Hello and welcome to Queer is Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world

and throughout time. My name is Eli. I'm Irene. I'm Alice. And today we're talking about a

passage from the work of 14th century French Jewish writer and translator Colonymous Ben Colonymous.

I'd like to acknowledge the Bunurang-Bunwarang people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we record this podcast

and pay respects to their elders past and present.

We recognise them as the custodians of an oral history tradition far older than this podcast.

We have a few content warnings before we start this episode. This episode will contain

discussions of historical and modern misogyny, as well as discussions of transphobia and homophobia,

and brief mentions of the persecution of medieval Jews and references to sex. So if any of that

sounds like something that you would prefer not to hear today, please feel free to give this one a skip. I also wanted to make one of our characteristic

notes surrounding pronouns, as we like to do before the juicy episodes. The text that we're

going to be discussing today deals with themes of gender transformation, and it has been suggested

that the author was therefore trans, specifically

a trans woman by some people. I've chosen to use they-them pronouns when discussing

Colonomists just for the sake of being careful, but I am retaining the use of their masculine

name, the only name that we have for them throughout this episode as well as using he-him

pronouns occasionally in quotes.

Cool.

Okay.

Colonomist Ben Colonymous was born in 1286 in Al in the south of France.

Their family was an illustrious one within the local Jewish community, so they would have

had a relatively comfortable upbringing, although the Jewish community was also affected

...