Talk:Elagabalus

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Contents 1 older entries 2 Transsexuality and pronouns 2.1 Carefull when applying 20th century concepts to historical persons 3 History loss 4 Transgenderism 5 Elegabalus 6 Some sections seem to have been vandalised

[edit] older entries

A quick googling show Heliogabalus 3,520 hits vs. Elagabalus 5,670 hits. I am thinking about moving this page there unless someone objects. M123 17:45, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Transsexuality and pronouns

It seems to me it would be more appropriate to use female pronouns for Elagabalus throughout this article. --Eequor 10:23, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It is not speculation to say Elagabalus was transsexual. Prior to my editing, the article included the following:

including the claim that he had an artificial vagina cut into his body

This is corroborated in each of the pages I linked. Such a desire very clearly identifies Elagabalus as transsexual. --Eequor 15:40, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

One would do well to read The Amazing Emperor Heliogabalus, written in 1911 by J. Stuart Hay. The author discredits previous works as unfairly biased and states a desire to "right a wrong". This book provides further corroboration for the claims of Elagabalus' behavior:

• Of course it would have been curious to see him in that wonderful palace, clothed like a Persian queen, insisting that he should be addressed as Imperatrix, and quite living up to the title. It would not only have been interesting, it would have given one an insight into how much Rome saw and how much she could stand.

• But it was not his voluptuousness that the world objected to; it was the abnormal condition of his mind; because in the body of the man resided the soul with all the natural passions of a woman. He was what the world knew as a Psycho- sexual Hermaphrodite.

• Certainly Hierocles had no just cause for fear; Elagabalus' affection was too feminine, too deep-rooted, to do more than tease the man from whose hands, like many another woman in history, he was more than willing to take ill-usage and stripes, if only they were signs of jealousy or proofs of affection.

• It may be that, as Lampridius says, his effeminacy disgusted the virile Roman world.

• In this epitome of the qualities demanded of men we see the true grounds on which the world has instinctively condemned Elagabalus, though probably without quite knowing why they did so. It is because they have been told that he possessed the virtues, along with the mind, of the woman, and a voluptuous woman at that, and had nothing of what the world expects to find in the male animal.

--Eequor 17:08, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Carefull when applying 20th century concepts to historical persons

Well, this question is always very, very tricky. Undoubtably, gender variant people have existed throughout the ages, [1] (Eequor already cited it) gives an overview, as does Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors. However, there are two things one always has to keep in mind when talking about history: One, not all sources are neutral. That is especially true when successors talk about the "debauchery" of their predecessors. Two, some categories did not exist at the time a particular person did live. That is equally true of homosexual, gay and lesbian, and transgender, transsexual, transvestite and all other terms describing gender variant people or behaviour. Therefore, applying these categories or descriptions to historical persons has to be done with the utmost care. In fact, most of the time it will be completely impossible - who can, with any certainty, say that a person behaved in a gender variant way because they were trans*, and not intersex, or merely in a way gay or lesbian that was expressed in a gender-variant way? The latter was at many times, after all, quite the norm. Additionally, such behaviour might have reasons completely unrelated to any of these reasons. So much for the general problem, now to the specific person in question:

I am not saying that what Eequor cites does not look very much as if Elagabalus was transgendered, and possibly transsexual. However, this is speculation, which I would consider NPOV and at least unproven as long as it is not being said by a historian who has reviewed the sources critically; and preferably by one who wrote after words like transgender and transsexual were coined, and the concepts described. Benjamin is certainly not a historian, and the second source given [2] is not exactly a strictly scientific historian one, as much as appreciate its existence. Same goes for Leslie Feinberg.

Therefore, I think that we cannot say, without violating the rules of NPOV and accuracy, that Elagabalus was transgendered and/or transsexual. What we can say without violating these rules though is something like "In various sources, Elagabalus' behaviour has been described in a way that today would undoubtably be described as transgender or gender variant, probably transsexual." It is also not usually done to use the "other" pronouns when describing historical people who show gender variant behaviour, with very few exceptions, non of which seem to applie here, and I think it would only confuse readers. Therefore, I think inserting the sentence above (or something similar) would be the best solution, until we have more critically reviewed data; and, for the change of pronouns, a change of habits in writing. -- AlexR 23:26, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] History loss

