Ever wondered how the medieval Church navigated gender diversity within its fold? Prepare yourself for an enlightening journey through the less-trodden paths of Church history, featuring tales of transgender saints and the societal repercussions of modern anti-trans legislation.
In this exceptional episode, we are privileged to host Professor Maeve Doyle, a seasoned scholar with profound insights into the medieval history of gender. Together, we uncover compelling stories of women who donned the masculinity cloak to join the Church, and saints depicted with intentional gender fluidity in religious artwork. From the intriguing story of St. Eugenia, celebrated on Christmas day, to the gender-fluid portrayal of Saint Athanasia and Christ's transcendence of the gender binary, we challenge and broaden your understanding of gender in the Church. As we delve into these historical narratives, we also emphasize the contemporary, highlighting recent research on the detrimental mental health effects of anti-trans laws and the crucial role of activism in safeguarding transgender youth. Join us, as we weave together past and present, history and activism, community and individual identity in this enlightening exploration of gender diversity in the Church.
Follow us on social @sexeddebunked or send us a message at sexeddebunked@gmail.com
Ever wondered how the medieval Church navigated gender diversity within its fold? Prepare yourself for an enlightening journey through the less-trodden paths of Church history, featuring tales of transgender saints and the societal repercussions of modern anti-trans legislation.
In this exceptional episode, we are privileged to host Professor Maeve Doyle, a seasoned scholar with profound insights into the medieval history of gender. Together, we uncover compelling stories of women who donned the masculinity cloak to join the Church, and saints depicted with intentional gender fluidity in religious artwork. From the intriguing story of St. Eugenia, celebrated on Christmas day, to the gender-fluid portrayal of Saint Athanasia and Christ's transcendence of the gender binary, we challenge and broaden your understanding of gender in the Church. As we delve into these historical narratives, we also emphasize the contemporary, highlighting recent research on the detrimental mental health effects of anti-trans laws and the crucial role of activism in safeguarding transgender youth. Join us, as we weave together past and present, history and activism, community and individual identity in this enlightening exploration of gender diversity in the Church.
Follow us on social @sexeddebunked or send us a message at sexeddebunked@gmail.com
Speaker 1:
This is Study Sessions brought to you by Sex Ed, debunked In these mini-sodes.
Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
Hi, this is Study Sessions, a bi-weekly Minnesota by Sex Ed Debunked, where we talk about topics brought to us by you, our listeners.
Speaker 1:
On this week's study session and in light of the Transgender Awareness Week, which goes from November 13th through 19th, and also the Trans Day of Remembrance coming up on November 20th, we're going to talk about a really interesting topic related to transgender folks, which is the topic of transgender saints in the history of that.
Speaker 3:
But first, because we know what's going on in this country right now with all of the anti-trans and anti-gender affirming legislation. I did want to talk a bit about the recent research around this legislation, particularly in the area of psychology. The Monitor on Psychology, which is a magazine that reports on recent research, reported on research in 2023 that is suggesting that the very existence of these laws, even if it's not in your state, is seriously impacting the health and well-being of transgender youth and gender diverse youth.
Speaker 1:
And that comes down to a lot of what we've talked about on the show before, which is anticipated Sigma and minority effect, and anxiety is the idea that, even if something isn't affecting you directly, it is in fact affecting you if you are a part of a minority group.
Speaker 3:
Well, and this research actually goes a step further, shannon.
Speaker 3:
What it's actually saying is that the fact that these varied discussions are even being had so even if it's not a discussion happening in your community or in your state, the fact that across this country people are talking about legislation that is banning gender-affirming care for youth and for trans youth just the fact that discussions are being had in the country is having a detrimental impact.
Speaker 3:
But I do want to point out one thing that the research is showing is a protective factor, and that protective factor goes around activism and speaking up.
Speaker 3:
That includes not just the transgender youth, but the fact that parents and caregivers and loved ones and siblings and friends are speaking up in favor of transgender youth and gender non-conforming folk. So for the listeners of the podcast who are frustrated and just like we are frustrated by what's going on in this country and the terrible negative legislation that is trying to strike down gender-affirming care, the best way thing you can do to help the people that you love is to show them that you support them and to show them with activism by saying hey, I just wrote to my representative or, when those conversations are being had about this legislation, to really actively say no, because the research is showing that activism and speaking up is actually becoming, is actually a way to help guard against some of the negative mental health effects. So, in other words, just like we've talked to before, shannon, you know you create a community. Community can help these transgender kids.
