Meditations on the Life of Gayle Starr

Towards a new Obituary for Gayle Starr

Gayle Starr died sometime around 1969 in rural Montana. She had been working as a waitress. My old colleague, Heather Branstetter, found the initial report of her death, as a dateless and contextless newspaper clipping in a file, while doing historical research on rural Idaho, and commented that today “we would probably write a different narrative for Gayle Starr’s obituary.” I did a little more digging and found a few more articles and details of Gayle's life, but still not enough to give her a proper obituary. Still I keep thinking about her, guessing about her life, wondering about it, sorta amazed by it.

Gayle was around 50 when she died, and was born in 1919, although I can find no clue as to where, or who her family were. However, we do know that Gayle was assigned as male at birth and given the name Herbert C. Upton. Gayle's upbringing and youth are unclear too. But by the age of 42, in 1961, Gayle was an ex-convict who had done time in both the New Mexico and the Michigan State Prisons on convictions of larceny, forgery, and fraudulent checks. In 1961, Gayle lived in Flathead County, MT and worked as a barmaid, in Essex, MT.  Essex is a tiny train stop on the edge of Glacier National Park, with few amenities mostly for tourists passing through.  Even the county seat of Kalispell isn't exactly big.  She was living successfully as a woman for at least 9 months. In one version of the story, she was arrested by the county Sheriff “after a tip by an area resident that things were not what they seemed where 'Gayle Starr' was concerned.” This arrest made it into the local paper, the Kalispell Daily Inner Lake, and she was held pending a psychiatric hearing. Another version of the story, has her being arrested after “area residents filed complaints of disturbances and threats with the sheriff's office” but the real problem emerges when Gayle “was growing a beard today in the county jail while awaiting arraignment for vagrancy and possibly other charges as yet unspecified.”

She was sent to the State Hospital for “psychiatric examination.” But the State Hospital “failed to find” "insanity to warrant commitment,” and further “previous charges were dropped on the basis of the psychiatrist's report.” Gayle was released back to Kalispell, a month after arrest, a free person, albeit one whose conviction record and birth name had been revealed in the local paper of the county of 30,000ish.

Downtown Kalispell 1974

By 1969, Gayle was living in Mineral County, MT, at the Guy Ghilheri Ranch in Haugan, MT. That county had only 3000ish people. Gayle had worked at the West End cafe as a waitress for over a year, at the time of her death. According to reports Gayle wore women's clothing, used heavy make up, and none of the locals had a clue that Gayle was given a male name at birth. The title of Gayle's obituary is “Death Reveals a Masquerade” and it assumes that Herbert C. Upton was the real person who died, and was male, and that Gayle Starr was merely the “feminine name” that “he” used. The file my old friend found the 1969 clipping in was historical notes marked “Residents of Shoshone Co” (a county in rural ID, that borders Mineral county, MT and had about 20,000 people in 1969), so odds are that Gayle lived there too at some point.

The Silver Bar, Haugan, MT in the 1960s

Yet Gayle certainly lived publicly as a woman, for months or years at a time, over the course of at least 8 years. Despite the name Gayle Starr getting negative publicity in nearby Kalispell, that was the name that she choose to use for herself over the following years. That sure sounds like it was a genuine identity for her, rather than merely an alias of convenience. The only Herbert C. Upton in the 1950 or 1940 census (near as I can tell, this could be my limits as a researcher) is a significantly older fellow living in Mass. So the person named Herbert C. Upton at birth, probably wasn't going publicly by that name already by the age of 21. It would have been easy for the psychiatrist at Montana's state hospital to have Gayle committed, that he didn't probably means he thought Gayle was a threat to no one, and also wasn't delusional. Similarly, the Sheriff could probably have sent Gayle to prison again for forgery. Given that Gayle's previous convictions included forgery and fraudulent check writing, it's tempting to guess that Gayle had previously attempted to live a publicly female life, and got caught and had the book thrown at her.

The picture that emerges from these few scattered reports, at least in my imagination, is a person who struggled their entire adult life to live in an identity and gender other than the one given them at birth. Someone who paid dearly for this, doing multiple stints in prison, and then living as an ex-con. Yet someone who kept being Gayle Starr, whenever she could, in a culture that definitely did not understand or approve of this. Living humbly as a barmaid and waitress, in the fading mountain west. Moving from small town to small town occasionally, probably looking for work, but also trying to start over again and again when their secret was revealed. Humble, brave, and relentlessly true to themselves despite real dangers, that's a mix I can respect.

Musing and Questions on Gayle Starr

1969 was the year that the Stonewall Riots happened in New York City. The contrast between the queens and transvestites of the big city, and the wandering rural trans folk is poignant to me, as a trans person that has never lived in a real city, or felt a part of trans community.

Evidence suggests that the vast majority of trans folk choose to move to large cities, and large cities have been centers of trans culture throughout the 20^th century and still today. Yet, I'm stayin' here in Terre Haute, which is a bit bigger that Kalispell, MT, but has far more in common with Kalispell or Wallace ID, than it does with New York, San Francisco, or Quebec. I often wonder how life is different for rural or small town trans folk, than it is for big city trans folk. I think there may be advantages to being small town trans as well as disadvantages.  It's hard to find kindred spirits.  But people are polite to me here, even when their eyes suggest they disapprove. I suspect the anonymity of the big city takes that away ...

