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Transmisogynistic language

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This page was riddled with discriminatory and derogatory language towards transgender women. It has since been updated to use correct terminology, but will probably continue to have that language reapplied because it's "more scholarly" to regard a group of women regarded as having changed their sex to female, who spoke like women, wore womens clothing, and engaged in womens roles, as being "of the male sex" and only "female presenting" and somehow "androgynous" (what exactly is androgynous about wearing exclusively women's clothing and being called women by one's society remains a mystery). I suggest that anyone who wishes to edit this article first familiarise themselves with the contents of Wikipedia's article on transmisogyny and perhaps do some further reading on degendering and third-sexing. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:07, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

i've asked for input on this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBTQ+ studies. the terminology used in this article is certainly inconsistent and stilted. hopefully a consensus on how to refer to the Enaree can be formed. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 18:17, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Anything other than regarding a population who were regarded as having changed their sex to female and spoke like, lived as, and dressed as women, as anything other than women, is and will remain transphobic. I do not understand how they could be represented as somehow not women, and somehow being androgynous (where, again, is the andro in all that?), called eunuchs when its not even verified they were castrated, and called male sex despite being regarded as having changed their sex to female, unless the purpose is to degender and misgender trans women. It will be a great failure of Wikipedia's LGBTQ+ studies to the 'T' part of that acronym if a consensus is reached that still allows their misgendering. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:31, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
were regarded as having changed their sex to female were they? The article cites that claim to Ustinova (with an unhelpfully wide page range) but I can't find support for that claim in the main discussion of the enarees in Ustinova (pp.76-79). Indeed, Ustinova talks about their "transvestite androgyny"! Where does Ustinova say that they were regarded as having changed their sex? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:59, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think looking for some more recent sources could be helpful here, as some of the wording comes from references that are over 25 years old and use terms that are dated/offensive today. I found a few different perspectives from this year:
Walter D. Penrose, Jr. wrote about why the Enaree, though described as feminine men by Herodotus, "might be better understood from our twenty-first century vantage point as intersex persons or male-to-female transgender women", describing the Enaree as "androgynous shaman-type priestesses who took on a role similar to that of two-spirits in North America".[1] Penrose also references Rachel Hart, who wrote that "it is more likely the Enareës would self-identify as intersex or perhaps even transgender individuals" than "transvestite shamans" (referring to an earlier interpretation argued by Meuli in 1935, Ballabriga in 1986, and Asheri in 1977).[2]
Eli Erlick wrote: "Trans people have found one another for thousands of years. The Enarei were a group assigned male at birth who took on roles typically assigned to women...they gathered and helped each other transition through customs, rituals, and orchiectomies.[3]
Diederik F. Janssen has a few recent papers on how the Greek descriptions of the Enarei evolved into the concept of "Scythian Melancholy" which was used to describe many LGBTQ people in periods where gender nonconformity was medicalized/psychologized. Janssen describes the portrayal of the Enarei as "cross-dressing Scythian seers" in one.[4]
Janssen also wrote: "analogues of ‘man-woman’ types beyond Europe were, however awkwardly, described as indigenous forms of ‘transvestitism’ before mid-century (e.g. Baumann, 1934; Broersma, 1931; Kleiweg de Zwaan, 1916, 1924). Early twentieth-century philologists, including Baumann, tended to affirm the idea that the Herodotean reading [of the Enarei] had chronicled transgender or ‘transvestite shamans’ given ‘striking anthropological parallels’ (Chiasson, 2001: 44) from various parts of the world".[5] In looking at Chiasson page 44, the word "transgender" isn't used, just "transvestite shamans". Footnote 28 says that this interpretation was accepted by various scholars, with only R. L. Gordon disagreeing and calling the Enarei "eunuchs" instead.[6] Hobbitina (talk) 05:36, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I’m not so certain about the first source’s comparison of native two-spirit groups (that, like most other scholarship regarding third gender/sex groups, has a lot of problems. Famously, the Hijra, despite calling themselves trans women, were and are regarded as third-gender, as another example) generally I think this sourcing is good and should probably be used and I appreciate the finds. I just think that, it’s not as if we’re not aware of groups like the Enarei today, and they turn out to be trans women 9/10 times. The language is a process called “third-sexing” or “degendering” and it has, as you outline, been used against transfeminine populations for centuries, and is used against regular trans women all of the time. It’s an excruciatingly common experience to have one’s own gender identity flayed from her as a trans woman, but that doesn’t mean we’re suddenly regarded as men after this barrage of degendering, just as eunuch, transvestite, third-category creatures. Missmonstergirl (talk) 08:00, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just think that, it’s not as if we’re not aware of groups like the Enarei today, and they turn out to be trans women 9/10 times. that may be true, but is textbook Wikipedia:Original research and therefore inappropriate to use in determining what goes into articles. i appreciate @Hobbitina's analysis of newer sourcing! ... sawyer * any/all * talk 13:21, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It’s not, lol, I’m drawing from specific analysis of these groups and the scholarship around