Speaker 1:
Well, exactly and that's that is exactly what I was going to say is that, unfortunately, you know, all of this negative legislation and just propaganda, basically is being spread around. But one of the positive effects, if you want to look at that, is it is rallying people together to stand up for our trans brothers, sisters and our whole trans community. And that doesn't necessarily mean that it is a positive, because we'd love for us to just be able to live freely as we are. But if you do need a way to look for the silver linings in what is otherwise a terrible, terrible political situation right now, it is the fact that communities are coming together in support and protection for our trans friends.
Speaker 1:
Yep, and so so kind of to get off that note, which is, of course, let's take it back and not talk about what's going on currently at all, because hey, what a nightmare, but instead what we're going to talk about and again thinking about the Transgender Day of Remembrance. We are going to talk about some interesting history about trans and gender diversity in the church going way way back In the church.
Yeah, in the church, cause for dramatic effect In the church and then also going back to some like medieval history. So huge shout out to Professor Maeve Doyle, who my mom, christian, met during a writing seminar at Wesleyan. But Maeve introduced this idea of the medieval history of gender and how fascinating it is. So we're going to jump into that and give you a really interesting trans history lesson in this study session.
Speaker 3:
With a caveat that this is just dipping our toes into it, but, as some of our listeners know, I've gone through, you know, 12 years of Catholic school plus college, of Catholic college, and I never heard about trans saints or even the idea of gender fluid saints in the church and that just kind of like blew my mind. So, first of all, like what Professor Doyle researches is art, history and sculpture. And if you go through the sculpture, certain areas of the world, particularly the Byzantine Empire, there are actually sculptures and artwork and on cathedrals themselves portraying saints that are arguably gender fluid, meaning that you cannot that part of their dress. If you deconstruct how the artist has rendered the saint, if you deconstruct it, part of their dress would be a traditionally male dress and some of it would be traditionally female and the artists, arguably, are very intentional in depicting these saints as really kind of gender fluid.
Speaker 1:
If you will. Yeah, it's so interesting and we know that you know, going back to Shakespeare, which obviously is not that far back, but we know that there is an established history of men passing as women, so it's not shocking that this might have come from somewhere. But there is even more when you go even deeper into it, beyond that right.
Speaker 3:
Well, the history behind it, interestingly, is actually the other way. It's actually women passing as men, Right, and there was kind of a recognition, certainly in those medieval times, pre-medieval times even, that you know, if you want to do anything important, you had to be male Sure. So young women born cis-female. If they wanted to be a monk, if they wanted to be a priest, if they wanted to preach the word of Christ, they had to dress in the garb of a man.
Speaker 1:
Well, for those of us who were raised on the problematic Disney adaptation of Mulan know very well that you have to pass as male. But what's interesting about this particular history lesson is it was women passing as male and we could call that trans, we can call that gender-bending, whatever you want to call it, but passing as male to fit into the church, which arguably this day and age is the entity that is most responsible for a lot of trans discrimination. And yet a lot of this trans passing and gender passing was in service of the church. To want to be a member of the church.
Speaker 3:
It's fascinating, isn't it? And fascinating that a number of these gender-bending folk actually became saints in the Catholic Church. So you know, in the Catholic Church the process of becoming a saint is a pretty big one and you know, you have to prove that you've had so many miracles and this, that and the other thing. So the fact that these saints are recognized is another kind of interesting little twist to what we think of as Christianity, right. So I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 3:
So I was looking back to a couple of the saints that were mentioned in some of the earlier writings, and one story that came out was this story about a Roman martyr named Eugenia. And when you look at the sculpture I looked at the picture of the sculpture which is on a cathedral in Spain, and the story of Eugenia is a born cisgender female, one of the ones who you know wanted to portray as a male monk so she could join the monastery. And the story was that while a monk, a rich society person, made advances upon Eugenia, the monk, and when those advances were rebuffed, of course accused the monk of sexual assault. Sure, so, in order to defend, had to actually tear open the monks garbs to reveal, in fact, a female and the actual depiction of the sculpture on this part of the cathedral actually shows the tearing open of the vestments, interesting To not reveal the breast, but it was definitely revealing the act of opening.
Speaker 1:
Well, Ray, and oh yes, of course, I'll let you finish, but what's interesting about that being depicted in art is that it is such an important part of the story and that is how stories were told prior to a really high literacy rate was. We have to show everything through art and this was such an important part of the story to show that transition and that reveal in the art.
