Transgender Dragons

Now and again there’s a report in the media which raises questions about gender determination – not in humans but in animals. In December there were reports that a lizard in an Australian aquarium had changed from female to male at the beginning of last year and scientists don’t know how or why.

Gender switching is not uncommon outside our hominid family. In fact it is well documented among reptiles and fish, including lizards and even crocodiles. Several years ago I wrote about gender-switching in chickens which may have led to the origin of stories about the legendary creature the basilisk or cockatrice. The gender determination process in lizards is similar, especially in several species that are named after another legendary creature, the dragon.

Like chickens and birds lizards’ chromosomes are given the names ZZ, which normally indicates a male lizard, and ZW, which normally indicates a female lizard. High environmental temperatures seem to trigger a sex change in embryos in pre-hatched eggs. It is the temperature of the eggs that determines whether the ZZ embryo of a male lizard develops into a female before it hatches. These female lizards with ZZ male chromosomes are even capable of producing normal offspring, all of them normal ZZ males.

In 2015 this type of gender determination was studied in a species of lizard called the central bearded dragon. This dragon lives in the tropical regions of Australia and despite their monstrous name they are no bigger than a domestic cat. Researchers found that around 10% of the dragons they examined were females with ZZ male chromosomes and no ZW female chromosomes. It was the first time that genetic gender differences of these lizards had been found in the wild.

But what is puzzling biologists is that one species of lizard closely related to the central bearded dragon called the Boyd’s forest dragon has unexpectedly changed sex from female to male in adulthood. The dragon in question lives in the Sea Life aquarium in Melbourne, where she had been given the name Doris.

Doris had lived as the aquarium for the past 6 years and has laid many eggs and produced many young. She lived in a tropical forest exhibit with two other Boyd’s forest dragons, a male and a female. Sadly the male dragon, called Old Mate, died in 2019 and the two female dragons were transferred to a new tropical exhibit in early 2020. Shortly afterwards Doris began exhibiting behaviour that was not typical for her gender. She began to eat regularly. Female Boyd’s forest dragon’s usually only binge eat in one short period prior to laying eggs, but Doris was eating like a male dragon. Then Doris started to change skin colour and develop a more prominent crest and she began to grow larger, just like a male dragon.

Doris the Boyd’s forest dragon.
Photo from the Sea Life Aquarium’s Facebook page.

These changes were noticeable to the aquarium staff particularly the reptile keeper Tom Fair (who is openly gay, by the way, but that’s not relevant to this story). The animals at the aquarium are given a medical check regularly and during one of them Tom took Doris to the aquarium vet. An ultrasound confirmed that Doris was a female dragon. Ovaries and underdeveloped eggs were detected. Then, a month later at the next check Doris was given another ultrasound. This time there were no ovaries and no eggs, and instead Doris had developed testicles. Doris was now a male dragon.

Scientists are both mystified and sceptical. Adult reptiles had not been known to change gender before. As explained above sex changed has only been found in embryos in unhatched eggs. The only other species known to change sex in adulthood is the clownfish (yes, the same fish as Marlin in “Finding Nemo” – I wonder if Disney will ever make a sequel about Marlin as an adult suddenly changes sex. I doubt it – you know how prudish the American are on these subjects).

There are several tentative theories about how Doris (I suppose we should start calling him Boris now) changed gender. A lot of research and observation will have to be done before any proper theory can be formulated. Over a year later scientists are no nearer to providing an answer. Until we know for sure that Doris won’t or can’t change back he goes down in history as the world’s first transgender dragon.

80 More Gays Around the World: Part 5) Tourists and Taurus

Last time on “80 More Gays”: 9) Polycrates of Samos (d.522 BC) lent his name to a psychological complex exhibited by 10) Paul Morphy (1837-1884), who played a game of chess during “Norma”, an opera which inspired 11) Marion Bradley Zimmer (1930-1999) to write an Arthurian novel, a genre popularised by the Victorians including 12) Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942).

