Part Two: The Gallae: Trans Priestess of Ancient Rome

Margaret continues her talk with to Gabriel Dunn about the gender deviants of the ancient world and how basically nothing ever changes.

Sources:

https://arkeonews.net/getting-to-know-matar-kubilea/

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/56909/what-is-the-difference-between-galli-and-metragyrtai

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Epigram%20History%20and%20Examples.htm

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/boadicea/

https://s3.amazonaws.com/arena-attachments/539632/d6348aa09f4510eb5704b6da501f9e7d.pdf

https://www.oldest.org/culture/civilizations/

https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/ancient-mesopotamian-transgender-and-non-binary-identities

https://www.apsu.edu/philomathes/MattinglyPhilomathesONLINE2023.pdf

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Coolso media, Hello, and welcome to cool people who did
cool stuff. You're a weekly reminder that nothing ever changes.
And by that I mean people keep doing good things
and only good things, And we do good things because
bad things happen. It's almost like the people who do
bad things. No, they're not doing us a favor by
letting us have a chance to do good things. But

(00:22):
one good thing that's happening is that I have a guest,
and my guest is Gabe.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
How are you Hi?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It's Gabe from the first one you'll remember.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Okay, I have a question for you. Yeah, what does
a thousand natural shocks mean? Which is, by the way,
the name of the podcast that Gabe does.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yes, and my sub sac it's from the to be
or not to be speech from Hamlet.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oh shit, I feel like a uh huh Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
He says the thousand natural shocks that flashes air to
And I kind of have weird like obsessions with different
Shakespeare plays for different amounts of time. So in college
I was really into Macbeth and I did not care
about anything.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Else because you're neurotypical.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, exactly, because there's no autism detected here. Yeah, And then,
so it wasn't like, oh, you're into Shakespeare. It was like, no,
I'm into this. And so that happened with Hamlet too.
While this was going on, because I was like, I
watched the Kenneth brannaw one.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Don't ask me to know the name of pop people
or actors.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So Kenneth Brandna, he's an actor, but he's also like,
he did an adaptation of Hamlet that's four hours long.
It ripped for me. I loved it, but then I
saw that he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for
it when he simply did not change one word.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I would still say a screenplay from a stage play
is an adaptation.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
He did, Okay, sure, maybe no, I'll buy it. But
when I saw that, I was like, he did, no,
no it.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, I will make my case because my association with
to be or not to be speech besides the only
Shakespeare I can quote like five lines of as compared
to nothing else. Can't quote anything of. Because when I
was in high school and I was an ingl me
and my best friend were teamed up to make Hamlet videos.
Oh okay, we had to pick some scenes and make
a Hamlet video. And me and my best friend competed

(02:10):
who got to be Hamlet by whoever memorized the speech
faster and I did not, And so I got my
second pick of who I wanted to be. So I
was a gay male Ophelia. Yes, okay, And so I
had a very tortured suicide scene, interesting bits of lore,
and we set the whole thing to the caral orifle
like do do do?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Wow that was a pretentious little asshole. Yeah, I got
to be Ophelia, so it all worked out.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Also, I want to shout out the movie Sing Sing,
which is also where I got that from. Speaking of
auditioning for Hamlet, I started liking Hamlet because in that movie,
it's about a real life troop of actors in a
prison who put on a play and they wanted you Hamlet.
But then they start writing Hamlet into a different play,
so like, Hamlet's just a character in this other play
they're doing. And two, the audition for Pamela. The part

(03:01):
that made me absolutely sob at the end is that
all of the actors in the film are playing themselves.
It's the prison troop. Guys other than Coleman Domingo. I
lost it. Holy shit, It's so good. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well to also talk about people who are theatrical is
this week because these ladies are queens sometimes, but because
we are on part two of a two parter about
the Galley, the transpriestesses of ancient Rome, who I thought
were going to be way more mythical than they are,
and actually we're just there was a fucking lot of them.

(03:40):
For once, source I found said that they were around
for twelve hundred years. What Yeah, I didn't find to
start an end date there, and that would push it
past the Christianization of Rome. And I haven't read as
much about the Galley past Christianization of Rome, but that's
just because I haven't read as much. So the Galley

(04:01):
were primarily talked about at the time with male language
the Gale, and again, as I said before, I couldn't
find pronunciation guides doing what I can. Most modern historians,
at least the ones I've tended to look at, tend
to use the female forms when talking about them, and
some of the original sources also use the female form
when talking about them, and you can kind of basically

(04:24):
see how much of Dick's they're being based on how
they fucking gender them in language. Imagine that things change
so much. Wild the galley existed for a while before
they started showing up and writing, probably, and that happens
around the year two hundred BCE. The first poems about
them are epigrams in this context, are very short poems,

(04:45):
usually inscribed on things. There's just a bunch of them,
and it's like, kind of like a classic style of
story will be about a gala, an individual galley who
is attacked by a lion and then uses her drum
and wild ritual dancing to scare the lion away and
then donate something a robe, a drum, a lock of
hair to meet your sabelli. Huh. The galley probably grew

(05:09):
out of the metro gear test the itinerant preachers and beggars.
And we know this, or we suspect this because one
of the epigrams that's just like the same story as always,
instead of using the word gala, use the word metro guide.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
And then one guy later was like, ione is called
the metrogetes, but galoy are what they're now called, and
used yet another well, I think they used the latter,
the caloy.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Okay, interesting, we should go back to being called these
fun things like or just start using them to confuse
sis people.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
I know, although what if it will get baden Gate two?
But anyway, I'll actually probably cover the baiten at some point,
which is the medieval English conception of the third gender
of trans women.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
But we are not using cool enough words, and that
I will go on record that's the number one problem
for trans people today.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
And I think we're pretty good at being cool. I
actually think it's the people who are I know, you
know this, Yeah, it's like, oh, we reclaimed the tea slurt.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
That's nice. I'm calling myself a metro guard now, yeah, Bryan,
stop me.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah. And it's funny because it's like we've always been
seen as cool and that scares people. Tease scares people
that we are because you have to be so comfortable
to come out as trans, and being comfortable is how
you are cool. And so these people who've locked themselves
into these like really rigid places are like, no, you

(06:39):
can't go over to the fun place, you have to
stay over here.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
I literally had someone when I was a bisexual woman,
which we all know is the most oppressed person you
can be, especially if you're white. Someone messaged me and
was like, I used to bully you online, like homophobically.
It was because I'm gay and I'm sorry and now
I'm out.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
And I was like, aw wow, that's sweet.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, it really is that they said in the thing,
they were like, I was just jealous.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
I love an Onion headline from like ten years ago
that was like grandfather confused as to why trans granddaughter
doesn't just dress in women's clothes in private like everyone
from his generation.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yes, suh, yes suh.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
So basically, at various points we do more obvious shit.
And the name Galley probably comes from the River Gallos,
which is in Phrygia. So it's basically a way of
being like, oh, these Phrygians, these like foreigners. The foreignness
of this cult, even though it's like tied now into
like Greek and especially Roman nationalism, it's still about being

(07:49):
like this foreign group of wild people, and so the
River Gallos is like, oh, this is basically the Phrygians.
There's also a chance that they got their name from
the Gauls who lived on the river Gallows. Oh, so
it's interesting because then it's like the Celts are fucking
added again.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
I was gonna say, Okay, interesting.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
And that's probably less likely. Oh boo. And the river
Gallos is said to drive anyone who drink his waters insane,
and the Sibylly cult was largely seen as insane.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, so now my next question is, what's the definition
of insanity? Just dancing crazy with a drum? Like, what
are we talking about?

