Attis the Trans-Woman Part 2

This week we are continuing our deep-dive into Attis, a figure assigned male at birth who travelled to Asia and underwent a gender transition. Following the surgery itself, Attis experiences first the manic highs of gender euphoria before falling into a depressive low. 

Rather than interpreting the anxiety through the lens of a hero acting shamefully and later regretting their acts, we will read the story through the lens of a woman lamenting a social death in the hours immediately after the change in social status. 

Part 3 will focus on Attis' life after transition through other appearances in ancient media. 

Transcript

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to Lambda, the LGBT and Antiquity Podcast, the show about all things LGBT from the ancient world. I'm your host, Dominica Raven, episode 9, Atis the Transwoman, Part 2. Attis arrives in Phrygia for sexual reassignment surgery. After she and all her companions have transitioned to female, they are overwhelmed in a state of ecstasy. The group grabs tambourines and flutes as they form a procession. They march in a parade from the seashore into the forests and hills. Attis is described here as an unbroken heifer running free in the mountains. They danced and sang the whole way up to the very summit of a nearby mountain. When the troop reaches the shrine of Kaibele at the summit, they collapse in exhaustion, falling asleep without any supper. The next morning, Attis awakens and there's a moment of depressive anxiety. Attis returns to a vantage point where she can see the sea. Looking out at the waves with a tear in her eye, Attis begins to speak, giving an account of the story. I left my homeland as an exile. I long to see my country, my friends and family again. I remember the city where I used to live with its market and the wrestling grounds and race course and gymnasium where I was once the flower of the playground. I remember when I was wooed and received gifts by flowered garlands by interested young men. Now I'm in the mountains far from my homeland and my familiar social relationships. I regret the loss of a social status I once enjoyed. Though Attis surgery is complete, the transformation into a bride of Kaibalay is only beginning, and the troop of young trans women are all to become the future priestesses of Kaibalay. Last week we followed Attis through their gender transition. Though assigned male at birth, Attis was never actually much of a male figure from the beginning. The scrawny, effeminate youth was wooed by many Greek men who thought Attis was a queer, feminine, gay man. It was clear that there was a significant distress centered around the gendered expressions, even in the beginning of the story. When Attis travels to Phrygia, in modern Turkey, she completed a gender transformation and was reborn. The discussion last week was principally to frame Attis and her fellow Gale as trans women, but neither Catullus 63 nor the story of Attis ends there. This week we're going to dive into the emotional turmoil Attis is going through during this period of the story. Attis is physically exhausted but emotionally moving between the manic highs and lows of post-surgical recovery. Though the first half of the poem displays unbridled gender euphoria, the second half shows the more contemplative, depressive Attis pondering on what has changed. The whole of Catullus 63 occurs within the first hours of gender reassignment. Many scholars who engage with Catullus 63 ascribe this poetic lament to an ancient literary trope of madness and regret leading to heroic shame. Some hero acts out of line, out of character, generally because they were provoked by some god. Now, after the violent outburst, the hero feels great shame and disgust for their evil actions and generally commits suicide and disgrace. A counterpart might be the story of Ajax found in the Sophocles play Ajax. Shortly before the end of the Trojan War, Achilles was killed by Paris and Apollo, at which point the Greeks held a great traditional funeral with great traditional funeral games. Ajax was the strongest hero on the fields of Troy after the deaths of Hector and Achilles, but Odessius was the wisest hero whose plans secured victory. So these two greatest of all the Greeks had a contest, and Odysseus was declared the victor by Athena herself. Ajax is so distraught by his defeat he goes on a violent rampage through the Greek camps, killing livestock and generally causing a nuisance. He eventually comes to his senses enough to realize the evil he has committed on his own companions and friends, and falls on his own sword with one final curse of the Greek commanding generals. This formula is used by Greek and Roman authors to describe a hero engaging in heroic shame and regret for their actions. For the record, I can see where all these scholars and commenters are coming from, and I don't think this is an invalid way to read the poem about Attis. However, this is one of those instances where singular interpretation has become a default. This reading of the poem is accepted as a given by many to a point where practically everything many of our scholars and commenters say is predicated on this reading of the text. I propose that there's another poetic formula expressing grief and regret that is more pertinent to the study of Catullus 63, the woman's lament. For an example, immediately after the sack of Troy, the Greeks round up all the surviving Trojan women and divide them up as household slaves. Hecuba, the queen of Troy and mother of Hector and Paris, is the first to speak in the Euripides play, The Trojan Women. She sings a lament for her city, noting her own and the Trojan women's collective pain. First, Hecuba reflects on the fall of Troy and her inability to go back to that period before. Her homeland is now seized by Greeks, and it is her fate to leave home forever. Here, Hecuba uses the language of a sailing ship to describe following one's fate, as if blown by the wind. Next, Hecuba tries to behold her city. She raises her head, but is only to groan and roll on her back. She stares longingly at the burned-out towers and smashed doorways, hoping for something, anything familiar. But Troy is