Right ok so here’s a sculpture that i really fuckin love cuz omfg an actual piece of sculpture depicting a trans/intersex body. This is called Sleeping Hermaphroditus and the figure is Hermaphroditus who was (allegedly) the child of Hermes and Aphrodite who was fused with a nymph - after refusing to sleep with her she prayed to the gods to let them be together and this is what they came up with. Honestly the mental acrobatics ppl will go thru to explain ppl being trans or intersex cuz yes trans and intersex ppl existed even in ancient greece
The figure was sculpted in the heyday of imperial rome and probs the romans were copying another part of greek culture as hermaphroditus had a cult dedicated to her which will have involved trans women (think the Galli who were the priestesses of Cybele) and would probs have involved chasers cuz where there’s a trans goddess there’s bound to be a chaser or two
The figure is in a resting pose but with her head turned to look back at u in an inviting way or to look away from herself, maybe a bit of both tbh
Cis historians believe that it was designed to shock those who came in to view it - it would have been placed in a room all of its own with the back facing the door and as you would walk around u would be presented with her gentialia and shock horror gasp etc etc etc yawn yawn yawn. The idea of this being a joke or a trap is boring and just incorrect
Chasers existed back in ancient rome just as they existed in 1620 when the mattress was carved by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Most trans historians would probs tell u this was more of a fetishistic thing by the rich cis men who could afford to commission a statue like this. We know that some of these men would surround marble statues like this with candles to give it a more fleshy tone.
Based on the pose we can tell this wasn’t a statue commissioned for public worship in a temple or worship by a cult, it was for more...private worship. Its likely the man who commissioned this would indeed have kept it in a private room and would indeed have invited friends to see it but it would not likely have been as a joke but as a curiosity and to oggle in the same way cis men have been doing to trans and intersex women for years
This statue was discovered in 1600s when digging the foundations for a church (lol) in italy and further copies were found in 1781 and 1880 but those aren’t as old as the first one that was found. The original one here was bought by Prince Camillo Borghese in like 1807 and i find this interesting cuz his wife was Pauline Bonepart (yes as in Napoleon) who was known for being a slut and sleeping with as many passing noblemen as she could while her first husband was away and while her second husband wasn’t.
She was chronically ill and spent a lot of time laid down and as us chronically ill sluts often do she decided to put that time to some use, she even posed nude for her own statue not too dissimilar but we’ll talk about that another time
So while Pauline was having it off with other men her husband Camillo was likely locking himself in a room with hermaphroditus if not locking himself away with real life trans women (he was known to have mistresses so some of those will have been trans and/or intersex)
The tone of this one has been less fun and joyous but its important (to me at least) to talk about this side of transness in art and how trans women and intersex ppl were also artistically sexualised and were very fetishised we’re just not in the big gold framed portraits