Did Gayle know anyone else in a similar situation to her? Was Gayle a natural drifter, or did she feel forced to move? Was there really no one in Mineral Co, who heard about Gayle's publicity in Flathead Co. a few years earlier? Or did some folks know and simply not mind, and not want to make trouble for her?

Why did the state psychiatrist choose not to have Gayle committed for Transvestism, which was certainly in the DSM at the time? Why did the Sheriff decide not to press any charges, including transvestism, or forgery? Were there authority figures who were covertly trying to create space for trans people to be themselves in the 60s despite the laws of the time?

Gayle's forgery and fraudulent checking charges, were those just punishments for trying to live as a woman, or had she done more than just provide cover for herself? Were charges like that regularly used to punish trans people? If we looked back through the fraudulent checking and forgery convictions would we find lots of cases where the only fraud someone was guilty of, was trying to be themselves? Were there other techniques that were used to backdoor punish trans folk, while trying to obscure what was really going on? Or maybe everyone back then knew that fraudulent checking sometimes meant kiting checks, and sometimes just meant trying to open a checking account under a non-birth gender and getting caught. The mafia famously owned lots of gay bars, including the Stonewall Inn, was organized crime helping trans folk create fake IDs, perhaps?

How did Gayle think of herself? Did she understand herself as a “female impersonator,” as a “queen,” as a “transvestite?” Several of the newspaper blurbs use the term “masquerader,” was that a technical term of the time? Would Gayle have thought of herself in those terms? Christine Jorgensen was a sensation in 1952, when Gayle was 33. Did Gayle think of herself as transsexual? Did she dream of surgery? Hormone therapy became available in the US during the 50s and 60s, but was pretty tightly controlled. Did Gayle know about that? Did she apply for it? Was she rejected? There is no mention of hormone pills in any of the news stories about her.

Who outted Gayle to the Sheriff and why? What all am I missing from Gayle's story? What would it be like to be gender non-conforming in your heart in the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s? I've meet folks from the 70s and 80s and on. But in the 50s, even open minded experts like Kinsey or Benjamin were barely wrapping their head around transgenderism. Did the queer folk in the streets, or drifting from town to town, have a better understanding of their own situation from up close? Or were they lost, trying to make sense of themselves with old categories that barely fit? Did Gayle have experiences that haven't even been hinted at in the few articles I've found? What did she do during WWII, for example? She'd have been 22 or 23 in 1942 when the US entered the war, but perhaps she was already living as a female by then. Did she have long term relationships during her life? Kids? How did she relate with her family?

There are so many things I don't know about Gayle Starr and her life, and she's probably not my kin or anything, but I keep coming back and musing about her life, and how people adapt to their times ... The Chevalier D'Eon is just a storybook character to me, but Gayle Starr seems like a person I can almost but not quite relate to, like a great-aunt.  Someone from before Stonewall, but after Jorgensen. Everyone else has been thinking about Ferguson and Selma recently, and I certainly see why, but I keep drifting back to thinking about this waitress from Montana I never met ...

Clavicula Mortonis – Being an Alphabetickal Compendium of Arcane Gender Lore

Agender – a person who feels neither male nor female, because neither masculinity nor femininity seem to apply to them. Especially if “none” seems closer than “a mix of both” or “in-between.” Seems fairly synonymous with nongendered, genderless, and null-gendered. Close to neutrois, but see it for more.  check here for more

Androgyne – an old Greek term for someone who combines male and female within themselves, that has been used for centuries. Sounds old fashioned these days, but still in use. It's my preferred label, although I like lots of others too. Androgynos was also one of the six gender categories in Jewish law.

Arenotelicon - A creature that alternates between male and female. This word is so obscure it is not even in the O.E.D.; as far as I know it occurs only in the Physiologus, an anonymous book of the early Renaissance. The Physiologus uses it to describe hyenas, which were commonly believed to change their sex every year. These days we'd probably say bigender or genderfluid.

'Aylonit – one of the six gender categories in Jewish law, for people who seem female at birth, but later seem pretty non-female. Literally means barren, but often used as a far more specific and extreme case of non-femaleness than what we would call barrenness in English.  For a modern trans rabbi's perspective check here, for more detail check here, or if you can access academic papers here, 

Baeddel – see scrat, also some folks on tumblr seem to be reviving this very old term, and I can't follow the 21st century issues well enough to comment.

Bigender – a gender identity where one has both a “male-mode” and a “female-mode” and shifts between them, and typically self-identifies as male in male-mode and female in female-mode. A crossdresser might behave similarly, but think of themselves as the same gender whether presenting male or female, a bigender person typically feels their identity switching as well. I was one for a while, but I'm pretty androgyne-all-the-time these days. Bigender is pretty close to genderfluid, but you tend to have two fairly discrete states, like a switch, rather than a whole flowing spectrum. Brin Convenient is a good example. I've seen the term trigender, but never met someone who described themselves to me that way.  For more info or community check bigender.net

Bisexual - when Charles Gilbert Chaddock translated Kraft-Ebbing's German book Psychopathia Sexualis into English in 1892 he picked the word "bisexual" to mean something like "sexually attracted to both genders."  The term has evolved since then, and you can find plenty of other discussions of it.  But BEFORE 1892ish it was a common English term meaning something like androgyne or hermaphrodite or having characteristics of each sex.  So you'll find it applied to people that don't fit nicely into the gender binary regardless of their attractions in lots of pre-20th century contexts.

