Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I was wondering if there was a recognisable culture of androgynes with their own forms of dress and behaviour and presentation, would we be able to conform to those standards? Or would we be characterised simply by our otherness?

Said Nicky...

What do you think?

I'm not sure how I would answer my own question. Probably why I asked it. I think that if I was brought up in that culture it would be far easier to conform to it. But the way I am now I doubt I would be able to conform.

I think we might end up with a generational thing where the androgynes of today are forging their own path and creating spaces for other androgynes. But I'm not sure if we will ever comfortably conform in our own spaces we create ourselves and will always be characterised by our otherness.

Saying that though we do have our own cultural phenomena emerging on this site - e.g. known for our changes of topic and sense of humour.

I think it would appear to be a very disparate culture, but to have a great number of thematic similarities

I said Otherness there, are many different ways in witch we present
I recall someone saying that there were 2 forms of androgyne presentation they called negitive androgyness & positive androgyness
negitive  being that people can't tell if you are M/F because you don't have any clear traits one way or the other
positive  being that people can't tell if you are M/F because you have clear and obvious of both sides eg. beard & breasts.
these terms I dont particauly like especialy since if applied  to clothes only negitive is much more acceptiable then possitive also not everyone fits into those 2 catagories
its as if trying to make a binary choice within a non binary group
if not Male or female are you Null or Omni, thats just cow dung.

I think it's fair to say that our 'otherness' and noncomformity are something that can unite us.  :)

The sameness is derived from differences.



Some would conform and some would not.  Either way, I trust that if we had our own true culture, that conformity would not be a requirement.

Quote from: Pica Pica on January 27, 2009, 04:44:04 PM
I was wondering if there was a recognisable culture of androgynes with their own forms of dress and behaviour and presentation, would we be able to conform to those standards? Or would we be characterised simply by our otherness?

Said Nicky...

What do you think?

I'd simply be myself as I am now. After all this time, I have no idea whether I'm androgyne, transsexual, or anything else. My gender doesn't define me. I tend to feel other or outsider because of many aspects of who I am.

I see no reason for androgyne conformity to exist, each of us is an individual with our own likes and dislikes.

Z

I think it depends on the person.  Particularly at first, we would see a lot of "otherness," with people sort of seeking out their own thing.  If androgyny becomes more recognized, then (1) I think some of the people open to adopting it will look to existing examples and will tend to emulate something they see, and (2) as tastes of people within androgyny refine their styles, people of greater expertise will (in)directly give shape to fashion (like with #1, people will integrate what they like).  However, the level of conformity will remain relatively low compared to other attitudes towards dress.

kaelin is right the more present androgyne is the more people who are like that see it and take insperation from it and create there own idea of it. like punk like goth or emo. but most people tend to emulate rather than inovate so there becomes a convention. also the general public will then stereotype anyone they feel meets the general outline of that image and a whole load of people that are sort of on the edge of it will be lumped in to. once the media are on it that its all over then as they will go out and find the most typical of that image and show that and then its just snowballs. though the internet as ment that people dont rely on that one set of images so much just look at emo the first truely defined sub group of the interent age its a lot more varied than previous sub groups.

I chose "Combination," because it seems to me that there is both conformity and otherness amongst the androgynes here.

The "conformity" I describe here, to my mind, is that we don't quite conform to binary gender identities. We conform in our otherness, if that makes any sense.

I think it'd be like any culture, every culture. You'd have your conformers and your non-comformers and your inbetweeners who just don't care or don't even notice that there is a culture.

And any conscious attempt at non-comformity quickly becomes conformity, e.i. punk, goth, club kids, etc.

So, it'd be like everything else.

I don't think comformity is a bad thing necessarily if not taken further than a need for belonging and a symbol of unity. Nothing wrong with that within limits.

Yeah, you're probably right Nero.