the galli as transmisogynised subjects

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introduction

The little of what we know of the Galli is from ancient sources which are entirely hostile towards them. The Galli were considered, by every account, in the Roman period, to be the pinnacle utmost deviancy from the convention of Roman norm. Their gender transgression was considered abhorrent as it undermined the expectations of true Roman masculinity through the forfeiture of the class of personhood which accompanied it. Through this forfeiture, they lose status, rights, and personhood on every level. The very basis of their self identifications are stripped away from them. While much scholarship on their gender transgression has been written, it often neglects to consider the parallels between the social status of the Galli within the Roman context and the social status of the transmisogynised subject within a modern context. The very mechanism by which the Galli are stripped of their personhood is the same as the mechanism which abjects the transmisogynised person, and much of the rhetoric which surrounds the Galli very closely mirrors modern transmisogynistic rhetoric.

As a note, I will be referring to the Galli using she/her pronouns. This may be controversial, however, given that the few references we have to their own identification with gendered language, such as the use of feminine appellatives, parts of speech when referring to themselves and each other, or the taking on of feminine names, I think this is the most appropriate course of action.

who were the galli?

The Galli, led by the Archgalli, were priests who served in a cult to Cybele, a Phrygian mother goddess in Asia minor, who was introduced to Rome in 204 BCE via Ostia, one of Rome’s ports. They, according to Roman accounts, castrated themselves in order to establish a relationship with the goddess and to celebrate the death of Attis, who was a central figure in the mythos of the cult. Evidence of worship to Cybele, also known as the Mother Goddess, first appears in the early first millennium BCE, and she remains and important figure in Mediterranean religion until the rise of Christianity. While Phrygian in origin, she is best known through references and through her cultic centres throughout the Greek and Roman world.

The story of Attis is of Roman origin, and does not appear within the original Phrygian mythos as far as we can tell. In Catullus’ depiction of the story in Catullus 63, he described how Attis travels from his home to Phrygia, where he castrates himself in a frenzy, apparently brought on by wild music and the excitement of the goddess's rituals – his initial reaction is one of exultation. He leads the followers of the cult until falling asleep. However, when he wakes from his trance he is forced to confront the reality of his situation: he no longer holds the status of a man, but nor will he now hold the status of a woman. He holds the status of a “counterfeit woman”, a notha mulier. He laments what he has done as by losing his gender he has also lost everything else within the context of Roman society.

The prevailing view of the Galli in Greece and Rome is overwhelmingly negative. The Gallus was considered, by Roman convention, to be an affront to the conventions of both race and gender and much emphasis is placed upon how their status as eunuchs made them deviants from Roman (and Greek) norms, especially in regards to their appearance and sociality. They are depicted as wearing brightly coloured clothes, heavy jewellery, ornate headdresses, make up, bleaching and crimping their hair – their eunuch status is recognisable by their effeminacy. They are often referred to as “pretty things”, “little doves”, and “half-women”. They are considered to be entirely artificial in the construction of their identities: they wear wigs and make-up and “feminise” the way that they walk. Ultimately, they are nothing but frauds. They are everything that a Roman man should not be. They have abandoned their proper male role.

The association between the Galli and gender transgression is first seen in the second century BCE in a series of six epigrams from the Greek anthology Anthologia Palatina. These epigrams all relay the same story. Here we first see the figure of the Gallus explicitly referred to as a eunuch, a half-woman, and recently castrated. Her appearance and manners are undeniably feminine. She wears her hair in a long lock which is either worn loose so as to be tossed in the wind, or plaited and worn under a hair net. She is also noted to be wearing women’s clothing and perfume, as well as having a high-pitched voice. However, these qualities do not make her a woman: the eunuch is conceptualised as male, which we can see from the fact that the Greek masculine pronouns and adjectives are used to describe her. Instead, she is a caricature, a parody of feminity taken to the extreme.

