Rapid Onset Greek Dysphoria

“Truth is terrible,” says Cadmus, surveying the carnage at the end of Euripides’ The Bacchae. “It always comes at the wrong time.” 

I have had a copy of The Bacchae moldering on my shelves since junior year of college, when I picked it up in a free book pile. I only decided to read it after reporting a piece on the feminist spirituality of Rachel Pollack. In her book The Body of the Goddess, Pollack wrote about Dionysus as a god of gender fluidity, whose cult looks (from the vantage point of the present day) intensely trans. 

Dionysus was raised as a girl, Pollack wrote, and went mad in adolescence; his madness was only cured when he sought initiation from the goddess Cybele, who was famously served by an order of transfeminine priestesses, and who was herself depicted as intersex. Dionysus’ cult, the Bacchae, struck terror into the heart of civilized Greeks – a lot of their activities involved pulling live animals apart with their bare hands, so it makes sense – but it was also a haven for gender transgression. At ceremonies, “female” worshipers strapped on phalli, and “men” wore women’s clothing. 

The idea that the Greeks had a god of transing your gender was new to me, and I’m someone who’s spent a lot of time with Greek mythology. It shouldn’t have been surprising: It’s all over The Bacchae, which is a story about a male-presenting character named Pentheus who puts on a dress, leaves the stage to attend a ritual of Dionysus, and comes back as a woman named Agave. Cybele is mentioned in the opening monologue. Tiresias — the seer who spent half of their life as a man, and half of it as a woman — is a supporting character. 

What really surprised me, though, is that The Bacchae is not just trans, but strikingly queer — queer in the present-day, political sense; queer as in outcast and marginalized and opposed to a repressive and violent social order. It is a story about a fascist regime that cracks down on gender non-conformity, only to be undone by the anarchic nature of desire, which lives in the hearts of fascists and dictators as surely as it lives anywhere else. 

Of course, it’s a mistake to project present-day realities and categories onto a work this old. Same-sex contact was, famously, permitted in Greek society, especially sexual relationships between younger men and their mentors. Yet, though the Greeks tolerated some homosexuality, they were absolutely devoted to patriarchy. Venerating femininity (as Dionysus did) was not okay. Recognizing women’s agency and leadership and independence (which the Bacchae, the “wild women,” embodied) was not okay. Abandoning traditional gender roles was not okay; blurring the line between genders, so that men could sometimes be women, and women men, was terrifying. 

It was a sacred terror, though. Dionysus is at once the gentlest and the most violent of all Greek gods; kind to those who welcome him, and utterly destructive to those who try to tune him out.  The only thing more dangerous than being taken by Dionysus is turning him away when he asks for you. Pentheus, the villain-protagonist of The Bacchae, tries to shut Dionysus out, and pays for it. Yet before that happens, Dionysus shows up to personally crack his egg — to transform him from Pentheus, who fears Dionysus, to Agave, who worships him. 

The whole set-up, translator Paul Woodruff tells us, is strongly reminiscent of religious ritual, and particularly the mystery cults of the day; Pentheus is undergoing some kind of initiation, maybe one that would be forbidden to explain or depict outside of a highly symbolic representation like a play. 

PENTHEUS: Tell me about [Dionysus’] rituals. What do they look like? 

DIONYSUS: They may not be revealed to those who are not Bacchants. 

PENTHEUS: What’s the good of these rituals to people who celebrate them? 

DIONYSUS: Hearing that is forbidden you, but knowing it would be of great value. 

The only way to know what Dionysus can do for you is to let Dionysus do it; the only way to know what happens in the cult is to join the cult. You and I, at this late stage in history, cannot join. But we do have this story, and it may still contain some instructions that we can use.