As all presidents have for decades, President Trump recently proclaimed February Black History Month and March Women’s History Month, even while his anti-DEI policies have had a chilling effect discouraging the observing of any “identity months.” But there is one annual day of observance this month that we can be certain he will not proclaim. In 2021, President Joe Biden became the first U.S. President to proclaim a national Transgender Visibility Day since the observance was first founded by activist Rachel Crandall-Crocker in 2009, and Trump, along with most of the right, made their distaste for the proclamation especially clear last year, when the day that Transgender Visibility Day always falls on, March 31st, happened to coincide with Easter Sunday. Grandstanding, the Trump campaign called on Biden for an apology of what they called his “assault on the Christian faith.” Trump’s stance on LGBTQIA issues has always been best described as grandstanding. Initially, in his 2016 campaign, he promised to fight for LGBT rights, and at one campaign event he even walked around the stage holding up a pride flag with “LGBT’s for Trump” crudely markered onto its yellow stripe. He even broke with the Republican Party and came out publicly against North Carolina’s controversial bathroom law requiring individuals to use the bathroom marked for the sex they were assigned at birth, saying instead they should be able to “use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate” and that there was no need for such a law because there have been no real problems with trans individuals using public restrooms. But he very quickly went from grandstanding to curry the favor of the LGBTQIA community to showing his opposition to the same community once he took office, whether just to reassure his base or in revelation of his true intentions (which seems most likely, considering some of his other remarks prior to his presidency and considering his exceptionally anti-LGBTQIA pick for Vice President, Mike Pence). Regardless, his record speaks for itself. If I were to list the many ways that Trump has weakened or rescinded protections against anti-LGBTQIA discrimination, it would end up being the full length of this episode, and the second time around, he campaigned on the promise to further enable such discrimination. But I can here list several of his specifically anti-trans actions, which have become more and more brazen, moving beyond the removal of protections to the removal of their rights, the enshrinement of discrimination against them as policy, and blatant efforts at erasing their existence. Almost immediately, when he first took office in 2017, he reversed Obama-era interpretations of Title IX that extended protections against sex discrimination in schools to transgender students, taking away their right to use bathrooms that accorded with their gender identity, essentially refusing to enforce the civil rights of transgender individuals. Then in the summer of his first year in office, he banned trans soldiers from serving in the military. That fall, his Department of Justice issued guidance that they would no longer extend Title VII protections against discrimination in the workplace to trans people, further eroding their civil rights. And by the end of his first year, his efforts at erasure were made explicit in his ban on the CDC even using the word transgender. The following spring, he ordered the Bureau of Prisons to transfer transgender prisoners according to their biological sex, putting them in very real physical danger. By October of 2018, he was already telegraphing his intentions to redefine “sex” in such a way that would erase transgender people. As his first term went on, he further enabled discrimination against this already at-risk group, with his Department of Housing and Urban Development issuing an order that would allow shelters to turn away trans people based on their biological sex and his Department of Health and Human Services rolled back a rule that would prevent discrimination against transgender patients in healthcare. On top of this, Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, were both explicitly anti-trans in their views and interpretations of law. His actions against the trans community not only stripped them of their rights and equality before the law but even resulted in avoidable deaths. As bad as this was, he only promises to be worse. In his 2024 campaign, he scapegoated and demonized the transgender community, promising to get trans women out of women’s sports and block gender affirming care, with ads stating “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” as if trans people were not American citizens, or even people. While President Biden took action to undo many of Trump’s anti-trans changes, Trump, on the first day of his second term, rescinded executive orders intended to restore the protections of transgender persons from discrimination and ensure their access to health care. He then went on to issue a flurry of executive orders aimed at the total erasure of trans people. Through his anti-DEI efforts, he has further attempted to remove the very language surrounding trans issues from any usage in federal programs and is currently threatening to withhold federal funding from schools that even mention the existence of trans people or support their trans students in any way, which to me reeks of extortion. He calls it an effort to “end radical indoctrination,” but attempts to force the erasure of a whole group of people in school curriculum, many of whom are students themselves, is itself indoctrination. And the worst, the most destructive order, which will cost the most lives, is his order attempting to deny gender affirming care to any youths, who just happen to be the group most at-risk of suicide. And to put an absurd cherry on the top of this crap sundae, his executive order attempting to redefine sex according to an “immutable binary biological classification” defines gender according to sex “at conception,” which is nonsensical, since at conception, or fertilization, there is no such thing as biological sex, only chromosomes, of which every embryo contains both male and female, X and Y chromosomes. Sex differentiation does not occur until 9 to 13 weeks, and before that, all fetal genitalia are of a female phenotype. So, ludicrously, in signing an executive order that states, “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell,” meaning sperm, Trump has stupidly erased himself. By his own order’s logic, the male sex can no longer be recognized, since there are no males at conception. In his eagerness to erase transgender persons, he has erased all men. It’s dumb, I know, and more than that, it’s potentially toothless, since executive orders are not law, and they can be and have been blocked by court orders. But this all demonstrates quite apparently the very real and concerted efforts by the right to erase trans people from existence, an erasure that can be credibly compared to an attempted genocide. Because of these efforts at erasure, I consider it extremely important, ahead of Trans Visibility Day, to acknowledge the existence of trans people, and as I have done in the past, to demonstrate the historical reality that they have always existed. As before, I will do this by telling the story of Elagabalus, a historical figure who was manifestly transgender, and tracing how she was portrayed throughout history.