12) Charles Robert Ashbee was an architect and designer though he also wrote several novels. One of these was an Arthurian Utopian fantasy, “From Whitechapel to Camelot”. Ashbee founded the Essex House Press after William Morris’s more famous Kelmscott Press closed. Many books were published by Essex House and Ashbee created the type faces called Endeavour and Prayer Book.

With William Morris Ashbee was the major player in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He established several Arts and Crafts School in London which produced furniture, jewellery and metal work.

On several occasions Ashbee was asked to design buildings. After renovating the country home of Col. Thomas Shaw-Hellier in the 1890s the colonel invited Ashbee to design and build him a villa in Taormina, a popular tourist destination on Sicily. It was especially popular with gay men.

Oscar Wilde sampled the delights of Taormina and a gay photographer, Wilhelm von Gloeden, a friend of Shaw-Hellier, spent most of his life there building up a large portfolio of photos of young male nudes. A lot of British men visits the town escaping the anti-gay-sex laws in the UK. One of them, Sir Harold Acton, once described Taormina as “a polite synonym for Sodom”.

It is assumed that Col. Shaw-Hellier was homosexual. He married very late in life (at the age of 63) and was friends with many of the gay men who visited Taormina. Charles Ashbee was certainly gay, even though he tried to uphold Victorian respectability by marrying and having four children.

The site of Shaw-Hellier’s new villa in Taormina was on the site of an old temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. The villa was built in 1907 and became known as the Villa San Giorgio. Shaw-Hellier died in 1910 and his villa is now the Hotel Ashbee.

Ashbee and Shaw-Hellier had a mutual gay friend on Taormina, 13) Robert Hawthorn Kitson (1873-1947). Kitson had just built his own villa in the town, the Casa Cuseni, in 1905. It became a magnet for visiting celebrities – Chanel, Picasso and Garbo, amongst others. Roald Dahl is said to have got the idea for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” when he stayed there.

Today Casa Cuseni is an Italian national monument and museum. In 2018 one of the original frescoes was “revealed” to the public as part of a tour of the town. It depicts a real event in Kitson’s life. In 1908 an earthquake hit Messina, half an hour’s drive up the coast, killing around 80,000 people and creating many orphans. Kitson and his lover, an artist called Carlo Siligato, decided to adopt one of the orphans. The depiction in the fresco is the first known example in art of gay adoption. This website includes a YouTube video which gives a detailed look at this fresco.

As mentioned earlier Charles Robert Ashbee’s villa, now the Hotel Ashbee, was built on the site of an ancient temple. So was the town’s main church. It was built on the site of a temple to a Greco-Egyptian god who was created through the deliberate merging of Isis’ husband Osiris and the chief Greek god. The new deity can be called 14) Zeus-Serapis.

Zeus-Serapis was “created” by the Ptolemys of Egypt in the 3rd century BC in an attempt to unit the Egyptians and Greek communities. It became a popular cult and lasted for 700 years and a sacred bull had an important influence on it.

In Egypt there was a cult to Apis, a sacred bull who was transformed into the god Osiris when it was sacrificed – Osiris-Apis (a name which developed into Serapis). The Ptolemys, being Greek, knew that their Greek subjects wouldn’t worship an animal god, or even a mixture of bull and man like Osiris-Apis. So they depicted the bull god in the form of their own chief god Zeus, and Zeus-Serapis was “born”.

Zeus has strong links to bulls himself, most famously in the story of Europa. I wrote about the multiple bull connections in the Europa myths in my article on Taurus back in 2012. Being immortal Zeus was actually Europa’s great-great-grandfather, she being descended from his lover Io who was transformed into a cow to keep her a secret from his wife Hera. It’s interesting to know that Zeus was also great-great-grandfather to his male lover, Ganymede.

Back to Sicily and the town of Taormina, the location of a temple to Zeus-Serapis. The town’s name actually translates roughly as “I stay with the bull”, and a mythical creature, half woman, half cow, called a bucentaur, appears in the town’s coat of arms (below) which was adopted in 1928. And the town itself sits in the shadow of Monte Tauro – Mount Taurus.

