Friends, Rowomen, countrythem 🤡

[IcakethereforeIam]

Ffs

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/20/trans-roman-emperor-hitchin-museum-claim-pronouns-woke/

Doh, must it's the definite article they don't have isn't it? Poor old Latin teacher must be spinning in his grave.

Quite right, no definite or indefinite article in Classical Latin.

In Late Latin ille/illa/illud came to be used pretty much as the definite article - previously meant 'those'. That's the root of the definite articles in Romance languages.

not sure the target audience would want to adopt Elagabalus as an icon

That's what I wondered too @Inamuddle36. It's like an article about trans women in sport using Fallon Fox as a victim.

Elagabalus was by all accounts a raging pervert, for whom identifying as a woman was only one of his quirks.

How trustworthy 'all accounts' are is debatable.

A slightly different take on it with some background on the wee scamp

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/21/claiming-historical-figures-for-the-trans-cause-is-sinister/

Interesting article. Thank you.

Elagabalus was high priest(ess) of a religion very similar to that of Cybele that they promoted above the official state religion focused on Capitoline Jupiter

Didn't need a doctor, adherents of Cybele ritually castrated themselves. If this religion was very similar they could have adopted the same practice.

Not heard of Julius Caesar ('every woman's man and every man's woman') or Caligula then.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=qWwAC9dOTCE

Wonder if anyone's told Matthew Baynton?

(About 55 seconds in..)

Joan Smith in Unherd

https://unherd.com/thepost/even-the-roman-empire-isnt-safe-from-trans-ideology/

Some interesting comments, although a few are a bit....!

My knowledge of Latin pretty much begins and ends with that scene from The Life of Brian. Although one of the arguments I haven't seen put forward to support Elagabalus, sorry, Elagabala being trans is pictured in my OP and 👇. I mean, look! SHe had a bust!

Always nice to have an excuse to perv over Mat. He was the first thing I thought of when I saw Elagabalus mentioned 😍

What I'm noticing is that TRAs assume he was a transwoman, and therefore must have been a good, progressive feminist who has been cruelly smeared.

They honestly believe that... it's bizarre.

They would have said the same about Nero or Caligula if either of them liked pretending to be women.

Makes sense if you believe women are defective humans, therefore a man who is castrated becomes a sort of woman.

The Guardian, although there's some silly shallying, comes down on Elagabalus being a he. It seems the museum is misgendering him and fomenting the lies of his enemies, the people who murdered him. Not very kind.

“We don’t know what Elagabalus was like. We don’t know how Elagabalus saw himself. But we have portraits and coins that all look male, that portray him with male facial hair, male features and in garments that would have been understood as male within Elagabalus’s culture – including the coin that the museum has at the centre of its display.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/24/was-roman-emperor-elagabalus-really-trans-and-does-it-really-matter

Interesting article from the Conversation by Andrew Kendrick: https://theconversation.com/museum-classifies-roman-emperor-as-trans-but-modern-labels-oversimplify-ancient-gender-identities-218643