Chaser, Admirer, or Transfan – slang terms for someone who is particularly attracted to trans people. Sometimes they are ppejorative terms, sometimes they aren't. It can be hard to tell if they're being used affectionately or insultingly.

Chian - Chios is the island in the Aegean right next to the island of Lesbos, which lesbians are named after (by analogy to the famous Greek Poet Sappho of Lesbos, who was probably bi, but oh well).  So a chian would be someone who isn't exactly a lesbian, but definitely in the vicinity ...

Cisgender, often shortened Cis – someone who thinks the gender assigned to them at birth fits them relatively well. It is never a slur or insult when I or most trans people say it. My lovely wife is cis, and I won't hear cisfolk badmouthed, OK?

Clavis – a fancy old word for a “glossary,” literally a “key.” I think it gives an elegant occultist feel to the standard old run down of terms that every discussion of non-standard gender or sexuality issues seems to be required to have, kinda like the Clavicula Salomonis. See also Gender Occultist.

The Clue Fairy – a well meaning spirit that repeatedly attempts to hit trans people living in denial over the head with a giant hammer, representing the repressed truth about themselves, until they finally start getting some of the clues through their thick skulls and coming out to themselves. Why do you take the extra time to peeing sitting down? Wham! Why do you insist on calling yourself a housewife? Wham! Is that gender dysphoria you feel when you look in a mirror? Wham! Why do you always pick female characters when playing video games? Wham! Your examples may vary.

Crossdreamer – Someone who regularly dreams or fantasizes about being another gender, or dressing, presenting or living as someone of another gender, but doesn't actually do much of any of that in real life. Yet.

Crossdressing – dressing in the clothes associated with the opposite gender regardless of motives. Very old practice, done in many cultures for many reasons.

Crossdresser / Transvestite – May mean someone who crossdresses even briefly for whatever reason, but may also mean someone who has regularly crossdressing as a part of their self-identity. In some cases we call someone a “crossdresser” because we don't know much about how they thought about themselves, we only know about their behaviour. Consider Marina the Monk (d. 508) or Ulrika Eleanore Stalhammar (1688-1733) who lived successful male lives for many years. In other cases, people self-identify as crossdressers or transvestites because it seems to fit their gender identity better than other terms, such as Eddie Izzard, who self-describes as a transvestite. The word transvestite is no longer polite in the US, where it was used for psychiatric conditions for so long that it now implies that you think someone's crossdressing is a psychological disorder, rather than a healthy lifestyle, but the word transvestite doesn't usually have these implications in British or Australian English. Someone who regularly crossdresses as part of a public performance will often identify and be called a Drag King/Queen instead, especially if they take an exaggerated gender role while performing. There are a lot of cultural differences between Drag folk and other crossdressers. The term “drag” dates to the 1870s, “transvestite” was coined in 1910, and the word crossdresser seems to appear in English first as a translation of the German transvestit in 1911.

Drag – see crossdresser

Epicene - partaking of the characteristics of both sexes; or common to both sexes; worn or inhabited by both sexes. Unisex. It's an old word that has been used for gender-non-conforming folks for centuries. Ben Jonson used it to mean something like 'effeminate'. Its Greek root means 'common,' and it shows up in descriptions of garments that either sex can wear, or places both sexes dwell ('Epicene...Convents, wherein Monks and Nuns lived together.' -- Fuller, c.1661). It's a good term for folks that think of themselves less as a combination of male and female, than as the greatest common denominator of male and female. I'll take this although I'm more mixed than common denominators only.

Eunuch – a term that either means a castrated servant in a royal household; or any servant, castrated or not, that you can trust your women with; or any castrated person; or any infertile male; or any impotent male; or any male who is impotent with women; or any male who has chosen to live celibately; or anyone of regardless of gender who has chosen to live celibately; or anyone born with ambiguous genitalia; or anyone assigned male at birth who then feminizes to the point of no longer being entirely male; or some combination of these categories depending on the century and culture it's being used in, and often the background of the speaker. The term has been in use for thousands of years, and I may or may not be one.  see my blog post, or wikipedia, or if you have access, dozens of scholarly articles ...

Furries - I'm not really qualified to speak here, but the furries I've known have been decent folk, and furries get made fun of, shit on, or have their conventions bombed a lot more than they should, so I feel obligated to say something.  My understanding is that there is a spectrum of identification from just being a fan of anthropomorphic animal art of various kinds (furry fandom), all the way up to feeling that one's "fursona" is a more authentic expression of themselves than their (what's the opposite furlessona?).  My understanding is that as with gender issues, there are analogs of crossdreamer, crossdresser, and transgender here (furdreamer, furdresser, and otherkin), with someone who regularly dresses in a fursuit often being called a furry lifestyler.  Sometimes there is a sexual component to furry fandom, often called yiff, (and things like pony play and puppy play are both historically older than furry fandom within alt-sex communities), but often there is only a minor sexual component, or none at all.  So it isn't necessarily about sex, or gender, but the analogs to the not-feeling-right-in-your-apparent-gender experience are strong enough that I've always felt furries were siblings to transfolk in an odd way.  

Galli – a priest/ess of the religion of the Cybele and Attis in the ancient world. They originated in Phyrigia, but were common throughout the Roman world for centuries. They castrated themselves and adopted many feminine mannerisms and dress habits publicly, and were commonly take to be a middle gender or third gender by their contemporaries, (medium genum, tertium sexus, etc.) although we don't have any self-descriptions of being a gallus/galla that I know of.