Before I take us all the way back to the 3rd century CE and examine Elagabalus as evidence of the existence of trans people and their mistreatment by historians, I want to address the comparison I just made of the current governmental efforts on the right to oppress the trans community with genocide. To some this may seem unwarranted, or even outrageous. I have already made clear and logical comparisons between erasure, such as colonial erasure, and genocide, so as I further develop the fact of trans erasure, I am with every point further making that case of trans genocide, but a more direct comparison to a more recent and largely recognized genocide can also be made. In 1920s Germany, under the Weimar Republic, transgender individuals, first of all, existed, and even enjoyed some institutionalized tolerance. Though called “transvestites” at the time, these individuals were certainly recognized as more than just cross-dressers or drag queens. In Weimar Germany, cross-dressing was outlawed, but these individuals, many of them transgender women living according to their gender identities, could be recognized as exempt from this law, issued a permit to dress and live as they wanted, and even legally change their names. Because of this recognition and tolerance, even if it was limited and begrudging, a thriving trans culture existed in the country. Trans cabarets were operated, trans political organizations formed, and trans magazines published. Many even accessed gender-affirming care at the famous Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. However, all of that changed when the Nazis took power. Trans people were branded “morals criminals,” and just as the Nazis demonized Jews with false claims and conspiracy theories, they lied that trans people were prone to criminality and were bent on recruiting German youth. Anyone who has heard anti-trans rhetoric in the U.S. today, about trans people being more likely than cis-gendered people to commit violent crime, when actually they are four times more likely to be the victims of such crimes, or that there is some trans agenda to corrupt children, should recognize the very apparent parallels here. Even more concerning is the fact that in Texas, in the beginning of this month, a bill was proposed that would essentially criminalize being trans, allowing the state to charge anyone identifying as a gender that differs from the sex they were assigned at birth with fraud. Branding trans people criminals was exactly how it started in Nazi Germany, after which their permits to express themselves according to their gender identities were revoked and many were shipped to concentration camps, branded “degenerates” and “dangers to youth.” To any who dispute the fact that transgender people were victims of the Holocaust, I would point out that in 2022, a German court weighed the evidence, provided by historians and experts, in an effort to determine whether claims that transgender people were not victims of the Holocaust should be considered “denial of Nazi crimes.” The court found that, indeed, trans people were the victims of Nazi war crimes, and Germany’s parliament promptly recognized them as such. So that is the company we, as Americans, are keeping, with a goose-stepping, stiff-arm saluting presidential administration, which has been credibly and compellingly compared with Nazis in numerous ways, now following the Nazi playbook insofar as they’d like to criminalize trans existence and erase them from reality. Trump has even forbidden federal agencies from using the words transgender or other words associated with gender, such as non-binary and any talk of gender assignment at birth or biological sex. Ludicrously, he has even tried to remove the word “gender” from usage. Therefore, to talk about this now, and especially to look at an example of the existence of trans people throughout history, even back to the Roman Empire, has become an act of resistance to fascism.