Taurus is, of course, one of the major constellations. Within the constellation is a group of stars called the Pleiades. I also wrote about them a couple of years ago, of their link to drag queens, and their connection to Dionysos, the god of wine and cross-dressing who is also known as the Bull God (there’s that animal again).

The Pleiades, representing a group of sisters, have provided the inspiration behind an initiative within astronomy aimed at improving the status and inclusion of women. There is also a set of awards which accompany the initiative called the Pleiades Awards. These was given to organisations, universities or observatories which champion female equality within astronomy.

The initiative and the awards were launched in 2014 by the Women in Astronomy Chapter of the Astronomical Society of Australia. The Chair of the chapter at the time was 15) Dr. Lisa Harvey-Smith (b.1979).

Next time of “80 More Gays”: We meet the Rainbow Serpent of the southern skies and celebrate the millennium with a centenary.

Dog Days of the Shogun

This time of year is often referred to as the Dog Days of summer. This is a traditional name for the hottest and sultry days of the year, so named because the brightest night-time star the Dog Star, Sirius. The Romans believed that when Sirius rose in the sky before dawn in the summer months its heat was added to that of the Sun.

I have to admit that I’m not good with dogs. I was attacked by an alsatian when I was about 7 (when you’re that young an alsatian is as high as your shoulder) and I still have nightmares about dogs. As a complete contrast, there’s one historical lgbt individual who is said to have loved dogs so much that he acquired the nickname of “the Dog Shogun”. His actual name was Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709) and he was the 5th shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty.

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi

In recent decades the reputation of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi has undergone a bit of revision. For centuries he had the reputation of being a bad ruler, a tyrant who eccentricities included favouring the welfare of dogs over humans and of elevating his many male lovers into positions of power.

As I have found out time and time again in the 40 years that I have been a dedicated historian what is written and accepted as historical fact often concentrates on one culturally biased opinion. In the case of Tsunayoshi that bias was contained in a very influential document called “Sanno Gaiki”. This had been accepted as the authoritative account of Tsunayoshi’s reign. It was written after he had died and was more of a critical parody than a history of his reign, and even though people recognised this as the time, people and historians gradually began to believe every word of it.

Despite the fact that Japanese historians just a century after his death had tried to rehabilitate Tsunayoshi’s reputation “Sanno Gaiki” had become too fixed in the popular mind for it not to take root. By the end of the 20th century many historians were attempting to “correct” this fake history.

Perhaps the biggest effect on Tsunayoshi’s reputation is his fondness for dogs and his famous nickname “the Dog Shogun”. From being an insult to being turned into a by-name for animal compassion this nickname has various legends surrounding it.

The origin of this nickname centre round the “laws of compassion” introduced by Tsunayoshi from 1687 onwards. These were a series of laws which gave protection to animals and punishments for animal cruelty, including death. Even though later historians concentrated on the protection of dogs the laws also included protection of cruelty against other animals - birds, horses and even grasshoppers. Protection for abandoned children was also a large part of these laws.

The dog connection is compounded by the fact that Tsunayoshi was born in the Japanese Year of the Dog. The “Sanno Gaiki” added to this by fabricating the legend that a Buddhist priest had told Tsunayoshi’s mother that the shogun had mistreated dogs in a former life and the death of his son and heir was a punishment. The priest said that only laws against cruelty to dogs would lift the curse of a childless shogun.

Dogs seemed to have a dual identity during the rule of the shoguns. On the one hand dogs were closely associated with the samurai and were a symbol of their ferocity. The samurai would breed and train hundreds of dogs for hunting. Over time there were too many for the samurai to keep and many dogs were either killed or left to stray the countryside.

