the anvil of religious laws I didn't want to defend and the hammer of anti-Semitism.

In my own life, Jews seemed to be a very small part of a larger, dominant culture steeped in bigotry and intolerance. I didn't see howJudaism could be responsible for that.

The more I researched the early Hebrews, the more I understood that blaming Judaism for the rise of biases against women, transsexuals, cross-dressers, intersexuals, lesbians, and gay men is not only anti-Semitic, it's a diversion from the realunderstanding of why oppression arose.

Where did the culpability really lie?

The Hebrews were one of many Semitic tribes that migrated from Arabia into theFertile Crescent region over a long period, estimated by many scholars to be fromabout 1500-1250 B.C.E. These nomadic cattle breeders conquered one city afteranother from the inhabitants of Palestine, increasingly subjecting them to theirrule. But what was won on the battlefield had to be defended by constant warfare.Other nomads were equally anxious for this fertile land. The territory conqueredbvthe Hebrews stood at a crossroads of trade routes that allowed the Hebrewstodevelop extensive commerce.

The accumulation of wealth in the form of herds, agriculture, and trade led todeepening class divisions among the Hebrews, so no wonder the religious beliefsand laws began to reflect the interests of the small group who owned the wealth andtheir struggle to strengthen their control over the majority.

The communal religious beliefs of the Hebrews had not been fundamentallv dif-ferent from that of other polytheistic tribal-based religions of that region. Thev wor-shipped numerous deities, including Yahweh.

So where did trans-phobic and gender-phobic laws in Deuteronomy spring from?Deuteronomy flatly condemns cross-dressing: "The woman shall not wear thatwhich pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for allthat do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."1 And male-to-female surgervwas denounced: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off,shall not enter the congregation of the Lord."2

The patriarchal fathers wouldn't have felt the need to spell out these edictsifthey weren't common practice. But why did they consider cross-dressing and sex-change such a threat? What was going on among the Hebrews at the time Deuteronomy was written?

Scholars hotly debate the date, as well as the authorship, of these laws. Estimatesrange from the eleventh to the seventh centuries B.C.E. But what is clear is thatDeuteronomy reflects the deepening of patriarchal class divisions amongtheHebrews, who lived in and around communal societies that still worshipped goddesses such as Astaroth, Ishtar, Isis, and Cybele. And remember, ritual sex-changewas a sacred path for many priestesses of these matrilineal religious traditions.

The condemnation against "cross-dressing," historians Bonnie and Vernon Bul-lough wrote, "formed part of a campaign against the Syrian goddess Atargatis. whowas probably a Syrian version of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar. In some of the w orshipceremonies, the followers of Atargatis dressed in the clothes and assumed the roleof the opposite sex, just as their Greek counterparts did."4

In addition, the laws warned againstjews cross-dressing. These rules forbadeJewish men from using makeup, wearing brightly colored clothes, jewelry, or orna-ments associated with women, or shaving their pubic hair. Women were told to keeptheir hair long, while men were to keep theirs clipped short.' On the one hand,these rules could be seen from the point of view that cross-dressing and cross-gendered expression as a whole retained an integral connection to the worship of the Mother Goddess.

But it's also important to remember that wealthy Hebrew males were trying to consolidate their patriarchal rule. That means they were very much con- cerned about making distinctions be- tween women and men, and eliminating any blurring or bridging of those cate- gories. That would also explain why the rules of ownership of property and the rights of intersexual people were extensively detailed in Jewish law. 6

The Hebrews and Judaism were not to blame for the rise of patriarchy or oppression. Class divisions were responsible for the growth of laws that placed new boundaries and restrictions across bodies, self-expression, and desire - as well as fencing off property and wealth. And the Hebrews weren't even the first society to split into classes, or to develop increasingly patriarchal laws. That transformation took place in societies all over the world.