Images from *The 3rd Sex*, the first magazine devoted to trans issues, published in Weimar Germany. Via the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

One simple way to illustrate the attempted erasure of Empress Elagabalus, the transgender ruler of the Roman Empire for less than four years, between 218 and 222 CE, is to remark on the fact that Elagabalus was not her name. First, it must be acknowledged that I am using feminine pronouns for Elagabalus and referring to her as Empress rather than Emperor, and I do this because, as will be made apparent, this appears to have been her preference. But I do not speak now of her deadname. We have approximations of her birth name, based on the family into which she was born. It is believed that she was given the name Sextus or perhaps the name Caius, with the family name Varius Avitus Bassianus. When she became the sovereign ruler of the Empire, she took the the name of her predecessor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, but this was not to express her gender identity. Rather, it was a common choice made by new emperors to signal their legitimacy. It is recorded that she raced chariots under the name Varius, but this was her family name, having been one of her father’s names. There is no record of her adopting a traditionally female name, but considering the accounts of her desire to adopt feminine roles, and it is very likely that she may have adopted such a name and it has gone unrecorded by history. The very reason why she is today known as Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus, is that she was purposely erased from Roman history in a process called damnatio memoriae, the damnation of memory. This was an institutionalized condemnation of despised emperors after their deaths, entailing the erasure of their names from history and the defacement of statuary depicting their likeness. The only reason that stories of Elagabalus survive is that, despite damnatio memoriae, it was also considered valuable to tell the stories of terrible or hated rulers as cautionary tales. Thus the contemporary historians who wrote about her, Cassius Dio and Herodian, used the name Elagabalus instead, a reference to the Syrian god Elagabal, of whom Elegabalus was a high priestess, and whose worship in Rome she instituted, this religious reform being one of the principal grievances against her resulting in the condemnation of her memory. And so complete was her erasure from that time forward that another biography would not be penned about her for more than a hundred years, when it is believed that Historia Augusta, a late Roman compilation of biographies, was written. Even then, the author, who identifies her as “Elagabalus Antoninus, also called Varius,” starts by saying that the life of this ruler he “should never have put in writing.” His only excuse for doing so is that the story of Elagabalus, as with the story of other despised emperors like Caligula and Nero, is instructive to “‘diligent readers’ who may learn of the Romans’ discernment,” in that, while other, revered emperors lived long lives and died naturally, these others, including Elagabalus, “were murdered, dragged through the streets, officially called tyrants, and no man wishes to mention even their names.”

Elagabalus’s rise to power was anything but ordinary. She was born to a Roman aristocrat and senator, her mother a Syrian noblewoman, within a family associated with the emperor through her grandmother, Julia Maesa, the sister-in-law of Emperor Septimius Severus and the aunt of the Emperor’s son and co-ruler, Caracalla. When Severus fell ill and died in 211 CE, Caracalla was raised to Emperor. Caracalla was a militaristic ruler, with a reputation for cruelty, as depicted recently in the blockbuster Gladiator sequel. After 6 years, he was assassinated by one of his own prefects, Macrinus, who then became Emperor himself. According to Herodian, Macrinus, seeing her as a threat to his rule, exiled his predecessor’s aunt, Julia Maesa, to her family estate in Syria, and she took her young grandchild Elagabalus with her. It was there that Elagabalus entered the priesthood of Elagabal, and it was there that her grandmother schemed to return her family to power. According to the sources, she spread a rumor, which may already have been circulating, that rather than being his cousin, Elagabalus was the illegitimate child of Caracalla, the emperor whom Macrinus had conspired to kill and supplant. This claim to the throne was supported by the Roman Legion in Syria, whether because of genuine loyalty to Caracalla or potentially because of bribery, and that legion’s commander declared Elagabalus emperor. Macrinus seems to have underestimated this threat to his rule, but after another Roman Legion, sent to make war against this rebellion by a prefect of Macrinus’s named Ulpius Julianus , instead turned on their leaders and joined the cause, Macrinus could no longer ignore it. He convinced the Senate to reject Elagabalus’s claim. Again, she had taken the imperial name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to further associate herself with the late emperor Caracalla, but the Senate called her a “False Antoninus.” Macrinus attempted to shore up his forces, delivering cash bribes to legionaries in an effort to buy their loyalty, but his cowardice was his undoing. At a banquet with the Second Legion, the severed head of his prefect, Julianus, who had made war against Elagabalus, was delivered to Macrinus in a very Godfather moment, and when it terrified Macrimus enough to send him fleeing to Antioch, the Second Legion abandoned him, despite his bribes, and added their strength to the forces of Elagabalus. Likewise, at the ensuing Battle of Antioch, Macrinus turned tail and left the field of battle, causing his Praetorian Guard to reconsider their loyalties. Eventually, Macrinus and his son were fugitives, and each was inevitably captured and executed. With no one to stand in the way, Elagabalus assumed power. Among the first actions taken under this new rule was the erasure of Macrinus by damnatio memoriae: the Senate ordered that his and his son’s names be stricken from all records, effaced from inscriptions and rubbed out of papyri, their busts and portraits defaced, coins bearing their likenesses destroyed, and all their earthly possessions demolished. Less than four years later, the same fate awaited Elagabalus, but if the sources are believed, she must have been little concerned with such a possibility, for it is said she was entirely reckless and inept in her rule and far more preoccupied with erotic pursuits.

