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Balkan Sworn Virgins

25 points by Semaphor

by goodmythical

0 subcomment

Nice, I'll add this to my "But it's just so new, it's hard to get used to" counter-argument pile.
We have worldwide written-history spanning evidence of gender variance.
Like, we've got CUNEIFORM tablets dating back to around 2500 BCE documenting assigned male at birth priests wearing feminine clothing speaking the language of women (as ancient Sumer had different languages for the genders as many ancient cultures had)
In her poem The Exaltation of Inanna (written ~2300BCE), Enheduanna describes how her goddess transforms people:
```
    "To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna."
```
And further she writes about the Pilipili, another group of individuals consecrated to the goddess who had undergone a spiritual and physical transformation of gender identity, shedding their birth-assigned roles to live a completely different experience.
Hold on, I'm on a role:
In Egypt: Middle Kingdom pottery fragments (Execration texts) list three genders: tai (male), shet (female), and sekhet. The sekhet are generally interpreted by historians as individuals who did not fit biological or social male categories.
In iron age Europe: Enarei were Scythian shamans who were assigned male at birth but lived, dressed, worked, and spoke as women, utilizing an automated spiritual status.
Ancient Rome (c. 218–222 CE): Emperor Elagabalus, A Roman Emperor who defied Roman gender norms by wearing makeup, adopting female titles (such as calling herself a queen), and asking physicians to perform a primitive gender-affirmation surgery.
South Asia: The Hijra,mentioned in ancient texts like the Kama Sutra (c. 200 CE), Hijras are recognized as a third gender in the Indian subcontinent, with a continuous historical lineage stretching back thousands of years.
As far as history is concerned, we have always existed, and it's not our fault that you (who claim it's all so new) are uncultured swine.