Reclaiming Androgyny & The Text Book Definition

[Dragonfly]

Sad for me to see this thread so bare...

[Dragonfly]

The first time I was mistaken for a "hot guy" was a defining moment in my life. I was hanging out with my guys in someones front yard. I was the only female but I didn't dress any different from them. Someone was on the phone with a girl and her friends down the road. From their window I was not only male but the one they wanted to talk to. It wasn't the first time I wished I really was a guy. Or the last. Many other times I have had the opposite set up and wished I were more feminine. I have thought I wish I were a girl many times as well. So for me my gender presentation comes into conflict when it comes to dating. More often I am attracted to someone who sees my "type" is not "their type". Just recently I have been getting close to an androgenous person and have experienced many positive and difficult aspects of this match up. The best thing so far has been the kindredness and understanding. Has anyone else ever felt frustrated enough to sometimes wonder "why can't I be more ___" when feeling hope become rejection?

[Turtle]

Yeah, so much depends on who I'm talking to and what fuckin mood I'm in....<sigh>

[Goo]

Androgynous is the label I prefer to use, rather than butch or femme. Or I just tell people I'm just me.

[PumaJ]

Not one or the other, but both at once. Yes, really confuses some people.

I have come to truly value the term Two-Spirit, which I learned and came to understand thanks to two of my exes. One being Native American, the other being Native Alaskan. To me, the term seems to capture the essence of "both at once".

[Goo]

Originally Posted by June

I like it when people come here, or I meet them in the outside community and they say "I'm just me". I don't think identities should be forced internally or externally. I'm a Femme. I am comfortable using that term. I am partnered to a masculine woman, she does not want to ID or have labels given to her non-consensually.

My girlfriend is like that as well, she is a masculine woman, but she doesn't want to have labels placed upon her. I absolutely love it when she wears her pink jammies, because I would never in a million suspect that she would own a pair of pink jammies.

[Turtle]

So, when I saw this on the home page I was thinking "OK, there is a theme for today" ~ Be who you are, own it, don't let other folks tell you who you are or what you do.

EVERY time I take a gender test I score as androgynus. Yup. I am me and other folks don't get to tell me who I am....and I do get to live and learn and grow and change into the new me I am always becoming a magnificent new concrescence every moment. (even if i am an ass at times)

[Chazz]

This is a thought provoking thread!

As a matter of course, I don't think about identity labels all that much. I'm just me, being me, on a moment by moment. I don't give labels butch/femme/androgyny/gender queer/transgender/..... all that much thought. Except, from a political perspective.

Online and offline in LGBTQ circles, I'm pegged as a [hard, masculine looking] butch. I don't embrace the label "masculine" because, TO ME, it smacks of a false gender duality; one I've been rejecting all my life. The more "butch" becomes associated with, or defined as some version of (variation on?) "masculinity", the more I bridle under it's weight. I'm not "masculine". I'm a lesbian woman who does not abide by contemporary canon about sex, gender or sexual orientation in mainstream or LGBTQ culture.

Associating me with "femininity", would be a source of hilarity everywhere.

For me, the term androgyny does NOT denote "masculine" AND "feminine"(or some mix thereof), it denotes NEITHER.

I'm a hybrid. Some might say a 3rd gender, perhaps, one of many. I suspect people are like snow flakes, no two are the same.

I do not now, nor have I ever had, "cis-gender privilege". As I've said elsewhere, conformity isn't a privilege. I HAVE stopped letting issues of privilege, conformity, passing, gender, etc., rent space in my head. With a very few provisos, I've stopped caring what other people think.

The more comfortable I get in my own skin, the less I give gender identity thought. This doesn't make me "privileged". It's the payoff for much hard, inner work. The result of a life-long process that allows me to reject "gender" as a paradigm, all together. Arguing gender is like arguing: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In the end, it's unanswerable because gender is a construct. A construct is about DOING, not BEING.

I sometimes wonder what our "community" might be DOING if we all stopped identifying with constructs.

(Yes, I do understand that "coming out" and self-understanding are a part of everyone's process. I'm just trying to dribble the ball down the court a little. I'm a heretic by nature.)

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by June

In the past few years, I have observed a trend towards hyper-masculinizing/feminizing in our community. I am not sure why that is.

As though being Butch isn't good enough and you have to add High before Femme to get the finished product.

I am in a FB group of mostly Europeans and they look at gender and presentation in a much more relaxed way that I find refreshing. They seem happier with themselves overall, actually.

This rigid policing of gender and desire is starting to get really old for me, so I am glad people are talking about the dreaded "A" word.

People who are confident in who they are are sexy, regardless of their label. People who swagger around claiming they would never wear pink or they garden in their stiletto's, not so much (for me).

I am tired of this rigidity, too. Really, really tired of it. Yes, confident in being who one is- that is a multi-faceted turn on!

Reclaiming androgyny- or redefining it for today is a wonderful idea. We do not have to settle for definitions that no longer fit or just need a tune-up!

I love what is feminine and masculine about myself, always have.

Glad to see this thread!

[BullDog]

I do embrace my masculinity, but I can see why many butch women do not since it continues to be equated with male most of the time, including in butch femme circles.

I do think of androgyny as being a blend of masculine and feminine as opposed to neither.

Good topic.

[Toph]

June;
i have a lot of issues about the same thing!
sometimes i feel more acceptance in the 'straight' world than in the gay world.
sad but true. when are you butch enough? when are you femme enough?
i wouldn't have expected this, but sadly it seems to be surrounding us. when is enough enough?

[Soft*Silver]

its interesting that when people think of women being androgynous they speak often about their masculine energy confusing people.

I have been evolving over the past few years and have found that when I dress lately, its not hyper femme like I use to. And my hair is nowhere near a girl's cut anylonger. My local friends have even said a few times to me that I am drawing closer to androgyny. Which panicked me, because back when I came out, androgyny was a political uniform and I wore it to fit in with the other lesbian feminists. Which of course was the wrong reason to "become" anything, but its where I was at, at the moment.

But here I am, sitting in my pretty and plus store, with short black hair, andro glasses, short nails, jean shorts and a basic t. If I didnt have earrings on, what would mark me as a femme? My nephews, age 8, told me the last time I babysat with him, my hair made me look like a boy. But I am a woman and a femme.

I have to go to a huge awards banquet tomorrow night. I have been looking for a gown to wear. I wonder if this andro period/evolv has something to do with it.