Quote from: Metroland on September 19, 2011, 12:53:12 PM
Hi All,
I have been struggling with gender identity for a while and I am trying to understand it. A friend suggested a while back that I would consider androgyny but I felt that the word didn't really represent me. I felt that androgyny is being genderless or having a little bit of "male" and "female".
I feel however that I do have a gender identity and it is unique to me. I don't identify as female and I don't identify as male. I identify as a gender that is a mix of characteristics that people call masculine and feminine. And this put together creates my gender identity.
Maybe I felt that I didn't identify as androgynous because I didn't feel that the label fits me. In this new categorization I feel that there is the male on one side and the female on the other and whatever in between is a mix of the two, so essentially it is still binary.
It feels to me that a person who is for instance 30% female and 70% male and a person who is 70% female and 30% male are both androgynous, and thus maybe considered the same gender, yet I believe that it would be better if each person can identify as their own gender.
Am I understanding androgyny correctly? Can a person identify as a separate gender? Would this person be considered androgynous?
Thanks for your input.
Hi Metroland
Your thoughts mirror my own, I agree completely that gender is completely personal, I think problems arise because it is the general consensus that people assume they know what 'Being' is, when "what is Being?" is infact the very question itself. People assume they know themselves, skip straaaaight past the only question there is every single day. They also assume theory comes before practical, when the practical world predates theory, always has and always will. For theories to be truthful they must arise from the actual world, the problem is some can visualize the actual world without necessarily needing to actually experience it while others only think they can. There is another problem in that as the practical comes before the theoretical, that all theories will never capture the whole, which is why Theories of Everything will never cover everything.
So minds (theory makers) may bring things out to our attention from within the world, and enlighten us greatly, but those things are already there, bringing something out we must be careful it does not become detached (in our minds only) from the greater and always ultimately unknowable world. Artistic theory can fail to clarify enough, while scientific theory may clarify too much.
We are all completely unique like every other being that has ever existed, Being is indefinable, theory can enlighten parts of me, but there is no man or woman or androgyne in the abstract and thus ultimate sense, a part of who I am and who I am is ultimately undefine.
Defeining ourselves can give us a great sense of strength, but it is a strength that will fail as it is defined strength with limits. But not defining oneself at all who do we utilise the world we live in how do we know who we are, we will be like the other animals. There is a balance, an understanding of what Being is.