This does not fully cover the way that the Galli are referred to within textual sources within the contemporary period, nor within modern scholarship, neither does it cover the scant material of self reference which we have. The reason for this is because most depictions of the Galli are inherently tied up in their status as transmisogynised subjects, as to an extent we have already seen. The context of conventional norms of Roman masculinity are needed context to understand the extent to which the Galli truly have parallels to transmisogynised peoples of our contemporary period.

conventions of roman masculinity

Masculinity, rather than referring to any sort of identity or assigned sex, refers to values and ideals which can be analysed within a cultural tradition as adhering to that which is expected of men. Roman conceptions of masculinity has a lot in common with modern, Western notions of masculinity, such as the hierarchical gendering of penetrative acts, wherein the active or insertive role is thought of as masculine and the passive or receptive role is thought of as feminine or subordinate. Effeminate men, in their failure to live up to the standards of conventional Roman masculinity are what “real men” are not, and “real men” are what effeminate men are not. In Rome, this tradition extends the role of the subordinate to include women, boys, and slaves. In order to be fully gendered within the context of Roman manhood, amongst other aspects, being penetrated was not an option, and would leave one open to ridicule or worse. Taking pleasure in being penetrated was entirely incompatible with the image of masculinity. However, this only extended to those who would be considered, in the Roman context as being able to have access to this status in the first place. In other words, slaves, for example, who would never be able to reach the status of true masculinity within the Roman context in any case, were often emphasised as passive sexual partners. It is important to note that the dichotomy of masculine and feminine traits cannot be aligned with conceptions of homosexuality and heterosexuality, but rather, masculinity was associated with dominion and control. In order to retain masculine sexual behaviour, a Roman man must always maintain the insertive role in penetrative acts, regardless whether they be with men or women. It is in taking the receptive role that he was liable to be mocked and scorned as effeminate.

However, being penetrated was not the be all and end all that could brand a Roman man as effeminate. The category of the subordinate within the context of penetration makes up one part of the group of men who would be seen as marked by effeminacy; many other facts played a role in this categorisation. Effeminacy, in Rome, was seen to be an underlying failure to live up to the imperative of masculinity: control and dominion, not only of oneself, but of others. Masculinity is associated with dominion and strength, whereas femininity, embodied by women and effeminate men is associated with softness. However, softness is a positive trait in women, and even in boys. Another important context is that of “virtus”, often translated simply as virtue, however it is notable that this term is always masculinely gendered and is the ideal masculinity to which every man should strive to embody. Some women may achieve it, and those men who fail to, are derided for their effeminacy. In other words, the dialectic pair of masculine/feminine in Rome can be aligned with a myriad of other dichotomised oppositions, much like the structuralist notions of the sex/gender system based on the nature/culture binary which we see now. Masculine/feminine could be paralleled with such binaries as moderation/excess, hardness/softness, courage/timidity, strength/weakness, activity/passivity, sexually penetrating/being sexually penetrated, and ultimately: domination/submission.

The categorisation of the effeminate could take on multiple aspects. One such aspect is an excessive concern for appearance, a trait which was stereotypically associated with women. So by extension, if a man attempts to make his body softer and hairless, or has an excessive concern for his appearance, he may be associated with femininity and thus passive sexual acts. Thus, Roman masculinity is also then associated with roughness, to a degree. Another aspect of Roman masculinity is the dominion over emotion, amongst other facets of life. To be excessive in pain, sickness, or grief or being afraid to die was considered womanish, and through this, led a man to be thought of as subordinate in status. The failure to dominate your emotions was a failure, and reason is implicitly masculinised. To lack control over the emotion is to act soft like a woman, and for a man to have dominion over his emotions is akin to have control over his slave or his wife or his son. This parallels the way that Roman citizenry as a whole should, ideally, dominate all others. In other words, self-mastery and discipline is a core aspect of Roman masculinity. Roman masculinity is also very tied up in military prowess, discipline, and bravery in the eventuality of death. This dichotomy contrasts manliness, associated with endurance and power, with effeminacy, associated with softness and idleness. Effeminate language is often applies to individuals who are seen to display luxurious, hedonistic or self-indulgent behaviour – here we see how dominion over oneself is once again so important in Roman conception of masculinity.