Speaker 1 (08:27):
I mean they're like cutting their own dicks off during
ecstatic dancing and stuff during Yeah, in like public ways
pretty metal? It is really fucking metal.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Oh you guys thought ripping off a bat's head spitting
it was metal, which I don't think he.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Even did on No, I don't remember if he did it.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
I think it wasn't on purpose. And now you know,
are you cutting your dickoff while dancing?

Speaker 1 (08:51):
No? Yeah, so yeah, you really got nothing on these people,
which is interesting. One historian that I was reading was
talking about how some trans people look back enviously of
this group, even though they're super ostracized, literally because their
transition was in their own hands.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Oh wow wow.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
And like because back then you were just like, I'm
fucking crazy, let's go cut your dick off.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Now it's like you have to get diagnosed as crazy.
This is a little bit more like twenty years ago.
Oh I love this. You have to get diagnosed as
crazy and then taken through the crazy system and then
they're like, Okay, I guess you're so crazy that we're
going to cut your dick off. And for anyone who's listening,
not everyone, even in the Sibley cult, probably but not
everyone's cutting their shit off. Whatever gender and sex are different,

(09:38):
do your homework. Anyway. Even in the twentieth century, historians
were like, oh, these people castrated themselves because they were insane.
And it takes until the twenty first century where people
are like, uh, you historians haven't really paid attention to
modern sociology, have you. And it's also possible that the
Galley that their name comes from the Gala consumer and

(10:01):
some historians have traced a possible route of cultural transmission.
This is less likely. It's more likely it's the people
of the Crazy River and Crazy Town over east. And
even though many of the people in the cult are
literally Greek, they're basically being like, oh, those weird foreigners
and the Galley were males who castrated themselves ritually and

(10:24):
then lived as women. And there's actually specific mythology. I'll
get into it a little bit about why they're not
just eunuchs but actually living as women, and it's a
different thing.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Ah Okay.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
The historian Ka Lucker, who wrote this piece in two
thousand and five that I'm citing sometimes and again in
the notes, wrote about the galley in Greece. Quote, the
social structure depended on clear, inflexible gender roles, and the
transgender priesthood seemed to threaten those roles, even while it
acted as a pressure valve, allowing people who could not

(10:54):
fit the rigid social roles a means of escape. And
so this is like the Greece and Rome are incredibly
patriarchal cultures with these very rigid gender roles, and so
here comes the wild thing. And this is why I'm
arguing that basically people are like, oh, we better let
people get trans otherwise it's going to be fucked up

(11:14):
in here, and so we want to do it in
our way by ostracizing them and controlling them, but tying
them into things.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
I see. It's interesting. It's almost like, oh, you're having
some gay feelings, go be a priest. Like it's very.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Like that probably happened a lot in history. Huh.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, it's very much like, oh, you're kind of a
different thing. You're weird. So instead of being in regular society,
we'll put you in this temple and then you'll be
taking care of the God. Yeah, and then you're not
in our grocery store or whatever.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
I remember talking to my aunt rest in peace. I
love her. Who's a nun? Yeah, And I remember I
asked her, you know, she was like dying, and I'm like, so,
why'd you become a nun? And she's like, well, I
like teaching and I didn't want to get married, and
I like, god, yeah, And like I don't know if
she was gay. I know she didn't like men very much,
but like, I don't know if she's gay or not.
I don't know. I don't care. Like, but her best

(12:12):
friend of sixty years they fucking lived together, and like,
as my aunt's memory went, her best friend would answer
for her, and like whatever the nature of that relationship
was was beautiful, like and it Yeah, I actually personally
think that aunt was probably like ace or just a nun.
I don't know. Yeah, it's a different sexuality to be

(12:33):
a nun, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Right, But you couldn't like you were just like, yeah,
that's the only place for me basically. And so if
you give yourself to a god and you have some
sort of different sexuality or different gender expression or identity
than mainstream society, it makes sense to be like, no,
this is a god thing. Yeah, totally, this is about

(12:55):
God for me. Actually.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, but the Galay could still fuck so well with
a lot of God people, fair, that's true. A lot
of God people fuck.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
A lot of God people fuck.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah. And so soon enough the Galley are going to
show up in Rome too, and Rome is gonna, you know,
become a pretty big deal on the world stage. So
because Rome becomes a big deal, the Galay are going
to exist as I saw sit it for twelve hundred
years and range from Britain to Turkey. Just fucking wild.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Wow, that's so widespread.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, there's like articles where like, oh, we on earthed
another transgender from Rome in northern Britain or whatever. Not
northern Britain, but the northern part of England where the
Romans got to what And yeah, because you know, Rome
colonized lots of places.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
And so the subtext I've read implies that Sibilly was
more popular among the people than the elite. And I
like that because it's something I run across a lot,
and it runs against a lot of the populist anti
queer propaganda that claims gay people only live in like
coastal cities or whatever the fuck, because I also think
that there's this dichotomy in queer culture between like upstanding
queer culture and like criminal queerness, and often like criminal

(14:10):
queerness runs all throughout history, where people are violent and
wild and untamed are often gayer, Like, yeah, if you're
on the outskirts of society, it's actually gayer, even though
people are performing masculinity like crazy. As someone who did
a lot of beard on beard kissing while living in squats,
and I first started feeling safe wearing dresses while like

(14:30):
literally sleeping under bridges with hoboes who liked to knife fight. Sure,
And so I appreciate this about this history because Sibilly
worshiped reached Italy before it reached Rome, it reached the
outskirts before it hit civilization. The countryside saw more and
more worship of this trans loving nature goddess. And there's

(14:51):
a decent chance that both her acceptance in Athens and
later in Rome, was that the powerful realized they couldn't
stop her worship, so it's better to contain it and
let it serve as this pre us valve. Let it
become acceptable theology before it blows the whole thing apart.
So for hundreds of years people are worshiping Sibylly or
Magnu matar as one of the ways it was called

