One of the fascinating and frustrating things about the genre of "transvestite saints," i.e., women (mostly in the early Christian era) who disguised themselves as men in order to participate in monastic devotion, is how thoroughly the stories center and elevate masculinity. One of the repeated motifs is that these gender-disguised women are approved because of the Biblical injunction to "become a man for Christ". That is, they became a more perfect type of Christian by "becoming male". Other female figures in these legends generally play the role of (attempted) seductive temptress or scorned would-be admirer. The saint in question is typically removed from the context of femininity once the change of clothes has signally a category change. So in the legend discussed in this article, there's a valid confusion over whether the forbidden desire that the abbot is trying to prevent with Eurphrosine's seclusion is heterosexual desire for the disguised woman or the equally forbidden homosexual desire for the eunuch she presents herself as.
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