Masculinity is not natural, it must be enforced, and violently. It is important to look at the construction of masculinity as an achieved and tenuous status. Boys are made into men, whilst girls just end up as women. Not only is there a constant struggle in the attainment of masculinity in the first place, consider for example the many often traumatic rites of passages by which boys are constructed into men, but there is also the factor of maintaining ones masculine status. The threat of a fall from grace into behaving like a woman, due to the binary logic within the sexual hierarchical system under which we live, is the ultimate failure. To act not like a man, or worse, to act like a woman is weaponised to keep this hierarchical system in place, and by extension is used to keep men, and boys who should become men, in line. This is an important aspect of the othering of the transmisogynised subject. The transmisogynised subject cannot attain this manhood, nor can they maintain it. They are de-personed through their failure to meet the gendered expectation of manhood placed upon them. They behave as a woman, and thus can be treated as one, but are not granted the status of womanhood either. This concept of the struggle of achieving and maintaining masculine status could be a considerable factor to the importance placed on control in the Roman conception of masculinity. Being vigilant was crucial given the tenuous and artificial nature of the construction of Roman masculinity and the intensity of its enforcement. This is also why so many traits within the context of Roman effeminacy were intrinsically linked, to fail in one area of Roman masculinity was to leave you open to fail in all the others.

the cinaedi as faggotised subjects

The word “Cinaedus” (plural: Cinaedi) was often used to refer to men who were anally penetrated, however, this does not capture the full way which the term was used. The Cinaedus was a form of gender deviant, but one who still, to an extent, maintained his status as man, albeit to a lesser extent. He has failed to live up to the conventions of Roman masculinity, and often the way he has done this is by being the passive sexual partner. The term was originally used to refer to an effeminate dancer who would entertain an audience with a tambourine, and is often referred to as moving his hips in a way that was suggestive of anal sex. Most performers, especially actors, in Rome were considered effeminate, and were heavily associated with a penchant for anal sex. So, whilst the term “Cinaedus” is euphemistic, it is also quite direct. As the cinaedus is associated with all that a Roman man should not be: softness, effeminacy and decadence, he was by extension of this, also associated with being sexually penetrated.

While we could see the Cinaedi as being similarly transmisogynised as the Galli, there is more evidence of it being more akin to a continuum where ideal Roman masculinity sits on one end and the transmisogynised Gallus sits on the other. The Cinaedus, sitting somewhere in between, is faggotised, rather than being transmisogynised. Several ancient texts seem to make this continuum cogent. In a text by Suetonius, the Gallus is referred to as a Cinaedus and in Juvenal’s second satire, the narrator wonders why the Cinaedi do not “go all the way” and make themselves Galli. Here we see the association between the Cinaedi and the Galli, but more importantly we see that the Galli is below the status of the Cinaedi – the Galli take it “all the way” by castrating themselves, and thus are the ultimate de-personed subjects. A man who takes the steps of rejecting Roman masculinity is on the route to the status of the abjected Galli, but he is not there yet. We see this parallel in modern conceptions of faggotisation and transmisogyny as well. The faggotised subject, often the gay man who is camp and unable to maintain his proper masculine status, is derided for this, often associated with trans feminity in a derisive way, but is still protected from the status of truly being on the receiving end of transmisogyny. Thus, whilst the Galli have rejected all semblance of Roman masculinity, they have left behind all legal and social status and protection, as we will soon see, the Cinaedi still maintain some of this status and protection. They are derided, ridiculed and scorned, but unlike the Galli, can still, to an extent, participate in wider Roman society.

understanding the sex/gender system and transmisogyny

To understand the Galli as transmisogynised subjects, we must first understand the mechanism of transmisogyny and being transmisogynised, as well as the function and structure of the sex/gender binary within our current societal systems.

The sex/gender system is inherently tied up in the structures of patriarchy, heterosexism, and cisheteronormativity. While it is often said that gender is a socially constituted characteristic on the basis of a “natural” or “pre-cultural” biological sex, this statement, as I will explore, is nonsensical, and the sex/gender system is ultimately an elaborate farce. Sex is just as socially constructed as gender is. Not only that, the classification and assignment of sex, as well as gendering, is nothing more than a system of control and enforcement for the structures labelled above.

