androgynous

Androgyny is a term derived from the Greek words ανήρ (anér, meaning man) and γυνή (gyné, meaning woman)^[1] that can refer to two concepts regarding the mixing of both male and female genders or having a lack of gender identification. The first is the mixing of masculine and feminine characteristics, be it the example of the loud fashion statements of David Bowie, Jeffree Star, Boy George, Marilyn Manson, Annie Lennox, and Visual Kei musicians, or the balance of "anima" and "animus" in Jungian psychoanalytic theory. The second is in describing something that is neither masculine nor feminine, for example the Hijras of India who are often described as "neither man nor woman" or angels which are often portrayed as genderless.

Transgender
Androgyny · Bigender · Cross-dressing · Drag king · Drag queen · Genderqueer · Intersexuality · Questioning · Third gender · Transsexualism · Transvestism
Attitudes
LGBT history · Transphobia · Homosexuality and transgender · Gynephilia and androphilia
Legal issues
Legal aspects of transsexualism · Access to amenities
Lists
Transgender-related topics · LGBT films · People · Category
LGBT Portal

Androgynous traits

Androgynous traits are those that either have no gender value, or have some aspects generally attributed to the opposite gender. Physiological androgyny (compare intersex), which deals with physical traits, is distinct from behavioral androgyny which deals with personal and social anomalies in gender, and from psychological androgyny, which is a matter of gender identity. A psychologically androgynous person^[2] is commonly known as an androgyne ^{[citation needed]} (and, less commonly, as a non-binary gender variant), and there is a politicized version known as genderqueer.

To say that a culture or relationship is androgynous is to say that it lacks rigid gender roles and that the people involved display characteristics or partake in activities traditionally associated with the other gender. The term androgynous is often used to refer to a person whose look or build make determining their gender difficult but is generally not used as a synonym for actual intersexuality, transgender or two-spirit people. Occasionally, people who do not actually define themselves as androgynes adapt their physical appearance to look androgynous. This outward androgyny has been used as a fashion statement, and some of the milder forms of it (women wearing men's pants/men wearing skirts, for example) are not perceived as transgendered behavior.

Lesbians who don't define themselves as butch or femme may identify with various other labels including androgynous or andro for short. A few other examples include lipstick lesbian, tomboy, and 'tom suay' which is Thai for 'beautiful butch'. Some lesbians reject gender performativity labels altogether and resent their imposition by others. Note that androgynous and butch are often considered equivalent definitions, though less so in the butch/femme scene.

A recently-coined word, often used to refer to androgynes, is genderqueer. However, this term can be used to refer to anyone who identifies as transgender, or even someone who identifies as cisgender but whose behavior falls outside the average standard gender norms. An androgyne may be attracted to people of any gender, though many identify as pansexual or asexual. Terms such as bisexual, heterosexual, and homosexual have less meaning for androgynes who do not identify as male or female to begin with. Infrequently the words gynephilia and androphilia are used, which refer to the gender of the person someone is attracted to, and do not imply any particular gender on the part of the person who is feeling the attraction.

People who show Androgyny traits are seen in Psychology as being the most mentally stable individuals because they can see situations from both a masculine and feminine perspective. They tend to also handle social situations better than people who are typically defined as solely masculine or solely feminine. ^{[citation needed]}

Androgynes

An androgyne is a person who does not fit cleanly into the typical masculine and feminine gender roles of their society. ^{[citation needed]} Many androgynes identify as being mentally "between" male and female, or as entirely genderless.^{[citation needed]} The former may also use the term ambigender, the latter non-gendered or agender. They may experience mental swings between genders, sometimes referred to as being bigender or gender fluid.

Intergender is also a word that androgynes can use to describe being between or beyond genders. Androgyne used to be primarily used as a synonym for hermaphrodite (a term since replaced by the word intersex), but this usage has fallen out of favor.