them, and pretending that it’s just “original research” to acknowledge the context in which these groups exist is really unnecessarily argumentative when the remark itself wasn’t even meant to be a major talking point, as I have previously already made all my points. Missmonstergirl (talk) 14:49, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It’s not “original research” to raise a specific problem with the scholarship surrounding third gender groups. Talia Bhatt’s essay “The Third Sex” is perhaps the most accessible piece of such analysis. It’s fine if you haven’t heard of something, and equally fine if you were to ask for broader sourcing, but I think presuming it’s totally original research with no basis in previous investigation violates some part of the civility rules. Missmonstergirl (talk) 14:58, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is in fact original research, specifically synthesis. If you have source A that talks about the Enaree being a feminine third gender, and source B that talks about third gender groups often being a mischaracterized conception of trans women, it is OR to use source B to support your conclusion unless they specifically mention the Enaree while making that claim. I ran into the same problem writing the Bæddel and bædling article, where none of the sources actually compare them to trans people, only the vague concept of a third gender or gender nonconforming people. Its disappointing, but that's where the scholarship is at, and we need the scholarship to catch up if we want to incorporate this perspective. 16:14, 15 October 2025 (UTC) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:14, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thankfully, this talk page explicitly states that Wikipedia sources don't need to be scholarly in nature. But if things are as you say, and the actual treatment of trans women and the research into that treatment doesn't matter because a bigoted academia reifies that treatment, then this website is the most useless repository of information with regards to queer and trans history ever made, especially with regards to Bæddel, a term used as a slur today against trans women. What is actually needed is a revision of how this site regards information wrt marginalised groups with little to no access to 'legitimate' avenues of having their voices heard and their perspectives acknowledged, which will of course never happen. Why do I even bother. Missmonstergirl (talk) 17:29, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, scholarly sources are not strictly needed, but I think you'd be unlikely to find coverage of the Enaree in non-academic reliable sources (newspapers, etc.). And yes, it does suck, but Wikipedia would be a lot worse about LGBT issues if it didn't follow academia on this - because the median internet user is far more reactionary than the median historian of queer history, and the only way we are able to push back against bigoted narratives around it in any form is because we have academia to fall back on. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:37, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, the median historian of queer history is about as reactionary, they just veil their language better. This is not pushback on bigoted narratives. This is reifying those bigoted narratives via academia. There is no difference between academia calling trans women 'third-sex eunuch androgynous hermaphrodites' and right wing internet users calling trans women the t-slur. They have the exact same goal, they buy into the same ideas, they both believe we are less than. What you are referring to is something being legibly worse, because it is much easier to identify bigotry when it's screaming slurs vs when it's shrouded in academic jargon, but bigotry that is less easily legible and identifiable is just as insidious and impactful. This isn't a lesser evil, it's the same evil with a suit on and the title of Doctor. Take, for example, Serena Nanda, who shrouds her transphobia in degendering the Hijra via extensive nonsense analysis of Hindu folklore and uses that to reach her conclusion of "despite what the Hijra say, they're not women because they can't give birth", vs the examples of stories in her book, which feature legal officials using their substantial power and openly reactionary ideology to say "Hijra aren't women because they can't give birth". It's the same ideology, it's the same impact, it's the same bigotry, and if this website and its users are unable to acknowledge that one being academic and one not isn't relevant to whether or not one is 'worse' then it is, as I've said, useless. Academia won't catch up because it has no need to. The ideology behind them is no different. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:21, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your intentions are noble but this is moving into WP:RGW rather than sticking by reliable sources. GraziePrego (talk) 22:05, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia really has a rule to shut down every single thing anyone could do to correct its biases, huh. I’m not the only member of the conversation that now centres around the language of the article, and I’m directly responding to points made by someone else also part of that conversation. I’m not the only one continuing it. This wasn’t a required response. Missmonstergirl (talk) 22:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i don't know what you mean by "this wasn't a required response" - anyone can respond to any message you post on this talk page, indeed that's what talk pages are for. there's nothing wrong with having a discussion about the language of the article, and no one is trying to shut the discussion down. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 10:11, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought it was fairly obvious that I was referring to the suggestion that I’m trying to “right great wrongs” by responding to the assertion of another user with a different perspective. You can say no one is trying to shut anything down, but responding to the natural path of a discussion wherein one person responds to another about the topic of the article and surrounding attitudes on the site the article is on by throwing rulebook violations that don’t apply here and otherwise adding nothing to the discussion is kind of what that is. But, you know, presuming good faith I just said it wasn’t required or helpful, because it didn’t apply. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:21, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thankfully, this talk page explicitly states that Wikipedia sources don't need to be scholarly in nature. While true, WP:V also says that If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources on topics such as history, medicine, and science, and various other policies and guidelines (primarily WP:NPOV) say that we should give the most weight to the viewpoints held by the most reliable sources. When there are recent scholarly treatments of a topic that is almost always the viewpoint which Wikipedia should give the most weight to. At any rate, regardless of whether the sources which support your viewpoint are peer-reviewed scholarship or something else, the starting point towards building consensus towards changing the article would be to present sources which support the viewpoints you think should get greater emphasis. What sources do you think that the article should make more use of? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