The sex/gender binary is based around a cluster of binary oppositions, most prominently nature/culture. The dichotomies alluded to within this framework, such as mind/body, animal/culture, man/woman, etc are all, in fact, ideological. The Graeco-European tradition is very attached to this mind/body dichotomy, and by extension, all the other dichotomies that accompany it, including the binary sex/gender categories: male mind and female body. These must, in this framework, be universal. This binary has, by design, denigrated women through the association of the feminine with nature, body and emotion and the masculine with culture, mind and reason. We see this dichotomy, as we have spoken about, in Rome as well, but not necessarily everywhere in the ancient world. In ancient Mesopotamia, the mind and the body were inseparable which led to a very different kind of gendered structure, with an allowance for gender transgression in some periods.

Julia Serano defines transmisogyny as the intersection of oppositional and traditional sexism. She defines oppositional sexism as “the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and nonoverlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desire”, and traditional sexism as “the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity”. Through this lens, we can see how trans feminine people are seen as the most abjected gendered class. In a patriarchal gendered hierarchy, where the assumption of male and masculine superiority over the female and feminine subordinate is implicit., the existence of trans feminine people who reject the status of masculinity, and even through doing so, they become sensationalised, trivialised, and sexualised, as it is in built into this system, they also call into question the status of masculinity itself, and the in-built societal belief of male and masculine supremacy.

There are many rhetorical similarities between the literature surrounding the depiction of the Galli and transmisogynised and trans feminine people in the modern context. First we will look at modern transmisogynistic rhetoric to better be able to make a cross-cultural analysis when we look at the transmisogynised status of the Galli. Transmisogynistic rhetoric frequently centres on “men wearing dresses”; “men who want their penises cut off”; trans feminine people as sexual deceivers (i.e. they trick unwitting cis people into having sex with them, a trope which has led to a law being passed in the UK which means that a trans person who does not disclose their assigned sex before any sexual encounter may be charged with rape); trans feminine people as hyper-feminine to the point of parody; the hyper-sexualisation of trans feminine people, often leading to depictions of trans feminine people as implicitly being sex workers or otherwise fulfilling some sexual fantasy through transition.

The transmisogynised subject (as well as any other person who transgresses the sex/gender binary), on top of this, stands in binary opposition to the legitimately gendered class, and thus an artificial hierarchy of gender forms, wherein one’s gender can be “fake” as opposed to the “real” or “natural” status of the gender of the legitimately gendered class. Despite the fact that most gendering of others is an assumption, this naive idea is built into our hierarchical gendered system. This is most poignant when combined with the structures of misogyny. The status of woman is already a relational category of “not man”, and culturally gendered expectations for women are far more stringent than they are for men. To fail to perform “correctly” gender as a woman is not only far easier, but far more severe in its consequences. Thus the transmisogynised subject is ultimately the worst off due to this artificial hierarchy of “natural”/”unnatural” gender.

An important aspect of the sex/gender system and of transmisogyny is that of abjectification, a concept proposed by Judith Butler within the context of the sex/gender system. Abjectification is to lose your status as subject. To not be properly gendered, i.e., to fail to do gender “correctly”, the very status of the humanness of said person is called into question. This is necessary for the construction of gender as whole, as the system operates on implicitly exclusionary means. The human, i.e. the legitimately gendered subject is only extant so long as there is the inhuman, i.e., the illegitimately gendered subject. This is because without the illegitimately gendered subject there is no way to maintain the structures of control that reinforce the sex/gender system and all the systems which that binary upholds. This concept goes hand in hand with “degendering”. Degendering is the system in which the legitimately gendered class strips the illegitimately gendered class of personhood through the artificial hierarchy of “natural” and “unnatural” gender which we previously covered. Degendering is mostly aimed at the transmisogynised subject. This is due to the fact that not only is the transmisogynised subject’s gender transgression seen as illegitimate, but their femininity is as well, because of the previously mentioned rhetorical trope of “parodical femininity”. They have failed to attain and maintain the status of “man” but cannot achieve the status of “woman” either within this system, and are often violently rejected from it.

reading the galli as transmisogynised subjects

The perception of crossing the boundaries between the enforced cultural conceptions of gendered expectations was perceived extremely negatively, and this is underscored very clearly in depictions of the Galli. The Galli represent everything that Roman society abhors. They do not maintain their status as men, nor do they achieve the status of women. They are outsiders, both in their behaviour and in their status as foreigner. They can never be Roman, nor should they be allowed to be. In fact, Romans were specifically forbidden from entering into the cult of Cybele as a Gallus priestess.

