A (very short) history of non-binary gender

As it is LGBT+ History Month and in light of recent events, both in the USA and globally, I thought I would write up a brief article about the history of gender throughout human existence. This includes anyone who did not believe they fit into the categories of male and female or people who felt their identity did not match the gender society assigned them, based on the characteristics that were considered to be gendered at the time.

Both sex and gender are spectrums, containing a whole range of different characteristics. Whether they be biological, cultural or linguistic, the idea that there are only two types of person on this planet would be baffling to anyone who has even done the slightest bit of reading (or listening or watching) around accounts of the countless societies that exist and have existed on this planet.

When people have said "trans people didn't exist in the past", this is more an indicator of the poor coverage of diverse history we have in schools, on TV and in museums. These sources themselves are not necessarily to blame, as the expectation to deliver a highly packed curriculum, popular entertainment or exciting exhibitions is challenging enough. Yet there are other ways in which we can educate younger (and older) generations about the existence of diverse genders in the past. Talking about these stories in every context we can, as often as we can (not just in February) is the only way to ensure people realise how universal an experience it is to question gender. We will never stop speaking up nor standing out.

NB: I will in most instances be avoiding the word trans and non-binary. This is not because I don't believe those people were trans or non-binary, but because those words are relatively modern and not what the people at the time would have used to describe themselves

Genderless figurines of the Neolithic

There has been debate for decades about the identities of a number of ceramic figurines that have been found across the South-East Mediterranean. They date to the Neolithic, up to 10,000 years ago, and consist of some feminine and some masculine looking individuals. However, amongst them are figurines without genitalia, that have been interpreted variably in the modern day.

Using the binary of male and female, those that did not quite conform were often shoehorned into one category or the other. Rather than consider the fact that these figurines were representative of non-gendered individuals, it has been suggested that these figures represented "children" or "clothed individuals". Certainly clothed figurines would explain the lack of visible genitals or breasts, but why? Why have a series of “clothed individuals”, like action man, that simply lack visible genitals when others have been decorated with them. The argument they are children has been suggested because children might have been seen as non-gendered before puberty. This in itself is an interesting perspective, as if a child will suddenly come into their gender as they get older. This would of course leave scope for a child to chose their gender at that point...

Sadly, the further back into the past we look the harder it is to know for certain what was going on. It is quite possibly these figurines were genderless, not because the individuals depicted had no gender but because they were at a stage in the life cycle where they were seen to have no gender. They could well have been clothed, though it would be an odd derivation from a series of normally "nude" figurines. Or, just maybe, they were representative of individuals who did not conform to gender. Their depiction with no or ambiguous genitals could be symbolic or an accurate representation of their bodies. Whether they were intersex or had their genitals removed, which we know happened well into the ancient past, it is impossible to know for sure. However, we should certainly keep an open mind that some of our earliest ancestors had a concept of gender that went beyond the binary of male and female.

Ancient Intersex Gods

Although mythology can often be seen as imagined stories made by people in the past, they can also be an insight into the beliefs of the people who created them. Whether the stories are intended to act as tales of morality or simply as entertainment, the types of characters and the way they are treated can tell us a lot about the attitudes and beliefs of the writer. In the ancient world, there were many examples of gods and goddesses that were considered as neither male nor female or moved between genders. The gods were seen as the most powerful and important beings within the universe. Yet many were nuanced, often depicted with negative traits, such as Zeus' constant adulterous affairs. This means they were clearly designed to be characters that were reflective of the human world.

The presence of gods with both, ambiguous or no genitalia, indicates an awareness of humans who were intersex. This might seem a silly statement as of course intersex people have always existed, but this is kind of the point of this article. Some people, even today, are not aware of the complexities of biological sex, as would have been the case in the past. Yet here we have accounts of tales written to be shared and spread far and wide, with individuals who are intersex included in those stories.