Speaker 3:
Well, and here's the real curiosity, Shannon, when I looked it up and I was looking online for this scene under the Catholic online, it basically says this whole story is made up, that there was a martyr, but the rest of the story is a romantic fictitious legend. By the way, her feast day is December 25th. But when I dug into the history of the medieval artifacts from the art history side of it shows that there's a small village in the north of Portugal with the name of St Eugenia that contains a church with a painting of St Eugenia dressed as a boy.
Speaker 1:
So you're a racial be damned. It happened. A racial be damned.
Speaker 3:
Well, and you know like you can say something online, like the Catholic online can say something, but it's actually there. It's actually there, in the country of Portugal, that this is how this saint was depicted. So I think it's fascinating how the artwork is a history, is a carved history that cannot be denied, no matter how you try to write your way around it.
Speaker 1:
Well, and that leads into another interesting point, because of course we have all this artwork and we have all of these religious pieces of art where we can see this very interesting gender-bendy artistic representation, but it also started to be proliferated in text. So from the fifth to the ninth century there was a lot of detailing about saints, especially like Greek and Mediterranean saints, and in the texts these figures are addressed by medieval authors using both male and female pronouns interchangeably. So you know, it's not just the art where you're left to interpretation, but in fact in the texts as well, they are using male and female pronouns because that is what was appropriate to them. This is essentially non-binary writing of male, sometimes female, other times.
Speaker 3:
Well, which kind of goes that? The striking part of this history, shannon, is. It goes against what everyone keeps like saying, what you hear in the media now, like oh, this is all something new. Well, no, this is in the fifth century, the ninth century, the medieval times, that there was a recognition of that. There was no such thing as a gender binary. That gender was fluid.
Speaker 1:
It was an acknowledgement that it was fluid in saints. Yeah, and in fact, some of the research that we read and we relied really heavily on research for this episode because we wanted to really understand it but a lot of the research said, in fact, using gender pronouns interchangeably was pretty common at this point and the misgendering is the modern approach. Misgendering and deciding that it has to be one or the other is actually the much more modern adaptation of these stories.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and there was another saint that came across from the Byzantine era called Saint Athanasia, and this was yet another saint born into a high social class, born as a woman, actually married to a man, but when their children died, they both took monastic vows and she decided to present as a man in order to get accepted into the monastery, and it was something that apparently I mean apparently it worked out, because now she's ordained as a saint. So clearly, like the issue the issue of being trans or changing your gender expression was not an impediment to becoming a saint, which anybody who's brought up in the Catholic Church it's like. Which is kind of how I was at the Church center.
Speaker 1:
And I do want to say, and just to caveat this like you know, one of the most problematic standpoints of TERF people is the idea that you're changing genders to have gender privilege. That is not, in any way, shape or form, what we were referring to in this episode and when researching this topic. It's actually just the idea that gender fluidity has existed for a very, very, very, very, very long time.
Speaker 3:
And it not only existed, but was acknowledged and acknowledged, and some of these gender fluid folks are now saints.
Speaker 1:
Well, and that is because the gender that they identified with was so authentic that it was not something that was exposed. It was simply who they were, because gender is fluid and who you are is who you are, and you can become a saint because of who you are and not because of the genitalia you were assigned at birth.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah. So so it turns out that the medieval folk might have been, you know, much more tolerant than we give them credit for and much more accepting and inclusive than we might give them credit for. And you had a story too here about Alexander's great love.
Speaker 1:
So, yeah, a couple of things and these are just a couple of, you know, points that I stumbled across in my research, but first of all one that's probably going to upset a lot of people, but there is some in religious texts.
Speaker 1:
There is some some what's the word, I guess evidence or support, and of course religious texts are one of the more interesting sort of tangent tangential things was the idea that Christ himself was able to provide sort of life force in a way that a traditional female person might, an additional female body might, and so there is a text that says that Christ said drink daughter from my side, and this is part of medieval Christian mysticism. But he said drink daughter from my side. And being able to provide that sort of life force is inherently feminine in in the grand scheme of religious texts. And this was really interesting because the research said you know this, this quote, this idea, this story grants quote, feminine bodily attributes to Christ, destabilizing assumptions about his gender in mystical images and texts. In fact, christ's capacity to transcend the gender binary, like his ability to transcend the binary of life and death, underscores his divinity.
