Attis the Trans-Woman Part 1

This week we are looking at Attis, a figure assigned male at birth who travelled to Phrygia and underwent a gender transition. The experience of Attis mirrors closely the experience of modern trans-women as we start with a figure who was never all that comfortable with male societal roles who is able to flourish upon gender affirmation. 

The story of this transformation and the first few hours after is found in Catullus 63. Though he reflects the general Roman attitude that Attis has become a counterfeit woman, everything about Attis is expressed with feminine terms in the poem. Interpreting this story through a Trans lens allows us to better interpret the emotional period immediately after the sexual reassignment. 

This is Part 1 covering the transition itself, Part 2 will focus on those swirling emotions which express grief for a changing status. 

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity podcast, your home for all things LGBT in the ancient world. I'm your host, Dominica Raven. Episode 8, Attis the Transwoman. Once over the vast sea, a youth named Attis rode in a ship from mainland Greece. Attis is excited to reach the destination in the mystical forests of Phrygia. Once the ship reaches the shores of Anatolia, modern north-central Turkey, Attis pauses on the beach. Using a sharp flint, Attis removed their own genitals. Within an instant, Attis has changed from male into something different. Her arms have lost any manlike strength, her fingers have grown soft and tender, and her arms are now soft and light, having lost any tan acquired on the journey by ship. Attis, a Greek hero assigned male at birth, has become a woman. With her body still dripping blood from the fresh wound, Attis shouts to her companions to do the same, saying, Come with me, Gale, up to the house of Rea Kaibele. You who have braved the seas with me, now unman yourselves and follow me again. Let's play music on flutes, crashing cymbals and tambourines as we dance through the trees. So, in a flurry of movement, the gale twirl and dance through the mountains. These trans women are in a state of heightened ecstasy. They are twirling and dancing in uncontrollable joy. This is a scene where gender dysphoria yields to gendered euphoria. The galleys' minds are filled with an unexpressible amount of joy. They're absolutely overwhelmed by the changes. Once they reach the house of Chaibala, atop a distant mountain, they collapse in sheer exhaustion. Attis is definitely not a standard Greco-Roman deity. Attis is actually a vegetation god, connected especially with fir trees. One story goes that when Attis was killed by a wild boar, Chaibalay transformed their devoted servant into the pine tree itself. Even one of the chief festivals to rea Chaibalae at Rome, called the Hilaria festival, involved a procession of Galilee priestesses moving from the harbor up through Rome while carrying a pine tree. The procession appeared very much like a funerary march, complete with wailing and mourning. The festival functioned as a sort of ritual commemoration of death and resurrection of the immortal Attis. The pine tree, which does not lose its needles in winter, is a symbol of this type of everlasting regenerative life. Attis was an additionally difficult figure because there's a level of geographic alterity. Attis comes from Phrygia, which is in Anatolia, and so a Greek or a Roman author looks at them through the lens of foreignness. Now, the way the Catullus presents it is that Attis is actually a Greek hero who, upon exposure to the corrupting and feminizing power of the East, was changed forever. This is also the version preserved in Pausanias's Travelogue of Greece. Other versions of the story have Attis as originally an Asian deity who was turned west to Roman Greece. Either way, there is this innate foreignness in Attis representing the corrupting and effeminizing risks of traveling to the eastern provinces. The idea that any Greek or Roman man might desire to become feminine has to be a foreign concept. Easterners are effeminate, weirdos, and even a virile man is at risk of corruption. This idea continues to the present. Many conservative politicians sell their attacks on the LGBT community as if it were a foreign import, whether it's the Russians who must defend against gay Europa and the EU's attempts to export homosexuality to the Russian sphere, or a pathetic, disgusting little orange troll arguing that transgender is a conspiracy of powerful liberal elites. Though gender variance gets treated like an invasion, the fear is absurd when one interrogates the alleged conspiracy. No powerful men on this earth are actually willing to stick their neck out for trans people and certainly not use us as a tool of imperialism. However, lots of powerful men all over the earth use the tools of imperialism to coerce their own nation and others into anti-LGBT laws and policies. The fear is wholly unfounded yet devastatingly effective at winning public support against us and justifying cruelty against minorities. We can see this dynamic very clearly