Not only do we have intersex gods, but there are plenty of gender fluid gods who would change between genders whenever they wanted. Although in these cases there was clearly something more supernatural and fictionalised, as a physical transformation often occurs. This would not have been possible for humans at that time, due to the level of surgical ability. However, the notion of a person moving between genders indicates a desire or awareness of such a thing within humanity. In fact, many ancient peoples had more than the two words, man and woman, to describe gender. In fact, in Latin, there are several words which are often just translated as woman or man which have much more nuance to that. Whether a person was a femina, mulier or virago would give the reader an entirely different sense of what type of person that was - for us, all they are often simply translated as woman. Therefore, even within language we can see a greater awareness of the fluidity and spectrum of gender in the past than many would have us believe.

One final thing relating to some of these deities are their worshipers some of whom have been considered as trans through a modern lens. For several of these intersex deities, and for some that aren't, their groups of worshipers were people born male who would castrate themselves and live their lives as women. Castration is a fairly complex phenomenon in the past, one that was often undertaken without the consent or willingness of the person being castrated. Therefore, knowing whether these castrated priests sought to become women is something we can't know for certain. Something we do know for certain however is the respect shown to these individuals by members of the public. It is therefore reasonable to assume that someone who no longer wished to live as a man might seek out one of these priesthoods to live their lives as women.

Without going into too much detail, perhaps another blog post will follow at some point, but here are a few gender non-conforming deities and deities with gender non-conforming worshipers, from the ancient world:

Atargatis - Mesopotamian mermaid goddess that had castrated male worshipers.

Cybele - intersex "mother goddess" from Anatolia who spread across Europe and Western Asia thanks to the Romans.

Hermaphroditus- the Roman intersex deity that led to the now outdated term “hermaphrodite”, being an individual with both male and female genitals.

Loki - Notorious trickster god who regularly changed between man and woman, depending on their mood.

Ometeotl- Aztec deity considered to be both male and female.

An archaeology of gender

I won't repeat the common, false, mantra of transphobes about gender and human remains. The truth is that our skeletons don't always tell you who we are. Although archaeologists try their best to get as much information about a person from their skeleton, in combination with any grave goods found with them, it is much more difficult than the media sometimes presents it. Even the most innovative scientific methods to find out information about a person, like isotopic analysis, are not without occasional error. So what can we really know about a person when they die?

In terms of the skeleton, archaeologists generally have five categories for a person's sex; probably male, possibly male, unknown, possibly female and probably female. Therefore, even a skeleton exists on a spectrum of sex. This is due to what happens to our skeletons throughout our lives. Children are difficult to sex as their bones haven't formed properly and certain features that are slightly sexually dimorphic (different between male and female skeletons) aren't as pronounced. Hips and skull are the go to, but even those we now realise aren't clearly divided into two types. Further to this, women in particular change as they get older. The skeleton becomes more masculine during and after the menopause, meaning older female skeletons can look more masculine.

With this already complicated issue of reading a skeleton, reading a grave is just as hard. Historically people have associated certain types of objects with certain types of people. Weapons with men, jewellery with women and toys with children. This clearly is based on modern assumptions of gendered objects and features, which can change within a generation. Until the early 1900s, pink was always seen as a boys colour, being a lighter shade of red, while blue was a girls colour, being associated with the virgin Mary. Those colour associations eventually swapped, making it harder to tell the gender of a child during that transition period. Equally all children wore dresses until the early 1900s, a type of clothing we now associate more with girls. When early techniques of sexing skeletons started to become more widespread, individuals who had previously been sexed male because of their grave goods turned out to have female skeletons. This shows just how much we can't assume anything archaeologically.

Out of this changing approach and more open perspective to sex and gender in archaeology, there have been some revolutionary interpretations put forward. Most recently, the claim that Iron Age Britain was a matrilocal society, where men travelled around to live with their new wives rather than the other way round as was common later on. Even within early medieval society some hundreds of years later, there have been burials once believed to be men that have turned out to be women who try weapons. On the other hand, the grave of a male skeleton with female jewellery found in Catterick in Yorkshire made the news when archaeologists suggested this was a Gallus, a worshiper of Cybele. As scientific techniques improve, rather than gaining more surety in the sex and gender of burials it is in fact opening the door to much broader interpretations.