This statue is thought to have once depicted Elagabalus but to have afterward, because of *damnatio memoriae*, been changed to depict her nephew and successor.

According to most modern narrative retellings of the reign of Elagabalus, while the effeminacy, or rather, gender identity, of Elagabalus and her transgressive sexual activities may have contributed to the tide turning against her rule, much of this may have been fabricated or embellished by the sources as libel, just part and parcel of the tradition of depicting “bad emperors” as outrageously debauched in retrospect. By this view, rather, the true reasons for opinion turning against her were that she was a generally inept ruler and that she imposed unpopular religious reforms. Among the foremost of the complaints that Cassius Dio and other make of her rule is that she executed political rivals on trumped up charges, but those whom Elagabalus executed on her journey to Rome were major supporters of Macrinus, who had tried to have her killed and who did have the previous emperor assassinated, so there is good reason to suspect an alternative view of these executions. Dio also suggests that Elagabalus demonstrated her ineptitude through her poor choice of political appointments. For example, she elevated the legion commander who had supported her claim, Publius Valerius Comazon, to the highest of offices, first to command the Praetorian Guard and then to serve as her consul. However, Dio’s chief complaint was that Comazon was unqualified to lead the guard, when in fact he had been a soldier since the time of Emperor Commodus, the emperor made famous as the villain in the first Gladiator film. Indeed, Comazon had led not one but two legions of the Roman Army. He had been raised to leadership under Macrinus, and he would survive the coming coup against Elagabalus to continue as prefect under her successor, so Dio’s evaluation of his suitability seems entirely inaccurate. In fact, Cassius Dio admits that he wasn’t even in Rome during Elagabalus’s reign, so all of his evaluations of Elagabalus’s decision making should be viewed as Dio toeing the line and presenting the rule of Elagabalus as negative in every regard, an approach made necessary by the official condemnation of her memory. Therefore, when Cassius Dio claims that Elagabalus promoted a man to high office solely because he had a large penis, when we know she actually promoted individuals based on experience and loyalty, we must look at what Dio says about her, much of which was just repeated by later accounts, very skeptically. For example, some other appointments made by Elagabalus give us an alternative sense for why her governorship proved unpopular. Elagabalus appointed her mother and grandmother to the Senate, making them the first women Senators, honoring them in inscriptions and immortalizing them on coins, which was unheard of in the strictly patriarchal Roman society. After Elagabalus was overthrown, women were promptly barred again from participation in the Senate. Moreover, having been raised to the throne at just 14 years old, it is important to recognize that Elagabalus was, like other child emperors, a figurehead, likely controlled or guided in large part by those in her regime. It is generally recognized, for example, that her mother and grandmother held great sway in her regime. Therefore, even though Roman tradition required that everything be blamed on the young ruler and she be portrayed as the sole and principal mover during her reign, the facts suggest that the overthrow of Elagabalus may have been more a reaction against women being given any power over men.