Androgynes sometimes refer to themselves using gender-neutral pronouns or the singular they.^{[citation needed]} A few even take steps toward transitioning from their birth sex into a physically androgynous form.^{[citation needed]}

Androgyny in culture

• Various alchemical, magical and metaphysical traditions had an allegorical figure named variously the Divine Androgyne or Alchemical Androgyne.^[3] All these concepts are derived from the sense of unity that a combination of femininity and masculinity in one being implies.

Anime and manga

Androgynous characters are readily apparent in anime and manga, possibly due to the concept of beautifully feminine boys known as bishōnen. Also, transsexual or crossdressing characters are relatively common when compared to Western media.

• Jun Watarase from Happiness!
• Seiko Kotobuki from Lovely Complex
• Mizuho Miyanokouji from Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru
• Isley from Claymore

Video games

• Birdo from Super Mario Bros. 2, dresses like a girl but is said to actually be male.
• Vega from the Street Fighter series
• Bridget from the Guilty Gear series
• Raiden of Metal Gear Solid 2 was given an androgynous appearance on purpose so that both male and female players could relate to him and draw themselves deeper into the experience, though the character was later parodied in Metal Gear Solid 3 as Major Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov.
• Similar reasoning was behind the choice to make NiGHTS, the main character in the Sega Saturn game NiGHTS into Dreams..., androgynous.
• Kuja from the PlayStation RPG Final Fantasy IX
• Giroette from the Nintendo DS game Megaman ZX
• Soma Cruz from the GBA game Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and DS game Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (although he was made slightly more masculine through the use of traditional anime art used in that game)
• Isaac from Castlevania: Curse of Darkness
• Mithos Yggdrasill from the Nintendo GameCube and PlayStation 2 RPG Tales of Symphonia
• Ion and Florian from the PS2 RPG Tales of the Abyss
• Lucius from the Game Boy Advance game Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
• Fox from Bloody Roar
• Reni Wassulmeier from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
• Sheik from Zelda: Ocarina of Time
• Slaanesh from Warhammer 40,000
• Leo, a character in the upcoming Namco game, Tekken 6.
• Lumine from Mega Man X8
• Serenade from Mega Man Battle Network 3
• Shuichi Shindou from Gravitation
• Reyson from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
• Strider Hien from Strider 2
• Milich Oppenheimer from Suikoden
• Seraph from Shin Megami Tensei Avatar Tuner is a literal androgyne, created from the fusing of a male and female character
• Tsukasa Futaba/Patrick Springs from Mega Man Star Force

Literature

• Elves in fantasy-fiction are often portrayed as androgynous.
• The character Desire from the graphic novel series The Sandman has physical characteristics of both sexes.
• The elven wizard Vaarsuvius of the webcomic The Order of the Stick has never had his/her gender genuinely identified as a running gag.
• The Fool is a character from Robin Hobb's fantasy novels based in The Realm of the Elderlings. In the first and third trilogies The Fool is almost always referred to as a man. In the second, a woman named Amber. When asked his gender, The Fool says it doesn't matter.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, one of Count Olaf's accomplices is described as looking "like neither a man nor a woman", being very fat, and having a very plain face. This character is only addressed twice in the series; once as "Orlando" by Sunny Baudelaire and as "Liza".

