#ghjulia.txt

[piousaeneas]

just saw a blog called 'would-this-user-survive-in-australia' and like. probably?? people live there??? it's not some kind of assault course over there????

[piousaeneas]

i am way too active on my uploadblog nobody deserves me

[piousaeneas]

wow im so boiling okay

[piousaeneas]

why am i getting ads for pizza in italian?

[piousaeneas]

hello! i'm ghjulia or morgan! (morgan is an online name i use, and is what i've been using online for years. ghjulia is one of the many names i use irl). i am an intersex transmasc lesbian (not a man) and i use they/them pronouns. english is not my first language. i speak french and corsican before english.

trying to get more connected to corsican culture, per the orders of my good friend marisa. < follow her rn.

rated the world's most normal about aeneas. trust me. just trust me okay. i have absolutely no opinions on the aeneid and you should never even bother asking me.

my uploads blog | my ancient rome blog | my lesbianism blog

[piousaeneas]

consider this my pentheus apologia:

(because before today, this is the only thing i've ever said about the bacchae)

to preface, this is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but everything i'm saying is completely sincere.

when i first read the bacchae, i hated pentheus. i found him off-putting, rude, even repulsive. the thing i found myself least able to condone was his eagerness to spy on the maenads. in my mind, this meant he was a sexual predator, he wanted to rape them, to use them. after all, why else would he want to infiltrate their festival? i remember describing him multiple times as 'inherently predatory'.

now, having reread the bacchae, i can conclude that he is not inherently predatory, nor indeed inherently anything. i, in my infinite arrogance, assumed i had a direct line to euripides and i knew for certain that he was saying pentheus was dangerous, threatening. i was wrong.

don't get me wrong, i still believe that, in many ways, the bacchae is a very transmisogynistic play. i think that pentheus' character aligns greatly with some ancient greek (and modern) transmisogynistic stereotypes.

i also think his character is much more complex, and his intentions much more vague, than i initially realised. by referring to pentheus as nothing more than a creep who wanted to perv on women, i wasn't questioning the political and social context of the play. i was just accepting it as fact on face value, rather than opinion, and allowing it to play into my own personal biases.

i think a lot of scholarship around the bacchae is even more mired in transmisogyny than the play itself. the translation i read, according to a friend who read the greek, twisted some of the lines to make pentheus sound as pervy and threatening as possible, as well as adding in stage directions to further convey that he was ridiculous and laughable.

i completely went along with these theories. it wasn't until i reconsidered them with a transfem friend that i realised the other ways that pentheus' actions could be interpreted, and that i had been willing to assume the worst of him because i hadn't unlearnt my own biases surrounding women's only spaces. i immediately thought pentheus was just a creep, but to my friend, he was just repressed, and wanted community.

so consider this my pentheus apology note. i still don't like you, but i'm sorry i said all that shit. from this point forwards, all my haterism will be centred solely around you being impious and dumb as bricks to not realise dionysus is a god, rather than your gender identity.

signed, your humble subject. i'm sorry you didn't get your party with the maenads

[piousaeneas]

sighs. changes my pronouns to they/them.

[piousaeneas]

marisa heard that one of her online friends is going to corsica and has made a whole ass playlist for them. ok. 1 million corsican folk songs be upon ye