for whatever it's worth, i'm working on a thorough analysis of the sources currently cited and a list of unused-but-useful sources. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 22:09, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hobbitina’s sources seem to be brilliant for this. Also, their (please correct me, Hobbitina, if you use other pronouns) points about gendering and standardisation in another reply get full marks. Thank you for asking me. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:46, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of the inconsistencies with calling the Enaree priests/priestesses and men/women on the talkpage, it looks like MOS:GENDERID points towards alignment with their self-identification from reliable sources rather than what's most common across all sources. I recently added details to the main page from Ustinova 1999 of how the Enarei referred to themselves using feminine grammars and likely vocab as well. By the policy, I think this self-description outweighs the debate between secondary sources of how to grammatically label the Enaree, so I'd advocate for standardizing terms on the main page to "priestess" and "women". Hobbitina (talk) 10:05, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a clever and interesting approach to choosing the article voice, but one I would be careful about. For example; self identification of pronouns must be separated from full self identification of gender as people historical and contemporary use pronouns to represent different gender identities than what may be immediately inferred. So the valuable insight you have produced is that, having possibly used feminine grammars contemporaneous to their time it may be appropriate to refer to them with these grammars regardless of the complexity of the underlying gender identity in the article if the evidence is strong enough.
Self-ID in deep historical sources must be subject to much more careful scrutiny as it may be (and almost always is) missing context that allows for the level of confidence we would want in assigning an identity as editors. It is always better to push to the safe side in assigning any gender if there is any ambiguity less misgendering occur by tacit binary defaultism. Anything short of "I AM a woman/man/any third gender" in unambiguously personal writing for a person where significant gender ambiguity is present in their historical record needs to be handled with care. I am always leery of haste and conviction in assigning binary gendered voice to an individual, let alone a group, when there is unresolved and possibly unresolvable uncertainty due to the fundamentally lossy nature of historical sources. It is a higher risk of revisionism than neutrality. Even in cases where an individual does have completely unambiguous self identification there can sometimes be value in more neutral voice when they presented as more than one gender identity during their lifetime. For groups, this would be even more prudent as variance in the ways individuals who lived a life role that was complex in gender identity would have their individual variances respected ny a more neutral voice. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 09:00, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think your perspective is informed by a belief that “binary” is somehow bad or repressive because it isn’t a more complex identity, but identifying them as women is not suppressing non-binary identity, it’s supporting women’s. We’re not less complex or more conformist because we transition to female. A refusal to look at how trans women of the time would have been perceived and regarded because doing otherwise preserves their gender ambiguity is a poor action—that you want there to be more non-binary visibility within history does not mean that the Enarei are nonbinary. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think your justifications for not using feminine self identification as evidence of, well, feminine self identification, are not great. Disregarding their self-identification as “not good enough” in favour of a standard we literally can’t meet, unless anyone would like to go and get a statement from their corpses, in order to preserve such wonderful non-binary rep as “they were cursed to be women” and “they live as women, dress and speak as women, but they’re men because I don’t believe in or understand what a trans person is” is really poor. I’d love it if the Enarei could get up right now and say “I’m a woman” but, again, using feminine language to describe oneself and dressing and living as women is what we have, and the fact that those writing about them seem to identify their inbetween-ness as the result of being born male but cursed or transformed into women, making them solely sort of male-female-thing in their eyes, speaks not to a respected non-binary existence but to the lived experiences of trans women historical and contemporary. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:53, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All of this arguing about whether the Enarei would have identified as trans women vs. nonbinary people is not super helpful here. For Wikipedia's purposes the question is: what do reliable sources say about them? Modern sources are fairly clear that the Enarei were in some way gender variant, but even e.g. Eli Erlick in Before Gender (a book which is generally keen to assign modern labels to people where most historians would not) describes them only as a group assigned male at birth who took on roles typically assigned to women.