Cities were often overrun with stray dogs. They attacked other animals and even children in search of food. Cruelty to dogs was already punishable and Shogun Tsunayoshi’s laws of compassion added an additional condition which stated that not feeding stray dogs was also cruelty and punishable. Most people, however, were under the impression that feeding any dog would make them legally responsible for the animal and avoided them. This led to an increase in stray dogs. The solution was to build massive dog shelters and kennels. When I say massive I mean that the kennels housed over 100,000 stray dogs.

Unfortunately for these dogs, when Tsunayoshi died his son and successor closed down all the kennels. It’s not certain what happened to all the dogs. The location of these kennels is commemorated today in a set of statue dogs outside Nakano City Hall in Tokyo (pictured below). The kennels may be the main reason why the Japanese went on to associate Tsunayoshi with them more than any other animal.

So that’s why Tokugawa Tsunayoshi became known as the Dog Shogun as a name of shame – a man who preferred dogs to people. But his reputation was smeared further by accusation of him promoting his male lovers to high office. What’s the truth about that?

As a samurai Tsunayoshi was no stranger to same-sex activity. In something very much like the ancient Greek practice whereby soldiers take younger male lovers the samurai had a similar system called shodu. As with the Greek practice shodu was more a rite of passage for the younger partner and, also as with the Greeks, it developed into a life-long platonic friendship. Neither practices can be said to be truly homosexual in our modern sense of the word but was strongly homo-social. The fact that both practices saw the man-youth sexual relationship as normal is what makes it a big part in lgbt heritage of our understanding of human sexuality.

Tsunayoshi is known to have had several young male lovers as well as a wife and several concubines. That, too, was normal. The claim made by a ruler’s critics of lovers and favourites being promoted to high office is common in most societies, even if there’s no evidence of same-sex activity. However, there seems to be hints in Tsunayoshi’s behaviour that may indicate that he did prefer male partners.

One of these hints is his friendship with Yanagisawa Yoshigasu, one of the many attendants at the shogun’s court. Yoshigasu was from a samurai family of imperial descent. He and the future shogun Tsunayoshi met in 1665 when he was 7 years old and Tsunayoshi was 19. Later historians also painted Yoshigasu as a bad court official though his reputation has been undergoing the same revision as the shogun.

Yoshigasu was a general attendant at the court. In 1675 he became a page at Tsunayoshi’s residence. Five years later when Tsunayoshi became shogun Yoshigasu joined him in Edo palace and soon began to rise in the hierarchy of attendants. He had no formal training in government or politics yet in 1688 shogun Tsunayoshi appointed him as his Great Chamberlain. This angered many officials and samurai families.

While there’s no actual evidence of a gay relationship between the two men in our modern sense, one may have been carried out in the form of the traditional samurai shudo before Tsunayoshi became shogun. There was a strong personal connections between the two through a shared interest in Confucian classics, though this alone is hardly enough to propel a humble attendant to the high office of Great Chamberlain. So, perhaps there was more going on between them.

As in a lot of historical instances evidence to prove a relationship one way or another is lacking, and the change in social attitudes to everything from sexuality to politics changes with each generation.

Given that the samurai code of shudo with its same-sex relationships was common in 17th century Japan it is unlikely that the Dog Shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, didn’t have male lovers.

Queer Cryptids

As we approach the end of the Pride season have you noticed how many unicorns you’ve seen? Unicorns seem to be everywhere. Amongst my other interests I’m a cryptozoologist and understand why members of the lgbt community feel some affinity with such fabulous creatures. After all, some people claim we don’t exist.

A cryptozoologist is someone who studies fabulous beasts, mythical creatures and strange animals. Yes, we’re talking about Yeti, Nessie and fairies. Until very recently I wasn’t really aware of any other lgbt cryptozoologist. The more open lgbt cryptozoologists on the internet seem to be of a younger generation than myself. Gay Star News published a feature on the current fascination for unicorns and the people who look for weird creatures and cryptids.

Cryptid is the all-encompassing name for these creatures. The words cryptid and cryptozoology indicate their mysterious nature. Their apparent strangeness and “otherness” has been mirrored over many centuries in the attitudes of society with regard to homosexuality and gender identity. They are seen as being outside conformity and the normal understanding of the world, just like many members of the lgbt community feel.