More than a century ago, Frederick Engels explained the importance of these dramatic changes in human society. Engels compared the significance of research into early forms of kinship by Lewis H. Morgan7 to Darwin's theory of evolution. Morgan, who studied the North American Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) and numerous tribes in Asia, Africa, and Australia, documented that matrilineal kinship historically preceded patriarchal families. Engels and Karl Marx saw Morgan's studies as proof that the oppression of women began with the cleavage of society into male-dominated classes based on private ownership of property and the accumulation of wealth.

I believe the same historic overthrow of communalism was also responsible for trans oppression.

In every society in which human labor grew more productive with the use of improved tools and techniques, people stored up more than what they needed for immediate consumption. This surplus was the first accumulation of wealth. Generally, men, who had primarily been wild-game hunters, domesticated and herded large animals, which represented the first wealth. Men, therefore, were in charge of stockpiling this abundance: cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and the surplus of dried and smoked meats and hides, milk, cheese, and yogurt.

Prior to this surplus, tools, utensils, and other possessions were commonly owned within the matrilineal gens. As wealth accumulated in the male sphere of labor, the family structure began to change, and men began to pass on inheritance to their male heirs. Those who had large families and other advantages gathered and storedmore surplus. These inequalities, small at first, became the basis of the enrichmentof some male tribal members over the women and the tribe as a whole.

This material imbalance led to the unplanned and unconscious transformationof human society. Communal societies, in which labor was voluntary and collective,gave way to unequal societies in which those who owned wealth forced others towork for them - an enforced social relationship of masters and slaves. This tookplace at different times in different places over a period of manv centuries.

No matter where or when this occurred, everything that had once been consid-ered natural was turned on its head in the service of the new owning classes. Cre-ation of a slave class required the branding - either literally or figuratively - of somepeople as "different," and therefore unworthy of a free status. This stigma, whetherrace, nationality, religion, sex, or gender, was meant to dehumanize the individualsandjustify their enslavement.

Shackling a vast laboring class meant creating armies, police, courts, and prisonsto enforce the ownership of private property. However, whips and chains alonecouldn't ensure the rule of the new wealthy elite. A tiny, parasitic class can't live in luxury off the wealth of a vast, laboring class without keeping the majority dividedand pitted against each other. That is where the necessity for bigotry began.

I found the origin of trans oppression at this intersection betw een the overthrowof mother-right and the rise of patriarchal class-divided societies. It is at this verjnexus that edicts like Deuteronomy arose. Law, including religious law. codifiedclass relations.

The earliest overthrow of mother-right took place in the fertile river valleys of Eurasia and northeast Africa during the period of about 4500 to 1200 b.c.e. In this new social structure, riven by inequality, male ruling class attitudes toward women and trans people grew more and more hostile, even toward transgendered queens and kings.

For example, Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled Egypt in the fifteenth century B.C.E. , "assumed masculine attire, was represented as god and king, and wore the symbolic false beard. In murals she was pictured with short hair, bare shoulders, and was usually devoid of breasts. S/he described herself by male names." Ruling with the support of the temple community, Hatshepsut built grand monuments in honor of the god Amun. Yet after her death, she and the god she honored faced a campaign of hostility, with her second husband attempting to erase all memory of her. 8

Some eight hundred years later, in the seventh century B.C.E. , King Ashurbanipal (Sardanapalus), the last of the Assyrian kings, was described by a physician in his court as spending a great deal of his time dressed in women's clothing. Key nobles used reports of Ashurbanipal 's cross-dressing to justify overthrowing him. Ashurbanipal waged a defensive military campaign against these rivals but was twice defeated in battle. As a result, his rule was limited to his capital city. Finally facing defeat, Ashurbanipal set fire to his palace, killing everyone in it - including himself.9

Hostility to transgender, sex-change, intersexuality, women, and same-sex love became a pattern wherever class antagonisms deepened. As a Jewish, transgender, working-class revolutionary, I can't stress enough that Judaism was not the root of the oppression of women and the outlawing of trans expression and same-sex love. The rise of patriarchal class divisions were to blame.