Gender Dysphoria – Dysphoria is an unpleasant feeling sorta between pain and sadness, kinda like discomfort but more or less intense. It can be as mild as a barely detectable niggling, or so intense you lay in a fetal position in your bed all day. If it's gender dysphoria, it will be tied to gender experience, presentation, and treatment in various ways. You might find that wearing a particular kind of clothing makes it worse, or alleviates it, or being called ma'am, or using particular mannerisms, or changing your appearance. Not all trans folks have it, and it isn't part of the definition or anything, but it is extremely common, and often a major clue that you are trans, and noticing carefully what seems to make it worse and better can be a big clue as to what kind of trans person you are.  It is also the APA's term for a new mental health diagnostic category, (here's the APA's official blurb on it). Here's a blog post about indirect ways it may manifest, 

Gender Identity Disorder – a US mental health diagnosis discontinued in 2013 on the grounds that having a gender identity other than what your birth certificate says you should have isn't a fucking disorder. Compare with homosexuality, which the US mental health system decided wasn't really a disorder in 1973, or habitual crossdressing AKA -Transvestic Fetish Disorder which was also discontinued in 2013.

Gender Occultist – One who is knowledgeable about the occult, hidden, secret, clandestine world of gender identities beyond the binary model of standard male and standard female, that we keep trying to tell anyone who will listen about so it won't seem so damn arcane and daunting to folks.

Gender Oracle - a person whom others approach to ask about another person's sex. It is well if the oracle can be persuaded to relish their role as an ongoing joke; more often, they dread it as a sticky social situation, and may transfer this discomfort to their client of not-entirely-obvious sex. In such cases the client is well advised to commiserate, pointing out that it is poor manners are on the part of the querant, to ask an oracle instead of the person themselves.  Coined by Raphael Carter, 1996

Gender Refusenik - a term for people denied SRS, whether due to lack of funds or psychological paternalism. All gender refuseniks are non-ops, but not all non-ops are refuseniks. Also 'gender otkaznik' for the Slav-savvy. Coined byRaphael Carter 1996, on the model of the Soviets who were “refused” permission of emigrate during the cold war (it didn't originally mean people who refuse to do something, but people who are refused permission to do something critical).

Genderfluid – someone whose feeling of their own gender shifts over time fluidly. They may feel quite male one day, and quite female the next, and may experience plenty of in-between (as opposed to bigender folk who tend to experience fairly discrete states of gender). Its not unusual for their preferred pronouns to shift along with their state. Genderfluid folks are genderqueer and transgender. Ruby Rose is a famous example.

Genderqueer - a catch-all category for gender identities other than man and woman, thus outside of the gender binary and cisnormativity. Non-offensive. A close synonym of non-binary. The word queer was associated with a certain political style in the late 80s and 90s, and aimed at reclaiming what had previously been an insulting term, so sometimes the term genderqueer inherits these political associations or sounds too close to an old insult. I identify as queer and genderqueer, but I'm actually pretty moderate on a lot of gender and sexuality issues, so I like the term non-binary a little better.

Hermaphrodite /Hermaphroditus – an old Greek term for a combination of male and female, that has come to mean many different things over the centuries. Sometime a child of Hermes and Aphrodite. Sometimes linked to statues of Aphrodite with male genitalia in the shape of a herm (pictured to the side). In some centuries it's a common term for what we'd now call non-binary or intersex people. Sometimes a technical medical term for conditions that very few humans fit, involving have both kinds of gonadal tissue. The term is still used in non-human biology a lot, (it's common in plants and snails, for instance), but it's usually avoided when talking about humans these days because it is taken to be loaded with specious or stigmatizing associations from various past uses.

Hijra – a category of third gender persons common in India. Often now called "transgenders" in Indian English (which is non-offensive in Indian English, although "transgender people" is more correct in US or British English).  See wikipedia, or say this article on recent legal victories for hijras

Homovestite - A person who obsessively, compulsively and neurotically wears the clothing of their own sex. Coined by Raphael Carter 1996

Intersex – I have yet to see a definition of this that really works. Roughly though, if your biology has a mix of male and female traits, other than just in your brain/identity, and the doctors notice it, and they don't think you are trans instead, they will label you as intersex. Only now it is often called DSD (Disorders of Sexual Development). Because you know, being a mix of male and female can't possibly be a healthy state, it has to always be medicalized as a disorder, and if it happens in the “body” it is a totally different thing that if it happens in the “brain.” Sigh. Many people with intersex biology are binary and cisgender in their own self-identity. And many people (like me) fit some of the formal definitions of intersex, but are not considered intersex because we are trans instead. Maybe this is it – if YOU decide your sex assigned at birth is wrong or oversimplified then you are trans, regardless of what the doctors think - if A DOCTOR decides that your sex assigned at birth is wrong or oversimplified or is “ambiguous” already at birth, then you are intersex, regardless of what you think about it. There are a lot of different kinds of intersex conditions and some of them really do have serious medical complications, like Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, so it's inevitable and even desirable to medicalize gender biology issues in some cases. But 20th century America proved to be very bad at being ethical about when and how to medicalize unusual biologies of gender.  (OK I've got whole books on this, but I'm having trouble finding a good overview, I guess this news report is a start). Intersex people have very much been given a raw deal over the last several decades, so I hope I don't sound dismissive and my venom is not for them. Being trans, intersex, or coming from a culture that assigns people non-binary genders at birth are the three ways to wind up non-binary, although plenty of intersex or trans people are binary too.