(15:11):
in Rome, in the countryside in Italy, and it became
an official part of the state religion in two hundred
and four BCE.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
What that's so wild, that's like very It is interesting
where you're talking about the dichotomy of queerness and the
sort of upstanding people who distance themselves from the wild crazy,
Like that's the difference between like being gay and being queer.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, in some ways, which you're both fine. Honestly, I'm
not trying to come for people who want a simpler life.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Sure, yeah, as long as you don't vote my rights away, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
It sounds like when you're talking about the galley, it
sounds like the LGB people who are like, is the
tea part of it? Like really, like maybe the tea
isn't part of it, and so the reason.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
That we can be like, you know, we're like, oh, yeah,
they show up in Greece and then then like Rome,
we're like two o four BCE because basically Rome came
crawling to Sibylly the Goddess and being like, we fucking
need you. Because in two oh five BCE you have
this whole Second Punic War that is entirely over my
head because I am a Spanish civil war once a

(16:24):
week thinker, not a Rome once a week thinker.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
She's not like other girls.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yeah, and so the you have this whole Second Punic
War going on, and the Romans are like, something's got
to happen. We're gonna go talk to the oracle because
we're in this war. And also stones keep falling out
of the sky and we're like starting to get kind
of freaked out.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Is that true?

Speaker 1 (16:46):
Yeah, that they seem to be writing about it might
have been like more asteroids than normal they knew about,
you know, asteroids and shit, right.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Well, yeah, maybe it would happen more often.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
And so they go to the oracle and the oracle
is like, you will win this war if you build
a temple for Magna Mater in Rome for Sybilly. And
so the Romans go to a mantter shrine in Anatolia
and they're like, can we bring monster to Rome? And
they're like, yeah, sure, here's the meteorite we used to
represent her on Earth or whatever. They're like, town mascot.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Why well, what's in it for the oracle? Why would
the oracle just pick this goddess out of thin air?

Speaker 1 (17:21):
I bet she liked her. I bet she was like,
I like hanging out with like, you know, wild ladies
and shit.

Speaker 2 (17:26):
She's like, Galay, I got you.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Oh my oracle says yea, hey God, I have Siby here.
And it might have been like, you know, Sybilly is
like representing this like untamable spirit or something right, and
maybe it's like you need a little bit more of
that in your mix in order to win this war,
you know.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Cut.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
I mean the Galay aren't like warriors, but like whatever.
And so the Romans bring Manser over as a space stone,
like as a little asteroid rock into Rome with great
pomp and fanfare. The boat is met with parades and
they like, bring the goddess this little rock kind of
like a Jamie Leftis has a pet rock. You know.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yes, this is like everything that you have described, like
every two sentences could be its own movie.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, this.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Is also I'm just picturing like this asteroid coming on
a boat, like every visual is so insane. Yeah, it's
like amalgamation of things.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
I like, I know, there's so many of these things
that keep running a cross being like why aren't these
more movies about these? And usually it's because, like, oh,
because it's about gay people or anarchists or whatever, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
But just the image of a boat with a big rock.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
On it, Yeah, a little rock. I got no idea
to see. They're well funny, Like I think it's funny
if it's like the size of like your fist, you know,
like on a pillow. I think that's what it is.
But I actually don't know. I got a pillow. Yeah,
that part.

Speaker 2 (18:51):
I love it so much.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, people have whole PhD's about this shit, but I
spend a lot of time reading about it this week.
So I'm the expert.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right in, if you have a PhD. Right in and
let us know if the rock was big or small.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, And by one ninety one BCE, they finished building
the temple right in the center of Rome on Palatine
Hill has got a courtyard and columns and a fountain
and all the bells and whistles.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
And the Romans have to add their own spin on
this lady. And maybe the biggest change is all a sudden,
poor Sibylly is a fertility goddess. No, she didn't want that,
I know, I know, but I guess she was like,
you know, it's been a while, I'm ready to pop
out some kids. I don't know. And the upside is
that her icons are drawn with a lot of children,

(19:39):
but also lots of like genitals just drawn on everything.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
I mean, uh, I can't win them all, but it's like,
it's so interesting to me to have this woman. And
then because I don't think she decided she wanted to
be a fertility god.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
No, I suspect not.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I think they were like, hey, you gotta be a
fertility god. Yeah, like when an influencer becomes a tradwife
because of the brand deals.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, totally, much like our brand deals, which are the following,
Hey I did it, and we're back. Okay. So she's
still this wild goddess, but they're also making her a
little bit more she's like the protector of Rome now,
and so they are doing this like she's not just wilderness,

(20:26):
she's urban. She can do it all, but everyone knows
she's a foreign import, and specifically her and her followers
get accused all the time of being too sexual, like
this foreign hussy is corrupting our culture, even though Rome
is literally where they decided to make it about sex.
She wasn't about sex before that kind of like how

(20:48):
today trans women are called groomers by people who marry
literal children.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
I mean very that. But it's also like, I'm sure
there's so many books I could read about this, but
there's female gods, and then there's so hated for the things.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
That people decide they are.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, like, girl, you made her that?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, why are you mad at her?

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Just make her? Not that you didn't have it before.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
I'm like starting to be of the like Rome ruined
everything theory of history.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Sure, Rome the Ronald Reagan of the world.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, that's the like chart you know where
everything gets bad. Yeah, although Ronald Reagan didn't want to
get into a nuclear war, so that's better than the
current present.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
I've now been seeing a lot of stuff about he
actually would be considered a Democrat.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Today probably, And that's not saying anything party.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
No very bad about the Democrats, But I like, okay,
so they bring her in, they say, not only is
she a foign hussy, but now she's got all these
nefarious intentions regarding sex. But like, did I think she's real?

Speaker 1 (21:57):
I don't know to what degree people use the gods
as metaphors or literal in the ancient times? Right, hard
to say, because I like, I find religion a useful metaphor, right,
Like that is a thing that is useful for my
own life. Yeah, me too, And and so I get
like really confused when people are like bearded guy in
the sky and I'm like, what.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
You could choose anything?

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well, it's like some of the things that people use,
Like there's like monotheistic stuff that is interesting to me
by using that as a metaphor, right, I guess I
would say it's like a both. When I think of
my polytheistic friends who like truly believe, they believe that
they create and empower gods, and gods are like real,

(22:41):
but in this way that doesn't really exist in a
materialistic world.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
They need someone to believe in them in order to exist,
kind of like Santa Claus.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, and kind of a like it's a thing you
can access by believing in them, Okay. I like that,
Like if you need to embody a certain idea, you're
going to talk to this certain like god. And I
think about like we did some episodes about the Haitian
revolution a while ago, and the way that like Voto
practitioners like bring down spirits to ride them and become

(23:14):
like yeah people, you know, it's like there's a real
power in that, right, And that was a power that
destroyed the French rule of Haiti, you know, because they
were like I'm empowering myself with the idea of I
don't give a fuck anymore, right right, right? You know.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's like the muses. So in some ways it like
almost doesn't matter whether they are self aware of using
it as a metaphor or not. That would be my theory.
And I I would fucking give almost anything to go
back and talk to some gallet and be like what
do you think you know? Because they didn't really write that.