The Galli, as eunuch priestesses, challenged the unspoken rule of masculine superiority within Roman society. This masculine superiority is not just one of male superiority but of a superiority of masculine appearance. She transgresses the cultural norms which allows her to participate in wider lego-social structures. For example, while it may have been acceptable for women to wear brightly coloured clothes, dye and curl their hair, and speak in a higher-pitches voice, these are not traits which men should possess. By taking on these traits, the Gallus has cut herself off from partaking in the social privileges she would be afforded by maintaining her masculinity, such as social contacts in the forum, the palesta, the stadium, and the gymnasium, all of which define the masculine position in society. We can see here how abjectification is not only an aspect of the modern system of control, but also of the Roman gendered hierarchy. The person who has castrated herself and stepped outside the bounds of the gendered norms has completely estranged herself from the duties of a Roman man, i.e. family and state. By rejecting her manhood, she has rejected her civic identity and by extension her freedom, yet she is still not a woman, rather a psuedo-woman. By acquiring this status, she can find no position in the legitimate gendered hierarchy within Roman society.

The Galli, notably, had very little in the way of legal protection. For example, only men and women can exercise inheritance rights, due to gender being intrinsically tied up in the ability to produce an (male) heir. We see this most clearly in the case of a Gallus called Genucius who was denied her inheritance on the grounds that she was neither a man, nor was she a woman. She was not even allowed the privilege of pleasing her place in the courts, as it was believed that her “obscene presence and corrupt voice” would pollute it. Another example is of a slave who castrated herself in service of Cybele in 101 BCE, and as a result of this was permanently exiled from Rome. In Roman law, the Galli were non-persons due to their lack of genitalia. This is due to the fact that gender identity hinged primarily on one’s ability to produce, specifically male, heirs. It is of central importance to gendering as a social category, as a role, and as a personal identity. Through their asexual status, they fail to live up to the gendered category of male or female, which separates them from the legal and social privileges gleaned from citizenship and kinship. Thus the Galli are automatically disqualified from their status as person through their failure to do this and thus uphold their gendered expectations, and thus abjected.

The Galli cannot hold the status of personhood within the Roman context and thus is a victim of abjectification. While sometimes the eunuch priestess is depicted as man who has purposefully made himself into a woman, or chosen to become a woman, and by doing so, has taken on all the negative implications which come with this assignment, a more common designation was of the status below woman. The Gallus is neither a man nor is she a woman, rather her appearance and mannerisms are are the worst of both categories. She is associated with everything a Roman citizen should not be, she is the abject to which the legitimately gender is compared against and represents the every looming threat against the masculinity of Rome. There are numerous references in Roman literature to the Galli being referred to in degendered or third-sexed ways, as medium genus, or tertium sexus. There The Gallus is derided as a non-person who is stripped of her right to self-identification and of her humanness through the structures imposed on her by the Roman gendered system. A system which has parallel’s to our own. The depiction’s we have of them, which are almost entirely from an outside perspective, and wholly negative paint a picture of a totally abjected class of people who are the ultimate deviants. They are unable to maintain or attain the masculinity which they should have and thus are cast from society. The rhetorical tropes used to describe them can be cross-culturally analysed as having alarming similarity to transmisogynistic tropes in the modern context on multiple levels. Their gender transgression made the Gallus the ultimate gendered other. While we should be hesitant to class them as trans feminine or trans at all, as to apply modern terminology to ancient people who have different conceptions and socio-cultural structures, would be a mistake. I would argue to read them as transmisogynised peoples is an entirely cogent one. by Philodemus about a Galli states that she is called “little dove” which fits neatly with the way that we the Galli referring to themselves as palumbulae (“little dove” – feminine form) in Apuleius. Other examples of note include being referred to as “sisters” by Apeleius, amd the fact that in Catullus’ depiction of the Attis myth, Attis refers to the Galli in the feminine (“gallae”), as well as other feminine grammatical forms. However, referrals by narrators always refer to them in the masculine and modern scholars when discussing the Galli often defer to the use of the masculine pronoun. Another place we see this is in scholarship relating to Mesopotamia. Despite the fact that there are separate words for “man” (nita), “woman”,(munus) and “person”(lu2), when the word lu2 is translated, sumerologists tend to prefer the masculine, despite the fact that it is gender neutral. This is itself transmisogynistic. With the little evidence of their own self-reference modern scholarship, and ancient writers, have denied the Galli agency over themselves, much in the same way that the modern transmisogynised person has their agency denied through the use of improper pronouns use.