M. - the goal of a gender neutral honorific substitute for Mr. /Ms./ Mrs./Miss, is a natural one. Some use Mx. (pronounced mix or mux), but I think M. is an elegant solution too, maybe it will even catch on some day.

Macaroni – an 18^th century British identity, where a male wore over-the-top fashions. Often they were ridiculed and accused of androgyny. Indeed, some seemed to aim for as much androgyny as they could get away with. Descendant of 15th-18^th century terms like fop, beau, gallant, popinjay, coxcomb, fribble, fashion-monger, and ninny. Precursors of the 18th-20^th century Dandies.

Mahu – a native Hawaiian non-binary gender category, a “third gender.” Often associated with hula dancing, or in general keeping old ways alive. Also sometimes other kinds of trans folk are called mahu now in Hawaiian slang by extension.

Molly – an 18^th century British identity that doesn't exactly map to modern notions of homosexuality, crossdressing or transgender, but is partly all three. Mollies congregated together in molly houses, which were usually also taverns and/or houses of prostitution. Mollies had a ritual called “lying-in” or “mock birth” in which they ritually imitated giving birth.

Neutrois – a person who identifies as neither male nor female. Especially if metaphors like “neutral” or “null” or “none” are closer than “both” or “mixed” or “none of the above.” It falls under the umbrellas of trans and non-binary and genderqueer. Many neutrois are happy to identify as agender too, others say they have a gender but it is somehow neutral, or neutered. Appears to have been coined in 1995 by H. A. Burnham.  See more here.

Non-Binary – not fitting into a two-fold system. In logics, it usually means you have more that 2 truth values. In gender, it means someone who identifies as something other than male or female. Genderqueers, Genderfluid folk, tumtums, third-gender folk, androgynes, neutrois, many two-spirits, and many more are examples. Transmen and transwomen are NOT non-binary though, and typically resent it if you treat them as not-a-real-man, or not-a-real-woman, or somewhere-in-between. Similarly some intersex people self-identify as non-binary, but many do not.

Otherkin - Folks who believe that they are non-human in identity, even if they are human in body. Sometimes they identify as elves or faeries.  Sometimes as animals, or anthropomorphic animals, in which case they may also be furries.  I've known a person or two who thought of themselves as dragons-in-human-form.  Angels, demons, shapeshifters, werewolves, vampires, aliens, cartoon characters, there are a lot of possibilities.  It may sound like a mental health problem, and it probably is sometimes, but I've known folks that were pretty non-delusional, and far closer to something like a religious or spiritual or self-discovery understanding of the sense in which this is true.  Oh and someone's non-human self-identity is likely to interact with their gender and sexual identities.

Pansexual – Some one who is attracted to people of “all” genders. A bisexual person who wishes to emphasize that gender identities other than male and female are attractive to them too.  Older dictionary definitions of bisexual often assume there are only two genders, but more recent definitions by self-identified bisexuals often allow attraction to many gender-identities and try not to assume there are only “two” genders, so usually if someone says pansexual instead of bisexual they are trying to emphasize non-binary possibilities.

Pronouns – It is polite to ask someone's preferred pronouns, and rude not to try your best to use them once you know them. They used in the singular is correct grammar, and the next most polite option if you don't know someone's preferred pronouns. Many non-binary people prefer he/him/his or she/her/hers or they/them/theirs. Some people prefer it, and if, so it is correct to use it. However, it is always inappropriate to call a person it, unless you are confident that it is its preferred pronoun. Non-binary folk often use ze/hir/hirs, and odder pronouns like zir, co, ey, xe, etc. are sometimes preferred. Do your best. Except zie, that's just wrong, see the entry on zie.

Radar -v. the stuttering of pronouns or honorifics owing to gender confusion. Named for Radar O'Reilly's invariable "sir, ma'am, sir" when addressing Major Hoolihan in the TV show M*A*S*H. Also suggests the scanning motion of the eyes that often accompanies the stutter. Coined by Raphael Carter 1996

Saris – one of the six gender categories in Jewish law, for people who seem male at birth, but later seem seriously non-male. Used largely for eunuchs in the Old Testament, but comes to seem closer to our modern notion of a transwoman later on.

Sib – a informal affectionate term for a non-binary person. Shortened form of sibling. Use it the way you would use bro, sis, dude, lady, mate, buddy, girl (for an adult), honey, sugar, etc. Homie and comrade are also gender neutral if either fit your style.  I wrote more here.

Scrat - Old English term for 'hermaphrodite' - “Hermafroditus, waepenwifestre, uel scratta, uel baeddel.” --AElfric, c.1000 (Waepenwifestre and baeddel have meanings similar to scrat, but seem not to have made it into Modern English in any recognizable form.) “Somtyme one of mankynde is both man & woman & suche..in englyssh is called a scrette.”--Caxton, Trevisa's Higden (1482) - The origins of the word 'scrat' are murky, but they seem to be somehow bound up with the Old Norse skratte, meaning wizard, goblin, monster. 'Old Scratch,' a nickname for the devil, is an alteration of 'scrat.'