And I found that wherever the ruling classes became stronger, the laws grew increasingly more fierce and more relentlessly enforced.

But They Had Slaves!

What was I taught in school about Greek antiquity? I recall only one moment. It was springtime, and I was gazing out the window, longing to be released from school. My teacher's voice droned, the harsh lights buzzed overhead, the giant clock ticked. At that very moment my teacher rapped on my desk and ordered me to pay attention. I sat bolt upright and tried to concentrate, which is the only reason I heard the following statement so clearly: "Greek democracy was the highest expression of ancient civi- lization."

I slumped back down in my chair and listened half-heartedly to a stream of facts and dates. Suddenly I heard the word "slaves." I urgently raised my hand and asked, "Were there slaves in Greece?" As the other kids giggled, I guessed I had missed that part of class. Later that day I wandered down to a stretch of woods tucked along the edges of my neighborhood. As I placed pennies on the train tracks and crouched waiting for the train to roar past, I thought about my teacher's earlier statement that "Greek democracy was the highest expression of civilization." If it was so civilized, how come they had slaves?

I've heard some gay men and lesbians exclaim that, out of all of human history, ancient Greek society was the most accepting of same-sex lovers. But I wonder, how happy were the gay slaves? The word democracy has a pleasant ring, but democracy for whom? The political reality is that Greek democracy was a form of state based on the authoritarian rule of the slave-owning patricians over the enslaved majority.

I found that, as with virtually every ancient people, the early tribes of Greece were communal and matrilineal. But the rise of the Greek city-states during the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.E. was based on slave labor, plunder, and trade. The longer the ruling patricians held power, the more women's status became degraded and expressions of human love became subject to legal dictate.

It's true I did find many, many trans references in Greek culture, religion, art, and mythology. But whatever homage trans expression still enjoyed was a holdover from the communal past. It was hard for the Greek patriarchs to diminish the honor that transgender and intersexuality still held among the laboring class. The patriar-chal priests in Greece were hemmed in by the popularity of ancient religions - somedating from matriarchal times - and by schools of secular philosophers who playeda vital role in politics and education. 1 Wherever ancient rituals still persisted inGreece, so did trans expression. There were numerous festivals, rituals, and customsin which men dressed in women's clothing, and women wore men's clothes andbeards. 2

Greek mythology was also filled with references to sex-change, intersexuality,and cross-dressing. Many mythological heroes and gods cross-dressed at one timeoranother, including Achilles, Heracles, Dionysus, and Athena. "Literal andmetaphoric sex change," notes classical scholar P. M. C. Forbes Irving, "seemstohave been a subject of considerable imaginative interest in the ancient world andhad some importance in ancient religion."3

But changing attitudes toward trans people and the sharpening patriarchal classdivisions are reflected in the Greek legends, in the same way that the mythologicaldefeat of goddesses by male gods mirrored the overthrow of matrilineal societies.For example, Kaineus (Caeneus) , a female-to-male figure in mythology, is viewedasa "scorner and rival of the gods."4 He is driven into the earth by the Centaurs whoconsidered Kaineus an outrage to their masculinity.

Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, was one of the gods who replaced the pre-classgoddesses. But Dionysus was represented as a transgendered, cross-dressing god-ahybridization of the old beliefs and the new. During the rites of Dionysus, females-known as ithyphalloi -dressed in men's clothes and carried large phalluses, and mendressed in women's apparel.5

Dionysus held great popularity with the most downtrodden, notes Forbes Irving:

Perhaps the most striking feature of Dionysus, and one which seems particularly relevant to his role as a shape-shifter, is that although he becomes one of the greatest of all the gods he retains in his myths and many of his cults a marginal character. He is above all the god of the weak and oppressed, especially women, and an opponent of the established order.6

The slave-owners were not easily able to impose their brutal system, or their beliefs, on peoples who had once lived freely and worked cooperatively. The patricians couldn't rule without fighting wars and crushing rebellions.

