The road to Malaga is older than we think 🤔

[IcakethereforeIam]

Although I'm probably, with my thread title, doing exactly what the (blue haired?) curator has done in this somewhat disturbing article

https://thecritic.co.uk/they-claudius/

I don't agree with Jamie Weir that this is a case of ahistorical projection, nor do I think OP guilty of it. It's a clear description of a phenomenon that still exists (complete with priestly/con artist connotations). I even think the curator was right to be cautious about pronouns. We don't know what pronouns were used for the galli (Latin isn't big on pronouns anyway) but it wouldn’t surprise me if they used feminine language about themselves. Fascinating.

Sounds like the museum handled it quite well to be honest, they didn't trans the skull. They gave the information that the skull belonged to a man but was buried with ornaments typically buried with women, some information on the cult he may have belonged to and information that the cult members castrated the leaders. Left museum visitors to find their own conclusions, but it seems that some people will find offence whatever you do.

I’m not sure speculation on the dead man’s motive, ie interest in Malaga, is entirely helpful, given that pre-Christian Roman values were so different to our post-Christian western values. There were so many gods and cults and festivals.

The 4th century Christian apologist Julius Firmicus Maternus wrote, “They fix their cared-for hair like that of a woman, and [dress] in delicate robes … And then when they have made themselves all together different from men, having been inspired with a song from the flutes, they call to their own goddess so that having been filled with a heinous spirit they predict the future, so to speak, to credulous men. What is this monster, or what is this beast? They deny that they are men, and they are not women. They wish that they were believed to be women, but a certain aspect of the body attests otherwise.”

Hello?

I agree with Jamie Weir. It’s an ideological position to use non sex specific pronouns for someone whose sex you know, just as it is to use opposite sex pronouns.

By doing this, the curators are saying they think the terms man/he are divorced from the reality of adult human male.

It would have been perfectly reasonable to use “he” when talking about this adult human male/man. The only reason you wouldn’t would be if you didn’t believe he wasn’t actually a man.

And believing that if men castrate themselves and wear clothing typically worn by women it means they’re no longer men is very definitely not neutral but an ideological viewpoint, which the curators are signalling, and imposing on museum visitors here.

It’s also significant that instead of saying plainly and simply he was male, they worded it as “archaeologists have identified that this person had male sex attributes”. “Male sex attributes” is the kind of thing you hear sex-is-a-spectrum folx whiffle on about, again it suggests there’s some fluidity or potential for uncertainty rather than sex being a fixed, observable reality.

But tbh that area of life has been so thoroughly captured I would be surprised these days if there wasn’t an ideological push on the part of those organising this.

Makes no difference that it’s “plain speaking” Yorkshire: just look at the record of West Yorks Police, for example, in terms of ideology enforcement.

(I believe the curator literally doesn't know the social sex of the skull btw, since it could in principle be a man with 5-ard. But Jamie Weir is mistaken in accusing them of pandering to modern sensibilities, given that their pronoun use potentially elides modern day trans people with freaky cultists, which is hardly flattering)

He’s a Christian so would have a very different perspective than a non-Christian at that time. Bit like reading a commentary from a very conservative evangelical church on the trans community today. And it’s not clear whether he’s contemporary with the dead man - cults can change practices over time so a commentary several hundred years after the fact may not be that helpful.

I’m still not reading anything that supports the OP that the man in the exhibit was motivated by an interest in Malaga. Maybe he did get gratification from it, or maybe the society was so different from today’s society that it’s difficult to draw analogies. I’m not Mary Beard.

And it’s not clear whether he’s contemporary with the dead man - cults can change practices over time so a commentary several hundred years after the fact may not be that helpful.

The galli were still a thing in the 4th century, so this was a first-hand description from the perspective of the 'new' religion.

I’m not sure speculation on the dead man’s motive, ie interest in Malaga, is entirely helpful, given that pre-Christian Roman values were so different to our post-Christian western values. There were so many gods and cults and festivals.

Gods, cults, and festivals are all man-made in order to gratify the needs of men. We can't read their minds but we know what they liked to do.

Also not Mary Beard.

Bit like reading a commentary from a very conservative evangelical church on the trans community today.

In some ways, perhaps. But

"They deny that they are men, and they are not women. They wish that they were believed to be women”

is informative about society's views in general, not merely his own.

The galli were still a thing in the 4th century, so this was a first-hand description from the perspective of the 'new' religion

It may be a contemporary description of 4th century galli, but do we know if that is the same date as the subject of this discussion? I couldn’t see from the article. if you look at the practices of the Christian churches over the last three hundred years then there are massive changes (eg the rise of non-conformist churches and worship, the role of women, Vatican II), while some are unchanged (eg the wording of the Creeds and the structure of the Eucharist). So I’m wary.

i think there are enough egregious examples of transing historical events, artefacts and people (Joan of Arc, Mary Rose nit comb). This feels like a bit of a reach to me.

‘Even contemporary Christians, who revered a tortured slave-god, ‘

What a bizarre take on Christ, a freeborn Jew who in fact was declared descended from King David.

I can’t really take anything else this bloke says seriously, if he is that far out on a basic tenet of a major religion.

Taking a swipe at Christians . Perhaps hoping some Evangelical will take the bait. Brownie points.

Perhaps he's referring to the crucifixion, which was the fate for runaway slaves. You'd think he'd know that Christ claimed to be the SON of God, though, not God himself.

I've read that some Christian theologians believe Mary was a slave because she refers to herself as a 'doule'. A word, they say, used exclusively for female slaves, which would make her children also slaves. I don't know how niche this interpretation might be though.

Even if it's wrong I don't think it's relevant to the main thrust of the article. I think it's interesting because how we frame the exhibits in our museums and galleries are necessarily exhibits themselves. The labels tell us about our society or at least about how a section of that society wishes to be seen.

This 25 yo man, there could have been horror, coercion and tragedy in his life. He died young. At least he wasn't she/her'd. Science is stumbling over an ideology but not fallen yet.

As a Greco-Roman pagan this is something I know quite a bit about. The castrated cross-dressing (these are facts) Galli were foreign priests from Anatolia where such priests could be found in Diana of Ephesus's temple and that of Atargatis. They were always men who either were forcibly castrated as children or wanted it. So we don't know how voluntary it was
We do know from a famous tombstone that a Gallus had long hair, wore feminine clothes, jewelry and was proud of his priesthood. Many did refer to themselves with the grammatical feminine gender. And they were sought after as lovers by both Roman women and men.
What's interesting is the Roman response to them as we inherit many notions of social gender from them.
Romans were fascinated-horrified by Galli as Roman manliness; being tough, wearing men's clothes, not being perceived as effeminate and being the active partner in same-sex relations was the prized norm.
And the Galli were the opposite of all this. They also lived on the top of Vatican Hill, which got it's name from the Galli who special days would wander about and tell fortunes (vaticanare).

At least there's a mad dash to move away from clown fish.
It does seem like facts are presented but with a slant to transing the dead. I find it tasteless.