Included by many cryptozoologists, myself one of them, are heraldic beasts, my specialist area. Many of these beasts are common to myths and legends – the unicorn, griffin, mermaid, etc. Some heraldic beasts are very real. The female pelican, for example, had the legendary trait of pecking at her chest so her chicks could feed on her blood. This blood-letting is shown often in heraldry and I’ve illustrated it a couple of years ago in the coats of arms of two lgbt people, Julia Pell and Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton.

In the 1990s I designed and sold badges which featured heraldic beasts (below). In view of the growing popularity of cryptids in the lgbt community, not to mention the world of Harry Potter and his Fabulous Beasts, I may redesign them and start selling them again (they've all been copyrighted to myself, by the way, and I do not give permission for them to be reproduced).

I adopted one heraldic beast as a personal mascot, a rare beast called an alphyn (seen on the bottom row of badge designs). I chose it because its name is similar to that of my grandmother’s family, who spelt their name Alphey in Tudor times. Just like the pelican of the Pelham and Pell families, people and places adopting beasts with similar names is common in heraldry. The London borough of Enfield shows the heraldic beast called the enfield on most of the street signs.

As well as the composite animal cryptids like the unicorn, griffin and alphyn, who are made up of body parts from different animals, there are also the humanoid cryptids. The most well-known of these is the mermaid. Today the term mermaid has been used to describe many water spirits and creatures. Sirens, tritons, naiads and many others have been depicted as half-human and half-fish, personified in recent popular culture by Ariel from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”. There’s so much to say about mermaids and the lgbt community that I’m going to leave them for separate article next month entitled “My Ancestor was a Mermaid”.

All through history people have been catching glimpses of strange, unknown creatures. Legends and stories have developed around them, trying to explain their origin. Remote locations have always been ripe for sightings of cryptids.

In ancient Greece many myths and legends were told about strange creatures and societies living near the edges or dark places of their world. Medusa, the Harpies and the Cyclops are still familiar cryptids. One of the lesser know cryptids is a race of being called the Makhlyes. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing 2,500 years ago, described this race of north African humanoids as being sexually divided down the middle of their bodies, one side being male and other female.

Medieval explorers wrote down what unfamiliar creatures they saw and medieval writers collected all those stories together into books called bestiaries. Familiar creatures, like the pelican, were included. Another creature that is familiar to us today but rarely seen by the majority of Europeans at the time was a creature called the cameleopard. It was a cross between a camel and a leopard. Today we call it a giraffe.

Perhaps, one day, we’ll discover the reality behind some cryptids. Perhaps we’ll find the real Nessie and discover if it really is a plesiosaur. Or perhaps we’ll find out if Bigfoot and Yeti are the same species.

Theories about Bigfoot have been very popular and lots of books have been written about it. Michael Grumley (1942-1988), was a gay writer who, with his partner Robert Ferro and their friends, formed an informal group known as the Violet Quill. Members of this group were responsible for the renaissance of gay literature after the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

In “There Are Giants in the Earth” published in 1974 Michael Grumley suggested that Bigfoot and similar humanoid cryptids are the last remaining members of a species of giant which once populated Earth. They now are very few in number and live in isolated caves and underground tunnels.

As my interest in cryptozoology has been rekindled in the past few weeks I wonder if there are any more cryptids that will become lgbt icons and mascots. In the USA the legendary Mothman and the less well-known Flatwoods Monster have been adopted by some lgbt people.

With so many genders and sexual identities being recognised and brought into the open perhaps there’s room for everyone to have their own personal cryptid mascot.

Star Gayzing : Polar Bears

Let’s get straight into it and look up at the night sky again at two of the most recognisable constellations in the northern hemisphere – Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

Also known as the Great Bear and the Little Bear these constellations circle the current celestial North Pole. These constellations have been pictured as bears since Ancient Greece when Ursa Major was called Arktos.