It's also worth remembering that we are talking about an unknown number of people across an unknown span of time here. There's no particular reason to believe that all of them had the same gender identity. It's entirely possible that some would, were they alive today, identify as trans women, some as nonbinary, some as intersex – and some as more than one of those things. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:27, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
absolutely agree, well said ... sawyer * any/all * talk 11:59, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
“A group of people assigned male at birth but who performed women’s roles” + the MOS:GENDERID guidelines, as well as Hobbitina’s helpful additions of context regarding them referring to themselves using feminine terminology, seems more than enough to standardise feminine language across the board. By all means, include that they would have not just been trans women, but nonbinary and intersex. I’ve got no issue with that. As you stated, there is no exclusion between those identities. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am in favour of the use of assigned male at birth purely as the generally correct way to refer to a person's birth sex and a clear improvement on the abrasive language present before. I continue to caution that the use of MOS:GENDERID (which is a bold and very important generalising extension of existing WP:BLP concern driven approaches to biography) for historical articles weakens it as a framework. Reflecting "the person's most recent expressed self-identification as reported in the most recent reliable sources" is the criterion set out by that very rule. In historical scenarios this can rarely be unambiguously achieved. The "most recent" has little meaning here as an over-riding factor on normal reliability criterion. The reliability of sources is less meaningful here than when it is a simple reporting of information about a contemporary individual's stated gender. When this standard can not be met because it's components do not apply, MOS:GENDERID can not fully apply. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 21:06, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The issue becomes that fundamentally there is no difference between the original article's wording of "feminine presenting but of male sex" and this proposed wording of "AMABs who participated in female roles". The argument you make is that the gender identity of the Enarei cannot be derived entirely from their own language (ie: pronouns), which is another thing, but the use of feminine terminology to refer to themselves promotes using feminine terminology to describe them within this article. Using MOS:GENDERID fits as justification for this. The evidence we have for the way the Enarei referred to themselves is, really, their most recent expressed self-identification. Missmonstergirl (talk) 21:14, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a self identification matter if we have no source whatsoever on how the Enaree identified themselves. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:52, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I want to clarify that I did not want to assign them as nonbinary. My post was entirely about avoiding assignment in the face of ambiguity in favour of more neutral language. By definition many historical gender roles, binary or not, are not easily mapped onto modern ones and need to be carefully handled when they step into varied territory. The response to mine appears to be litigating the binary vs nonbinary identity out of context. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 20:16, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My contention here is that there is no true "self"-identification when the the historicity of the sources is taken into account here. The very fact that this standard can not be met is the reason we avoid overworking the information in the sources by using more neutral language. I personally have no issue with contrasting this idea in a modern example context. In a modern context it would be regarded as offensive to assign a gender identity without comparatively rigorous self identification, so regardless of what the exact historical gender role they played were, why would we apply a different standard there and apply an arbitrary cut-off. If the high standard for assignment can't be met, do not assign. It's worth noting that I apply this standard where there is reasonable cause to believe there is complexity in the identification. In individuals or groups for which there is no such evidence, assignment of gender role is not a relevant factor. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 20:27, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can't contrast modern examples where it would be offensive to assign gender while also dismissing the gender identification guidelines as too modern and not fitting fully. Neither fit fully. I think that only using modern examples of gender expression to shut down an assessment of the Enarei as fitting them is quite biased. Missmonstergirl (talk) 21:18, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not dismissing the gender identification guidelines. I am reading them and applying them as written. They explicitly preference rigorous self-identification as sourced reliably over plurality of sources. We don't have anything here resembling self-identification. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 22:40, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree on the higher level of scrutiny required of historical sources, especially when historicity is called into question. The modern sources I've reviewed have used parts or the whole of Pseudo-Hippocrates' description of the Enarees' speech, dress, and roles at face value, and I have not been able to find critique of this depiction (in the way Herodotus has been questioned), although I am open to seeing more sourcing. It appears there is consensus on feminine Enaree speech, so I find this strong enough validation of the original source to not override its description of the Enarees' chosen gendered grammars. I agree that there is inherently more evidence needed to use words of gender identity to avoid misgendering, and support the wording choices brainstormed in the discussion thread. @Sawyer777 (sorry to move grammar discussion back up here) I agree that MOS:GENDERID is aimed at biographical articles, but I've seen it apply to historical figures and mentions of people outside of biographical articles (the top of the MoS page says policies extend to discussions of people where relevant).
I prefer we align the gendered grammar in this article to feminine language because that reflects the consensus among reliable sources of the Enarees' self-expression. In the scope of gendered grammars this maps cleanly to the article and MOS:GENDERID. If we can't agree to do that, I'm okay with us rewriting the article to remove gendered grammar like some other disputed historical articles have done. I would want us to be careful of defaulting to male-gendered descriptors in this process, especially when others are described as "priestess" in the article. Hobbitina (talk) 05:11, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with using feminine grammars as a general principle and that that element of their speech is well enough established as present in the historical sources. This article uses very few gendered forms, priest/priestess has me a little bit confused. Usually the gender neutral form for these kinds of Latin loan words is also the masculine. Actor (masculine/neutral) and Actress (feminine), Doctor (because we no longer say doctress/doctrice/doctrix), etc etc. It's an unfortunate quirk of the English language which does not have native noun gender but imports it accidentally from other languages and then doubles down by associating the noun with a historically gendered position.
