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Christmas.
Like many other people in academia I know, I have a very toxic relationship with Christmas. We have a lot of deadlines just before or just after the dreaded holiday, so the "countdown to Christmas" really becomes the ticking clock of anxiety. It feels a bit like this: While everyone around you is Christmas shopping, Decking the Halls, and drinking Gingerbread Lattes, you're trying to get enough work done before Christmas to justify a festive break (maybe a few days at home, maybe just a Christmas Eve/Day and Boxing Day without any critical theory), and dealing with the guilt that comes from taking an afternoon off to go buy your mum a pair of slippers, and - if you're one of us unlucky ones who also have to work to subsidise our PhDs - serving Gingerbread Lattes.
Then Christmas comes and goes and it’s brilliant, or terrible, or just as underwhelming as you were expecting, and then you think “right, time to get back to work”. Except it’s not that easy. You could still be reeling from all the late nights and long hours that you put in before Christmas, trying to get all that work done. You could be daunted by all the work that you let pile up, thinking “oh well, it is Christmas, after all” as you poured yourself another gin. You could be planning on starting a new project (or writing a new blog post) but you get overwhelmed by that blank page and flashing cursor, just waiting for you to start. You could be so full of consecutive roast dinners and Quality Street that you swear your brain has turned into a secondary stomach repository for all that excess turkey/nut roast, leaving little room for Judith Butler and linguistic gender performativity. Then, before you realise it, it’s the twentieth of January and all the things that you promised yourself would be done by the end of the month remain inexplicably not done, and you’re back in your feverish pre-Christmas mania.
Anyway, it’s February now, and I feel like I’m past the trauma until November rolls back around. So, anyone want to talk about some myths?
OFFERINGS IPHIS PLEDGED AS A GIRL AND PAID AS A BOY
(Ovid B.9, L.794)
I’m going to talk about the relatively unknown myth of Iphis, as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses IX, share some thoughts on why I think it should be reinvigorated as an iconic myth today, and then make the inevitable link back to my PhD project.
Iphis was born as a girl but raised as a boy, because her father demanded that if her mother were to have a girl, she would have to kill the baby, since they could not afford her. On the advice of the Egyptian goddess Isis, Telethúsa gives her child the gender-neutral name Iphis, and raises her as a boy. Only mother, daughter, and goddess know the truth, while Iphis’ father and the rest of the kingdom is deceived. In time, Iphis and ‘a fair-haired girl called Ianthe […] famed for her beautiful looks’ (Ovid b.9. l.715-7) have their marriage arranged by their fathers, and fall in love. Their betrothal causes great anxiety for Iphis and her mother, who fear that their gender deception will be found out at the ‘wedding between two brides, where the groom has failed to appear’ (l.763), and so they both prey to the goddess Hera, referred to by Ovid as ‘O Juno, goddess of marriage, O Hymen!’ (l.762). Here, Hymen is invoked, who was a minor god of marriage ceremonies in Hellenistic religion, but he was merged with Hera/Juno in later Greek and Roman mythos, because Hera symbolised the spotless wife, and was the primary goddess of marriage and family. On the morning of the wedding, Hera transforms Iphis into a boy, allowing Iphis and Ianthe to marry, and they lived happily ever after.
And they lived happily ever after? That doesn’t sound like your typical Greco-Roman myth, where Zeus is raping everything with a pulse, in various disguises, pretending to be the person’s husband, or an animal, or a shower of golden rain (make of that what you will). Even the greatest love stories of classical mythology are filled with horror and heartbreak. Take, for instance, Orpheus and Eurydice - he loves her so much that he goes to the Underworld to get her back from the dead, but one second of doubt, of indecision … he glances back and she is lost to him, condemned to the Underworld, forever. Or, consider Cupid and Psyche - he falls in love with her, takes her as his wife, but because she has the audacity to want to know who he is, she ends up burning him with hot oil, he flees, and she is tormented by his mother, the goddess Aphrodite/Venus. Although Psyche is rescued and given immortal ambrosia of the gods, I imagine there are some tough in-law relationships, what with vengeful Venus on one side and Psyche’s jealous sisters on the other. What I’m trying to point out here, is that “happily ever after” is not typical.