The religious reforms that Elagabalus, or rather that her regime and the women behind it, introduced to Roman society are often, as already stated, seen as the principal reasons for Elagabalus’s ouster and her memory being damned. When she came to Rome, she brought with her not only the ideas of her religion, but its chief symbol or idol, a conical black stone. As the high priestess of this Syrian religion, a role she came to through her family’s hereditary connection to the priesthood, she promoted and observed this religion, it seems, mostly through dance. The god of her religion, Elagabal, was actually a sun god, which she described as dei invicti Soli Elagabali, the unconquered god, the Sun Elagabal, and this phrasing suggests that it was Elagabalus herself, or rather, she and those in her family and regime, who were responsible for introducing monotheism to Rome, in a form that would coalesce within 50 years in the sun cult of Sol Invictus, that same religion often claimed to have been an influence on Christianity. So what, one might ask, did the cone-shaped rock have to do with the sun? Herodian states that some markings on the stone looked vaguely like the sun, and so it was venerated by the cult. However, it is unclear whether this stone was meant only as a symbol or was considered the god itself. Herodian describes summer solstice ceremonies in which Elagabalus had the stone placed on a chariot that she led around, never taking her eyes off of it, as if it were the very god, and the name Elagabal itself, which meant “God of the Mountain” suggests that the stone itself was the god or contained it. It being a black stone further suggests it may have been a meteorite, and therefore viewed as the sun having fallen to earth, as was the case in numerous ancient religions that worshipped baetyls, or sacred meteorites believed to contain a deity. Regardless of the nature of the belief, though, according to Cassius Dio, it was rather more the institutionalization of the new religion and some particularly sacrilegious acts that turned Rome against her. She was said to have forced Senators to attend her religious ceremonies and to watch her dance, to have unified the roles of emperor and pontifex maximum, or supreme pontiff, and to have relocated the sacred relics of other gods and goddesses of the pantheon to the ostentatious temple she had built for Elagabal. Those who argue that the worship of Elagabal was the forcing of a monotheistic tradition claim that this move was intended to prevent other gods from being worshipped unless it was in connection to Elagabal, but the worship of other deities was not outlawed by Elagabalus. Rather, it seemed an effort was being made to syncretize and include Elagabal within the Roman pantheon. For example, Elagabalus apparently declared a union between Elagabal and one of the Roman goddesses, in a gesture of respect for the Roman religion that was meant to legitimize Elagabal’s inclusion in the pantheon. And as the principal figure representing her god, Elagabalus herself apparently married a Vestal Virgin, a high priestess of the goddess Vesta, in a further effort to unite her religion with the religion of her empire. This, along with her decision to not eat pork and to have herself circumcised, was viewed as sacrilege, since according to Roman law Vestal Virgins were to be executed—buried alive, specifically—if they were to ever lose their virginity. However, judging from what we know and can deduce about Elagabalus’s sexual orientation, it is reasonable to assume that no such physical union ever occurred, and even though it was claimed that the marriage would produce “godlike children,” it may have been an entirely symbolic union.

Two coins depicting the stone of Elagabal, believed to be a meteorite associated with a sun god, which Elagabalus brought to Rome and introduced into the Roman pantheon.

Elagabalus married and divorced a total of three different women, with none of whom did she ever produce any offspring, at least as far as we know. Whenever romantic love is mentioned in Dio’s account and others, it is love between Elagablus and a man. First it is a charioteer named Hierocles, and they had quite a meet cute, in which Hierocles falls out of his chariot, losing his helmet, and Elagabalus is immediately smitten. Whether meant as an insult or an accurate characterization of how Elagabalus wanted to be seen, Dio states that their relationship was a literal marriage, and that Elagabalus wished to be seen as his “wife.” Regardless, he is clear about Elagabalus’s love for him, saying that her “affection for this ‘husband’ was no light inclination, but an ardent and firmly fixed passion.” But then came a rival for her attentions, a remarkably attractive man named Zoticus, and Dio describes how Elagabalus swooned for him and Hierocles became so jealous that, in order to prevent their being together, he slipped Zoticus a drug that would prevent him from achieving an erection. Now first, I want to remark on the fact that Elagabalus was only 14 years old when she took the throne, and though the stories about her excesses are not told according to any chronology, such that they may have occurred when she was closer to her majority, I still do not wish to romanticize or pass over this uncomfortable fact without remark, even if it may have been legal in Rome for boys as young as 14 and girls as young as 12 to marry. Indeed, Elagabalus’s young age is actually another factor that indicates the extreme excesses attributed to her may have been exaggerations or libels. For example, Cassius Dio claims that she prostituted herself, and some historians suggest this may have been a stereotype that Dio was imposing on her because of her role as a priestess in a Near Eastern religion. This notion stems from an account by Herodotus about Babylonian temple prostitution: ”The foulest Babylonian custom,” he called it, “which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life.” There is no such claim about Elagabalus prostituting herself in our other contemporaneous source, by Herodian, so we may safely dismiss it. However, talk of her love affairs, which Dio accounts with such detail that they are essentially a digression from the narrative and serve more to humanize her than demonize her, seem by my reading more likely to be a reflection of genuine events. It is also important here to acknowledge that the sexual preference of Elagabalus does not necessarily have any bearing on her gender identity, but as we will see, it is in Dio’s descriptions of her romances with these men that we find most of the indications that she identified as a woman.

