Androgyne
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An androgyne is a person who feels that they do not fit cleanly into society's boxes labeled men and woman. An androgyne may identify with the gender identity of a combination of male and female or as neither / neutrally gendered. They may also use the terms non-gendered or bigendered. They may experience swings between genders.
Androgyny can be either physical and/or psychological, it does not depend on birth sex per se. An androgyne may have been born with ambiguous sex organs (intersex), or for others it is not dependent on their birth sex at all.
It is a misconception that androgyny is just a fashion statement, behavior, or set of visual cues. One could say that all androgynes are psychologically androgynous, whereas not all androgynous-looking people are androgynes.
Originally, androgyne was mostly used as a synonym for hermaphrodite (a term since replaced by the term intersex).
Various alchemical, magical and metaphysical traditions had an allegorical figured named variously the Alchemical Androgyne (http://www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/issue_4/articles/graham/graham2.html) and the Divine Androgyne. All these concepts are derived from the sense of unity that a combination of femininity and masculinity in one being implies.
A recently-coined politicized version of androgyne is genderqueer. Other related terms are pansexual, guydyke, girlfag, eunuch, neutrois and a great many others.
Gender and sexual orientation being two different things, androgynous people may consider themselves straight, gay, bisexual, asexual or more commonly none of the above.
Androgynes sometimes refer to themselves using blended pronouns like Ze, Hir etc, and use a gender tag Mx instead of Mr. or Mrs.
External links
- Androgyne Online (http://androgyne.0catch.com/)
- Neutrois (http://web.archive.org/web/20010726112745/www.neutrois.com/defin.htm)
- Sphere (http://web.archive.org/web/20030621061019/www.devrandom.net/~aidan/sphere.html)
- The Two-Spirit Tradition (http://androgyne.0catch.com/2spiritx.htm)