Darkside Rainbow

Sorry to be updating so late today, but I’m technically on a working vacation - meaning I’m keeping a pretty loose schedule here. In keeping with my five days of stress-free life, today we’re going to lay off the heavy, politically debatable news topics and instead relax with a submission to the “Ask Adri” column.

Hey

May seem a bit of an odd thing to be asking, but…

I’ve found that in addition to being bisexual in terms of who I’d like relationships with, I’ve got an odd kind of bi-sexual body image as well. I’m naturally female, but don’t want to be just that. Not that I want to be male. I don’t like having to be either, I do a lot of androgyny with suits and ties and formal footwear to create a sexless effect. I want to be both, or neither. When I have attempted to explain why I do my androgyne look, people either don’t seem to get it or assume I mean I’d rather be male.

I don’t really have much experience with the gay community, finding it to be too brash and busy being ‘fabulous’ to be useful to my sombrely suited self. So I don’t know if it’s a common thing with Queens or the equivalent Kings or whatever they may go by. Is my wish for sexlessness particuarly odd? Are there many others who’d far rather be hermaphroditic or asexual then have to be male or female?

Love the comic, by the way. Long time habit of politics watching, so the links are often useful.

- El

El, really, what you’re feeling isn’t so abnormal; androgyny’s been around for a long time, and wasn’t just a popular fad that produced such 80s icons (and nightmares) as David Bowie, Annie Lennox, and Boy George before fading away. It really has nothing to do with your sexuality, or even with your gender identity; you’re not a Queen or a King, and thus really shouldn’t worry about defining yourself by any terms outlined by an overly-flamboyant (and I’m a bit on your side there) gay community.

Modern-day gender roles themselves are really quite outdated, and it’s quite surprising that they’ve held out for as long as they have. Rigid gender-based behaviors began eons ago out of a need for organization and safety to preserve and further a species of primitive hunter-gatherers divided by those who bore and raised children, and those who provided for and protected the child-rearers and their offspring.

We’ve evolved far from those needs, and since men and women now fulfill pretty much the same roles in society - women protecting and providing for their families, men staying home with the children, and vice-versa - it’s time to abandon the ideas of what men should wear and what women should wear as entirely separate things, and abandon these ideas that who one is is strictly defined by one’s gender. Hormonal influences from gender may affect some personality traits, but in the end you are who you are, and your attachments (or lack thereof) shouldn’t change that.

Just because you have a penis or a vagina doesn’t mean you have to fulfill this preset concept of what a boy or a girl should be. I know, you probably wish you could get rid of your sex-defining anatomy altogether, or else double-up to be both - all or nothing, as it were - but when you can’t do that, the least you can do is ignore societal norms and focus on your own comfort with how you present your genderless (or dual-gendered) identity to the rest of the world.

In a way, you’re just ahead of the times. Yes, many people are socialized into accepting that because they’re male or female, they should act certain ways, desire certain things, wear just these clothes - and they’re comfortable with that, because they don’t even stop to think that it could be any other way. But there are plenty of people who will completely ignore their assigned gender role, recognize that just because society is binary doesn’t mean that they have to be, and will quite contentedly choose their lifestyle based on what they like and how they feel, rather than whether or not their choices fit their gender. They both disdain gender and fluidly embrace it, ignoring its rules while enjoying its every aspect, at once being sexless and yet dual-sexed.

I’m one such person.

No, seriously. Keeping to the topic of clothing alone (so I won’t be here all day boring you), my wardrobe is a mixture of men’s and women’s clothing; when it’s time for me to get new clothes, I wander both sections of the department store looking not for just this type of men’s clothing, but looking for anything that appeals to me regardless of where it happens to be hanging. If I can find women’s jeans that don’t squeeze uncomfortably in the wrong places, I’ll buy them because I love the low-slung hip-huggers, boot-cut to the point of almost being bellbottoms…and yet at the same time I’ll pair those with men’s muscle shirts and some rugged men’s boots. I wear them together because I like the overall androgynous look, not because I’m trying to be masculine or feminine or even balance in between - and I can promise you that I don’t want to be female, even if I’m not so deeply attached to my masculine identity, either. It isn’t about any of that for me; it’s about my own personal style and comfort.

I wear my hair long and like to comb it across my face to accent my eyes prettily (vain, I know), but at the same time think I look silly if I don’t have at least a little rough stubble dotting my jaw; quite often people have to do a double-take with me and check my flat chest to figure out if I’m male or female, which is pretty much how I like it. My behavior patterns range between strict definitions of masculine and feminine, and I don’t care. I can’t even really identify which traits fall where, because to me, I’m just acting like Adri, and Adri would be Adri regardless of anatomy. It has nothing to do with me being gay, either; as the wide range of gay male behavior - from butch to femme and all along the road in between - will tell you, sexuality really has nothing to do with masculine or feminine behavior. But then you already know that quite well, being you.

Basically what this whole mess boils down to is that you aren’t alone in feeling this way, and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, in my eyes you’re more normal than any promotion of strict behavioral separation by gender. If you don’t want to be a boy or a girl, don’t be either. You can’t change your anatomy, but you don’t have to let it guide how you act, how you dress, or how you feel; make the best of what you have. Just be El, enjoy being El, and to hell with everything else.

Hope this helped at least in some way, even if half of it was just a little commiseration from a similarly-minded person.

Androgynously yours,
~Adri

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ask adri, gay advice column, genderqueer, androgyny