To return to Dio’s characterization of Elagabalus’s relationship with Hierocles, he states that she “was bestowed in marriage and was termed wife, mistress, and queen.” Likewise, the later and even less reliable Historia Augusta claims that similar nuptials occurred between Elagabalus and Zoticus, but even more telling is the story Dio shares of their first meeting, when Zoticus greeted her as “My Lord Emperor,” and she assumed a “ravishing feminine pose” and replied, “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady.” Moreover, in more than one of her marriages, she was said to have offered to abdicate the throne to her husband, but reading between the lines there, it seems just as likely that she intended to fully assume the gender identity of a wife, and thus would be the Empress to her husband’s Emperor. Even if these direct and quite apparent indications of her preferred pronouns and gender identity were to be disregarded or mistrusted as slander, there are still the many descriptions of her preference for female-presenting dress and even body modification. While Herodian only depicts her as dressed in the richest of garments, her “purple robes embroidered with gold,” adorned with necklaces and bracelets and a tiara for a crown, he describes it more as a Phoenician style of dress than as women’s clothes, but Dio is explicit, saying that, while in court, she “had more or less the appearance of a man,” otherwise, or as he says, “everywhere else,” she “showed affectation” in her demeanor and voice, something any trans woman will tell you is a common practice, called voice feminization, which just like any gender-affirming care or practice, helps reduce the discomfort and distress of gender dysphoria. According to Dio, she applied make-up to her eyes, and she “used to dance, not only in the orchestra, but also, in a way, even while walking.” And it was her dancing in particular that, according to Herodian, led to her downfall, as supposedly her grandmother feared not the Senators but the soldiers that saw her dancing, believing that they were “outraged by [her] eccentricities.” Again, though, this too may be exaggeration or even fabrication. Herodian is believed to have relied on Dio’s work, and as we’ve seen, Dio wasn’t there and is unreliable. The fact that her grandmother was born in Syria, into a family of Arab priests, makes it seem more likely that she actually supported all of Elagabalus’s efforts to introduce this religion to Romans, including the dances performed by its high priestess.

A triptych depicting Elagabalus’s entrance into Rome, dressed here as a woman, behind her the black stone baetyl of her religion, depicted here as a phallus rather than just as a cone.

Beyond these indications of Elagabalus adopting feminine dress, manner, and voice, and the direct claim that she preferred to be referred to using feminine nouns and wanted to be considered a woman, there is the extraordinary evidence that Elagabalus practiced extensive body modification in an effort to better align her physical self with her gender identity. Both Dio and the author of Historia Augusta make a point about her hair removal. Dio says she “had the hairs plucked out, so as to look more like a woman.” And the author of the latter work talks about her further depilatory regimen, applying a hair removal ointment to her entire body before appearing nude as Venus before an audience. When mentioning her choice to circumcise herself, Dio further notes her desire to have herself castrated, which he differentiates as not being associated with her priesthood but rather with her effeminacy. He even states that she “asked the physicians to contrive a woman's vagina in [her] body by means of an incision, promising them large sums for doing so.” This is absolutely definitive as evidence for the reality of the trans experience stretching all the way back to the furthest reaches of history, as it indicates not only a desire for gender-affirming surgery but also gives us a sense of how desperate she was and how seriously she took her gender identity. These passages in Dio are also important for us to cut through what is true and what fabrication. Cassius Dio is careful to suggest that this desire of hers had nothing to do with the priesthood, likely because he wished to differentiate her effeminacy from well-known eunuch priests of the goddess Cybele. These priests, or gallae, castrated themselves and wore women’s clothing, and they have themselves been interpreted by some historians as transgender women, were called “half-men,” and Dio is careful to differentiate Elagabalus from them. At the same time, he is also careful to subordinate the controversy over her religious reforms to the perceived aberrations of her transgressive behavior with regard to gender. This is different from accounts of other “bad emperors,” whose debauchery and licentiousness is typically subordinated to the other grievances against them and as such may be details further embellished to demonize them. In the case of Elagabalus, however, it appears Dio is suggesting that it was her violation of gender norms, first and foremost, that explain her downfall, and other transgressions, like the religious stuff, should be considered secondary, which may here indicate that the claims about her gender identity are true. If we consider this, in conjunction with the other things we know about her rule, and the fact that such gender transgressive behavior was not unheard of, considering the existence of the gallae, then we may suspect that the real reason for Rome’s rejection of Elagabalus was that she was, in all the ways that matter, a woman holding power over men, and she also raised other women to positions of power over men. And this was something they could not abide.