gone. Then Hecuba describes the Trojan War from her vantage point and how she has watched her sons and grandsons get picked off one by one as the war plays out. Finally, Hecuba spends some time juxtaposing social events such as weddings that once took place in Troy with the life of slavery which awaits them all. As women in a captured city, they can all look forward to a life of domestic servitude in some Greek hero's household. Their former status as free matrons is lost forever. Naturally, at this point in the story, Hecuba is not happy, but Hecuba is also standing in the liminal space between the life she had enjoyed at Troy and the unknown life as a slave for the Greeks. While there certainly is a bit of regret on her part, I mean Hecuba has a dream about a firebrand when she was pregnant with Paris Alexander. Rather than killing the infant, she had him left exposed, which allowed Paris to be rescued by a herdsman. So the whole Trojan war could have been prevented had Hecuba killed that firebrand right away. Yet, though this is an important part of the story, regret that Hecuba did not kill her own infant is not the key to understanding this lamentation. Rather, Hecuba is describing a social death, the death of a society and the death of her own role within it. Troy is destroyed, but the Trojans themselves are going to be divided up and live out their days spread in a diaspora around the Mediterranean. This is the key piece. Personal death is tragedy, but the death of a community is the death of a social entity, and that is a community tragedy. Comparing Hecuba's lament with Attis yields a striking similarity. Attis starts out with a lament for her homeland. The very first line of this lament is a longing for my country, she who bore me. Though Attis arrived in a ship, Attis poetically describes the journey on foot. My feet carried me to Mount Ida's woodlands. Next, Attis went to the beach and beheld the sea. She tries to catch a glimpse of the homeland, but Attis has left that life behind. It is too far, and Attis is unable to see home again. Then Attis presents a retelling of the story of their journey to Phrygia, culminating in the dancing in the mountains from the night before, from her own perspective. And finally, we get to the part about Attis's social death. Attis' social death is a striking piece of the story when viewed from the queer angle. Attis first recalls their parents and family, leaving behind one's country and homeland is really leaving behind one's social network. This is particularly stark when we remember that Attis is inducted into a mystery religion, and traveling beyond the sanctuary's boundaries is going to be much more difficult in the future. Attis really is leaving behind their whole family when they join this religion. That's not to say Attis will never ever see their family again, just that Attis has taken a first step into a mysterious world where the uninitiated are not allowed to follow. Beyond family relationships, Attis also laments the loss of friendships, though many others accompanied Attis to Phrygia. Presumably some of Attis' friends were unwilling to come on this journey of enlightenment to Asia Minor. Here, at line 14, Attis actually calls herself and her companions Exules, meaning exiles or wanderer. The word can also imply banishment. It's important to note that we neither know from which country Attis departed, nor can we say for what act they were banished or became an exile. In any case, Attis and the company are no longer able to return home, and they're probably never allowed back into their country. Next, Attis relays a list of activities they had engaged in back in town, that they may never be able to enjoy again. They list going to the marketplace or forum, to the wrestling school, the racetrack stadium, and the gymnasium where young men train together. All of these are part of daily life for a young Greek man, reflecting the athletic training prized so highly in ancient society. Attis even calls themselves the flower blossom of the gymnasium and the glory of the oil. Next comes the part where Attis remembers the wooers crowding around their door and leaving flowers at the doorway. As we discussed last week, none of these descriptions are heteronormative expectations for male figures, but rather Attis is explicitly being coded as a queer feminine male homosexual before the story even began. Calling themselves a flower blossom only furthers this interpretation. Everything about this section of the poem is not about the death of an individual, but the death of a social being. Though Attis was somewhat disgruntled in this prior life, it was a familiar life as a young man. Social relationships break down as the result of a transition, and there is no going back. For better or worse, transitioning is a seismic event which does change relationships with friends and family. Attis' fear of being unable to contact anyone anymore is an effective way to show this dynamic. Additionally, the iconic, almost stereotyped activities for a young Greek male are presented as facets of their identity, Attis would not mind continuing into the future. There is real anxiety over what pieces of one's social identity can persist through the sexual transition. As we'll see later, Attis' life will still contain chariot races and athletics, just not in the conventional athletic competition sphere. The undesirable parts of Attis' social life are gone, and the parts that they would like to maintain persist. The critical line for our reading of the text is actually the last line spoken by Attis in the entire poem, verse number 73. Now I grieve what I have put in motion. Now I am sorry. If we accept the heteronormative reading of the heroic shame motif, we read something like, I regret the surgery, or I wish I hadn't cut my own bowls off, which certainly fits the heteronormative understanding a lot better. However, if we use our heroine lament model, the words are transformed and mean something like, I regret the loss of a social status. In this way, Attis is regretting first the loss of family and friends, and second, the loss of familiar, socially acceptable activities, but not the sexual reassignment or gender transition itself. For