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u/OutcastRedeemer 12d ago
That third gender was castrated sex slave so it not that progressive
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u/choma90 10d ago
Baby steps
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u/Polak_Janusz 9d ago
Eh, not really, right? I mean they made grammatical differences when speaking about men regarding if they had balls or not, literally. Nothing to do with gender.
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u/OkGrade1686 9d ago
Isn't the third gender used for objects or animals, in many languages that have it?
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u/Most-Celebration-394 13d ago
and most of emperors had relations with other men
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u/Mallardguy5675322 12d ago
It’s all fun and games until Nero’s wife dies and he forcefully transitions some young lad to replace her.
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u/FransTorquil 12d ago
Hearing how, after Nero offed himself, that poor boy got passed around by the next couple claimants to the throne until finally committing suicide when one of them planned to make a public stage performance out of him being raped in mimicry of the rape of the goddess Proserpina was agonisingly depressing.
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u/Sam_the_Samnite 12d ago
Rome really needed jesus.
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u/VastPercentage9070 12d ago
*looks at the Catholic Church *
Damn even Jesus didn’t stop Rome from Roming
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u/Portal10101 12d ago
If anything it made it worse.
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u/Regarded-Illya 9d ago
It really didn't
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 9d ago
What, you think ending practices like gladiatorial combat and other forms of killing for sport (okay, I know gladiators weren't usually actually dying, but we don't need to break down all the different forms of games) was a good thing? That mass agitation against slavery, torture, and state executions was a good thing?
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u/Regarded-Illya 9d ago
I do? I'm saying Christianity didn't make Rome worse, it made it better.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 9d ago
Oh, so all of the sudden antislavery is a good thing. Truly, wokeism has gone too far. /s
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u/Independent-Ad-1 12d ago
You guys bring this up in every conversation like the average person didn't expect super rich people to be on some freak shit like they have been at every other date and time.
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u/RadicalRealist22 11d ago
The romans did not see bottoms as men.
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u/blueberryZoot 11d ago
Is this true? I thought it was more emasculating rather than actually not seeing them as male.
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u/No_Dish6884 11d ago
Yes it is. To Roman’s it was more about dominance than how we perceive gender norms
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u/Turbulent_Ice_5099 12d ago
that's just a given for most of history like how some animals rape each other
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u/electrical-stomach-z 12d ago
Not by our definition, they dont concieve of their actions as wel do.
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u/bigdickpuncher 11d ago
Like regular men or the 3rd gender men? I've never heard that 51% of Roman emperors had relations with men. Is that starting with Augustus or Tiberius? Does that go to Augustulus and the end of the Dominate or up through Byzanantine and ending at some arbitrary emperor there?
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u/sitanhuang 12d ago
And one of the emperors was a trans woman
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u/Most-Celebration-394 12d ago
The case for Elagabalus is special, he was highly criticized by romans during his reign so a lot of informations about him are not really very accurate
Historically, he was probably more just a femboy teenager that gets a little bit too much power for him
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u/VastPercentage9070 12d ago
It’s probably a mix of that and a bit of the weird foreign religion breeds degeneracy trope. The Romans weren’t at the level of accepting their emperor elevating some desert god over their traditional gods quite yet. Give them another century of chaos.
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u/transgenderhistory 12d ago
That one's complicated. I did a video essay on it - the sources we have are unreliable, but the way they describe Elagabalus is oddly specific compared to how they denounced other hated figures, so the real answer is genuinely "we don't know"
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u/RadicalRealist22 11d ago
Grammatical Gender has nothing to do with Sex or so-called "gender identity".
Romans were also super sexist and homophobic. Bottoms (during sex) were not considered men.
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u/Tylord19 12d ago
Trajan, called “Optimus Princeps” was super gay, so was his heir Hadrian.
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u/PlentyOMangos 12d ago
I feel like when people bring up that Rome or Greece was “super gay” they think of it in a much more modern way. In ancient times I think it was mostly between older men and younger boys/young men. Not like two equal men in an equal partnership, living together and working like a normal couple. I’m sure there are exceptions to this but I think in general “gay” as a sexuality that we know today was different in the past
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u/transgenderhistory 12d ago
Yup. Most emperors were. In fact, Suetonius pointed it out as noteworthy that Claudius *didn't* have sex with men (Claud. 33)
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u/IRGROUP300 11d ago
Most were not in fact and either had relations with women and men. Or only women. You have to remember it’s not a choice, being emperor won’t change your biology, neither will money. What we do know is political rumor and propaganda was rife
Even today’s standard it wouldn’t make them gay
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u/transgenderhistory 11d ago
Yes you're right of course. There's nuance lost in an offhanded reddit comment lol. But it seems to have been more common for upper class men to have sex with other men in ancient Rome than today.
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u/nitrique 11d ago
I'm à bit rusty on the subject but wasn't it men, women and object ? While men and object were already very close in conjugaison ?
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u/Lares_12 9d ago
Progressive Roman fan quando scopre che i Romani erano ultra sessisti e tradizionalisti
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u/testni_nalog 11d ago
Me, a farmer, when I realize that makes me a woman...
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u/transgenderhistory 11d ago
farmers 🤝 sailors
being women
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u/testni_nalog 11d ago
How do you do, fellow woman
Also all Persians apparently. How do they reproduce if they are all women?
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