The Fish Thread started because Sparkles got annoyed with any serious discussion about being an androgyne descending into daft jokes and nonsense. In response sie set up a thread of daft jokes and nonsense in the (less than serious) hope that is would descend into a discussion about being an androgyne. Recently sie has returned to the thread and commented that it was the longest thread sie ever started, but it was a pity there was nothing useful in it.
I beg to differ.
I think lots has been learnt by the fish thread...and using other threads and knowledge of myself and my own intuitions, here is what I think those things are. It might just be that this is what I learnt about myself in the fish thread, but I'm going to extend it out a bit.
1.ANDROGYNES DON'T LIKE TO / CAN'T/SEE NO POINT IN TALK(ing) ABOUT BEING ANDROGYNE
That was Sparkles irritation in the first place. I am probably one of the most talkative people on the subject itself, but even I feel more reluctant to talk about it.
Why would this be?
a) The subject hurts.
There are people here who have real pain from this androgyne thing. Occasionally they mention it, but mostly it bubbles under the things they type. I myself get little stabs of hurt, or sometimes a few days when I am wrestling the subject like mad.
The hurt comes from two places, one is accepting the idea of being an androgyne, and so the possibility of feeling not quite the same as everyone else for ever, with nothing I can do about it. The second is the possibility that I am wrong, the urge to man up and stop being silly, or the urge to femme up and dismantle the life I already have.
These things are not things I usually like talking about.
b) There isn't much to talk about.
When I am not having my little stabs of pain, being an androgyne is just the same as being born in brighton or being freckly. I could talk about what brighton is like, or the quest for high spf sunblock, but it's pretty dull. Similarly talking about androgyne stuff, it's just there.
There is also the fact that most of us count ourselves as parents, siblings, offspring, musicians, technicians, lazy writers etc...before we consider ourselves androgyne. It doesn't always run quite as deep.
c)We have less topics to go into than the transsexual types.
We talk about being androgyne less, because there is less to talk about.
i) We don't transition.
Most of us can't physically transition because we don't know what to transition into. A few people like Andra have a clear and achievable goal, and then achieve it with remarkably little fuss - and they get to update us on that. But most of us don't have this clear vision (and most of us feel it would risk our more important roles...see above). This means we can't talk about medicines or doctors, or gatekeepers, or therapists or surgery or any of those things.
ii) We don't present.
It's impossible to present as an androgyne. There is a physical image of male and female, there is no physical image of an androgyne. Even androgynous does not have to be the image of androgyne. And there are some of us that don't want to look androgynous. I want to look cute and pretty, these are traditionally gendered ways of looking, but being an androgyne I take them for my own, I would be perfectly happy looking like a cute and pretty male..it's not the gender that concerns me.
Shades O'Gray seems to have got this split best in calling 'emself an 'androgyne crossdresser'. Wearing dresses is still cross dressing for an androgyne, as the dress is so inherently gendered towards female. Wearing a dress is presenting female, not androgyne. There is almost nothing androgynous about a male body in female clothes or vice versa.
Also, while I guess we would all like to have been born androgynous looking, most of us are not. It's best we dress and present as ourselves....
Because of this lack of 'passing' techniques we could share, that is another subject that can't really fire our talks.
iii) We don't moan endlessly about how miserable we are.
The main thing that transsexuals seem to do when they get together, apart from compare who is the manniest or femmiest, is to vent all their bad feelings. How some minor infraction in their day made them realise none of it is worth it, or how they are so frustrated they want to bite their own tongues off.
I am probably one of the androgynes that comes closest to that, because I do use this forum as a way to complain when things aren't going my way, but on the whole the androgynes don't do this. Now either we do not have that level of pain, or it is because we have other ways to cope (i would suggest through silly jokes, daft facts and all that). Laughs are there on the TS parts of the forum, but they are not cherished as much, they are regarded as a distraction.
d) We are talking about it, but through other means
Most of us do not seem to communicate in complete straight lines, it is clear we are talking about being androgyne even when we are not....
The unicorn references talk about how alone and not connected to the rest of this world we feel. In a magical forest with lots of unicorns we are free to run and play, but none of us (with the possible exception of Tekla) live in this magical forest. We only visit. Most of the time we are in the real world, where people do not believe that unicorns exist.
The androgyne attack sheep are viciousness couched in extreme mildness. Are androgynes mild, or are they attack sheep?
The 'ban' on the word peeps refers to the impersonal and naff nature of ungendered language. The struggle between being an androgyne and a human being.
ETC...ETC...ETC.... Look at what the jokes that have captured us are saying about us, we are really often discussing these androgyne things. Which leads me to...
2.ANDROGYNES DO FEEL A NEED TO COMMUNICATE WITH OTHER ANDROGYNES
One of the lesser populated boards, but one of the most talkative. It is clear there is a need for us to talk with other androgynes. To make the silly links and comments that would be ignored or ridiculed in real life, to let our hair down with people who have something in common with us...all that. I've tried to leave and not come back twice, I can't do it. I need this sort of interaction that I can only get from friends when they are drunk. This freeflow type thing, where lines and barriers are not drawn between various ideas....
- There, that is what I learned from the Fish Thread and lots of other threads that would appear to be daft jokes and nonsense. All It takes is that you read it right.
