Androgyny is according to The Internet, either a state of having both masculine and feminine traits; OR a state of appearing to be neither masculine nor feminine.
I actually think that the current usage of ‘androgynous’, particularly by groups like Unisex and Genderfork, focuses on the latter. I find that many places that celebrate androgyny celebrate a very narrow definition of androgyny… a young, white, hairless, slim, usually female-born androgyny. Its very *pretty* but it gets boring after the first dozen or so photographs. It is an absence of gender markers, and it can occasionally make people uncomfortable, but not that uncomfortable… after all, our mainstream beauty standard calls for a youthful, slim, hairless, shapeless embodiment of beauty. This style of androgyny does not challenge the viewer. It might confuse them slightly, but if they can determine the assigned sex of the subject, they feel better, and move on, unchallenged and unchanged.
This absence of gender is only momentarily interesting to me. I like strong, bold expressions of peoples personality and passions, and all the little things that make them comfortable in their skin. I find queer femmes incredibly attractive because they take femininity, they embrace it, they recreate it, and they make it their own. I find bears hot, because they took a straight masculinity and made it unmistakeably gay. I like radical faery boys, and effete young men, and I love tom boyish girls on the soccer team, and butches that practice chivalry without a drop of irony.
An excess of gender cues is a form of androgyny as well, the state of having both masculine and feminine traits. This kind of androgyny is a kind of genderfuck… it is a sensory overload for the viewer, as they attempt to pin down the ‘real’ sex of the subject, and usually fail. This kind of gender presentation is a much more aggressive disregard for societies rules about how gender must work, and so is policed much more heavily, and subject to much heavier penalties. (Because people are uncomfortable around people that are different… and displaying excessive gender markers is different). In general, but not always, FTM spectrum folk are more likely to fall into an ‘absence of gender markers’ category, and MTF spectrum folk are more likely to fall into a ‘excess of gender markers’ category.
When someone displays an excess of gender markers, they will usually be assumed to be a man masquerading as a woman. I think that two factors go into this, firstly, that trans women are more commonly known about, and because humans weight masculine traits more heavily than feminine traits. Often, one of the things cited as being ‘attractive’ about trans men is their androgyny (meaning absence of excess gender markers), so those FTM’s who display excess gender markers wont fit that predefined idea of how FTM’s are ’supposed’ to be.
These days I fall into the Excessive Gender Markers category. I stopped binding last night, and went and bought a bra. I need to be able to work out, and working out in a binder is completely unrealistic for an asthmatic (and probably most other people too). All of a sudden, I was a person with breasts, and hairy man-legs, a deep voice, and big girly eyes, no facial hair, but a masculine swagger.
People can’t see this, but I’m developing hair on my chest, and my clit is growing into a micro-phallus. I’ve got a cunt, and a cock. I’m hairy, and curvy. I’m a man and a woman.
Usually I stifle my feminine gender markers so that when I’m out in the world I pass as an effeminate gay man. Last night I stopped bothering, and went into the world with my womanhood and manhood on display simultaneously.
It made people uncomfortable. It terrified the wits out of the greeter at the Big W change rooms. She didn’t know whether to send me to the mens or the women’s changing area.
I passed as a butch dyke to other queers. A gay man called me ‘Darling’, and a femme flirted with me. The straight world though? It was alarmed when it had to deal with me.
And its not ‘pretty’ like gender-free androgyny. Its not youthful, and innocent looking. Its confusing, and confronting, and hairy.
But I like it.