The Greeks explained the presence of two bears in the sky through the myth of Callisto. She was a nymph who was one of the hunting entourage of the goddess Artemis (known as Diana to the Romans). Artemis required all her entourage to be virgins, like herself. This can be seen as the power of feminism over a patriarchal society – no man is going to dominate them.

However, if you know something of Greek mythology you’ll know that sex will rear its head sooner or later, especially for a mythological virgin. The great pansexual king of the gods, Zeus, was particularly taken by Callisto (well, her name means “most beautiful”). The problem Zeus had was how to have sex with her. It’s not a problem you have for long if you’re a shape-shifting deity like Zeus, so he transformed himself into a doppelganger of Artemis and made an amorous advance on Callisto when she was on her own.

The seduction of Callisto became a popular theme in art. It has been variously depicted as an act of rape, a loving embrace between two women, or something much more erotic (usually to please the male eye). The imagery became decidedly lesbian and has become part of lesbian lore.

“Jupiter in the Guise of Diana and Callisto” by Jean-Simon Berthelemy

The patriarchal interpretation of the myth puts Callisto in a subservient role, exactly what the real Artemis wanted to avoid. The matriarchal-feminist interpretation highlights the lesbian aspect of Callisto willingly succumbing to the sexual advances of her mistress and remaining in her service afterwards knowing she had broken her vow. As the Roman goddess Diana, Artemis has become the central goddess in a modern neo-pagan faith called Dianic Wicca, a female-only faith established in 1971.

It’s what happened after Callisto’s seduction that has been depicted more often in art. For several months everything was fine. Knowing she was supposed to remain a virgin, even if she believed it was Artemis who made her pregnant, Callisto hid her condition. She bathed alone in a river, but another nymph saw her and noticed that she was heavily pregnant and informed Artemis.

Artemis was understandably, furious. She banished Callisto from her entourage. This banishment is depicted in art many times. The painting “Diana and Callisto” by Richard Wilson (1713-1782) showing this episode is listed as part of the lgbt collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool.

Callisto later gave birth to a son whom she named Arcas. But if she thought her troubles were over she was mistaken. Very soon after the birth Zeus’s wife Hera recognised Arcas as her husband’s illegitimate son. This time it was Hera who was furious and as punishment turned Callisto into a bear.

Just in time Zeus spirited baby Arcas away. Eventually he became the king of a nation named after him – Arcadia. Like his mother Callisto Arcas was a great hunter. One day he was hunting bear when he saw a bear bounding towards him (you can probably guess what’s going to happen next). The bear was Callisto, eager to be reunited with her son. But he didn’t know that, and was about to shoot an arrow into her when Zeus stepped in and transformed him into a bear as well. He then flung both bears into the sky and they became Ursa Major (Callisto) and Ursa Minor (Arcas).

Because of their prominent positions in the sky, particularly Ursa Major, the constellations have been depicted on flags and in heraldry. The most famous of these flags is the state flag of Alaska (pictured at the top) which is actually the reason I’m writing about Ursa Major and Ursa Minor today. Today is the 91st anniversary of the flag being adopted by Alaska.

In heraldry Ursa Major has been featured in the coat of arms of the composer Richard Wagner and his gayson Siegfried (1869-1930) which I wrote about in 2014. There I explained that several German families called Wagner adopted Ursa Major for their coat of arms because it is a pun on their name. In German “plough” is “wagen”, and in Germany Ursa Major is known as the Great Wagon.

Returning to the nymph Callisto. As well as Ursa Major she is represented as one of the moons of the planet Jupiter. The four largest moons, called Galilean moons after the famous scientist who discovered them, are all named after some of Jupiter’s/Zeus’s famous amorous encounters. The two largest moons are Ganymede and Callisto. I find it interesting that they are named after Zeus’s lovers which are based on same-sex attraction.

Finally, I find it baffling why the lgbt bear community hasn’t taken advantage of the Ursa Major image and used it to produce more distinctive flags and logos. Maybe I’ll design some myself.

Jupiter's Galilean moons