Why T-girls are supposed to stay out of the ladies' room

[Deleted]

Hi, Folks!

Lately I’ve been going back through my notes on stuff I read many, many years ago, and just yesterday I came across one of my favorite stories.

Set in Rome in the first century BC, it involves a certain man named Publius Clodius Pulcher. A delightful character: a demagogue, rabble-rouser, general trouble-maker on the political scene. Three charges he always had hanging over his head: (1) he had committed incest with at least one of his sisters; (2) while serving in the army he incited a mutiny; (3) and then back in Rome when on trial for said mutiny, he managed to get himself acquitted by bribing the jury. Nice to have money, right?

Anyway, there was a regular religious ceremony in Rome that was dedicated to the Bona Dea (“the Good Goddess”) and was strictly for women only. (I wonder if they excluded T-girls? “This is for womyn who were born womyn!” And what did they call T-girls? Given that “trans” is Latin, it would have been easy to call them “transfeminae”.)

Anyway, the ceremony was always held in the house of one of the leading ladies of the city, and all males (of any species) were barred from the house at the time. On this particular occasion, it was to be hosted by Pompeia, the wife of Julius Caesar—and there were rumors going around that the afore-mentioned rabble-rousing Clodius was having a bit of fling with her.

As if to give substance to those rumors, Clodius sneaked into the house, dressed as a woman, while the ceremony was in full swing just to see if he could have “a few words” with Pompeia. And he got caught. The ladies ran him out of the house, and a huge scandal erupted. This is sacrilege, right?

So he was up in court again, and it should have been an open-and-shut case since there were plenty of witnesses against him. But politics came into it since Clodius was one of the leading politicians of the day. People started lining up on both sides, and eventually he found enough influential friends to get him off.

Even Caesar refrained from speaking out against him, although it was his house and his wife who were involved. He kept quiet about Clodius—but he did divorce his wife. When asked why he could punish his wife when he did nothing about Clodius, he pompously replied, “Caesar’s wife should not even be under suspicion.” And this is the guy who was often referred to as “every woman’s man and every man’s woman”. And later on, when Caesar was looking for political allies, he and Clodius came to an understanding.

So it goes. Men may pretend to be horrified at the idea of “men in dresses” invading women’s spaces, but you can wonder how much they really care. If I remember correctly, one of the leaders of the No campaign in the recent rights referendum in Houston was a lawyer who was peddling the familiar fear-mongering line about women’s safety and perverts in the ladies’ room. Yet shortly afterwards he was found to be defending a guy who had sneaked into a women’s changing room to take pictures of them while they were changing. And this lawyer said that it was a frivolous case, the poor guy was just being harassed—even though he was admitting his guilt. He was even admitting that it wasn’t the first time he’d done it.

So how much do the haters really care anyway? But this is why T-girls today are still supposed to stay out of the ladies’ room: because there are always guys like Clodius, i.e., male cisgender trouble-makers, and for some reason they think that has something to do with us.

Oh, and by the way, what happened to Clodius in the end? He was killed in a fight with one of his political enemies. No great loss.

[Kira]

I love this little story and the analogy. Not an obvious one to connect. I love that your mind saw the parallels :-) x

[Deleted]

You know, Kira, I keep telling myself that perhaps I'm being unfair to Clodius. After all, there were lots of guys in Rome at the time who were no different. What was going on at the time was pretty much out-and-out class warfare, rich v. poor, and Clodius was at least on the right side. Certain senators, i.e., upstanding pillars of society, are on record as getting their lads together and clubbing their enemies to death in the street. That's the sort of thing that was going on.

I remember, too, a historian saying that history has been kinder to Caesar than he deserves. I'd certainly agree with that. Caesar is on record as being merciful because he pardoned a lot of guys who fought against him in the civil war. True, he did, and a number of those guys ended up in the gang that assassinated him. But people don't always point out that during his conquest of Gaul, estimates of total casualties run from several hundred thousand to a million. Caesar had no hesitation in killing as many people as he needed to in order to improve his political position. Towards the end of the war there was one town that rebelled against Roman rule. To make an example of those men, Caesar had their hands chopped off. So much for "merciful".

Anyway, just for fun, here's a little poem that is universally believed to be about Clodius. The reason is that the poet, Catullus, was in love with Clodius' sister, Clodia, and wrote a series of poems for her. In these poems she's referred to as "Lesbia"--which doesn't mean that she was a lesbian. So this poem is talking about her brother who is said to be handsome, and Clodius' last name (Pulcher) does in fact mean "handsome" in Latin. So, it's agreed this poem is about him. The poem also refers to the widespread belief that Clodius and his sister had had incestuous relations.

Lesbia’s brother is handsome—yes,
Since she prefers him, Catullus,
To you and all your clan.
Yet this handsome brother, I say,
May sell me as a slave
Along with all my clan,
If he can find three friends
Who will greet him with a kiss.

So whereas in ways Clodius was no worse than lots of men at the time, I think for me it's his personal shenanigans that make him stand out.