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Transgender and Transsexuality

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Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender

Brief Intellectual History of Transgender

Ancient Greece and Rome

Plato, in his Symposium, allows Aristophanes the opportunity to speak on the concept of the power of love. In that speech, Aristophanes says:

…For one thing, the race was divided into three; that is to say, besides the two sexes, male and female, which we have at present, there was a third which partook of the nature of both, and for which we still have a name, though the creature itself is forgotten. For though “hermaphrodite” [now called “intersexed”] is only used nowadays as a term of contempt, there really was a man-woman in those days, a being which was half male and half female… The three sexes, I may say, arose as follows. The males were descended from the Sun, the females from the Earth, and the hermaphrodites from the Moon, which partakes of either sex… (Harvey, 1997, p. 32)

The Greeks, forerunners of modern medicine, believed in the concept of more than one sex. It was well within their mythological construct...

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Authors
  1. Tarynn M. Witten
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Human Relationa Area Files/Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Carol R. Ember  & Melvin Ember  & 

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Witten, T.M. et al. (2003). Transgender and Transsexuality. In: Ember, C.R., Ember, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29907-6_22

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-29907-6_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-47770-6

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