Aphroditos by Thraskink-Coven

Did you know there’s a male Aphrodite? He’s called Aphroditos, or Aphroditus.

Something unique about Aphroditos is that he maintains female breasts while also having male genitals, and is sometimes depicted with facial hair. Sometimes Aphroditos is depicted with traditionally male features but retains a vulva. Many statues of Aphroditos depict him lifting his dress to reveal a penis. This deity, of course, originated from the same place as many of Aphrodite’s origins: Cyprus, later making his way to Athens.

Needless to say, Aphroditos is androgynous, intersex, and/or transgender. As Bettany Hughes explains, “Some believed that the goddess kept her father’s castrated male sex organs within her —or [he is] simply an early recognition of the nonbinary nature of sex and desire.” The first part, about Aphrodite’s birth where she was born from Ouranos’s castrated genitals being thrown into the sea, does make sense when I think about it, as does the second part. Desire — and not strictly sexual desire—does not discriminate; it’s something within us all, no matter how we choose to identify ourselves.

It is also important to note that the divine — gods and goddesses — are not bound to human constructs such as gender, nor do they only take on one face. We identify a deity being male and female for our convenience, so who’s to say that the idea of an androgynous/intersex/transgender/nonbinary deity can’t exist? I’ve explored this most with Dionysos, who is the god most known for breaking the constraints of gender.

Aphroditos makes perfect sense. There are many male gods of love, sex, and desire such as Eros, but Aphrodite, to me, is a deity who represents universal love, universal sex, universal desire, and universal beauty (not to say that Eros and other deities can’t stand for this either). Not to mention her nature of duality, which I apply to all her domains.

There’s an epithet of Aphrodite that I’m fond of: Aphrodite Pandemos, which means Aphrodite common to all people, or the people’s Aphrodite. Although I interpret this more to do with worship, meaning anyone can worship her, regardless of class, social status, etc. I also apply this to sex and gender. No matter your sex and gender, you can follow her, and no matter how we perceive Aphrodite, she is a deity representative of all sex, gender, and desire. This, of course, translates into Aphroditos, which could mean exactly that.

Aphroditos also goes by another name, as I’m sure some of you know, Hermaphroditos, or Hermaphroditus, who is the son of Aphrodite and Hermes (a combination of their name). He eventually became merged with Salmakis, his lover, thus becoming androgynous/intersex. Because of their similar features, Aphroditos were conflated with Hermaphroditos, and today are considered the same deity. Both Aphroditos and Hermaphroditos are most often depicted as being female in appearance and having male genitals.

As I say with all of my posts on the many aspects of Aphrodite, it’s important to acknowledge and respect this aspect of the goddess. Aphrodite and Aphroditos can teach us many things on the spectrum of queerness, and its relation to the world around us, no matter what form or what face they take.