(23:51):
We have the writing of it, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Yeah, they didn't tell their own stories.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, which is I don't know, I get it, like
annoyed when people are like, oh, own voices, this is
all that matters, and I'm like, ah, does it And
then I'm like, oh, but it does matter too. It's
like part of what matters, you know.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
At least in a nonfiction sense.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah. So the Galley come with Sibilly, and this scared
the shit out of Roman society, and the galley were
held in contempt by the laws of society. The laws
were like, Romans can't join them. And the historian that
I keep quoting Ka Lucker pointed out, and I'm paraphrasing here,
it is well understood in sociology that a society only

(24:31):
outlaws something if people are trying to do it right.
They're not making up new laws. So like people want
to be galley, romans are trying to join them. They
were popular among some people, despite being despised and ostracized
by much of society, and people would sometimes get exiled
for joining. One time, there was a galley named Janutius,

(24:53):
and she was denied her inheritance because the law was like, oh,
only men and women can inherit property and out a
man or a woman legally, which means that they are
legally a third gender. But Janutius wasn't able to speak
in court to defend herself because just by being in
court with her presence and voice, she would have polluted it.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
You know what's so interesting, it's not them going no,
you're actually a man. It's them going you're a third thing.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
And we don't like that either, Yeah, totally, which like
to compare to the Baden of medieval England. The reason
we know about them is some old laws that are like,
I like, if a man sleeps with a baden, it's
a crime. If a woman sleeps with the bad and
it's a crime. If a bad and sleeps with another
bad and it's a crime. But they're all different crimes

(25:42):
or like different and so like we know we exist
because it was illegal for us to fuck. Yes, yes,
but we are legally distinct from both men and women.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yes, that's exactly. Wow, that's so interesting.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah. And then did the go a live at the temple?

Speaker 1 (26:04):
Yeah? I believe so.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Okay, cute little model house like in America's next time.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
I will take your word for it. The things that
I've read imply that they were kind of a happy
little society amongst themselves. It seems like it they weren't
allowed to bury their dead inside the city. I don't
know whether this is just Athens or just Rome. The
two sources are confusing between the two. So they had
a unique death ritual. The dead Galla was carried out

(26:31):
of the city by her comrades and buried under stones
outside the city, and then her friends would wait seven
days before returning to the city and getting back to work.
They sat shiva. Is that a thing is to like
go hang out with the dead for a week.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
When a Jewish person dies, you sit in your house
for seven days. There's other rituals and stuff around it,
but you're supposed to stick around for seven days.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, it's called sitting shiva. And you're supposed to cover
all your mirrors and you're supposed to tear your clothing. Yeah.
People come and visit you, They bring you food. A
rabbi comes and prays at your house every day.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Jews have some good death rights. I have a lot
of Jewish friends who like once a year the yard site.
It must be like celebrating the death of someone. And
then like my friend like who whenever she stays at
my house like sings songs and like likes candles and
stuff for the dead, and.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Yeah, the yard site candle.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
One funny thing is I went to a non Jewish
friend's house one time and they had a bunch of
yard site candles and I was like what and they
were like, oh, they're like a dollar at the store.
And I was like, those are Jewish death candles.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Oh, that's funny. It's like the equivalent of how everyone
has like the prayer candles from like Latin American exactly.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, but theirs has Beyonce on net.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yeah, totally uh huh yeah, which, honestly, and Catholics mess
is fine from my point of view. Yeah, ghost syncretic
who cares. And so the Romans are obsessed with hierarchy,
and so they add a person in charge and they
do this in a way that probably sucks. They make
an arch Gallas, one Gallas to rule the rest of them.

(28:08):
And this Gallas probably didn't castraight. And I'm gonna say himself,
not just because he has a dick, but like he
seems to be an appointee from the city to watch
over these wild women. What I know, And I don't
know whether that looked like the doctor at the asylum
or like it's so fucked up, I know, like they

(28:32):
clearly can take care of themselves. Get Chad out of here,
I know. And reading this makes me think because Caesar
claims that the Druids had arch Druids, and I'm like,
did they or you just Roman? So you just assume
there's a fucking hierarchy everywhere there's an arch whatever the fuck?
You know.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
This is like when the cops tried to ask us
who in front of the detention center downtown was in
charge and who was bringing us Yeah, and then we
were like, no one.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
They could not wrap their minds around it.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Yeah, it like genuinely doesn't compute to a hierarchical organizational
model that anyone would have a model outside of that,
you know, Yeah, which has like always been one of
our strengths, although it has its own weaknesses that we
just have to learn how to adjust to.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:22):
But so I had trouble tracking exactly which sources we're
talking about Greek and which we're talking about Roman gallet.
It doesn't help that one of the main people writing
about them was a Greek satirist named Lucian who seemed
to hate them, who was also writing about them in
Rome despite being the Greek person. So I'm going to
conflate the two a little bit.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Okay, So he was like, not only do I hate
them here, I also hate them over there.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
That seems to be the thing. Or he was Greek
but part of Roman. It fucking I get really annoyed at.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
This satirizing satirizing in what sense, So.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Like, I think he's kind of a little bit of
a shock journalists kind of my impression, okay, but I'm
not one hundred percent certain. And he's the only person
to describe their initiation ceremony, which is again, it's literally
the same problem we had with the Druids, where the
only people writing about them were Romans and Greeks who
kind of didn't like them but also kind of wanted
to sensationalize things. But also the past is also sensational.

(30:17):
So like, the thing that I'm about to describe might
be true, and most people take it as true, and
I've read some stuff that's a little bit skeptical. During
Dias Sanguinus, the day of Blood on the spring equinox,
it's this big, wild festival full of ecstatic music and
dancing put on by the Gallet for the people of
Rome Warehouse party. Yeah, I think it's in the streets honestly,

(30:41):
but I'm not sure cool spectators would come because who
can resist a good show. And so they do their
ecstatic dancing and music and shit and everything's fucking wild,
and so some of them are so overcome by the
moment that they go into the center of the crowd,
they pick up the ritual sword and they castrate themselves.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
That's not the Galley doing that.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
This is how they become Galley.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
So the people that want to join the Galley, they're
so excited about it.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
But most of these people didn't know they wanted to
be Galay until the dancing. Up. By the dancing, you
kiss one girl and suddenly you're a lesbian.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
You know exactly, or you see them having the time
of their lives. Yeah, and you're like, that's what I'm missing,
that's what I need to do.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
It's that thing where it's like, oh my god, they
got surgery so quickly after they just like thought they
were trans and it's like, no, there's probably a lot
of stuff bubbling. You don't just go into the middle
of a crowd and cut your dick off. If that
hasn't occurred to you a few times beforehand, I know,
now you're given permission now because the world is so
celebratory and you're surrounded by people who are like you