Movies and TV

• Fa Mulan from the Disney film Mulan could be considered an androgynous character, for she is a Chinese maiden who dresses up as a man to serve in the Chinese army. Her companions are completely unaware that she is a woman until she is exposed.
• The movie Orlando follows the young nobleman Orlando, who lives through four centuries in Britain and changes sex on the way, ending up as an androgynous being.
• In the movie Stargate, the Egyptian god Ra is portrayed as an androgynous figure.
• In the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation entitled The Outcast, The Enterprise helps an androgynous race.
• In the episode of Star Trek: Enterprise entitled Fight or Flight, The Enterprise investigates the murder of a crew of an androgynous species.
• Saturday Night Live's popular character "Pat", played by Julia Sweeney, was portrayed as an androgynous figure.
• In Constantine, the archangel Gabriel was depicted as being androgynous, although played by Tilda Swinton, wearing a suit in one scene while wearing genderless clothing in his/her next appearance.
• The figure of Satan in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ is presented as genderless. The character was portrayed by a woman, Rosalinda Celentano.
• The movie and the graphic novel 300 both showed the Persian king, Xerxes I as an androgynous figure.
• Both of the characters of Hedwig and Tommy in Hedwig And The Angry Inch were androgynous, although to different extremes.
• In the Angel episode Orpheus, Willow Rosenberg calls the eponymous main character's son Connor androgynous, saying, "You must be Angel's handsome yet androgynous son."
• The movie Dogma directed by Kevin Smith features angels which appeared to be male (they are played by male actors, use the men's restroom, and are frequently mistaken for human men) but are anatomically neuter, and a muse played by Selma Hayek who appears female (and works as a performer in a strip bar) but is also anatomically neuter and makes it clear that she does not identify as a woman.
• Katherine Moennig who portrays Shane in The L word has androgynous qualities both in the show and in real life.
• The character Switch from The Matrix is described as an androgyne in the screenplay, and it is rumored that she was originally a man while still trapped in the Matrix and switched genders after being freed and finding out her true gender.

Music

• The Visual Kei movement in Japan, the United States, and Europe has the more notable points pertaining to androgyny in today's society.
• For the cover of his Mechanical Animals LP, Marilyn Manson donned prosthetic breasts (without nipples) and a bulge where his penis would be, recalling both mannequins designed to display men's wear and those designed to display women's wear. He described this as being the only way to escape limits by genders.^{[citation needed]}
• The 1970s glam rock genre had artists such as Queen, David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Jonne Aaron, Alice Cooper (see cover of Easy Action) and Suzie Quatro who dressed in an androgynous manner.
• Also Bill Kaulitz (singer) in Tokio Hotel has an androgynous look.
• The song and subsequent video "Androgyny" by Garbage 2001
• The song "Be My Human Tonight" by Norman Iceberg talk about the concept.
• The song "Androgynous" by The Replacements, and covered by Crash Test Dummies and Joan Jett.
• The Japanese musician Yoshiki Hayashi had an androgynous appearance while his band X Japan still pertained to the visual kei movement, which often explores androgyny along with macabre or eccentric themes.
• The music video for the song Love Is A Stranger by Eurythmics plays with gender and androgyny
• Brian Molko of the alternative rock band Placebo is well known for his androgynous attire

See also

• Ageless
• Ardhanareshvara, aka Ardhanari and Ardhanarishvara
• Asexuality
• Bisexuality
• Bishōnen
• Effeminate
• Feminine side
• Futanari
• Glam rock
• Pangender
• Postgenderism
• List of transgender-related topics

References

1. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=androgynous&searchmode=none
2. ^ psychologically androgynous person
3. ^ Alchemical Androgyne

• Feldman, Stephe. Androgyne Online. Transgender Tapestry Issue 107 (Fall/Winter 2004), pp. 38-39.
• Sell, Ingrid M. Third gender: A Qualitative Study of the Experience of Individuals Who Identify as Being Neither Man nor Woman. Doctoral Dissertation, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, 2001). UMI No. 3011299.

1. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=androgynous&searchmode=none
2. ^ psychologically androgynous person
3. ^ Alchemical Androgyne

• Bem, Sandra L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 42, 155-62
• Dynes, Wayne Androgyny Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Dynes, Wayne R. (ed.), Garland Publishing, 1990. pp. 56-68.
• LIlar, Suzanne, Le couple (1963), Paris, Grasset; Translated as Aspects of Love in Western Society in 1965, with a foreword by Jonathan Griffin, New York, McGraw-Hill.

External links

• Sandra Bem and androgyny
• Androgyne Online
• Androgyne Discussion group at Tribe.net
• Susan's Place Transgender Forums: Androgyne Talk Section
• Neutrois people who identify as being non-gendered
• Sphere gender as a sphere, where male and female are just two of a number of possible points
• The Two-Spirit Tradition
• A Different Da Vinci Code The missing pieces of Leonardo's puzzle point to plain and simple Hermeticism (altreligion.about.com article).

Donate to Wikimedia