Shemale – a terribly impolite term. From the mid 19^th to mid 20^th century it was used to refer to women who were considered too masculine in a pejorative way. By the 1970s it started shifting to being used to make fun of effeminate males and trans-folk. These days it is usually a rude term or a porn term for pre-operative MtF transsexuals, often fetishizing them for others' gratification. If you are tempted to use this term in psychology or reptile biology (as some people do), then don't.

They – a pronoun that has been used in the singular regularly since frickin' Chaucer. It fell out of favor in the 19^th century because prudes and chauvanists argued that using he for everybody regardless of gender was preferrable. They singular is a common pronoun of choice for non-binary folks, and it is not a new or edgy or incorrect use of this very old word, so get over that worry. I like ze though.

Third Gender – a phrase used to describe specific kinds of non-binary people who think of themselves as something other than male or female, like hijras, or fa'afafine, or the sworn virgins of the Balkans. A lot of times it's not necessarily how the people with the supposed third gender identity see themselves (like with the Kathoey), and a lot of times the local gender schema have more than three gender categories available (as in many Native American cases). There is a big danger of projecting our anthropological categories onto other people. Still, often it is an OK way to think about non-binary people. Richard O'Brien describes himself as being in a third gender between male and female. I'm happy to be called third gender, that seems like a decent way to cash out my in-between or mixed gender state.

Tranny – This was actually a polite term once. Long ago.  There are queerfolk who have been around a while that still use it affectionately.  But most transfolk in my experience find it offensive and impolite, here's a careful argument. Unless you are TRYING to degrade someone or sell degrading porn, or provoke a fight within the trans* community, don't use it. Oh and don't try to do any of those things either.

Transgender – 1) someone who thinks the gender assigned to them at birth doesn't fit very well how they think of themselves.

2) a broad term for many many kinds of “transgressive” gender identities.

Trans or Trans* - like transgender, but especially emphasizing inclusiveness and the second definition, and definitely trying to include trans-vestites, and crossdressers, and drag queens/kings, and intersex people, who might not feel they fall under the first definition of transgender above.

Transsexual – every definition I've seen of this is either identical to def#1 of transgender or has medical BS I don't like in it. I think it tends to be used especially for people striving to live and be accepted as the “opposite” sex of their sex-assigned-at-birth, and thus for binary trans-folk - transmen, transboys, transwomen and transgirls. It also tends to be used more for folk that use medical interventions like hormone or surgery. My sense has always been that as a non-binary person I don't count.

Transvestite – see crossdresser

Tumtum or timtum – a Hebrew category of gender from the Mishnas on (first few centuries CE). A person whose gender is not readily apparent, but might wind up being either male or female. Sometimes used as a slur against feminine males, or masculine females, but also used as a neutral category of Jewish legal thought, or even as a self-description. A baby can be tumtum. One who is questioning their own gender identity can be tumtum even to themselves. Someone who is trying to live with a gender presentation that leaves their biological sex in doubt to others might self-identify as tumtum.  Here's the awesome article.

Two-Spirit – a term for grouping a bunch of different Native American identities together (winjke, nadleehe, etc). Often they involve gender variance of some kind, but the lines between bisexuality, homosexuality, transgender, crossdressing, “third gender” and gender-non-conforming can get tricky and vary from tribe to tribe and be not natural concepts in the original languages. Instead of a gender binary for instance it is pretty common for Native American cultures to divide people into 4 types – masculine men, masculine women, feminine men, and feminine women. There is also a lot of evidence that contemporary two-spirit communities and self-understanding differ quite a bit from pre-contact or early-contact two-spirit communities and self-understandings. Its not unusual for a two-spirit person to think of themselves as non-binary in gender even if they seem fairly binary in gender to others.

Waepenwifestre – see scrat

Ze / hir / hirs – Another common pronoun set for genderqueer folk, especially in the Internet age. Hir is pronounced like “hear” or “here” not like “her.” Actually, the vowel in “hir” is just a little different than “here,” but like pin/pen or tin/ten, or bin/Ben, I can't hear the difference with my Midwestern ear and accent. I take this.

Zie / hir / hirs– the WRONG pronoun set, for all right thinking non-binary people. Those who use zie with an i, will be roasted over the flaming remains of their own genitalia of undisclosed shape, for all eternity in the afterlife. Don't let this tragic fate befall you, return to the path of righteousness and use ze without the i.

maybe I should include terms like demisexual, hyposexual, asexual, aromantic, panromantic, MSM, etc. etc. but my inclination is not to include sexuality identities that don't really have a gender component on my list.  Look terms like that up elsewhere.  Also, I've tried and failed to find a decent term for my own sexuality so I don't relish trying to explain the nuances of others.  Currently I joke, say I'm chian, and them give them the definition above when I get the blank look..