(31:50):
and they seem to be having a good time, You're like, well.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
You're right, Yeah, we're a social contation.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
This is for me? Is this social contagent? If not
everyone at the thing cuts their dick off, you know? Yeah, no,
exactly only a few people do. If it was the
whole party would do it.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, it would solve some other problems. Never mind, I
take it back. So it gets even cooler after they
cut their shit off. And Okay, Historically when people a
talking about castration in this context, it seems to be
like sometimes it's like orchaect to me, and sometimes it's
like the full package.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Yeah that's what I thought.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're dick right, And so then
they run through the city holding their jrunk in their
hands and then throw it at a random house like
egging a house, but for keeps eh wavos that's my joke. Okay,
And whoever's house they have egged, the people then have
to come out and give the new gala women's clothes

(32:50):
and jewelry.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
This fucking rules is amazing. This is cool as hell.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, there's some adult whatever it shows up my house
and throws her dick at it. I'm like, all right,
you get a dress.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah exactly. It's like the craziest Halloween treating of all time.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Totally yeah, your house. I dicked your house. Wow. And
then they return to the temple and they joined the gallet.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
You're not gonna bleed out right, Like, what's so?

Speaker 1 (33:20):
There is danger here? And yeah, I don't know what
percentage Because a lot of people were talking about this,
I starting to talk about it, say like they are
willing to accept this level of danger that they might
not survive this thing, right.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Just kind of pack the wound and let it scab over.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah. I don't know the actual danger of chopping your
dick off in the middle of a crowd. I think
it's reasonably high. But like you know, on a normal day,
we have like a really low chance of dying. The
day you shop your dick off in a crowd, you're
gonna have a higher chance of dying. Does that become
one percent? Does that become twenty percent. I could not
tell you. I'll go into my chart. I'll ask my doctor.

(33:56):
Yeah it's a good idea. Yeah, and bring a little
hand drum.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah yeah, just curious.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Yeah. So this day, the Day of Blood, was a
celebration of the sort of demi god of the galley,
the sort of right hand lady of.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Sibylly Adis Sick.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
But what Addis liked was ad Nope, this is literally
the worst AD transition I've ever done. Oh but you're
stuck with it, Okay, go back for it. Only is
that her real name? Addis? Yeah, okay, but not with
a d. H, not with a D. I didn't do
it on purpose. I wish I had. I wish I

(34:36):
was that clever. All right, ads, and we're back. So
when the cult went to Greece, they took this word Addis.
That was probably either the name of a specific priest
of matter and Phrygia. It might have been also the
name for like priests of materire. But basically they're like,

(34:58):
once the conceptual Addis is in Greece, they're like, all right,
this is the demigod who's hooking up with Sibylly, and
he is generally seen as the first Gala. He gets
heat and sheet in various ways. I'm gonna just okay,
I'm gonna misgender and by accident her.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
Okay, this is interesting.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
And there's a ton of different versions about this myth
about how this comes to be someone who is more
than a eunuch but is in fact living as a woman.
And so these are the origin stories that we know
is like, this is more than being a eunuch.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
In some myths, she starts off as infertile from birth,
which could mean a lot of things interesting. This includes literally,
if someone's just like not attracted to women, they could
be called infertile from birth, or they could be intersects,
or they could just literally not be fertile for a
fucking million reasons. In one of these stories, Addis is

(35:52):
hooking up with probably Sibylly okay, and then he cheats
andre as a boy in whatever gender sure something, cheat
meat on her. She's so mad at him that he
goes crazy and he cuts off his own dick in
like sorrow and this and this kills him and the
galet self castraight in Addis's memory. Another poem has adis

(36:14):
going mad in the woods alone and cutting off her
own junk with a flint knife. At this point, she
gets female pronouns in this story, and she picks up
the drum and dances and then goes to sleep. She
wakes up and thinks kind of in awe about how
she's been every kind of person. Wow, and she's super sad.

(36:34):
But Sibylly sends a lion to drive her insane, but
like in a good way, in a like free you
from your sorrow's way.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Okay, yeah, like when we up my searcher line.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah. And then Adis goes into the woods and is
forever after a servant to Sibylly.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
So in one instance, addis Amab.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, always Amab in these stories.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Okay, addis Amab looking up with Sibley. He cheats on her, Yeah,
but somehow he's the victim. Classic And then.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
I don't know if he's the victim in that. I
think he's like he's upset.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
He goes insane because she's mad at him. Yeah, it's
like when your boyfriend is like you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, like I'm so stupid and starts.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
But I'm sorry. Yeah, why would you ever want to
be with someone like me whatever, you know that kind
of okay.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Anyways, so then.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
He's like, what, oh, okay, if you don't take me back,
I'm just gonna cut my dick off. Then he cuts
his dick off, and then he dies, and then all
the gully are like, will cut our dick off because
of your crazy ex boyfriend?

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Well, when you say it like that, he's in cell coded.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Deeply in cell coded.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Oh god, oh you found the darkest version of this story.
Uh huh? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
Or also like, if my friends cut their dicks off
because of my crazy ex boyfriend, I'd be like, are
we even friends? Why would you do that?

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Yeah? Okay, more stories about Addis. Oh no, there's so
many of these. I've only got some of them written down.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
The performative feminist boyfriend Addis.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Uh. Another story has Addis as a young Phrygian who
is supposed to stay chased for Meter, but then instead
falls in love with a Niad, and so Meter kills
the Naiad by destroying its sacred tree, and so Addis
runs off into the wilderness and castrates himself because he
decided his balls were why he was sad? What's a

(38:29):
naiad like a fucking water dryad. I think I played
a lot of D and D as a kid. I
assume I know this, and now I'm worried.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
He falls in love with a dolphin.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
No, no, like a naiad is like a nymph whoa
got it, got it?

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Got it?

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Okay. So then he runs away dramatically cuts his own
balls off because that's what's making him sad, because.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
His desire for sex was making him sad. I guess
because he like was supposed to say, chased and he failed.
So now he's like, ah.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
He's so dramatic. Oh my god, dude, have you considered
just being regular?

Speaker 1 (39:05):
No, adis is not. Neither has any trans woman ever
said we earned our reputation, and in a positive way,
I'll say so. In another Greek tale, this one's like
less og okay, Zeus falls asleep and has a wet dream,
and his wet dream creates Agdustus, who is sybilly and

(39:29):
is an intersects god with the two main sets of genitals.
Agnustus freaked out the gods so much that they cut
off Agnustus's dick, which then sprouted into an almond tree
and a nymph ate one of the almonds and it
got her pregnant, and she gives birth to Adis, who
was then raised by a goat. And then Adis is

(39:51):
getting married to someone but then saw Agdustus and then
goes crazy at the wedding and castraates both himself and
his father in law. Okay, and what does Syby have.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
To do with this?