To my surprise, I discovered that one particular group of warriors who fought against this enslavement was considered transgendered, at least by the Greeks - the Amazons. I knew a little about the Amazons because they were such a symbol of freedom and resistance for modern feminists. However, I had always thought of these warriors as "woman-identified women." But were the Amazons also an example of transgender resistance?

The ancient Amazons fought in the gateway between freedom and slavery, between the over- throw of matrilineal communal societies and the ascendancy of patriarchal class rule. Numerous battles between Amazon warriors and the Greek armies are documented in art and legends. The double-edged axe the Amazons reportedly car- ried in battle has become a symbol of modern feminist pride.

Yet while the Amazons are almost always portrayed as feminine, there is evidence the Greeks thought of them as transgendered. Classical writer Pliny the Younger referred to "the race of the Androgynae, who combine the two sexes. . . . Aristotle adds that in all of them the right breast is that of a man, the left breast that of a woman."7

The right breast of a man, the left breast of a woman - this sounds very much like a description of the Amazons. The only thing I had heard about the legendary Amazons was that they surgically removed their right breast because, they were archers. But that had always struck me as a rather simplistic explanation.

To the Greeks, these Amazons were masculine women who bore themselves likemen. And they weren't the only transgendered Scythians. The Greeks were wellaware of the transsexual priestesses among the Scythians, who were trading partnersand competitors in the Black Sea. And even in legends, the Amazon leaders werepaired in battles with Greek male warriors such as Achilles, Theseus, and Heracles-all ofwhom were reported in mythology as having cross-dressed at one time. In addition, the Amazons were believed to have a spiritual connection with Dionvsus, thetransgendered god.8

And was the Amazon's weapon - the double-edged axe - a "man's" armamentmerely because it was a weapon of war, or did it symbolize intersexuality?

Greek historian Plutarch wrote that Heracles gave Queen Omphale the doubleaxe he had taken from a defeated Amazon as a spoil of war; both Heracles andOmphale were reported to have cross-dressed. Eventually, the axe was given inhomage to Zeus Labrandeus, who was represented in a bronze statue as a beardlessdeity holding the double axe, the upper body bearing four rows of breasts. So theaxe passed, as Delcourt concluded, "from a warrior-woman to a hero and a queenwho have exchanged clothing; afterwards it goes to a father-god represented as hav-ing breasts; indications of androgyny are particularly abundant here."9

Were the Amazons a shining example of transgender resistance? If so, ScythianAmazons are part of the overlapping history ofwomen and trans people. And I knewthat the Amazons were not the only female warriors associated with transgender.

I remembered the description of female-to-male warriors of the Tupinamba,innortheastern Brazil, described in 1576 by Pedro de Magalhaes de Gandavo. Heandother explorers renamed the river that flowed through that area the "River of theAmazons," after the Scythian warriors. And I recalled that both a double-edged axeand cross-gendered expression were central to worship by African and Brazilian fol-lowers of the Yoruba deity Shango - a divinity believed to appear at times as a manand other times as a woman.

As I began to write this chapter, I thought about how the past has been interpreted only from the standpoint of women and men, without taking transgender, bigender, transsexuality, or intersexuality into account. Later that afternoon I received an e- mail from Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a respected bio-geneticist and feminist from Brown University. She called my attention to a short article that appeared in the British Daily Telegraph on February 13, 1995. The clipping, headlined "She-Men," announced the discovery of evidence of transgender, including women warriors, in Iron Age graves in southern Russia by British archeologist Timothy Taylor. "I think I have identified females who moved into a male sphere as well as men who cross- dressed," Taylor wrote. 10

It's time for a fresh look at history. And this time, I don't intend to be left out!

Part 3

Part 4