Androgyny

I have read some interesting work in this area although I would have to look at my bookshelf at home to remember the authors. I have not written in this area although i do have a novel started which looks at another non-normative category--asexual romance.

One Hour, one thing I've learned since I got online is that every "weird" thing which interests me alone is one shared by thousands of others. If it floats your boat, it'll work for others, too, no matter how much it feels like you're the only one.

In my experience, only those who totally get it, whatever it is, can write erotica about it and do it justice. Which is why I can write some kinky stuff, but totally can't handle, say, feet. I just don't get it.

Maryn, clueless

I always wondered about androgyny - doesn't it only work as long as the character has their clothes on? Naked, most people are pretty clearly male of female, or at the very least they are a specific mix of the two, the mystery evaporates...? Unless they're hermaphroditic fantasy creatures or aliens or something...

Feet. Yup - they leave me cold. Can't figure the erotic appeal.

Androgynous in what sense? I've written screenplays where a character is specifically androgynous - usually 'boyish' in appearance, and with one of those names "Pat", "Jean", "Chris" or such. I've written scenes where an androgynous female, dressed in male attire, is hit on by 'mistake' by a female - and the interesting twists to that moment. But again, if the clothes come off - aren't you sort of forced to take a point of view?

Well the novel I am thinking of is sci fi where a third gender actually are androgenous. But other than that androgeny can be like orientation. It is how you feel and identify yourself.

An actual third gender, which is NEITHER male or female, as opposed to some form of Hermaphrodite eh?

As to mental orientation - not sure where on the continuum 'androgeny' lies. I mean, its possible to be 'metro-sexual' I suppose, or its possible to assume the stereotypical attitudes of the opposite gender - but that's certainly not androgynous. I think of the use of the word almost exclusively in terms of appearance. Physical attributes and clothing which do not speak to a gender. This usually means 'boyish' in appearance, because the presence of noticable breasts almost immediately tags the person as female, who may or may not dress in a 'masculine' style. A truly androgynous appearance is hard to achieve.

A person dressed in drag, is NOT presenting an androgynous appearance. A person WITH an genetic gender, who is attracted to both sexes - might be termed bisexual, but is not necessarily androgynous in either appearance or attitude.

So I guess I'm missing how (outside of Sci-Fi's third gender) a person can have an androgynous attitude.

I've only ever used/heard the term 'androgynous' applied to boys, actually. Boys who have more slender facial features and body shapes. Usually I think of androgyny when the boy is exceedingly beautiful. Beautiful, not handsome. Nearly pretty. And the guy wouldn't be feminine in attitude or behaviour or anything, just not that manly-looking.
It makes sense that a girl could also be androgynous, I've just never seen a girl and thought 'wow, she's kind of genderless.' Probably because we have the term 'tomboy' for that, whereas there's really no word for androgynous guys that doesn't instantly make one think 'possibly gay', so we actually have to think of the word 'androgynous'.
I have characters that I'd probably consider androgynous in appearance, but they're very masculine in personality. Not the opposite, though (androgynous-looking girls who are very feminine underneath). I think it would be very hard to make a character like this, because if a girl feels feminine, acts feminine, wants to be feminine, she'll dress to reflect that and will end up looking pretty feminine. Boys have a harder time of making their gender more or less apparent when they wish. IMO.

I am not sure what the difficulty is. I assume most people are aware one can be a born bologically one sex, and actually be the other? Well, you can also be neither or both--regardless of what your body is.

There are two different kinds of androgyny, the one where the person comes off as having neither masculine nor feminine markers (think "Pat" on SNL) and the kind where they have a lot of both masculine and feminine markers.

For true androgyny, you're really looking at people who consider themselves third gender or two-spirit or genderqueer or genderfuck, and I definitely know people who settled on that as a place to stay, but most people I know who dabbled with actual androgyny ended up moving to some other identity. True androgyny is *exhausting*, because it is a very narrow target, and most people you interact with can't handle the ambiguity.

Then there's all the stuff which can get called androgynous -- like crossdressing or gender-bending -- where being in-between really isn't the goal, but it's where they end up being perceived. For example, studies show that observers weigh masculine markers more heavily than they do feminine markers when they are trying to decide on someone's gender. So a natal male wanting to appear feminine can have a hard time erasing enough masculine markers to make it all the way to feminine, and gets perceived as androgynous instead, even when that isn't the goal.

And I've known plenty of natal females who have been described as androgynous -- there's a particular kind of soft butch that hits that dividing line quite nicely.

And you know, I have one story I wrote with a first person narrator whose gender was never revealed. In it I had three different sex scenes. You can keep the androgyny up when the clothes are off, but you do have to work at it. (I think I had it posted around here somewhere. Let me check. ETA: They're all in this part here if you're interested, starting almost halfway down. They're not really 'scenes' in the erotica sense -- I hadn't realized the genre this thread was in. More like encounters, each a paragraph long.)

I"m still waiting for a definition of 'androgynous attitude' as opposed to androgynous appearance.

How does this vary from transgendered attitude? A transgendered attitude, is STILL an attitude with a gender specific viewpoint.

According to Wikepedia:

An androgyne in terms of gender identity, is a person who does not fit cleanly into the typical masculine and feminine gender roles of their society. They may also use the term ambigender to describe themselves. Many androgynes identify as being mentally "between" woman and man, or as entirely genderless. They may class themselves as non-gendered, genderneutral, agendered, between genders, Intergendered, bigendered or, genderfluid[citation needed]

Well, so what? I know very few people who fit 'cleanly' into an identity. Those that do are called 'stereotypes'. I accept that there are masculine and feminine traits in all of us. Who gets to define what a 'balanced' point is along that continuum?

An androgenous attitude is the feeling of not belonging exclusively or predominantly to either gender--e.g. intergender, agender, genderqueer.

WriteKnight said:

I"m still waiting for a definition of 'androgynous attitude' as opposed to androgynous appearance.

How does this vary from transgendered attitude? A transgendered attitude, is STILL an attitude with a gender specific viewpoint.

Well, so what? I know very few people who fit 'cleanly' into an identity. Those that do are called 'stereotypes'. I accept that there are masculine and feminine traits in all of us. Who gets to define what a 'balanced' point is along that continuum?

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This is true, but misses one vital bit, I think. What makes it an androgynous attitude is not just that you don't fit cleanly into a traditional gender identity, but that you *also* feel discomfort when someone tries to put you into one. Most cisgendered people (I'm told) feel generally okay with being assigned to a particular gender, even if they have some mismatched traits.

That's the thing that trans folk have in common with the androgynous -- the need to get *out* of the gender identity they were assigned. The difference is that the truly trans usually have a strong need as well to get *into* a different one.

veinglory said:

An androgenous attitude is the feeling of not belonging exclusively or predominantly to either gender--e.g. intergender, agender, genderqueer.

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Yes, exactly.

Oh I've got a story idea with a 3-gendered race that I've been trying to develop. None of the three genders are androgynous though - they are Seeders (males), Layers (they produce an egg once a month and lay it through an ovipositor (hollow penis), and Bearers (they have the womb, they are the 'apex' sex that must have sex with both other genders to get pregnant). Each gender has a pretty strong stereotype of how it is appropriate for them to look and act. I'm debating whether to have a prejudice or taboo against sex between a seeder and a layer (the slender penis of the seeder fits nicely inside the hollow one of the layer). Probably going to go with using male pronouns for the first two genders and female for the third mainly because it's really annoying to write gender neutral pronouns and I like mmf threesomes.