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Agus is Sibilly?

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Oh? Got it?

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Got It's just like some syncretic shit. So in this case,
Sibilly is intersex.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Okay, Well, this story is insane, Like is there an
explanation for like were these people like eating berries that
made them high? Like what is that explanation? Is it
just like if you don't have anything else, you're just
very creative.

Speaker 1 (40:28):
I think it's echo chamber shit. I think it's like
if everyone's telling you like, yeah, yeah, totally, Zeus would
totally do that, and then you're like yeah, and then
it would like create an almonary and everyone's like yeah, no, absolutely,
and so I was like I don't think that they
would create an almonary and they're like no, you just
get how could you think that? That's My best guess.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
It's like when you're playing like with a little kid
and the kids like and now my dinosaur can fly,
and you're like okay, yeah, and they're like, no, the
reason that you can't actually have your power introde that
is because mine has a force field. And you're like, okay,
and that's what this is. Like, No, he had a
wet dream and it turned into an almond and she
ate the almond and she's pregnant. Duh.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, and that's why the goat raised him. And then
then yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
And then you have to just be like, you're right,
I'm stupid.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, that one is the most Greek myth of all
of them, but it's just like a tragic, weird story.
I'm like, all right, whatever, And a lot of them
are just like, oh, I went into a cave and
then was overcome by like ecstatic madness and self castrated,
and you know, went off to go worship the goddess.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Why are they obsessed with castrating?

Speaker 1 (41:33):
Well, so in this case, this is a specific I
don't want to say Greek culture is obsessed with castrating,
but I would say that, like a lot of historical
societies are, I've only read about some of them. I
was reading about this cult in Siberia in the eighteenth
and nineteenth century. That was like, oh my god, it
was an ecstatic dancing cult where they like cut off

(41:54):
their own dicks. See, yeah, I think ecstatic dancing is
associated with the shit don't let your children go to
raves if you don't want them to become trans girls.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
And put that on a pillow.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
Yeah. And there's another story about the First Gale, and
this one is not Attis but a guy named Combabos
who castrated himself for the Syrian goddess Adergatis, whose followers
would castrate themselves. But this is the like not just
uniq story. This woman falls in love with a unit Combabos,
but when she realized he didn't have a dick, she

(42:27):
does what anyone would do and kill herself in her sorrow.
And ever since, the Galley have worn women's clothes, so
it's to not seduce women. And I can just go
ahead and say that that was not written by someone
who has a trans woman's experience, because wearing women's clothes
doesn't make you less attractive to women. I'll just go

(42:47):
ahead and say that.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
No. If anything, it's well, I guess I'm not a woman.
When I was a woman, it was one of my
top tiers.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Yeah, it's like, yeah, I think it's interesting because it's
like saying, like, oh, the solution here is to become
a woman, like to fit the social role of women,
instead of trying to go through life in this social
role of Unich, which is an existing social role within
a lot of these cultures. And I don't know as
much about it. I've watched Game of Thrones and read

(43:18):
some history.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
But it's like, so nobody could be like, we should
just wholesale do life as women because that's basically what
we are and we don't want to confuse anyone.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
I think that that's kind of a bit of what's
happening here. And like, again, we don't have any gallet
saying why they did it. Maddening, I know. But what's
interesting that the Klucker. The reason I really like her piece,
I assume it's her. Oh my god, I'm making rud assumptions.
I don't know why I really like this person's piece

(43:50):
is that that author says, like, you know, what historians
are missing is the transgender experience is understanding this is
a way that people feel creech, And so this author
is able to come in and say like I can
actually offer. And they're an academic and they're presenting all
the academic arguments, but they're like, but the thing that

(44:12):
actually fits all the data we have is that they're
fucking trans people who have always existed and like in
different ways in different societies, but this is a way
to be trans in that society. And that because you're like,
why did they do it? And like, I don't know,
the music was good and I always kind of wanted
to do I don't know.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
You know, like, yeah, did you ever see the movie
Stress Positions? No, it's by a trans woman. It's like
more recent movie by a trans woman named Feta Hamilton,
I believe. And there's a part in it where this
younger guy who is like questioning has like trans women.
It's like me, I don't know, yeah, and a little

(44:52):
eggy is talking to the trans woman character and is
like being so when did you first realize the we're
a woman, and she just goes, I don't know. I
just kind of wanted to kill myself and then this helped. Yeah,
totally always think about I think about that all the time.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
I'm going to shout out my nun on again, please,
I have a cousin who's trans who came out before
I did.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Wow, rude, Oh, I.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Have so many trans cousins. This is the beautiful thing
about being part of a lot of Catholic families. I
have a lot of cousins. I've got like thirty something cousins.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
I don't have any cousins.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, I have more than I literally
can keep track of it any given time. And so
I'm sitting at Christmas next to Sister Dominic and my
cousin comes in and I'm not going to say my
cousin's name.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
But Hummingbird.

Speaker 1 (45:46):
My cousin humming Bird to throw back, yeah, exactly, And
my aunt says, now, who's that? And I'm like, oh,
that's humming Bird. She's a woman now. And Sister Dominic,
eighty year old, none is like, I bet she's always
felt that way.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Oh, and a conversation perfect.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
And it's funny, is it's like I talked to a
Hummingbird about it and she was like, no, I didn't
always feel that way. I just like, when I was
like twenty two or something, I realized this possibility.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
And I know we're not allowed to tell six people
that yet I know.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, mine was that. I was like, I think that
I had one idea of my gender and then what
trans was moved to include it.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
You know. Wow, Okay, I love that. I love that.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
But anyway, so you have the galley. Yeah, they don't
eat pigs, they don't touch doves. I could not tell
you why. They also kind of had the original. I
don't know if all of them ate only this diet,
but the Holy Food for Sibilly, the Sacramental food is
the original paleo diet trend, not what we call paleo,

(46:53):
but specifically because meter prefers to eat pre civilized food.
The food, the original food, greens and cheese, like vegetables
and cheese. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yeah, no, it seems like a pretty good diet.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Yeah, very down mostly. I think that's kind of my
diet now. Yeah, yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
I explain this to people and I'm like, yeah, no,
that sounds nice. I'm like, well, I want bread, but
that's because I'm civilized. I've been sure.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Greens, cheese and then just a little pop tard as
a treat.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah, olive oil and bread and top. Yeah huh oh,
I'm so hungry. Okay, So the Galley would drive people
into madness, but a pleasant madness with their wild, untamable music.
They would walk around town in brightly colored robes, begging
for alms and accompanied by floutists. And the noise they
produced was to remember how meater. You know, Sibilly hid

(47:49):
the god Jupiter from Saturn when Saturn was trying to
do his whole devour all of his children thing. Yeah,
so Meter hid Jupiter and then made a huge noise
to cover up juice Butter's crying, Oh my god. And
so this is the like holy noise to reflect keeping
this child safe from its like murderous father.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
But we don't know what it sounds like.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
There's actually some people who get mad if you call
them reconstructionists, who say that they have found the original
drumming patterns, and I have only their word for it
off of their website, which is galay dot org or
calm or something. I'll talk about them a little at
the end.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
But I like this story because trans women have always
been associated with noise music. It's in our blood, which
actually used to piss me off a lot. I once
played this show. I like I had a synth band
and it's a solo project, but it's like not a
noise band. I was like, very like, it's like, you know,
it has noticeable rhythms and yeah, music theory and whatever.
I went to go play this show at this punk bar.