Whether undertaken by her grandmother or not, the historical tradition we have is that members of her own family sought to raise her cousin, Alexander, to co-Emperor in an effort to encourage Elagabalus to temper her behavior, or perhaps to appease the critics of the Empress. According to the sources, which again may be defaming her, she tried to have Alexander killed, but found that her Praetorian Guard preferred him to her and none would do the deed. So then she instead started a rumor that he was ill, but when her soldiers began to riot, Elagabalus was forced to bring Alexander into their camp to show he was well. It was then that, perhaps through some intrigue from Alexander’s mother, Elagabalus and her mother were slain together. Their heads were then taken off and their bodies stripped and dragged through the city in what might seem to be the ultimate humiliation, but Elagabalus would be humiliated for all time. Her memory damned, she would only be written about under this false name, which I have adopted here only for clarity reasons, since if you want to look up more about her, this is the name to use. She would be misgendered for most of history, despite her own critics acknowledging her preference. Even now, you can see her misgendered on her Wikipedia page and in almost all scholarship about her. And even long after her memory was damned and her life so distorted, when she was to be finally resurrected in more modern discourse and reclaimed as a misunderstood or falsely maligned figure, even then, she was consistently used represented as a gay man and not a trans woman, and in such a way as was standard to the sexual politics of each era, such that her memory was often used to malign gay men as well. So, for example, British author Alfred Duggan, in his 1960 novel Family Favourites, written during a moral panic over male homosexuality, delivers an admirable depiction of a character whose sexuality is not a choice but rather an immutable aspect of the character but still treats it as a rather unfortunate condition and does a real disservice to Elagabalus by depicting her as a virile gay man rather than as woman that she was. Then in 1966, Kyle Onstott and Lance Horner, of the Falconhurst historical erotica series, tried their hands at crafting a gay bodice-ripper centered on Elagabalus in Child of the Sun. They too depict Elagabalus as a gay man rather than a trans woman, but their characterization partakes of many longtime stereotypes, portraying the character as an over-mothered narcissist whose homosexuality stems from his acute misogyny, and even perpetuates the false stereotype that all gay men, at heart, just want to be women. So through the millennia, many have made of Elagabalus whatever it suited them for her to be, to make whatever statement they wanted to make. And I am certain some will say that’s exactly what I and others do in presenting her as a trans woman, but as I have argued I think convincingly here, this representation hews more closely to what we actually know about her. And in a time when the U.S. president is conducting witch hunts against trans individuals and trans women especially, punishing those who even accommodate their existence, and even just recently reposted a conservative newspaper article that featured the pink triangle, the Nazis very own concentration camp badge for gay men and trans women—that’s right, yet another social media post accidentally containing Nazi imagery shared by Trump, making three now, if you’re counting—I think it is more important than ever not to deny, not to qualify or hem and haw, but to acknowledge the truth, that transgender people have always existed and must be treated as people, not aberrations.

Coin immortalizing Elagabalus’s grandmother, Julia Maesa, whom Elagabalus appointed to be a Roman Senator, or rather, Senatrix, as would eventually be the feminine form of the word.

Until next time, consider this. Many men, myself not included, claim to think about the Roman Empire every day. Yet I wonder how many have heard of the trans Empress Elagabalus? Go ahead and link this to a Roman Empire nut. I’d love for them to give more thought to this issue.