in the story of Attis. Attis may have become a woman in Phrygia, but it's just the end of a very long period of transition. Nothing in the poem indicates that Attis was a manly man who got corrupted. Rather, Attis as an effeminate figure from the beginning. The trip to Phrygia is not where gender nonconformity begins, it's where the gender nonconformity was able to flourish. And that is a key distinction. The poem states that Attis was never really a straight-ahead heteronormative figure. Later in the poem, Attis will look back at their previous life. Attis remembers time in the gymnasium and playing in the athletic stadium. Additionally, there were crowds of wooers who came to Attis' doorway singing songs and giving gifts. These are very traditional activities in the ancient world when a man is trying to woo somebody. Asking somebody out on a date was a carefully choreographed public activity in the ancient world. A man would be expected to come to the doorway in the evening. In this way, both the person being wooed, and more importantly, the potter familius would be aware of what was going on. The wooer would sing a poem praising their beloved, often reflecting on physical traits as well as personality. The ruler was also expected to give a gift, or several. Many gave pieces of jewelry to their beloved. Amber and pearls were particularly appropriate when wooing feminine figures, and then an additional gift to the paterfamilius or the matron, or just generally towards the household. In this way, the act of wooing reinforced the gendered order because the male was expected to take up the act of winning a female's heart and reinforcing the social order because the family and household, and most critically paterfamilius, play the integral role in the process. Finally, it was almost a prerequisite that once all the songs were sung and the gifts were given, the wooer would leave at the doorstep garlands of flowers. This way, even if their beloved heard the song but was unable to come out, they would still see something physical to remember the act by. The basic principles of wooing a young woman apply when you're trying to woo a young man as well. So as we can see, Attis was never an exceedingly male figure, even before they begin to transition. The way the poem describes the wooing is clear. Attis is the one being wooed. If you remember from our discussions of homosexuality, the proper masculine male is the one who does the wooing, who gives the gifts and generally plays the active role in romance and lovemaking. The queer feminine male is the one who is wooed, who receives the gifts, and who generally plays the passive roles in romance and lovemaking. So even from the beginning, Atis is a soft feminine figure. This resonates with many trans folks' experiences. Many of us feel as though our inner gendered expressions were already present long before we could explain what we were feeling. There is an inner transness we feel before we're able to begin transitioning. I think this is what's going on here. Attis is an effeminate figure before the transition to female begins. Beyond this, the poem itself describes Attis' body in feminine terms as well. Attis's membra sine wiro, limbs without manliness, at line six is one description. The word wiro can technically mean masculinity or manliness, but it can also mean potency and potent juice, and even took on the meaning of a poison. We still technically do use this metaphor that a strong, potent drink is a masculine one, with phrases like, that'll put hair on your chest, effectively equating masculinity with percentage alcohol. More than a few trans women would agree that manliness and manly potent juices are like poison in their bodies. Attis is also described as having newius manibus or snow-like arms or snowy hands at line eight. Attis grabs a tambourine to begin the song with teneris digitus, or tender, soft, delicate fingers at line 10. This phrase can either be describing the fingers themselves as delicate or touching of the tambourine delicately with the fingers. All of these descriptions are very common ways of describing young women. Soft limbs, of course, is a reference to arms and legs which have not been honed by physical activity and athletic achievements. White arms are indicative of domestic life where women and eunuchs are expected to spend all their time. Women with tanned arms are laborers, and therefore of a lower class or even slave population. Tender fingers is again to say hands not accustomed to hard, heavy labor like agricultural activity, and thereby not calloused. Interestingly, conventional women's work like weaving and spinning wool actually strengthened the hands tremendously. Moving a loom back and forth actually created very strong women with very, very strong fingers and hands, but the convention held that female fingers were not all bruised and ripped up by manual labor, and that female skin in general was not all cracked and leathery, so females must not be all that strong. So when we take it all together, we have this image of Attis as an effeminate figure. Attis