Cross-dressing Saints

[ikhet_sekhmet]

We're moving house, so all sorts of things are popping out of the woodwork.

"Female chastity, and especially virginity, removes the assumption that a woman is operatively female and therefore de-sexualises her. Furthermore, it assigns her to a 'liminal', or intermediate, state between masculine and feminine, with a pronounced bias towards the masculine. Thus de-sexualised, a virgin can in certain societies adopt the attire and manners of men... whatever simultaneously partakes of two contradictory categories - the third, 'betwixt-and-between' category - is abnormal because non-natural and rationally unintelligible, and in many societies is identified with the 'holy'... [Saint Thecla's] membership of a third, anomalous category brought her very near to the holy angelic state - a sexless and bodiless condition which however remained closely aligned to the male sex, as may be inferred from the names and military interests of angels."

(I was reading something else entirely recently - can't remember what - anyway, it occurred to me that before troublesome Eve is introduced into the world of Genesis, that world is both male and neuter: male is the natural, sexless category.)

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Petropoulos, John C. B. "Transvestite virgin with a cause: The Acta Pauli et Thecla and late antique proto-"feminism"." In B. Berggreen and N. Marinatos (eds). Greece and Gender, Bergen, Norway: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1995.