There is another atypical aspect to this myth, which you’ve probably worked out by now: it’s here, it’s queer, and it would like to say hello (to a modern audience). Sorry, that was atrocious. Anyway…
The myth of Iphis and Ianthe can be read from a contemporary perspective as a transgender narrative. This is because Iphis transitions gender from female to male at the mercy of Hera. There is also an element of gender affirmation in the myth, when considering Ovid’s Iphis as a transgender character. Gender affirmation is the - typically hormonal and surgical - process which changes a transperson’s body to match their gender identity. This is identifiable in Iphis’ myth, as when she is transformed into a male ‘She felt a new vigour she’d never enjoyed as the female she’d been’ (Ovid: b.9 l.790). Here, ‘vigour’ is of particular interest, as it could be interpreted as the male writer and translator trying to compare the male and female experience, and assuming that masculinity feels stronger, healthier, and more vigorous, or it could be interpreted in terms of gender affirmation. This is to say that Iphis feels a ‘new vigour’ as her body’s biological sex now accurately reflects her gender identity; if one considers Iphis’ newfound ‘vigour’ in terms of gender affirmation, this suggests that Ovid’s myth could be an important tool in genderqueer cultural representation.
Iphis and Ianthe can be read as a lesbian narrative, as well as a genderqueer one. Iphis falls in love with Ianthe while her sex and gender are still female: ‘The female is never smitten with passionate love for a female.’ (l.734) … a woman smitten with passionate love for another woman? Even Robert Graves couldn’t turn that heterosexual (when adapting the Greek myths in 1955, Graves famously erased all of the homosexuality that was present in the original myths, presenting the world with a more conservative, Christian adaptation).
Okay, so I’ve made my point that Iphis’ myth is queer as folk(tale). But why is this so important? Because cultural and historical representation is important. Look at all the men who were upset when Doctor Who - a fictitious time travelling alien - became a woman, because one of their many, many cultural icons who represented them so exactly (a straight, white man, and a hero to boot), was being altered. In terms of myths, not only do we have a plethora of men and women, gods and heroes, for people to choose from - for them to decide who best represents them - there is also a wide variety of male homosexual icons. Take hyper-sexual Zeus and Ganymede, a young man who Zeus found so attractive, he bought him off his father, installing Ganymede as his lover and cupbearer. Or, you could look at hyper-masculine Heracles, and his innumerable male lovers, if Plutarch is to be believed; not least Heracles’ lover Iolaus, who helped him to slay the Hydra by cauterising the necks before further heads could sprout up, after Heracles had cut them off. Finally, the pièce de résistance of homosexual hellenists: Achilles and Patroclus. Do not get me started on their tale of love and loss, against the backdrop of the Trojan War … or do, and I can do a post on the absolute pleasure that is Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles…?
I fear I am getting off-topic.
So, here, contemporary world: have a genderqueer and lesbian myth to represent ye.
On the one hand, I wish it was me who was to thank for bringing this tiny, optimistic myth back into public consciousness. But, on the other hand, Ali Smith does it so well in Girl Meets Boy, that I really don’t mind. In this Canongate novel, Smith combines contemporary storytelling techniques and ancient myths to tell a story of queer love and political activism. Smith chose to adapt Ovid’s myth of Iphis and Ianthe because it ‘is one of the cheeriest metamorphoses in the whole work, one of the most happily resolved of its stories about the desire for and the ramifications of change’ (Smith 2007: 163). It is this theme of ‘change’ that is the most prevalent in the novel, since Smith ‘changes’ Ovid’s Metamorphoses into a contemporary queer narrative, wherein the characters ‘change’ their genders (Robin), sexualities (Anthea), and beliefs (Imogen). Moreover, this theme of ‘change’ is political as well as personal, due to the central concern of activism in the novel, which opposes gendered oppression and environmental exploitation under capitalism. In the novel, Robin and Anthea use the myth of Iphis and Ianthe to oppose gendered oppression and capitalist exploitation of the environment. They do this by graffitiing shocking statistics of exploitation, followed by the mantra ‘THIS MUST CHANGE. Iphis and Ianthe the message girls 2007’ or ‘the message boys’ (Smith 2007: 133-4).
‘IN NO COUNTRY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW ARE WOMEN’S WAGES EQUAL TO MEN’S WAGES’ (Smith 2007: 134)
This must change.
Giant corporations are causing environmental destruction, third world famine, and toxic workplace cultures.
This must change.
Not everyone’s feminism is inclusive and intersectional and, as Laura Bates states in her novel Girl Up!, ‘it’s not a big deal to include everybody in our picture […] this includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, but the asterisk [in LGBT*] is there to indicate that there are lots of other categories included too, like agender, asexual, queer, intersex, gender fluid etc.’ (Bates 2016: xiii).
This must change.
Not everyone has heard of the Canongate Myth Series, Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy, or the myth of Iphis and Ianthe.
This must change.
Art by enrouge
Another wonderful post <3
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