Chasing Eunouchos and Saris

I have a writing on Jesus' interaction with gender-odd people, that I have started and given up/bogged down on three times now. Trying to talk about early Jewish ideas about gender-odd people, or Greek ideas about gender-odd people have similar issues. It's all very complicated, and there is a lot of evidence that is suggestive, but very little that is particularly decisive. And there are so many methodological problems. And so many assumptions that might be challengeable, or might not … I keep hoping for a bright grad student to spend months and months sorting it all out for me … Or maybe a scholar already has somewhere, and I just haven't found it. … So rather than giving answers I'm going to try to share some of my frustrations …

One of the first basic issue is this. At Matthew 19, Jesus talks about three kinds of “eunuchs.” The Greek here is “eunouchos” which the Septuagint regularly uses for the Aramaic term “saris.” So did Jesus actually say the Greek word “eunouchos” or the Aramaic/Hebrew word “saris” (or something else?), and the author of Matthew just chose the Greek work “eunouchos” to render whatever Jesus said into Greek? Well, it probably depends on just how bilingual you think Jesus was, which is controversial, and has lots of suggestive evidence. Moreover what did “eunouchos” mean in Greek at the time? Was it a term specifically for males who had been castrated and typically served as royal servants? Or was is a broader category for a variety of gender-odd people in Greek thought, including but not limited to castrated male royal servants? I can find suggestive evidence for each side and people advancing that interpretation. Certainly the broader notion comes into use by the next century. What about “saris”? Again it looks like castrated male royal servants are the main meaning in the Hebrew and Aramaic of a century or two earlier. But the Hebrew of a century of two later, seems to treat “saris” as a much broader category. So what did it mean in Jesus' day? In Jesus' mouth? In this specific context? It completely shifts the meaning of passage as a whole, how you take these terms … There is lots of reason to think that several different traditions and cultures worth of understanding of the castrated and gender-odd were colliding in the Roman Empire around this time, the Greek, the Phyrigian, the Roman, the Jewish, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Mesopotamian Semitic, etc. The idea the “eunuch” in English specifically means castrated male seems pretty entrenched, but it's not that hard to find people who use the term otherwise, so there are lots and lots of problems with interpretation.

1) Cultural Imperialism vs Overly Uniquifying the Modern

So the smart scholar I've been corresponding with puts the first worry this way.

“I'm not saying that there weren't always people who felt different or who felt that they did not fit into the binary gender system. I just wonder whether they thought about themselves in the same terms we do today... whether they could actually conceive of a third or intermediate or indeterminate gender as being a suitable label to embrace, because the idea simply hadn't been floated yet. It makes me think a little of the situation with gay/lesbian sexual identity. You have to wait until the 19th century to find the intellectual underpinnings of what we now think of as sexual identity. There were always gay people, but the idea of a non-heterosexual identity just wasn't there until the modern period. So I think we have to be careful not to get into "cultural imperialism," imposing our modern way of thinking onto the past.”

2nd Century Gallus Priest

Well, first, Rome officially adopted Cybele as a State Goddess in 204BCE, and her priesthood coming out the Phyrigian tradition, were “galli.” They wore women's costumes, mostly yellow in color, and a sort of turban, together with pendants and ear-rings, wore heavy make-up, and wore their hair long a bleached. They typically castrated themselves. They were a familiar sight in Rome, and other parts of the Greco-Roman world. And Romans used phrases like “medium genus” and “tertium sexus” to describe them (“middle kind of people” or “third sex.”) So yeah, the ancients definitely at least had the idea or concept of a third or intermediate gender or sex, as an available possibility, whatever they thought of that possibility.  And whether that was their usual way of thinking about gender-odd folks or not. And yes the Galli were routinely called “eunouchos” in Greek. And don't get me started on India, and how much cultural interaction there was between India and the Greco-Roman world.

But, the bigger point about “cultural imperialism” is a real worry, but a complex one. The terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are from the 19^th century, it's true. Earlier people carved up the complex domain of gender, sexuality, attraction, identity and so on, in different ways with different terms and idioms, and often different ideologies as well. There were lots of ways of talking and thinking about sexual identities other than heterosexual ones long before the 19^th century though, and this was something that interested many people in many time periods. Plato in the symposium, for instance has Aristophanes talking about male-male lovers as “people of the sun,” female-female lovers as “people of the earth” and male-female lovers as “people of the moon.” Clearly, Aristophanes speech is intended to explore the rhetorical possibilities of humor and satire, but it is also advancing a picture of preferences and identity. The topic of homosexuality in the Ancient world is a complex and fairly well explored one, and it is very much a mistake to project modern categories like “homosexual” onto them, but the ancients certainly used plenty of intellectual categories of their own, and made lots of distinctions in attraction and identity. They just carved the space differently. The distinction between penetrating and being penetrated, and what kind of motive one had for being penetrated was crucial, whereas whether one preferred penetrating males or females was often considered minor. And if we look at other pre-modern contexts, say medieval China, or Shakespearean England, we are going to find different terms, idioms, and concepts, and none are going to be exactly like the 19^th and 20^th century idea of “homosexuality” but neither are they going to lack the intellectual underpinnings to think and talk about sexual identity in their own idioms and categories.

There is definitely a danger of “cultural imperialism” of overly using our own intellectual categories to think about other times and cultures. But there is an opposite danger too. We can over-emphasize the uniqueness of the modern, by refusing to look at similarities to other times or cultures. Maybe we want to flatter ourselves that our culture is “advanced” or “special” or “distinctive” and it really is in some ways, but it is easy to want to exaggerate this. Or maybe we want to portray our society as “fallen” in some important ways, and want to dismiss or under-emphasize ways in which other societies struggled with similar issues.

There is LOTS of evidence that various cultures of the ancient world struggled with the gender binary in various ways. Sometimes scholars just assumed that gender wasn't binary. Sometimes people assumed binaryness, but there were rebels. Sometimes gender binaries were really about trying to suppress the power of women culturally or politically, other times that motive seems less central. A good history of the gender binary in the West, and resistance to it, would be a long hard, (valuable) project, and if someone has done it and I haven't seen it, I'd love to know.

