Deemed transgender
Oh look, a trans emperor!
A Roman emperor has been deemed transgender by a British museum, The Telegraph can reveal.
The council-run North Hertfordshire Museum has decided to be “sensitive” to the purported pronoun preferences of the 3rd-century AD ruler Elagabalus.
Oh how kind. I don’t suppose Elagabulus cares all that much by now, but still, it’s fraffly kind of the museum.
The Roman Emperor will be treated as a transgender woman and referred to as “she”.
Elagabalus has been given female pronouns on the basis of classical texts that claim he asked to be called “lady” – but historians believe these accounts may simply have been a typical Roman attempt at character assassination.
Gaaaaaaaaaasp! How dare you!
Information on museum policy states that pronouns used in displays will be those “the individual in question might have used themselves” or whatever pronoun “in retrospect, is appropriate”.
You don’t use pronouns that other people say to refer to you. You use them when you refer to yourself or other people. Latin, like languages descended from Latin, doesn’t have female and male forms of the first person singular, so good old Ela G. wasn’t using any pronouns to declare his own sex.
The museum consults with the LGBT charity Stonewall and the LGBT wing of the trade union Unison on best practice for its displays, to ensure that “our displays, publicity and talks are as up-to-date and inclusive as possible”.
Let’s everybody consult with some different charities for a change. Ones that give a damn about women would be a good place to start.
Liberal Democrat councillor Keith Hoskins, executive member for arts at the Lib Dem and Labour coalition-run North Herts Council, claimed that: “Elagabalus most definitely preferred the ‘she’ pronoun and as such this is something we reflect when discussing her in contemporary times.”
“most definitely”?? How does he think he knows that?
Historians have said that feminine behaviour would have been a dishonour to men in Rome, and suggested that accounts of Elagabalus’ life are replete with the worst accusations that could be levelled at a Roman because they are character assassinations.
But the North Hertfordshire Museum knows better.
Are they going to continue to misgender Caligula? Terfs.
I thought they say that you can’t assume pronouns. Or is that you can’t assume the correctly-sexed pronouns, but it’s totally fine to assume the opposite-sexed pronouns?
Wouldn’t he have been more peeved at being mistaken for a mere human instead of recognized as a god?
First person pronouns weren’t gendered in Latin, but adjectives and nouns were. I wonder if Emperor E. left any writings behind, and, if so, what forms he used to refer to himself.
Well thanks for THAT rabbithole XD
…OK so out of curiosity, I googled “ emperor Elagabalus writings “, and while the hits on the first page of search results were not what I had set out to search for (i.e., writings BY Elagabalus), they included a number of historical accounts of Emperor E’s life that are… well, let’s just say I’m not sure whether it’s better or worse for their cause to consider Elagabalus trans or not O.o
…and on that note, In case anyone else is as curious about this as I am AND remembers their Latin well enough to decipher it… this might possibly prove insightful? I can’t tell, though; as the kids say, it’s been a minute since I read ancient Latin ;-)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20188889
(A Letter of the Emperor Elagabalus, John Rea; Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 96 (1993), pp. 127-132.)
@6: Nothing relevant there, though TRAs would probably claim that “quae” (feminine relative pronoun, line 4) refers to the speaker, and hey, given that it follows a long lacuna, who can prove them wrong!
Better yet, it’s the feminine singular and the feminine plural relative pronoun, so maybe he preferred (or “used”, as the kids say today) “they / them” pronouns! (Not that that makes sense in languages other than English, but who cares?)
Perhaps, in the museum’s collection, there is a mosaic from the ruins of some Roman villa in the staid and respectable acres of North Hertfordshire showing Elagabalus as a drag queen?
I listened to an interview with Dame Prof Mary Beard the other week. She’s just published a book about Roman Emperors. Great to listen to her as always. She specifically talked about the way it was routine to assassinate an Emperor’s character after they were deposed and/or killed. The conversation loops back to this several times. I think some zealot has had a rush of blood to the head and is seeing what they want to see.
Thanks for chasing that rabbit, ibbica.
Either scenario is possible. We know Elagabalus was depraved, probably the worst of all the Emperors. We know his sexual habits were considered abhorrent. We know that the Emesene cult he came from continued the Mesopotamian practice of temple prostitution, and so it is not implausible that Elagabalus followed that practice as Emperor as the historical narrative suggests. Some of the specifics may have been posthumous ( use of that name is) and invented to demonize him, but without a doubt he ignored Roman norms in many matters.
The curious thing is that there is absolutely nothing in the historical record to suggest that he could have been a competent or even tolerable Emperor. Whatever his behaviours were, he was narcisstic, performative, self-indulgent, and viciously intolerant. Seems like an odd place to hang one’s hat for activists.
I feel really grubby for having been able to guess the Emperor despite never having had the opportunity to take Latin at school :-) .
Holy crap, don’t these people have anything better to do with their time?!
In short, the same sort of man that often seems to identify as trans.
Prof Beard says “Read the book.”
https://nitter.net/wmarybeard/status/1726884576847425931#m
Naïf: Your last paragraph seems to describe a current Imprrusl wannabe rather well. Maybe Trump can declare itself non binary and pick up the deranged victimhood olympics vote?