Female Gender Marginality in the Imperial Roman World: Affinity between Women and Slaves in their Shared Stereotypes and Penetrability

Abstract

The concepts of sex and gender existed in the imperial Roman world. Although there existed a sliding scale of sex and gender, gender was largely pre-determined at the time of one's birth based on one's sexual anatomy and concurrently, gender acculturation of the male and the female began. It was a conventional notion that women were marginal compared to freeborn men by the virtue of gender. Although the Romans improved the legal independence of free women, Greco-Roman literary evidence harbors various theoretical positions regarding female social marginality and submission, which were largely associated with slaves, and also underscores the paradox that female position of authority was only meant to be negotiated with the position of subordination. This article deals with the issue of female gender marginality and enculturation of female servility in the imperial Roman world. Various Roman literary traditions link women to slaves in their shared stereotypes and evidence that women and slaves were seen to share affinity for vulnerable penetrability in the face of the male sexual and domestic violence.