I had actually edited this page twice. A database error occurred during my second update; the record of the first edit seems to have been destroyed. --Eequor 11:25, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Should I have spelled out the implications of that? This page should not be edited at all until the developers have a chance to look at whatever is going on. Doing anything may cause further damage. --Eequor 15:30, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm... If that's true, perhaps no one should make any edits to Wikipedia ;-) Seriously, though, I don't think we need to worry about "damage" or "records being destroyed" in this case. All software has bugs, and sometimes your edit never makes it into the database for some reason. I wouldn't be overly concerned. Thanks, BCorr|Брайен 02:42, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Locking the wiki wouldn't be that bad an idea, really. History being overwritten is a very serious bug. Consider the damage that could be done if somebody found a reliable way to cause database errors. A capable vandal could make changes that would be impossible to revert. --Eequor 04:43, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Transgenderism

Referromg tp Elagabalus as "she" is absolutely ridiculous. Modern concepts of transgenderism ought not to be applied to the ancient world in the first place, and as Alex points out, it's very possible that the stuff said about Elagabalus is nothing more than calumny by his enemies. john k 02:45, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Transgenderism is hardly a recent phenomenon. [3] It hasn't changed significantly over thousands of years, either. The same ideas that hold today held during the reign of Elagabalus. --Eequor 03:19, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

As for calumny, one should look to the biases of the historians and inconsistencies between accounts. Fabrications are more likely to vary in the telling and even contradict each other. What is consistent throughout the works cited thus far?

• Elagabalus desired (and possibly succeeded) to have her anatomical gender changed. Even the earlier Wikipedia article mentioned this!
• Elagabalus was fairly effeminate, often (or always) wearing women's attire.
• Elagabalus took the role of wife to a slave named Hierocles.
• Elagabalus insisted upon being called empress (or imperatrix).
• Elagabalus was very active sexually.

Note in particular that both NPOV Harry Benjamin and positively biased J. Stuart Hay agree on these. This is not calumny. --Eequor 03:45, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I suppose that's one view. I would strongly suspect that you'd be hard pressed to say that this is a generally accepted view. I don't know that much about scholarship on this issue. Certainly much of the scholarship on homosexuality focuses on the extent to which "homosexuality" as a category under which people are categorized (though not, of course, homosexual activities) has been constructed in relatively recent times. I would be highly surprised if the scholarship on transgenderism is not ultimately similar. john k 03:23, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Leah Q: I understand that research on trangender behaviour is an interesting topic. I read the links and i found them interesting and useful, that is why the external link was not removed. The people who wrote the research are the paradigm of speculators (thats their job as researchers in this field) and you are speculating . Wondering if Elagabalus preferring to be treated as a she or a he is the mother of all speculations. This kind of information does not belong in an encyclopaedia, it belongs to Scientific Journals on Psychology, Gender Studies, History and so on and so forth. Muriel G 13:23, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I think it would be OK to have a brief mention of the theory at the end of this article; many of our articles report recent theories and research results, even ones that are kind of far out (I did a bit of this in Conflict of the Orders for instance). But we need to put a lot of caveats around it, because much of the lurid stuff comes from the Augustan History, which may itself be entirely fabricated. People who are not specialists in ancient history see a nicely printed book and may not realize that all we have is the words themselves; there is usually no independent authority or source material to vouch for their accuracy, and therefore no way to distinguish fact from fancy. Much of the job of classical scholars is just to dream up ways to extract another solid fact or two out of the mass of verbiage. Stan 19:59, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Elegabalus

I redirected the page Elegabalus to this article, and put the old content at Talk:Elagabalus/Elegabalus. It seems all the content in that article is sufficiently covered here, but someone who knows better might like to check. Zeimusu | Talk page 04:03, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

The article is a cut and paste of an academic paper that has some rather good source material. Unfortunately, while the paper's author gives permission for the paper to be redistributed, his stated terms are not compabitable with Wikipedia's. As a result I have deleted the original page's history and the temp page. -JCarriker 07:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some sections seem to have been vandalised

He also took a Vestal Virgin as one of a succession of wives and openly boasted that his sexual interest in men was more than just a casual pastime, as it had been for previous emperors. That means he was a total faggot

I have deleted this section. The fact that he took a vestal virgin has been mentioned further on in the article