We Have Been Around For Eons!

How many times have you read that trans people are a new phenomenon, as usual the conservative are wrong!

We have been around since the dawn of time.

Trans Saints? Early cross-dressing monks and martyrs share similar lives
Q Spirit
By Kittredge Cherry
November 20, 2022<


Early Christian cross-dressing monks are being reclaimed as possible transgender or LGBTQ saints. More than 20 saints share a similar story: They escaped their lives as women and lived as men, joining monasteries or becoming religious hermits. They usually spent the rest of their lives as men, often for decades. In most cases their biological sex was discovered by shocked communities after they died.

The church honors these queer saints for living holy lives, despite the Biblical prohibitions against women dressing as men in Deuteronomy 22:5. These intriguing saints are venerated as women by the official church, but today they are sometimes categorized as transgender men, butch lesbians, nonbinary or genderqueer people.

Then not to leave us trans women out…

The male-to-female counterpart may be eunuch saints, such as the Ethiopian eunuch who was welcomed as an early church convert in Biblical times, Cosmas the Eunuch of sixth-century Palestine, and Chusdazat of fourth-century Persia. There were also male saints who wrote and spoke (metaphorically) of being female. For example, Francis of Assisi described himself as a “poor woman” when he met with the Pope and liked to be called “Lady Poverty.” Jerome, the fourth-century saint who translated the Bible into Latin, imagined himself as Mary Magdalene or the woman in Song of Songs… and there is a legend about how he was tricked into wearing a dress as a joke. Theodora and Didymus are fourth-century male and female Christian martyrs who exchanged clothes to help Theodora escape a brothel. Another idea about the lack of male-to-female saints is that they are “hiding in plain sight” because elaborate clergy robes allowed queer men to satisfy their need to dress in feminine style.

They then go on to list them, some of them are…

• Agnes of Moncada / Benjamin de la Cartuja
• Anna / Euphemianos of Constantinople
• Apollinaria / Dorotheos: Queer saint crossed gender line to become a monk in 5th-century Egypt

Saint Apollinaria or Dorotheos has been called a transgender icon or a cross-dressing saint. Assigned female at birth, Apollinaria adopted the name Dorotheos and entered a monastery as a man in fifth-century Egypt.  Dorotheos’ father learned the secret when he accused the monk of getting his other daughter pregnant.  Otherwise Dorotheos lived as a monk until death, when the full story became public.  The story of Apollinaria / Dorotheos is similar to more than a dozen queer saints.  This saint is honored by churches on Jan. 5-6.

• Xenia / Andrei of St. Petersburg: 18th-century widow adopted husband’s identity to become a queer saint and “holy fool”

They go on to list a dozen more and notice they aren’t in biblical times some were from the 1700s.

A famous trans person from the 1700s was Chevalier d'Éon a spy for the French Court. I wrote about her here, a very interesting story.

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Thanks to Richard for the heads-up on the article. I you see an article that you think might interest me pass it along!