Transgender in the Historical Imagination

Abstract

Human beings have been fascinated by images of bisexuality and the androgyne since ancient times. The statues of ancient Greece and Rome, and the cults which they represent reveal a particular preoccupation with hermaphroditism, as we shall see later, but cross-dressing, too, has a long and complex history of representation in western culture. The main purpose of this chapter, in the context of a study of the modern imaginary, is precisely to demonstrate the deep-rootedness in the human psyche of these two aspects of what we now call trans-gender, and the cultural representations that give it expression. This survey will also reveal on the one hand an unchanging hostility towards any real and permanent threat to gender, and on the other, an erotically motivated fascination with transgender which expresses itself in our similarly unchanging myths and narratives.