Undoing gender

This chapter focuses on the lines between gender. It looks beyond the gender binary and shows how the fluidity of gender identity and expression has always been an important facet of art and art interpretation.

Mermaids

The mermaid is a symbol adopted very often by trans and gender-variant people. This is because the mermaid is traditionally depicted with human characteristics only from the waist up, making it impossible to speculate about the mermaid's genitals, a discrimination to which trans people are often subjected. Many associations have adopted the mermaid as a symbol for trans people’s rights.

Colomba Antonietti

Colomba Antonietti is one of the only two women celebrated on the Gianicolo hill in Rome among the busts of the revolutionaries of the Roman Republic who stood alongside Garibaldi against the French troops in the first half of the 19th century. She wore the uniform of the Bersaglieri to disguise herself and join the army, as her husband had done, and died in 1849 at the Porta di San Pancrazio in Rome.

It would be easy to narrate the stereotypical story of the devoted wife who follows her husband to a certain death. In reality, once she died and her identity was revealed, Antonietti was celebrated as a heroine, and more than one account reports her dying declaration that she did it ‘for the homeland’.

We must be cautious of the late romantic narrative of the woman soldier. Not much is known about Antonietti as a person, but the fact that she was married does not suffice to say that she was simply a female figure who joined the army, but perhaps someone with a sincere desire to also live in the shoes of a gender different from their own. In any case, her story is of transgression against gender boundaries.

Shiva

Shiva, one of the major deities of the belief system Hinduism, is sometimes depicted in mystical union with his consort, Shakti - recognisable because, as in this case, Shiva has a breast sculpted on one half of his body while the other does not, symbolising the union of masculine and feminine.

Bodhisattva Guanyin

A Bodhisattva is a mythical figure in Buddhism pursuing Enlightenment. There are many Bodhisattvas.

Bodhisattva Guanyin (here referred to by his Chinese name) is a figure who changed gender during the spread of Buddhism from India to East Asia. Originally portrayed as a male character, in East Asian cultures Guanyin becomes female instead, as the qualities attributed to him - care and affection towards devotees, magnanimity, and forgiveness - were stereotypically considered feminine qualities.

Amazons

The Amazons have been considered in the etymological reconstructions of ancient and mediaeval philologists and Latinists, such as Isidore of Seville, as examples of virago, a term still used today to refer to ‘masculine’ women.

According to Isidore, virago was the deviation of women from the norm of mulier, the only possible development of femina. A virago is thus a woman who denies her nature by acting as a man. Indeed, virago has the same etymology as vir - as proven by the fact that in the Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate), virago is also used to call the Virgin Mary; virgo and virago have the same Latin root, despite the opposed qualities later attributed to them.

Christina of Sweden

Christina of Sweden has been variably interpreted as a lesbian, or bisexual, a genderqueer person, probably autistic, and intersex. Her most recent academic biographies, which draw on both contemporary chronicles and her autobiography, have endorsed various hypotheses. It is not made any easier by the queen's autobiography, which enjoys scandal and confirms every gossip spread about her. She plays with the idea that she could have been a 'hermaphrodite', describing herself as extremely 'virile' and hairy from birth.

What we know is that it is difficult to find evidence that she was intersex, but she certainly had a gender performance that cannot be reconstructed as feminine. Perhaps this is in part due to the education she received as the heir to the throne, described by herself as that of a prince. She felt comfortable in masculine attire, describing in her autobiography a discomfort with being a woman, and the letters she sent to her lady-in-waiting Ebba Sparre confirm sapphic feelings towards her (and other women subsequently).

Unfortunately, in the process of romanticising Christina from the 19th century onwards, she is reconstructed as an unconventional female figure, overlooking the complexity of her possible trans identity.

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I was a highly romanticised historical figure who never officially engaged in sexual relationships and is often claimed as an ancestor of the aro-ace (aromantic - asexual) community. Many hypotheses have been advanced over the years about why the queen wouldn’t marry. One theory states that the trauma Elizabeth experienced from her mother and stepmother being executed over love affairs led to her never marrying.

Speculations aside, her life is proof that being non-compliant with gendered stereotypes is a possibility, even throughout history, and that therefore people who did not engage in romantic and sexual life can be re-appropriated today by queer communities without having to question their queerness.