Speaker 1:
So almost the idea that Christ exists outside of binaries and outside dualities is why he is Christ in the first place. Is that Christ does not Christ. They do not exist in binaries or dualities and that's just well. I thought that was just such an interesting point of view to read about. Is that Christ? Christ is constantly divided, it def what's the word? Destroying the binary Right exactly is constantly going beyond a binary. It's constantly going beyond what is true and false. I mean, so many of Christ's miracles are going against what we believe to be true, and so I thought right, really, really fascinating.
Speaker 3:
It is, and you think about the stories of the life of Christ, and he is constantly trying to break down the norms. Actually, when Christ allowed the leper to come to him, when Christ allowed the prostitute to wash his feet, All of that was about breaking down the social norms even of that time. So it's not surprising to have a mystical writer here talk about breaking other binaries and other norms as well, which is pretty fascinating yeah it's really fascinating.
Speaker 1:
We've talked about that too and obviously we've done episodes where we've talked about religion and we've talked about faith and we've talked about how Jesus was intended in a lot of these texts to be kind of the ultimate rebel, right Like breaking tradition and going outside.
Speaker 1:
Rightly erratical, Certainly erratical, exactly.
Speaker 1:
But then the other story that you alluded to which I just found interesting was Alexander the Great's most recorded lover was a eunuch named Bogos, but then in most of the many of the writings after the historical text was translated into Bogo, which is just a female character.
Speaker 1:
But most of this was just kind of, you know, done to normalize or stabilize the gender binary. But the truth is that, like this lover of Alexander the Great, that really was his most recorded lover, was in fact transcending the gender binary. And you know this was just affirming the possibility of there being something beyond the binary, that this great warrior, with these recorded stories and again we've talked about it Warriors were always sleeping with people of all different geniors. They were just trying to get it where they could get it. But this was the most profound relationship recorded Alexander the Great's life and it does bring up the question of the number of times throughout history that we've heard of a eunuch character, and was that eunuch a quote unquote eunuch, or were they in fact a transgender person that they were struggling to find a identifier or a title for a label for?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, and that's a fascinating point of view, and I am certain that they are trans researchers out there looking at that very issue as we speak. And if you are a trans researcher, and you are listening to this.
Speaker 1:
We've reached out to us because we need to know more. We have asked a lot of questions. More, more, more.
Speaker 3:
Yes, exactly, but so we hope you enjoyed this very cursory dive into medieval art and sculpture in the Catholic Church and elsewhere. But it does evidence quite clearly that being transgender diverse and gender non-binary is not a recent phenomenon, as some have argued Right.
Speaker 1:
And we know that science is on the side of transgender and gender diverse folk and I hope this episode helps our listeners know that history is also on the side of gender and gender folk.
Speaker 3:
That's right. Well said Shannon.
Speaker 1:
History and science, and so do we have some good news? Yeah, do we have some good news? We have a little bit of good news.
Speaker 3:
We have a little. I want to highlight a little bit of good news from the sex education front in two areas. First of all, we do have a group that's trying to develop national sex education standards and those standards which is really cool is actually. One of the highlights of that is gender identity and expression, and so we do have that right there wants school districts to start teaching about gender identity and expression and in the context of gender roles and social norms around gender roles, starting K to 2. Which is awesome.
Speaker 3:
The second piece of legislation that actually I want, I hope abroad Swath of you are aware of, because this has actually been introduced in 2023 in our federal Congress and it's called the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act of 2023. And the purpose behind that act is to one uphold the rights of young people to make decisions about their bodies and health and sexuality, which obviously is quite important, but also looks to preserve the right to gender affirming care, and right now this bill is being sponsored by I believe 33 senators and I think 50 something members of the House of Representatives. So for you listeners out there will post it on as a resource on the sex had debunked page, but it's called the Real Education and Access for Healthy Youth Act and if you call your legislature or your state representative, you can tell them that this act is important to you and gender affirming care for youth is important to you.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely so. Again, this is the Trans Awareness Week and we are coming up on the Trans Day of Remembrance. So, to our trans community, we are here for you and we have about 20,000 listeners who also are here for you, and we will continue to educate as much as we can. We are here and we'll have open ears if there is anything else we should be talking about, but we are here for you and we fully believe in the right to every single person to be exactly who they are and express exactly who they are, and we really hope our listeners feel the same and that more people will continue to rally and show their support in that way. So that is another episode of Sex Ed Debunked. That is our study session. We'll be back next week with a full episode and, as usual, if you have any questions, topics, comments, concerns, weird quotes, funny sex stories, whatever you've got that you want to share with us, we are at sexeddebunkedcom and all socials at sexeddebunked. Thanks everyone for listening and have a great week. Bye now.