was already on the wrong side of wooing. The proper virile Roman man should be the one giving the gifts and leaving the garlands, not receiving them. Attis already has soft bodily figures expected of women. Their body was described effeminately from the very first lines of the poem. Now we could read this as an image of youth. Young men are softer looking than adult men, and in a system of introductory homosexuality, young men might well find themselves being wooed. At this phase of their lives, a level of inexperienced, woman-like behavior was acceptable, or at least socially tolerated. Someone might read this story as Attis attempting to keep that youth and prevent growing up. In this reading, the figure of Attis becomes like a Peter Pan figure with the goal of never ever becoming an adult. The problem emerges when we remember that Attis does not refer to herself as a young male, forever an aphoe. Rather, immediately after the castration, the language transforms into the feminine. If this were a case of a figure trying to never become an adult, would we not expect the language to stay masculine throughout? I desire to remain a young man implies that I am a type of man and have no need to change to the feminine at all. Attis' transitioning to the feminine during this poem. We know because of the descriptions of Attis Bati. For example, line 10 says, She sang to her female companions, the verbiage being very feminine, and the company is called the gale in the next line, which is a feminine form of the name of the priestesses of Rhachibali. Gallus, galoi, these are the masculine forms of the phrase. The narrative voice immediately pivots and refers to Attis and all the others in the feminine, and Attis uses the same feminine language to describe themselves collectively. Therefore, neither Catullus the poet nor the narrative character Attis add any credence to this interpretation that Attis longs for masculine youth. The other version of the story of Attis comes from Pausanius, who wrote in the second century A.D. During the relatively peaceful and stable period called the Golden Age of the Antonines, roughly 138 to 180 A.D., represented the five good emperors, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, and there was an extensive interest in this period of the empire's Greek heritage. In particular, Hadrian was sometimes called Greculus, or Little Greekling, for his love of Hellenic scholarship and art. He spearheaded a massive investment and rebuilding effort in the Hellenic, Greek-speaking East. He imagined using imperial investment to transform Greece into an artistic and cultural driver for the whole Roman world. During this period, an author named Pausanius produced a travelogue, a sightseer's guide to Greece. His work is often helpful for us because he often points out key religious temples and pilgrimage sites, providing a handy guide to significant places and festivals which went on there. Pausanius describes a temple to Attis in the city of Daime, which is the modern town of Cato Achaea on the northwestern edge of the Peloponnesian peninsula. He recounts another version of the story where Attis was a eunuch from birth. In this version, Attis was born between men and women already. Attis chooses to go to Asia Minor, Phrygia or Lydia, and join in the ecstatic worship of Rhea Chiboli or Agdistus. Critically, both versions resonate with this idea that Attis was never a heteronormative male to begin with, when the body begins transitioning towards female. What is absolutely critical to our reading of the poem is that where Attis may have been an effeminate male or even eunuch at the beginning, within the first few lines of the poem, Attis is called a woman for the rest of the story. The group of companions are called galae, which again reflects the feminine form of the word. Attis and companions are all throughout the poem called feminine phrases. The group is likened to Maenides, which is a phrase using female devotees of Dionysus. The troupe is also so exhausted by dancing up from the shore into the mountains that when they reach the house of Chaibalae, they are worn out and weary and collapse from sheer exhaustion. Finally, Attis is described as a famula, a handmaid or maidservant of Chaibele. Now, Catullus uses a phrase notha mulier, meaning spurious woman, bastard female, or counterfeit woman to describe Attis. This reflects the social values of the Roman poet. The phrase seems to imply that Catullus, as well as the wider Roman social structure, does not see Attis as a proper woman. In the ancient as well as modern world, the cisnormative society values cisgender people above transgender people. It is important to remember that when ancient authors feel trans women are bastard women, that resonates with modern authors who might agree that trans women aren't women, and this is a recipe for mutually propagating bias. Many cisnormative authors see their own opinions reflected back at them and are willing to accept it uncritically or with little reflection. Taken together, all of this indicates that Attis is a female figure. While