Priest vs Priestess though technically not an exception exception, outside of Christianity it is gender neutral. But in practice it is strongly gendered enough that it's hard to use as a default and there is no widely accepted gender neutral except for the clunkier and less specific clergy member. Funnily enough Clergymen is gender neutral in the same way that layman is, but less useful. Sacerdos is too niche to use in wikivoice. Priestess is a word that was specifically introduced to English to talk about pre-Christian women in clergy roles. So it seems appropriate but I worry that to the average reader it would straightforwardly read as gendering the Enarei as women outright in the wikivoice, making any conversation about their exact role in the article body more confusing. It would be more comforting if there were a scholarly source that was comfortable using the word "priestess" to describe them in the context of discussing the Enarei in any capacity. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I fully support this course of action. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:43, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This conversation is getting lost in the sauce here. Yes, the initial wording "androgynous priests" and "feminine-presenting priests of male sex" can be made more neutral to avoid implication that they filled male priest roles that they may not have, or did not fill traditionally female priestess roles. Shamanistic soothsayer is an excellent replacement. But smoothing over the fact that they are in part defined and differentiated from other priestess roles in the lede by removing any reference to the complexities in their gender identity that are present down to the Scythian root of their name seems ironic to me. If they were in fact closely analogous to modern binary transgender identities, it would seem a form of erasure of the role of transgender identity in their lives. Otherwise surely they would be refereed to simply as "female priestesses" by most sources. Their transformation and androgyny is important enough to be in the lede, and the cleanup to priestess seems exclusionary in its own right. I do not have an immediately full suggestion for replacement but I will think about it, but "androgynous priestesses" might be an immediate improvement. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 09:19, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why would they be referred to as “female priestesses” by sources that are biased by opinions of the Scythians already? It is alleged they gained their femininity through a divine curse. You have identified degendering language as simple fact and you are suggesting that reaffirming their womanhood is somehow suppressive towards them, which it is not. Essentially, you are saying, “What do you mean, trans women are women? Cultural authorities from a completely different country say they’re just men!” There is no androgyny on display here, aside from the Enarei being “born male”, which is not proof of anything—so unless you mean to suggest modern binary trans women are somehow an androgynous identity because we are classified as male as birth, despite living our lives as women, dressing as women, speaking as women, etc, then I think you need to rethink your language. Missmonstergirl (talk) 10:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
to be frank with you: your approach to this talk page is unproductive, although no one has succeeded in getting through to you on that. we do not decide our own interpretations of sources based on what we understand as true - we follow secondary academic sources. all of your arguments are based on your interpretation of sources and your opinions. Why would they be referred to as “female priestesses” by sources that are biased by opinions of the Scythians already? those are the only primary sources that exist, and all interpretation of the Enaree is based off of them and some limited archaeological finds. we do not do our own analysis of primary sources here, we summarize that which is found in the scholarship. There is no androgyny on display here, aside from the Enarei being “born male”, which is not proof of anything this is, again, your interpretation. if scholarship calls them androgynous, which it does (see below), then so do we. likewise with any other terminology. that is how wikipedia works - you've been linked WP:No original research and WP:Righting great wrongs before, and i suggest you read them again. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 15:36, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’m going to first reply with this helpful excerpt from Hobbitina’s comment. “In terms of the inconsistencies with calling the Enaree priests/priestesses and men/women on the talkpage, it looks like MOS:GENDERID points towards alignment with their self-identification from reliable sources rather than what's most common across all sources. I recently added details to the main page from Ustinova 1999 of how the Enarei referred to themselves using feminine grammars and likely vocab as well. By the policy, I think this self-description outweighs the debate between secondary sources of how to grammatically label the Enaree”.
“If the scholarship calls them androgynous, then so do we” no, actually, we don’t, as helpfully outlined above. Their self-identification points otherwise, and it should be respected. I’m going to be frank with you, here: neither is yours. You aren’t moving the discussion forward, you aren’t seeking a new consensus, you default back to an old one and you basically use your time replying to me about how I’m being “unproductive” rather than actually producing anything yourself. I’d love to see that analysis you’re promising, Sawyer, but until it’s done do attempt to contribute something to the conversation that isn’t hammering on about things that don’t apply to me. I’m not actually making a different point than Hobbitina did. I know you’ve got a personal issue with me, but try and recognise that. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:17, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, brilliant, you posted it. I think the conversation has moved beyond that, at this point, but please disregard that section of my reply. Missmonstergirl (talk) 18:26, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
yeah, i also disagree with Hobbitina's opinion on the applicability of MOS:GENDERID on this article, as i outline here. it's not personal. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 19:19, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's funny, you literally make the exact argument that I made for why the primary sources assessment of the Enarei shouldn't be taken at face value. Oh, well. Hobbitina's point seems mostly correct, and your disagreement seems half-founded, really, because Hobbitina provides enough to work around that. Missmonstergirl (talk) 19:46, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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sources currently cited in the article

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(not counting the Classical, primary sources; organized chronologically)

  • Phillips 1972 "The Scythian Domination in Western Asia", p. 130: cites Herodotus & pseudo-Hippocrates, describes the story of the Enaree sacking the temple of Aphrodite and being cursed with "a female disease". he also notes that pseudo-Hippocrates does not indicate any sort of divine punishment.