Certainly there were people in the Mediterranean in Jesus' time who were thought of as non-binary by their contemporaries. But how many? Of what kinds? How did people think or talk about them? What were concepts employed? Did Jesus know or say anything about them?

2) Fine details in terms and concepts and the limits of evidence

Galen uses the term “eunouchos” to include people who are born with ambiguous genitalia, and for people who have male genitalia but are impotent or heavily feminized, as well as for people who have had male genitalia removed. Lucian in the 2^nd century, says that someone who has intact genitals but is unable to penetrate a woman is also a eunuch.  Is that usage more common, or limited to the 2^nd century only, or what?  Aristotle and Hippocrates both mention that men unable to procreate from birth even with a full set of genitals are "eunouchos."  The Septuagint uses “eunouchos” to translate a discussion of a merely infertile male at Wisdom 3:14, and that's like 3^rd century BCE, so the word was used for more than just castrated-folks even before Jesus. Latin uses the terms castratus, eunuchus, and spado, (as well as eviratio vs. castratio). Are there important distinctions between them? Probably. (OK I learned more, the Pandicts, 6th cent Roman laws clarify this quite a bit, the wikipedia on eunuch is more helpful than my Latin dictionaries here.  Spadones are folks who lack generative power, whether their genitals are intact or not, castrati have damaged or missing genitals.  Spadones are allowed to marry, adopt, and institute posthumous heirs, unless they are also castrati.  The Pandicts are clear that someone can be "eunuchus" and still even able to procreate.  Now how many of those distinctions are in place centuries earlier?).  The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon lists 9 different terms as meaning eunuch or chief eunuch (and from a bunch of different roots, including an Aramaic transliteration of the Greek term eunouchos, and the Hebrew tumtum isn't one of them). Were there important distinctions among these many terms? Probably.  NINE terms.  Are there other terms in Greek besides eunouchos that were near in meaning to it, but had important differences? Probably. There is a lot of dispute about the etymology of the Greek eunouchos, some tracing it to eune / bed in various ways, or to eunoein / good minded, or to eunis + okheuein / deprived of mating. And that plays into controversies on the words meaning. Is a gay man a eunuch? An impotent but intact heterosexual? A person with a micropenis? A trans-woman who has undergone genital surgery? A Catholic priest? A celibate woman? A non-binary person who is no longer fertile, but has kids and a marriage already (like ME)? If that seems like projecting OUR concerns into the past, notice that ancient Greek speakers seemed to disagree about the case of the impotent, or the infertile, or the uninterested in marriage, or the purposefully choosing not to engage in marriage despite it's attractions, or the potent but not with women. Who the hell counts as a eunuch?

Maybe we could sort some of this out with a lot of footwork, but probably there is enough subtlety to the terms and their shifts over time, and uses in different polemic contexts, that many of the maddening questions are going to be unanswerable.

3) Axes to grind

Even apart from worries about cultural imperialism, I clearly have an axe to grind here. I'm non-binary and trans and looking for places that ancient thought dealt with non-binary people or trans people, or whatever the closest equivalents they could frame in their own idioms were. And there is a sense in which I'm working on this largely to try to make sense of Matt 19. (Other ideas like androgynos, or hermaphoditus, or galli, or the myth of Tiresias, or Hercules' crossdressing, become important if we are trying to understand more Pagan understandings of ancient non-binary and trans -like people)

But there are plenty of gay scholars, who think, plausibly of eunouchos as a term for men so gay that they were unwilling or unable to procreate with women, despite social pressure to do so.  They see in Matt 19, Jesus discussing something like homosexuality, but in pre-modern terms. And there are plenty of conservative scholars who think of eunouchos as a term for people who choose celibacy, like the priesthood that is eventually started in Jesus' name, and see Matt 19 very much in terms of the celibacy of the priesthood.

That means that this isn't just a term from another culture, or a term we have suggestive but sketchy evidence on, but a term that is itself a thing to be fought over in the modern world. Sigh. Each scholar and each translation has to be viewed with a certain kind of suspicion, even ourselves, because it is so easy for agenda to take the lead over evidence …

4) Lack of Personal Resources

My Aramaic scholar friend-of-a-friend gave me over a dozen great leads to find things that smart people might already have written on this quagmire.  If I were still a grad student in Bloomington, I'd go round them up from the excellent University library there, read them at my carroll, look for more, and start composing. But I don't have access to a university library anymore, and none of this is going to be in our little public library, and only bits and pieces are on the web. And I don't really have the time. And I don't really have sufficient expertise in the relevant languages, just a sorta broad base in ancient cultures, gender theory, and such.   This topic deserves a long and serious scholarly treatment by a real scholar, but I am just scholar enough to yearn for one, and not scholar enough anymore to deliver one.

* * *

I WANT to say, hey Christian or ex-Christian gender-odd folk, this is what Jesus actually says about gender-odd folks, regardless of what the conservative Christians in your life want to say about people who don't fit perfectly into the right boxes …

What I actually have to say, is here's my take with a huge dose of perhaps, and waffle, and complexity. The bigots speak a simple message, ignore problematic details that call their narrative into question, and trust people like me to be full of doubts and caveats, and easy to shout down. And so I am, and don't know how to fix it …

Maybe I'll write that commentary on Jesus and the Gender-Odd folks one day, but for now, all I can do is complain about how hard it is … sigh.