(48:50):
I would hang out it all the time, and I
like walk in with my like synthesizer under my arm
and shit, and someone looks up and goes, oh, I
didn't know there was a noise show later tonight, and
I was like, no, I'm just a trans woman.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well you're like, what are you talking about. I walk
around with this all the time. Yeah, I actually legally
have to carry it.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
Yeah, in order to flag my gender. Yeah right, it's.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Sort of part of the thing. They're making me bring
it to the airport. It's a whole deal.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, in order to get my ID to work.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, you're at the DMV with your synthesize. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:20):
They put me in the trans line.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah. Another thing that trans women have always been associated with.
And this has much more to do with being ostracized
by society and sex work.

Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh so it's not flautists.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
Yeah no. Unfortunately, although if we go far enough into euphemism,
it is. But yes, in Rome, the Galley were wild
and exotic and sexual and corrupting, so absolutely, at least
in the accounts of them. They're often sex workers. Whether
or not they are, I don't fucking know. It's written
as slander. It doesn't need to be fuck that. Yeah,

(49:53):
fuck anyone whoives people shiit for doing sex work. They
also seem to usually but not always, lose their connection
to their family when they come out as oh, oh
my god, yeah, nothing changes, this is wow. Most dropped
their family names, and the Galley weren't allowed to get
married because they couldn't have kids. Was a big part

(50:14):
of why they weren't allowed to get married. And the
only role for this legal third sex was as priestess.
And they had each other. They had each other, and
they had the goddess, and the Galley spoke for the
goddess like one of the most important gods right, And
Sibylly had her own form of poetry, Galliambic meter ah

(50:35):
okay is a meter of poetry that exists for the
Galley to speak for Sibylly. I am not a big
classical poetry buff in terms of like meter and stuff,
but I looked it up and I found one English
poem written in this form by Tennyson. Okay, I've actually
brought up Tennyson before in the show. I think he's

(50:56):
not a lefty, but I've brought him up before because
he wrote the poem that Charge of the Light Brigade,
which was meant to be this patriotic ode to people
who like charged it a certain death. But then if
people read it now, it sounds like a critique of militarism,
but he like didn't mean it as one. But he
writes all this like ancient British patriotic poetry. But the

(51:16):
example I found is from a poem called Boadicea, and
Boadicea is named after probably a future friend of the
pod even though she's a British icon, and that fucks
with my brain. She was a Celtic queen who led
her people into war against the invading Romans in sixty CE.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Okay, so a lot of goddesses had our big and
in charge of stuff, a lot of queens. A lot
of it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
I mean, part of it is that, like the rest
of the world besides Roman Greece was like, ah, women
are in charge of shit and fight sometimes whatever, who cares.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, that's true. There was a lot of goddesses women
like yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
And I'm flattening it a little bit, but only a
little bit, and like not metaphorical like goddesses. I keep
calling the metaphors, but like there's just like a lot
of like warrior queens who are fucking up Greece and Rome.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
You know, Yeah, they're just like women who it's almost
like they're put on a pedestal and also denegrated at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, which nothing ever changes. Well, but it's interesting is
that I haven't looked into this as much as I
would like to. I started down this side quest and
then I was like, this is a different episode the Amazons,
partly because I was looking for trans mask representation in
this episode, because it's like a transwomen, right. If you
go back to Sumer, you get some trans men stuff
going on, right, because a Nani could transform people either way.
Oh true, and would also like specifically give afab priests,

(52:38):
would be given spears and like turned into men or whatever.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
You know, Sure, we have muland we don't need more representation.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
So the Amazons are, in a weird way a sort
of trans MAScin representation, but they're mythological, right. But in
Greece you have these like warrior women and they are
presented as women, but they're also cutting at least one
of their tits and they're taking these very masculine roles
and they're living in this world without men. And what's
interesting is, again I haven't fallen as far down this

(53:09):
rabbit hole as I would like, is that basically the
Greeks built up a mythology of being, Like they looked
around and we're like, all of these women keep killing
us with bows from horseback anytime we like go east
into the steps, you know. Yeah, And so a society
with gender equality or at least better opportunities for women
was seen as this terrifying mythical place where women were

(53:31):
basically men and the men were basically dead. And sounds
cool to me, I know, there's no notes. Yeah, And
there are modern pagan reconstructionists of Sibylly, like the Maytrum
of Sibylly, who are women living in at Upstate New
York who got their start nineteen ninety eight. I literally
only know about them from their website at the very
last minute. I'm not shouting them out specifically, they might

(53:52):
be fine. I just don't know, you know, Is it.

Speaker 2 (53:54):
Just like a Geocity site from nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
No, it actually updated their webpage was because I ran
across it in an article, but from a while ago,
and I was like, oh, they're still around, and they're like,
they're still around. Their website is like, hey, we updated
our web page finally, you know. And they say that
the Matrum is open to all, regardless of gender, gender identity, race,
ethnic background, or sexual orientation. Our theology starts from the

(54:17):
simplest basis, the divine feminine principles, the basis of the universe,
where all the great mother learning about ourselves. And they
started as a place for trans women to recover from
transition and get their shit together, and soon started to
include all women. And they're horizontally organized. Each priestess is
the other's equal. They have a radio station that's part
of the Veterans of the Pod pacifica radio public radio network. Okay, again,

(54:43):
I don't know shit about them besides what they've said,
but I am happy when people make the world more interesting.
Mm hmmm. And that's what I got about the GLEG
people who won't touch doves who hang out and play
wild music that incites people the social contagion. They're corrupting
the U. And they lived in some ways beautiful lives,

(55:03):
but they were ostracized from their families and stuff.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
You said. They took care of each other. It was
like a sisterhood, like a closeness.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
That it seems to be. Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
So they found each other, and I wish we could
hear from them, because I'm sure there were so many
things that they knew amongst themselves that they obviously would
not have shared outside of that. And also, yeah, you're right,
a lot of the depiction was very sensationalized, very like

(55:34):
who knows if they even did the dick cutting in person.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
It's just like, yeah, it might have been like a
sacred thing. Later they asked somebody just an orchaectomies.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Right, It's just like this. It is like what you said,
where they just dig up in the future every New
York Times headline about trans people and then decide that's
what it was like to be trans.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Yeah, and so what.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Happened to the galley? They? Where did they go after that?
They just stop? They died out?