    • terms used: refers to them as men, "impotent Scythians"
  • Ascherson 1995 "Black Sea", pp. 120-122: discusses Scythian gender in Classical sources generally - pseudo-Hippocrates viewed Scythian men as impotent and with low libido. Ascherson, citing pseudo-Hippocrates, writes "the manuscripts portray them as a category of Scythian men who have become - in their social behavior - women. 'The great majority among the Scythians become impotent, do women's work, live like women and converse accordingly.' These men are explicitly described as cross-dressers: they 'put on women's clothes, holding that they have lost their manhood'. They take this step after finding that they are unable to have sexual intercourse, thinking that 'they have sinned against Heaven'. citing Herodotus, Ascherson relates the story of the Enaree sacking the temple of Aphrodite and being cursed with menstruation. on p. 122 he writes "now it is time to take a much closer look at the bones of queens, priestesses, and important women in general...some of them could turn out to be men: Enareis transvestites and gender-crossing mediums who have deceived another generation of far more sophisticated archaeologists."
    • terms used: "cross-dressers", "transvestites", "gender-crossing mediums"
  • Conner 1997 "Enaree", pp. 129-131: notes that "enaree" means "unmanly" or "effeminate". "midway between the 'transformed' or 'soft' shaman and the gender variant priest of the Goddess". cites archaeological evidence of shamanism & goddess reverence in Eurasia. "The enarees may have practiced ritual castration of may have simply abstained from heterosexual sex; they do not seem, however, to have practiced celibacy. Hippocratic writings and other texts indicate that they engaged in same-sex eroticism." for this he cites the use of the term "malakia" by Aristotle and "androgynous" by Herodotus, both of which carry implications of a male who engages in "anal eroticism". Conner is skeptical of the Greco-Roman view of the enaree as having been cursed, and says that they were respected and worshipped, and viewed as essentially different from other males as a result of divine dispensation. Conner describes the various rituals the enaree participated in, and connects them to indigenous North American two-spirit shamans and the Khlysts & Skoptsy of 17th/18th-century Russia. on p. 215 is entry "Linden": "among the Scythians of ancient Russia, a symbol of feminine or third gender (male) identity. The Enarees, gender variant priests of the Scythian goddess Artimpasa, twined or braided linden leaves and branches in divination."
    • terms used: "gender variant"
  • Ustinova 1999 "The supreme gods of the Bosporan Kingdom", pp. 76-80: cites Herodotus, pseudo-Hippocrates & Clement of Alexandria, describes the Enaree as believing they had been endowed with their prophetic abilities by Aphrodite and also cursed by her with "a female disease" after they plundered her temple in Ascalon. Ustinova's analysis of the Classical sources shows that the Enaree seemed to view themselves as "punished" with "femaleness", although she also analyzes the phenomenon in the context of other similar gender-bending shamanic traditions in the ancient world, where the gender-variant shamans were considered the most powerful. she cites pseudo-Hippocrates: "men who wore women's dress, performed women's jobs, spoke like women, and enjoyed special respect because of the fear they inspired".
    • terms used: "androgynic", "eunuchs", "transvestite"
  • Parzinger 2004 "Die Skythen" (there is a newer edition of this from 2016 but i can only find it in epub format, which is problematic for pagination), p. 104: google translated, relates the same story about the sacking of Aphrodite's Ascalon temple. seems to be a pretty brief mention, and probably unnecessary to have cited in the article
  • Ustinova 2005 "Snake-limbed and Tendril-limbed Goddesses", pp. 65, 78-: discusses the distinction between Aphrodite Ourania and her Scythian counterpart Argimapasa. relates same story of Aphrodite's temple at Ascalon. connects their gender-variance to the androgyny of the goddess(es) they served.
    • terms used: "manifestly transvestite", "trans-gender behavior"
  • Ivantchik 2016 "L’idéologie royale des Scythes": google translated, briefly discusses the terminology used in Classical sources
    • terms used: "prêtres androgynes"
  • Ivantchik 2018 "Scythians": disagrees with the identification of the Enaree as shamans, and categorizes them within priests.
    • terms used: "transvestite"
  • Cunliffe 2019 "The Scythians", p. 272: describes the Aphrodite temple incident & Herodotus' & pseudo-Hippocrates' accounts. "drawn from prominent families and were therefore probably a hereditary priesthood." Cunliffe is skeptical of Greek identification of the Ascalon priests and the Enarees and believes it "may be little more than a rationalization based on the observation that both priesthoods were strongly transgender."