Depictions of the Galli are writhe with tropes which we still see today and associate heavily with transmisogyny. They are thought of as sexually promiscuous, have an uncontrollable lust for both women and men, and use their status as priestesses to trick gullible women into sex and other unlawful behaviours. They are criminals and deviants at the margins without any shame for their actions. They dress flamboyantly and self-mutilate (often in public), they kidnap young villagers – predominantly young men – and force them into acts of degradation, as well as “forcing their way of life” on others by way castrating unwitting men. As we have previously discussed, they are associated with a sort of quasi-femininity which is parodical in its exaggerative nature. Many of these rhetorical tropes directly mirror those tropes we previously discussed in the section on transmisogyny. was an unspoken assumption not only of male superiority, which the Gallus calls into questions, but that to transgress the gendered cultural norms which the rest of Roman society ascribed to was to lose your status as person. The Roman Christian response to the Galli was possibly even more negative than the pagan Roman response, which placed a moral dualism on gender wherein gender transgression is associated with evil.

Despite that all references to the Galli in ancient texts, and for that matter, modern scholarship, insists on the use of masculine grammatical forms, classical sources represent their speech as effeminate in a variety of ways. They use feminine appellatives, feminine parts of speech when referring to other Galli and themselves, as well as likely having assumed feminine names. An epigram by Philodemus about a Galli states that she is called “little dove” which fits neatly with the way that we the Galli referring to themselves as palumbulae (“little dove” – feminine form) in Apuleius. Other examples of note include being referred to as “sisters” by Apeleius, amd the fact that in Catullus’ depiction of the Attis myth, Attis refers to the Galli in the feminine (“gallae”), as well as other feminine grammatical forms. However, referrals by narrators always refer to them in the masculine and modern scholars when discussing the Galli often defer to the use of the masculine pronoun. Another place we see this is in scholarship relating to Mesopotamia. Despite the fact that there are separate words for “man” (nita), “woman”,(munus) and “person”(lu2), when the word lu2 is translated, sumerologists tend to prefer the masculine, despite the fact that it is gender neutral. This is itself transmisogynistic. With the little evidence of their own self-reference modern scholarship, and ancient writers, have denied the Galli agency over themselves, much in the same way that the modern transmisogynised person has their agency denied through the use of improper pronouns.

Depictions of the Galli are rife with tropes which we still see today and associate heavily with transmisogyny. They are thought of as sexually promiscuous, have an uncontrollable lust for both women and men, and use their status as priestesses to trick gullible women into sex and other unlawful behaviours. They are criminals and deviants at the margins without any shame for their actions. They dress flamboyantly and self-mutilate (often in public), they kidnap young villagers – predominantly young men – and force them into acts of degradation, as well as “forcing their way of life” on others by way castrating unwitting men. As we have previously discussed, they are associated with a sort of quasi-femininity which is parodical in its exaggerative nature. Many of these rhetorical tropes directly mirror those tropes we previously discussed in the section on transmisogyny.

conclusion

The Gallus is derided as a non-person who is stripped of her right to self-identification and of her humanness through the structures imposed on her by the Roman gendered system. A system which has parallel’s to our own. The depictions we have of them, which are almost entirely from an outside perspective, and wholly negative, paint a picture of a totally abjected class of people who are the ultimate deviants. They are unable to maintain or attain the masculinity which they should have and thus are cast from society. The rhetorical tropes used to describe them can be cross-culturally analysed as having alarming similarity to transmisogynistic tropes in the modern context on multiple levels. Their gender transgression made the Gallus the ultimate gendered other. While we should be hesitant to class them as trans feminine or trans at all, as to apply modern terminology to ancient people who have different conceptions and socio-cultural structures, would be a mistake. I would argue to read them as transmisogynised peoples is an entirely cogent one.

references

will update these soon (theyre on my substack!!), just cba rn lol