Speaker 1 (56:03):
Yeah, I mean like Rome Christian and Nizes and the
pagan religions are like suppressed by the Christians. And I
don't know about what the Cult of the Galley does
like and the Cult of Sibylly does post the Christianization.
I would love to read more about it, but I
just don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
Wow, But then now modern day you think it's kind
of like this group has sort of I really like,
as I get older, I'm starting to really enjoy people
who have taken old things and just preserved them.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
Yeah, just like so.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
That you know, and you know, here's the old way
we used to make milk. Just want you to keep
knowing about it. Yeah, it might need it someday, yeah,
or well, but it's just kind of like these oh
I've learned all these stances from you know, the eighteen hundreds,
just want to keep them just in case. So like
the fact that I'm trans and I had not heard

(57:01):
of this before. Yeah, even though we do, like you
said in the first part, we do say, oh, trans
people have always existed. It's it's deeper than we even
say with that tagline. Yeah, it's so much deeper. And
like the ways of being a different gender. You could
do a podcast like this till fucking end of time,

(57:23):
just covering all the different ways people have come up
with doing it, you know, because we can flate them
down to very simple things, you know, not simple, but
like we take like the two spirit idea, you know,
which is like a different type of gender deviance in
a different society, But then we're flattening a lot of
societies to come up with that, right, right, And like
the Hazra thing from South Asia. You know, there's like

(57:44):
so many different ways of being what I'm going to
call trans which is like you could pedantically attack me
for and I would be kind of fair, because I
get really sad when people think, oh, we know what's up,
and we look back at the old ways of being
trands and we're like, oh, those they didn't know what
we know.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
You know, we don't know what they know. I don't
know shit exactly. We have ways that work for us
in ways that don't work for us. And as someone
like I sometimes look back at the Beten and I
don't know much about them, But as someone who has
you know whatever, I'll be reasonably personal on this. My
problem is not my body. My problem is the gender
assumptions the society has about who I should be based

(58:23):
on my body, you know. And so sometimes I look
back at older things and I can kind of resonate
with it more than the modern, very medicalized approach, right,
But other people would look back and be like, fuck,
I don't have access to these things that save my life. Right,
And there's so many ways of being trands even now,

(58:45):
And I think it's beautiful to realize that, you know,
not just like go digging around through history and be
like I'm that now or whatever, right, but like we
could understand there's so many ways to express gender. And
also just like as we start unpacking that, like literally
the oldest language in the world talks about a goddess
who makes you trans right, we have, which means that

(59:07):
cultures that are older than that probably fucking have that.
Like the Victorian idea of like man is penis and
girl is vagina is some fucking modern shit like you
were talking about with like Ice. You know, you're like,
that's just twenty years old. Most people listening to this
are older than Ice, And like I've like met people

(59:30):
who are older than like immigration law in the United States. Oh,
I guess we have the alien exclusion active whatever. But like,
the modern border is a fucking new and bad idea.
It is, And people are like, oh, my answers just
came over the right way because because there wasn't a
wrong way. I mean, actually they did come over the
wrong way because they killed in genocide in order to
do it. But like, but that's not who they're talking about. Yeah, yeah, anyway,

(59:53):
that's my rant.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Yeah, I think I agree with you about looking back
because it gives us more options for what it's like
to even engage with gender even if you're a SIS person. Totally,
And I really loved hearing about all of this. I
really I loved knowing just yeah, knowing more about what

(01:00:18):
it was like to be gender variant, even if they
never actually through their penises at houses.

Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
I know, but I'm willing to let them have. Usually
when people talk shit on us, I'm like, yeah, but
I'll own it, Like, okay, hear me out. I have
a friend who went to prison for property destruction because
he went to a protest and he was accused of
breaking every window that was broken by a black block
at a protest. It was physically impossible for him to
have broken all of those windows, but he did the time.

(01:00:49):
I hold that he can claim to have broken every
single one of those windows.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Okay, I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
We might not have thrown our dicks at houses, but
I'm willing to pretend like we did because we had
the social ostracization for it, so we might as well
get the like, yeah, fuck it, whatever I like. Actually,
it was a very deeply personal thing that I did
it with the consultation of priestesses, and we had a
very beautiful ritual. But yeah, I fucking threw my dick
at a house. Fuck. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
You know how when the drag queens are doing their
numbers and inevitably some trans mask is walking behind them
with like a basket to put the ones in. That's me.
All of you guys are throwing your dicks at houses
and I have a little basket behind you just picking
them up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Oh. I just want the Sci fi store where you
just walk into the store and you like, pick up
and leave secondary sex characteristics that you like, do and
don't want, like an exchange.

Speaker 2 (01:01:39):
I wish you think about that all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah. Anyway, God hope eventually do this podcast so long
and someone does figure out the dick and Titty Store
and like, you know, and we're going to be sponsored
by the Dick and Titty Store. Oh, I love it
as the most I'm talking about dick and Titties on
the show.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Basically, ever, I did it, guess I did it. Thank
you for having me. I'm so excited. I'm on the reddits,
as I said, so, please everyone be nice to me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
I do not look at the reddits for cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
It's bad. I mean no, it's bad of me to do.
It's not that the things there are bad. Everyone there
is very respectful.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah. Every now and then when people say positive things,
someone show it to me and I'm like, that's great.
And other than that, I'm like, you know, it can
be discussion that people have without me. That's fine. People
are gonna have their own opinion about what I'm doing.
It works for me, yeah anyway. But if people want
to have an opinion about stuff you do, where can
they reach your words and hear your voice.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
You can follow me on substack one thousand natural Shocks.
That's substack dot com. I'm on Instagram at Gabe s Done.
I used to post fun party Boy, Gabe, we Hooe,
pomp spring stuff and now it's exclusively anger at the government.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
The times we live in.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
I said that I slid into a DM of a
guy and I was like, you should look at your
profile and see what you come across just before you
do that. And then I was like, hey, I promise
I have hobbies and interests that aren't anger at the government.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
I'm working at a book right now where a character
is making fun of another character and they're like, I
looked up your field profile and it literally just says Antifa. Yes, yes,
that's a little spoiler for a book I'm working on.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
And that's my humor entirely. So the podcast is a
thousand natural shocks Bad with Money podcast. It's an extension
of Bad with Money due to my changing radicalism. And
do a show called Just between Us with my friend.
It probably will be done, but you can go listen

(01:03:50):
to back episodes of that if you'd like.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Fuck yam and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
I think that's everything. I don't know. Everything's on Instagram now,
slash substack.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
And you can follow me on the Internet. I'm Margaret Kilchroy.
I'm on the Internet. I wish I wasn't, but you know,
I also like feeling like I interact with the world,
and I like eating on a regular basis, So say
on that.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Cool People who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the I Heard

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.