    • terms used: "androgynous transvestites", "transgender behavior"
  • Penrose 2020 "Gender Diversity in Classical Greek Thought", pp. 37-41: discusses the terminology used in Classical sources ("androgynoi", "eunouchoi"). term "Enarees" is probably of Scythian origin. Penrose explicitly connects Enaree to contemporary transgender and intersex identity, as well as gender-variant shamans among the Chukchi of Siberia. he suggests that the Scythians were more tolerant of gender-variance than the Greeks. explicitly addresses question of whether they were intersex or an equivalent of today's transgender women. "the answer may be both". suggests that a burial found in Afghanistan, and another found in Siberia, may be Enaree. speculates that they may have consumed pregnant mares' urine as a sort of HRT.
    • terms used: "androgynous shaman-type priestesses", "gender non-conforming", "intersex individuals, transgender women or otherwise gender non-binary persons who were Scythian Enarees.", " intersex persons or male-to-female transgender persons, such as the Enarees"

... sawyer * any/all * talk 23:36, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

sources not currently cited

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there are more, and i will probably make a whole subpage just for a bibliography because it seems there is quite a lot of literature on the Enaree - due to this, i believe we can be more picky about the quality of our sources. for now, this list will have to suffice. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 23:36, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's M. Rostovstev not Rostovtsev but IDK. Ustinova cites four sources for the section about the transformation, Shternberg 1939: 157-159; Tolstov 1948: 324-326; Artamonov 1961: 86; and Atkinson 1992: 318. Though it's not clear to me which is which. The primary source for the section about them living as and using the grammar of women is cited as a pseudo-hyppocratic treatise called De aere, any scholarly text that deals in the contents of this treatise more directly could be a useful source. The leads in Ustinova are Dawnson 1929: 6; and Khazanov 1975b: 89, but the reference format is a bit unclear. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 18:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Michael Rostovtzeff I think this is probably the author in question. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 18:35, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
oh that's great, i'll look using that spelling - also, thanks for the references from Ustinova (i got a bit dizzy doing this bibliography so i was sure i missed some), i'll go try to track those down as well. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 19:04, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There were a bunch of other references surrounding De aere in Ustinova but I also got tired because you can't copy paste from the version I was looking at. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 20:16, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

discussion

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from my view, it seems that the newer scholarship leans more towards identifying the Enaree as equivalent to contemporary intersex/transgender identity, or outright makes that claim. there certainly is scholarship which calls the Enaree transgender or similar, such as Penrose 2020, but i don't think we're at the level of academic consensus where it'd be appropriate to say so in wikivoice. more analysis of terminology in sources not already cited in the article is needed, which i may do this weekend. cc @Hobbitina, @Generalissima, @Caeciliusinhorto ... sawyer * any/all * talk 23:36, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for going through all these and finding more sources! Many of the descriptors are directly translated from words in the Greek sources. Eunuch, "eunuch-like", and impotent come from Pseudo-Hippocrates' use of "eunuchoi" (Chiasson and Penrose state this explicitly, some others denote this as a translation). Androgynous, androgyne, "women-men" and "man-woman" comes from Herodotus' "androgynoi" (Penrose discusses at length, Conner mentions two meanings, Janssen, Hart, Erlick, Chiasson show translation). My impression of "eunuch" is that enough sources prefer the "impotent" translation (or state that modern sources agree on it) so "eunuch" shouldn't be used in wikivoice. My impression of "androgynous" is that it is used differently in this academic/classical setting than in wider use, as mentioned in Penrose and Conner (more details from non-Enarei "androgyny"-focused sources: here and here). I think we should clarify the academic connotations of the term before using it, and perhaps just avoid using it in wiki-voice to avoid using jargon. Enough sources talk about gender, whether using "gender non-conforming", "gender-variant", "gender-diverse", "gender-crossing" or "gender transfer" that a term like "gender nonconforming" would be widely supported and easier to understand.