my part, this seems to capture best those mixed emotions one goes through right after the surgery itself. There is a ton of physical pain and exhaustion, just like Attis and company when they collapsed at the house of Rea Kaibele. But there's also mixed feelings as you move from a place you know to a place which is wholly unknown. During this liminal phase, there is untempered euphoria and significant anxiety. It seems reasonable to me that someone might find themselves longing for familiarity, even familiar discomfort in this period. Whenever you cross the Rubicon in life and you know there is simply no way to return to where you were before, there is always a burst of anxiety. Even when going forward in something you've desired for a very long time, you will have mixed emotions as you weigh what you have been and familiar feelings with an unknown future. Sex reassignment is a very scary thing, and you might find yourself longing for a disgruntled, uncomfortable period of youth because it's familiar. I think this is what's happening with Attis in Catullus 63. Attis is not pining away for a lost masculinity, but reflects the death of a social being and the anxiety associated with that entity transitioning into a new social being. As we can see, where Hecuba started her lament with a reflection on the fall of Troy and her ability to ever return to those happier days, Attis starts with a reflection of their journey and inability to ever return to life before transition. When Hecuba tries to behold Troy, the pain is worsened by seeing what is left of the city. When Attis tries to behold her homeland, she can't even make out the shores on which she was born. Then Hecuba gives a brief summary of the Trojan War from her perspective, and Attis retells the narrative up to that point from their perspective. Finally, Hecuba reflects on the death of the social entity that was once called the Trojan people, and the loss of community that the war represents. Attis spends a fair amount of time on the same social losses as they are now removed from their community, and have yet to establish a new community. All that we've done today is propose that instead of using the tragic formula where hero acts shamefully and desires to undo their villainy, we can use a different tragic formula where a woman laments mainly for a lost social being, a station in life which was made possible by social structures and is now breaking down, leading to the anxiety for a great unknown future social life. We can see the loss of relationships as a key feature in Attis's lament. This way of reading the poem yields an individual mere hours after surgically transitioning, looking back and wondering what of their previous life can carry forward. The uncomfortable life as a male of Phoebe is in the past, and the affirmed life as a bride of Kybalae is just beginning. Next week we're going to continue our deep dive into the other literary appearances of Attis. Though Catullus 63 is far and away the best known of all the appearances of Attis in literature, it's not the only one. In fact, the story of Catullus 63 cuts off about a day after the transition begins. When we see Attis at later points in her life, there is no wavering or mixed feelings. She is a bride of Kybalae and actually starts playing an important role in advising and mentoring other effeminate heroes, such as Dionysus. This is not a figure pining away eternally for loss, but a figure thriving in an affirming environment. In all, I think this is a very apt description of a transition, as we have often got emotional stumbling blocks shortly after the reassignment itself. Only after we have a bit of time to process the transformation can we truly flourish. We'll see you next Monday. Notes and comments. The opening passage is drawn from Catullus 63, verses 12 through 73. Catullus was the 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 BC, and he grew up during the time of the revolt of the consul Lepidus in 77 and the conspiracy of Catiline in 63 BC. His adult life was eaten up with the rivalries between Pompey the Great, Crassus the Greedy, and Caesar the Republic Slayer, although Catullus himself died before the final showdown at Pharsalus in 48 BC. This was a period of immense change where literally every piece of Roman life and tradition was breaking down. His poetry, which is mostly in short verses, reflects this chaotic crisis when the old republic was in its death throes. Catullus 63 is one of his longer poems, sometimes called the Hymn to Attis and Chaibalae, or the hymn to Better Cynthia, but the poem itself is also called an epilion or mini-epic because of its heroic content. In any case, Catullus 63 tells the very first hours of Attis' life after sexual reassignment. The translation of Anna Jackson, titled Attis at Large, published in Arian, a journal of humanities and classics, volume 27, number 2, in 2019, gets across the trans nature of the story better than any translation I have encountered. The translation is available online at Anajackson.nz, or you can type Attis at large PDF into your search engine, and it'll pop right up. The Suicide of Ajax is drawn from the Sophocles play Ajax, lines 815 through 865. Ajax was first produced at some point around 440 BC. It is unclear which year or which place the play took, but Sophocles never placed below second in his entire life, so it was presumably in the top two. The Lament of Hecuba is drawn from Euripides' Troides, lines 98 through 152. The Troides was first produced at 415 at the city Dionysia and won second place. I did choose the very first women's lament monologue to analyze, but the Troides, as well as Euripides' plays in general, feature many comparable examples of women's laments. If you're interested, there was a feature-length production of Trojan Women produced by Michael Kukoyanis in 1971, which starred the incomparable Catherine Hepburn as Hecuba. She performs this women's lament brilliantly. Attas crying out for the country that bore me is drawn from Catullus 63, verse 50. The description of dancing in Mount Ida's woodlands is from verse 52, and Attis' social death is described in verse 59 through 67. That's all for this week. We'll see you next Monday.