Attis may have been a sign male at birth, they never actually express a simple binary expectation of masculinity. In fact, from the beginning, Attis is an extremely soft figure. Whether Attis was born in an intersex body or a default heteronormative body is completely irrelevant for this point. As the narrative progresses, it is overtly obvious that Attis is presenting feminine from the very beginning of the story. This poem is one of transition, a shift of identity from male to female. That Roman society, and Catullus himself, thinks about all of this as a counterfeit female, is besides the point. Attis is a trans female during this poem. This week we covered just the physical transition from a vaguely male-looking figure to a discreetly feminine one. This transition is remarkable. It is possible to transform one's gender in the ancient world. It just requires the act of a divine being, like Rea Kaibale, to work properly. This fact of gender transformation we will revisit. Changing gender by surgery is not good enough. Truly changing your gender requires some god's assistance. Once it was done, Attis was made immortal and transformed into a fertility goddess and companion of Rea Kaibale. Therefore, we have a case of a transgender experience reflected in ancient poetry. The poem also reflects the manic highs and lows immediately following sexual reassignment. There is unrestrained joy for the future as Addis dances and sings in the mountains. Then later, Addis awakens from the dreamlike ecstasy and feels a longing for something familiar. Most commenters assume it's post-transition regret and a desire to detransition, but I actually disagree with what specifically is being regretted and longed for. When you cross the Rubicon of sexual transition, there is absolutely no way to go back, and there is a burst of anxiety. Even as you start going forward in what you have desired for a very long time, there are still mixed emotions as you weigh where you have been, and the familiar feelings of inadequacy with a wholly unknown future. Though Attis desired this change all along, the change itself is a scary thing, and they find themselves longing for that disgruntled, uncomfortable period of youth simply because it's familiar. Next week we're actually going to continue our exploration of Attis in transition. Today we got through the transition itself from male to female, and next we're going to really dive into this emotional turmoil which accompanies such transitions. Where many scholars assume it is the loss of masculinity causing the anxiety, a closer look indicates that it's a change in social status from the known experience as an effeminate male into the unknown experience as a handmaid of Kibele. The anxiety is just the first few hours of transition, not eternally longing and pining away for a lost part of themselves. See you next Monday. Catullus was a Roman poet who lived in the first century BC. He lived through a lot of crises, being born during the period of the Social War slash First Civil War in the 80s B.C., and he grew up during the time of the revolt of the Consul Lepidus in 77 and the conspiracy of Cathaline in 63. His adult life was taken up with the rivalries between Pompey the Great, Crassus the Greedy, and Caesar the Republic Slayer, though he died before the final showdown at Pharsalus. In 48 BC. It was a period of immense change where literally every facet of Roman life and tradition was breaking down all at once. His poetry, which is mostly short verses, reflects this chaotic crisis era when the old republic was in its death throes. Catullus 63 is actually one of his longer poems, sometimes called the Hymn to Attis and Caibala, or the Hymn to Beresinthia, which is another name for Chaibala. But the poem is also called an Epilion, or mini-epic, because of its heroic content. In any case, Catullus 63 tells the story of the first few hours of Attis' life after gender transition. The translation by Anna Jackson, titled Attis at Large, published in Arian, a journal of the humanities and classics, volume 27, number 2, in 2019, gets across the trans nature of this story better than any translation I've ever encountered. This translation is available online at Anajackson.nz, or just type in Attis at large PDF into the search engine, and it pops right up. The discussion of the Halaria Festival is drawn from Latzer Lazar in an article called The Heterarchy of the Roman Galli in the journal Religion and Gender, 2024. Catullus 63, verses 64 through 67 contain the various symbols of wooing like the crowded doorways and flowered garlands discussed in the episode. Pausanius's Description of Greece, Book 7, section 17, lines 9 through 13, contains the alternate story of Attis. The group is called Menides at Catullus 63, verse 23. The group is collapsed in a sheer exhausted sleep in verses 35 through 38, and Attis is called a handmaid of Chaibalae at verses 68 and at verse 90. Catullus calls Attis a counterfeit woman at verse 27. That's all for this episode. We'll continue next Monday with our treatment of the story of Attis. See you then.