I agree on the analysis of recent change in scholarship that explicitly identifies the Enaree as intersex or transgender. The one remaining question I have is how much of the older scholarship calling the Enaree "transvestite" was referring to transgender identity rather than just gender expression or cross-dressing, since the term has had many uses by past academics. Some of the authors used "transvestite" and "transgender" or "trans-gender" in ways that equated their meanings, like Cunliffe and Ustinova. Janssen broadens past sources' use of "transvestite shaman" to mean transgender, and Penrose discusses the terminology's relations a bit. Ascherson extends his descriptions beyond just meaning cross-dressing, and Ivantchik uses both transvestite and the broader androgynes. I think more sources would be useful here for deciding consensus because "transvestite shaman" was the prevailing interpretation of the Enaree during much of the 20th century according to some of the sources, and many modern sources translate the concept to gender-variant shamans or priests with transgender behavior, but I'm not sure what's needed for consensus. If there's not consensus to use intersex/transgender in wikivoice then there's at least consensus for terms that express gender variance. Hobbitina (talk) 09:51, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i think that "gender-variant" or "gender-nonconforming" is absolutely within reason to put into wikivoice, my only hesitation would be with more specific terms like "transgender" as i'm not totally sure there's demonstrated academic consensus for that. re: your above mention of MOS:GENDERID (for the sake of not splitting the discussion), i don't know that i agree with it applying to this article. a) that guideline is intended for biographical articles of more recent people, and b) i don't think we can be so certain about how the Enaree viewed themselves - after all, we don't even know what they called themselves in their native language. i don't think we can take the Greek sources at their word on the Enaree philosophy of gender, when writers like Herodotus are pretty famous for embellishing and speculating in their work. like, it's not really self-identification when we don't have any text written by them at all. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 19:39, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
additionally, i've created Talk:Enaree/bibliography for the benefit of people looking to expand this article (including myself, probably) ... sawyer * any/all * talk 20:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Poking at this, it looks as though there's something to be written about early-modern and modern interpretations of Herodotus and Ps.-Hippocrates. Walter Penrose talks a bit about different scholars' approaches; Janssen 2021 is more about how the Enarees were interpreted (first by Ps.-Hipp.'s attempted rationalist explanation of the "feminine disease", and then by early modern scholars as various diseases and/or vices) than about how Scythian religion and society actually was; Janssen 2025 also looks relevant here. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:10, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
definitely; i can envision a "scholarly interpretations" section or something of that nature. ... sawyer * any/all * talk 12:12, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Minor note, gender nonconforming usually refers to people who identify firmly as one gender despite not conforming to many of it's stereotypes. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 11:15, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"The one remaining question I have is how much of the older scholarship calling the Enaree "transvestite" was referring to transgender identity rather than just gender expression or cross-dressing, since the term has had many uses by past academics" would love to see more investigation on this because it seems highly likely it was nearly all of them Missmonstergirl (talk) 19:47, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it might be preferential to let the descriptions of their gender presentation can stand alone. Cleaning up abrasive language such as "female-presenting priests of the male sex" and replacing them with better voiced language like "The Enaree were shamanistic soothsayers with an influential role in the Scythian priesthood." Something to that end as the neutral segment. For description of the gender variance, gender non-conforming is out because it is the common term for people who identify affirmatively as a gender despite not conforming to it's stereotypes. There is a good term for the Enaree's gender variance we could use as voice that comes straight from the scholarship and that is "Gender Transformation". A.K.A "The Enaree were assigned male at birth but considered to have undergone a divine/religious transformation of their sex, after which they assumed feminine roles and lived as women". Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 23:08, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
i can definitely get behind this approach. then the hangup becomes whether we describe them as "shamans", as that also seems to be a bit controversial in the literature (see Hasanov 2016, Ivantchik 2018, etc.). hopefully that will be less contentious among us editors though! ... sawyer * any/all * talk 23:12, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not familiar enough with the sources to distinguish here but as a placeholder it's probably good enough already, the term shamanism is used so heavily in the body of the article that the lede would not be out of place immediately. A rework on that front could be done after if anyone has a better idea on describing the religious traditions. "Influential members of the Scythian Clergy/Priesthood" could be left stand-alone without the shaman title if it's too contentious. A reminder that the Enaree section in the Scythian religion page should also be partially amended for consistency. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:19, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That honours their identity and works perfectly for me. I would love to see that "Gender Transformation" mentioned alongside the "shamanistic soothsayers" thing, because I'd like this information to be available at a cursory glance. Missmonstergirl (talk) 23:19, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, to clarify these suggestions were are about choosing which of the wordings in the body to include in the lede. The body covers a wider range of time and geography in the characterisation but the transformation term seems to be consistent across a few sources and variations of the religious tradition. Antisymmetricnoise (talk) 10:23, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Great. There should be remarks later in the article pointing out the comparison to modern identities scholars have drawn, also. Missmonstergirl (talk) 14:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This approach sounds good to me. Agree on avoiding "gender non-conforming" due to the misleading implications between the sources' use of it and its usual meaning, and using "assigned male at birth" and "gender transformation" would work well here. Hobbitina (talk) 04:01, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sexual relations contradiction

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Under the heading of SEX, the article claims of the Enarei: "They likely practiced same-sex eroticism and did not engage in heterosexual sex."

However, earlier in the article (DIVINATION) at the end it notes: "The sons of these Enarei were also all killed, but their daughters were spared."

So, did the Enarei have sex with women, fathering children? Or did they "not engage in heterosexual sex"?

If these two conflicting statements represent opposing scholarly views, the wording in one or both locations should reflect that. Mastakos (talk) 13:09, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]